The Greatest Missionary Generation: Inspiring Stories from around the World

By Sharp and Larry W.

In The Greatest Missionary Generation: Inspiring Stories from around the World, Larry Sharp establishes the characteristics, challenges, successes, and uniqueness of an incredible generation of missionaries. It is of no small significance that the missionaries of the second half of the twentieth century prepared the way for God’s people of the twenty-first century. Post-World War II purveyors of the gospel had incredible opportunities and open doors, and they used them for the glory of God.

Through the retelling of personal stories of the missionaries in New Guinea, Brazil, Mexico, and more, lesser known details of missionary activity in the 1950s and 1960s are revealed, including the courage, personal calling, sacrifice, and excellence of these brave Christians. Their incredible journeys prove that their legacy is worth celebrating and remembering. It is of utmost importance for future generations to understand and appreciate the previous generation’s struggles and triumphs. The Greatest Missionary Generation will mobilize hearts to love and serve the Lord.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers
• Release date: Sep 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781683073314

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The Greatest Missionary Generation: Inspiring Stories from around the World (ebook edition)

© 2020 Larry W. Sharp

Published by Hendrickson Publishers

an imprint of Hendrickson Publishing Group

Hendrickson Publishers, LLC

P. O. Box 3473

Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473

www.hendricksonpublishinggroup.com

ebook ISBN 978-1-68307-331-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Scripture quotations contained herein are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

All Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are taken from the King James Version. Public domain.

Disclaimer: This book contains sensitive subject matter, including the brutal death of children and missionary martyrdom. The events were included as an integral part of the missionary story. Please be aware of this before reading this book.

Note: Much of the information in this book was taken from personal interviews and correspondence between the author and the involved parties.

Due to technical issues, this eBook may not contain all of the images or diagrams in the original print edition of the work. In addition, adapting the print edition to the eBook format may require some other layout and feature changes to be made.

First eBook edition — September 2020

Crossworld is committed to unleashing the explosive power of spiritual multiplication and the untapped potential of every believer. Its vision is to send disciple-makers from all professions who bring God’s love to life into the world’s least-reached marketplaces.

To God, my heavenly Father, who protected the man who would one day become my father from a watery war grave in the English Channel that cold October night in 1942. That man later came to believe in you as his Savior and with my mother led me to follow you as well.

To my beloved wife, Vicki Linn, of fifty years. She has lived through marriage, parenthood, and service to the fullest with me, walking alongside me in the journey of bringing this book to reality, insisting on its quality and accuracy.

To my children, Tammy, Torrey (Teri), Trevor (Lindsey), and Trudy. It has been a privilege and honor to be your father. Whatever successes follow me into eternity will be largely to your credit. I am proud of each of you.

To the people at Crossworld, who provided context, guidance, and friendship through forty-seven years of ministry in Brazil, Canada, and the United States, along with Business as Mission ministry in more than forty countries.

To the many members of the greatest missionary generation we have known—only some of whom are represented here. You have been our models in life and faith. You have served your generation well. I believe you are truly the greatest!

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

1. Motivations for the Greatest Missionary Generation

2. Missionaries to New Guinea

3. Pioneers in Brazil and Mexico

4. Issei and Nisei Japanese in Brazil

5. Animism and Bible Translators in South America

6. Into Harm’s Way

7. The Home Front

8. God’s Girls

9. Missionary Institutions

10. Francophone World

11. Missionary Kids

12. Flexibility and Availability

13. Where Do We Go from Here?

Acknowledgments

Photographs

Foreword

Many of the stories recounted in this book have existed in relative obscurity until now, hidden away in the hearts of the great men and women who experienced them. Though I have worked with Crossworld for thirty years, ten of those as its president, some of the content of this book was completely unknown to me. Undoubtedly, these stories were shared with the faithful saints who sent out these heroes over half a century ago, but without today’s technology to spread them around the globe, they were eventually forgotten.

Larry and Vicki Sharp have done a huge service for the kingdom of God in capturing these stories for the generations to come. Not only does this book honor this greatest missionary generation, but I pray that God will use it to awaken and send a new generation of courageous men and women, who will consider no sacrifice too great for the glory of his name.

Do not read this book as a mere history of great missionary activity. Read it as a stimulus for another great movement of God among the nations before he returns. Beg God to stir up and send out a new breed of pioneers to continue the task of proclaiming his name to the 2.9 billion who have still never heard of him. The jungles they live in, however, no longer resemble the ones described in this book. For the most part, they are the urban jungles of business enterprise and higher education, as well as those of poverty, injustice, illiteracy, illegitimacy, crime, and hopelessness.

It’s likely that this next generation of champions will not come by way of the same paths as the missionary greats described in these pages. They may or may not have Bible degrees or a missionary salary. They certainly won’t arrive by boat. And they might not stay for forty years. But what they will have in common with those who have gone before them is an unquenchable thirst to see God exalted among those who have not had a viable opportunity to know him. They will leave behind comforts of a magnitude their forebearers could not have imagined. But like those who have gone before, they will be willing to lay down their lives for a cause that will endure throughout all eternity.

Maybe you, the reader of this book, will be one of those someday called the final great generation. Or maybe you will need to release one of your children or grandchildren to the mission field. Maybe letting go of the ones you cherish the most will be your own act of greatness. Whatever the case may be, don’t read this book passively. Read it with a heart ready to be mobilized for the final great push into the glorious eternity that awaits those who love him.

Dale Losch

President, Crossworld

Introduction

No phase of the occupation has left me with a greater sense of personal satisfaction than my spiritual stewardship. . . . Please send missionaries . . . and Bibles.

—General Douglas MacArthur

after the defeat of Japan in 1945

The Second World War was perhaps the biggest national challege of the twentieth century for the United States and its Western allies. Filmmaker Ken Burns called the generation who fought the war abroad and at home a generation of remarkable Americans—our better angels, and journalist Tom Brokaw called them the Greatest Generation, which was also the title of his 1998 New York Times best-selling book.[1] Noted historian George Marsden also said of this time period that it was the greatest spurt of growth in the two-century tenure of modern missions.[2]

My father was one member of that greatest generation and was an example of, in the words of Brokaw, men and women whose lives had been defined first by the deprivations of the Great Depression and then by the sacrifices of the war who came home to start families, begin careers, build communities, serve their nation . . . and they gave us the lives we have today.[3] Although they were just ordinary people, they went on to become known as the greatest generation.

When I was a child, a plaque on the wall of our home read, Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few, spoken by Winston Churchill during the Battle of Britain in 1940. My father was a flyer over the skies of England. He eventually returned home on a stretcher in 1943, after being bailed out of the English Channel. His plane sank in ninety seconds. He was my hero.

Among this generation of great but ordinary people were the missionaries who followed another leader to the ends of the earth—Jesus their king. Like those fighting battles between nations, these warriors were willing to confront a different and more powerful enemy—the enemy of human souls. Some say Americans and Canadians came of age in 1945, but so did the missionary movement—as we shall see through the stories that follow.[4] The world seemed open to receive the good news they brought—just as the men and women between 1939 and 1945 also brought liberation to a world at war. I therefore call them the greatest missionary generation—ordinary, but also extraordinary.

They, too, were defined by the Great Depression and the sacrifices of the war that followed. They had the same innate character, passion, honor, loyalty, and love of heaven, earth, and God himself. As noted above, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific, Douglas MacArthur, pleaded in 1945, Please send missionaries . . . and Bibles.[5] Within five years, five thousand missionaries went to Japan alone and the Bible became a best-seller. These and other missionaries in the late 1940s to 1950s joined the greatest spurt of growth in the two-century career of modern missions.[6] Christians were challenged to seize the postwar moment to bring the message of Christ to those starving for the Bread of Life. Missionaries not only flooded to open doors in China, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere in Asia, but also to Africa, Latin America, and Europe. New agencies grew up, and old ones were reenergized to spread the faith of the Christian gospel.

Who were these members of the greatest missionary generation? What motivated them? What were the conditions of their calling? What can we learn? And perhaps most importantly: how can we value, remember, and cherish them so that their sacrifices and heroic deeds will not be forgotten?

In the latter part of the twentieth century, it became commonplace to think of missionaries as those who couldn’t adapt in the rapidly changing postwar culture of North America. Many thought these people turned to foreign missionary service because they were not college material, were anxious for adventure, or were escaping problems at home. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, Fran Tracy was a decorated sailor in the United States Navy during the war. She then graduated with two degrees from an Ivy League university and eventually translated significant portions of Scripture into two tribal languages. She could have been successful anywhere and represents her generation well because she was smart, educated, dedicated, and successful.

For this missionary generation, there were challenges as well as successes: headhunters in New Guinea turning to Christ by the thousands, Bibles translated into indigenous languages, nationalist rebellions and missionary martyrs in the Congo, growing churches amid the poverty of Haiti, children and husbands drowned in the Amazon River, exiles from places such as Cuba and Egypt, avoiding spears aimed at the white foreigner, and on and on.

While we hope that some of these tragic experiences will never be repeated, we also hope they will never be forgotten. The book of Hebrews uses an expression that applies to this generation: of whom the world was not worthy (11:38 KJV). They are indeed among the greatest. Their stories demonstrate courage, personal calling, sacrifice, and excellence, and represent a legacy worth celebrating. They also demonstrate a commitment to obey God’s command to make disciples of all nations, which they took seriously (see Matthew 28:18–20).

As we pause to reflect on these stories of yesteryear, we must not simply cheer at the memories of all that God has done and marvel at lives well lived. God is not finished with the world. While followers of Jesus in the future might not confront cannibals, enter unknown jungles and mountain valleys, or face strange diseases while leaving their children at faraway boarding homes, a demanding call for obedience, courage, sacrifice, and professional excellence still beckons. More than likely, new generations will enter the unreached regions of the world with their professions and skills, so as to live and love like Jesus in the marketplace of life. They, too, must take seriously his command to go out and make disciples. The open doors they find may look radically different, but the commitment will be the same.

The inspiration for collecting these stories began during my service as vice president of operations of the missionary organization Crossworld from 1993 to 2013. My respect for this generation, however, began much earlier, when my wife Vicki and I were serving our first term of missionary service in Brazil in the early 1970s. There, we rubbed shoulders with colleagues who had arrived in the 1940s and ’50s. It was not long before we recognized them as true heroes of the faith.

But why not just thank God for those experiences and the people we have been privileged to know and then move on with our lives? While serving this generation in the home office of the mission and helping them retire back in North America, our appreciation grew even more. Surely their stories need a wider audience, we thought. Maybe we are the ones to tell their stories—not only of those we knew, who served with our mission, but also of those we did not know who served with other agencies.

While on my various trips around North America and the world by land and air, I always seemed to be in a hurry. I flew to conferences and other appointments, or I drove via the interstate highway system. Many times, I dreamed of driving across the continent on the old roads taken by this greatest generation—national roads, such as Highways 1, 6, 30, 66, 99, 101; the Trans-Canada Highway; and other historic routes that predate the interstate system.

When I retired from my executive role in 2013, Crossworld’s board gave Vicki and me a monetary gift to facilitate a motor home trip to interview more than fifty members of this greatest generation who were now back in North America. In this way, they combined my dreams of cross-country traveling and learning more about these amazing missionaries. So, we made our preparations, contacted many people, and purchased a twenty-seven-foot Class C motor home. We placed our possessions in storage and began a twelve-month odyssey that took us to thirty-three states and four Canadian provinces. About twenty-three thousand miles later, we had interviewed more than fifty retired missionaries in depth. We then sold the motor home and moved to Seattle, Washington, to begin writing these stories. Tears filled our eyes often as we listened to the tapes, read our notes, and conversed about all we had seen and learned.

What a privilege to have these saints share their pain and joys with us, tell of amazing miracles, and explain how they overcame incredible challenges and how God repeatedly answered their prayers. Some experienced terrible losses, while others experienced things no other human being has seen or done. Our primary prayer has been that we now do justice to these remarkable stories of this greatest missionary generation.

Several times, we commented to each other that if no one ever reads even one of these stories, we ourselves have been blessed beyond measure. In the end, we decided to write for the glory of God. We have simply been trying to cheer on the next generation by building on the legacy of the generations behind us. Indeed, they modeled obedience to the Great Commission for our generation and for our grandchildren’s generation.

We want to apologize to the men and women who told us their stories but are not included in this written record. We wrestled with the fact that we could not include everyone, but we encouraged each of them to tell their story in their own way. We also encourage younger readers to ask questions of this greatest missionary generation while they are still with us and to listen to their astonishing stories.

It is of no small significance in the grand scheme of God’s purpose that the missionaries of the second half of the twentieth century prepared the way for God’s methodology of the twenty-first century. Postwar purveyors of the gospel had incredible opportunities and open doors, and they used them for the glory of God. So, too, today God provides opportunities for professionals with skills needed by underdeveloped and unreached regions. In this way, a new generation can open new doors for more people to become followers of Jesus. They do this by standing on the shoulders of those who went before them.

Notes

---

[1]. Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New York: Random House, 1998), ii.

[2]. The Free Dictionary, s.v. pioneer, (n.), accessed October 1, 2018, www.thefreedictionary.com/pioneer.

[3]. Ibid., xiv.

[4]. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 231–57.

[5]. Paul G. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008).

[6]. John F. Peters, Life among the Yanomami (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 51.

1. Motivations for the Greatest Missionary Generation

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always.

—Jesus (Matthew 28:18–20)

We have defined the greatest missionary generation period to be roughly analogous to those described in Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation, who shared similar experiences during the Great Depression, World War II, and early postwar America. But the values and motivations of these missionaries make them unique, especially as we see how their accomplishments paved the way for subsequent attempts of later generations to obey the Great Commission of Jesus. So, what motivated them—and why them and why then?

While the motivation for missionary efforts since the first century AD has been foremost the command of Jesus to love every neighbor (Mark 12:31) and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18–20), other factors played into the unique postwar sense of urgency. These include biblical prophecy interpretations that placed heavy emphasis on the formation of the state of Israel, the rise of fundamentalism, the threat of Communism, and the opportunity to use Western civilization and the gospel as a last effort to save the world for eternity.

When the United States and other Western powers recognized the devastation of Germany and much of Europe, they committed to help them rebuild. Such a pledge was unprecedented in world history. The American promise to help the economic recovery in Europe, officially called the European Recovery Program, was the brainchild of US Secretary of State George Marshall. Hence, it is most often referred to as the Marshall Plan.

Japan’s recovery pathway differed from Europe’s in that it was agreed that Allied forces would occupy the country for eighty months. During this time, the United States, led by General Douglas MacArthur and supported by the British Commonwealth countries, supervised Japan’s political stability and economic recovery, which included food distribution, democratic reforms, and the establishment of a constitution. MacArthur’s well-known call for missionaries went out to the West. He respected the belief that the values and history of Christianity largely accounted for the growth of Western democracies, especially the United States, and could now bring peace and hope to a war-weary world.

The rise of Communism in what became known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, and elsewhere created fear in Western democracies. As a result, many postwar policies were driven by a keen desire to prevent its spread. Many believed that Christianity was a key component of this resistance. Evangelical Christians, especially in North America, began to wonder if the evils of Nazi Germany would be considered mild when compared to Stalin in Russia and Mao Tse-tung in China. Maybe Jesus would be returning soon!

However, perhaps the greatest motivator after the biblical mandates was theological in nature. Premillennial dispensationalism advanced by John N. Darby and most of the prophetic conferences common in the first half of the twentieth century were a powerful motivating factor in reminding believers of the urgency of both personal holiness and world evangelization. Believers needed to live in preparation for Christ’s imminent return, as well as evangelize unbelievers as quickly as possible.

Whereas conservative evangelical Christians were marked by other indicators—such as a regenerative personal born-again decision, belief in the literal authority of Scripture, separation from the world, some degree of militancy, and fulfillment of prophecy—the strongest motivator was the premillennial teaching about the imminent return of Christ. Fundamentalist evangelicals believed the time was short and therefore evangelism of the human soul dominated the missionary efforts of the time.

The urgent theology of these postwar decades had its roots in preachers and teachers, such as D. L. Moody, A. J. Gordon, A. B. Simpson, James M. Gray, L. E. Maxwell, F. B. Meyer, G. Campbell Morgan, Robert C. McQuilkin, and A. C. Dixon. During this time, Reverend Billy Graham began to preach as the first full-time evangelist of the fledgling postwar organization Youth for Christ. Before long, he launched out on his own and gained national attention at the Los Angeles Crusade in 1949, and so the era of Billy Graham crusades began. By the mid-1950s, he was a fixture on listings of the most admired people in America. Other evangelists soon joined him in this national and international phenomenon, all of whom exacerbated the sense of urgency. In addition to all this, the prolific notes of the Scofield Reference Bible kept conservative Christians fixated on themes of the second coming well into the second half of the twentieth century. It was now or never.

Most writers on this subject, as it relates to the missionary wave after the Second World War, acknowledge that the strongest missionary training was provided from dispensational schools that flourished during this time: institutions such as Moody Bible Institute, Prairie Bible Institute, Columbia Bible College, Lancaster Bible College, Appalachian Bible Institute, Bible Institute of Los Angeles (which later became Biola University), Dallas Theological Seminary, Philadelphia School of the Bible, and the colleges and seminaries connected with the Southern Baptist Convention. Of these, Prairie Bible Institute in central Alberta and Moody Bible Institute in Chicago were considered the foremost missionary training institutions in North America. People left these schools as missionaries in droves because missionary service was considered the highest spiritual calling.

Dispensational theological pundits in the 1950s, promising Jesus’ soon return, identified the antichrist as anyone from the Roman Catholic pope to Chairman Mao to President Kennedy. The formation of