I was born in Gardendale, Alabama on a 40-acre farm. I remember my family would carry me to church. I made a profession of faith at 10 years of age during a revival but really didn’t know what I was doing. It wasn’t long before the Holy Spirit showed me I wasn’t saved, but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, and no one knew because my life didn’t have any overt sin.
But when I was 18 years of age, I moved to Chicago, Illinois to live with my sister, and went to work for a magazine. I got myself a phone book and looked up a church near my sister’s home and went to the church cold turkey. As I began to hear the Word, I became convicted (and praise the Lord He allowed me mercy to come to that place). I went home and I knelt at my bed and asked the Lord to come into my heart and save me.
After that, boy, I hit the ground running. I had so much zeal for the Lord. I would knock on every door, pass out tracts, invite people to church. Then I started teaching a Sunday school class of 10-year-old girls. That was really a sweet experience because that’s the age when they love you to death and just shower you with love, and I needed that. After a couple of months, I felt the Lord calling me into Christian service. One day again, on a Saturday, I knelt on a chair and surrendered to the Lord. I said, “Lord, here I am. Send me. I’ll do whatever You want me to do; I’ll go wherever You want me to go.” When I got up, it was like a burden was lifted from my shoulders because the Lord had been dealing with me for such a long while.
I decided if I was going to serve, I needed to go to Bible college and seminary. I asked my pastor where he went and applied there, got a scholarship and that’s where I met Charlie [my husband]. I was a first year, he was a fourth year, and he was almost ready to graduate. I went in January, and he was going to graduate in May. At first we were just really good friends and he would drive me to work, but that friendship soon developed into a love. We complemented each other so well; I know the Lord was in it. He was a visionary and a people person; I was administrative (he never wrote a letter in his life, he never sat down long enough!). I took care of everything administrative, so even after he died, I was able to run the Mission.
Right after we got married, Charlie was going in to be a church planter. We went to Pascagoula, Missisippi and planted a Baptist church there. In Petal, Mississippi, the Lord called us to the mission field. In April 1968, we started raising support and getting pledges from people. Almost every one of these people has supported us for 50 years now. In September of 1968, Charlie and I, together with our children Tom and Tamara (Tom was three years old and Tamara was one), left for Costa Rica. When our two planes landed, a painted cart pulled up to collect our luggage. I knew then that we had truly arrived on the mission field.
We were to spend nine months there to study Spanish. To be honest, even though I had no doubts that God had called us, I still had many concerns and misgivings, the greatest of which was the health of my children. When we attended our first church service in Costa Rica, a small child with a dirty face and a runny nose sat in his mother’s lap next to us. To my dismay, the first thing that he did was to take a sucker from his mouth and plop it into my one-year-old daughter’s mouth. As soon as he did it, I said to myself, “Welcome to the mission field.”
I also had concerns about our food source. San Jose, Costa Rica had only one very small grocery store with imported canned food. The remainder of our food had to be purchased at the local market where the meat hung in the open air and was covered with flies. The vegetables and fruits were contaminated and had to be washed thoroughly in bleach water. Since we could speak no Spanish, we could not read the labels on the cans, so every meal was a big surprise.
Through it all, each step of the way, the Lord assured me that He loved us and that He would always be with us, and that He would build a hedge of protection around us.
