To be a Missionary

By James Bethea

In this collection of the author's personal missionary stories, you will cross oceans, learn how to live in other cultures, taste foods that you may never have imagined, find out what it's like to live in the middle of wars and famines, raise four happy children, and see God do miracles that change lives for eternity. You will be face-to-face with fanatical fighters, gangs of thieves, and hopeless people. Your job is to learn how to hear God's directions in every situation and then trust Him enough to do exactly what He says--or maybe die. The greatest challenge of all will be to know God yourself.

Africa, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Ukraine are some of the places described in these stories. There you will sail among tropical islands, climb snowcapped mountains, walk jungle trails, and meet wild animals. If you survive, you may have the opportunity to tell someone about Jesus. How will you do that? Then what happens? When you see the real God at work, it's worth everything you've ever known, including your very life.

This book is an opportunity for you to know what it's like to be a missionary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887511528

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To be a Missionary

James Bethea

ISBN 979-8-88751-151-1 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88751-152-8 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by James Bethea

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Indonesia

Pacific Crossing

Bandung Battles

Obstacle Course

Grambolan Attack

Tankuban Prahu and Hope

Burn the Hospital!

One Dropped Tract

Man in the Yellow Clothes

Food on the Table

DC-3 over Egypt

No Other Gods

East Africa

Witch Doctor

Sergi

Redmond the Ranger

Antoni

Fire on the Porini

India

An Air about India

Gateway of India

Frozen Yogurt

Silver Skewer

The Sign of Jonah

MV Logos: The Miracle Ship

Turning Point

Snowstorm on the Equator

The Call

Lebanon

Into the Jordanian Desert

Pella

Bombs, Bullets, and Beirut

Baby Ben

Dog River Demons

Habibi

US Marines in Beirut

Bullet through the Windshield

Khalde: Through the Sheltering Storm

Um Eli

Ahlan wa Sahlan!

Oriel

Michel

Sidon Post Office

Khoury Philippe

Elan

Narkosi

Gaby

Don't Miss the Boat

Dr. Marmeri

Deir al Qamar

Mary of Cyprus

Crazy Woman

Shaul

Jon Jorjuga

Hassan

Captain Alber'

Flee for Your Lives

Eli

Furlough in America

Northwest Adventures

Whose House?

Intercession

Expo 86

Andrei

Hazarat

Indonesia Again

On the Wings of the Dawn

Perri SuPerri

Sunda Sentra

Tinjau

The Snake

God's Visas

Pak Wahid

The Last Nadai: A Sailing Adventure

Pulau Buluh

Light Bringer

Vic

The Hermit

Jesus in Mecca

The Thief

Man of Peace

The Interrogation

Lutung at Patam

Puskesmas Miracle

I was driving home across Batam Island and slowed to turn left at an intersection of new paved roads through the jungle. There were no other cars or people in sight except for one lone man trudging along in the heat waves beyond the intersection. Suddenly, he began to run, frantically waving his arms for me to stop.

United States

Home, 1993

Ray

Pastor Years

Uzhgorod, Ukraine

Hidden Lake: A Solo Hike in the North Cascades

About the Author

We've a story to tell to the nations

That shall turn their hearts to the right,

A story of truth and mercy,

A story of peace and light.

For the darkness shall turn to dawning,

And the dawning to noonday bright,

And Christ's great kingdom shall come on earth,

The kingdom of love and light.

—Hymn by H. Ernest Nichol, 1862–1928

It's like being a soldier in God's army, Jon. If He tells us to take a point position, then we stay there until He says otherwise. As you know, soldiers are expendable. We don't have to survive. But we do have to obey orders.

The militiaman nodded. Ana fahem! But how do you hear the orders?

That's what I've been trying to tell you....

To my wife, Stephanie, the bravest woman I've ever known.

Preface

The purpose of this book is to provide our personal missionary stories as an inspiration for you to trust in Jesus as Lord of your life. You may already be a Christian, but learning to fully trust Him continues for as long as you live. This is still true for my wife, Stephanie, and myself. Our prayer is that you will be encouraged by these stories in your own journey of faith now and on into eternity. There, I hope to hear your story too!

The stories that follow are grouped in order of where and when they happened. Some names and a few locations have been modified for the protection of the people described or their families. Dialogue has been recreated or translated into English as accurately as possible. Incredible as many of the stories seem, even to us who lived them, they are true testimonies of God's sovereign work in changing lives. May your life also be forever changed as you read them.

Indonesia

Pacific Crossing

October 1960

What do you want for your birthday? Dad asked.

A surfboard…all day! I shouted excitedly.

Brother Mac grunted, Yeah!

We flew to Hawaii ahead of our ship from San Francisco and had already spent half a day on Waikiki Beach. Actually, I wouldn't really be eight years old until a week later, but we'd be out in the middle of the ocean by then. My folks were planning ahead, but for us kids, right now was all that mattered.

Dad laughed. Well, okay! We'll see if they have any small ones for rent tomorrow.

They didn't. We ended up with a boatlike platform about ten feet long. I could run from one end of the thing and side to side without making much difference. The only way I could move it was to jump in the water and push. When a breaking wave came, I'd climb on but was either knocked off right away or left behind with my spindly arms paddling uselessly. Big people paddled with one arm on either side of the board like they were swimming, but I couldn't reach all the way across. I needed a crew for my first command at sea.

Hey, Mac! Wanna ride?

With two of us on top of the surfboard, we managed to catch a few waves. I still remember what it felt like when the board slid forward on its own. First the nose tilted down as a wave came up behind. We flailed the water like crazy trying to get the board moving. We probably wasted more effort squealing with excitement than paddling. Then suddenly, white foam roared all over us. We were going! That big board was actually moving! We'd both jump up, swinging our bottoms from side to side trying to steer.

Kaboom! The board would swerve and flip. We'd come up spluttering. We did it! Mom! Did you see us? We were really great, weren't we, Mom? C'mon, Mac! Let's do it again!

Mom stood anxiously over baby Sam playing in the sand of the beach, wondering if she should leave one child to rescue two others. Dad and my oldest brother had their own surfboards further out in the real waves. But she let us play while she prayed fervently for God to save all of us.

Sometimes we had to chase that crazy surfboard all the way into the shallows before turning it around to go back out again. The thing went really fast all by itself when it got away. We soon figured out that all we had to do was sit in the right places and hang on while it zoomed us along. It was the best birthday present ever!

Mac and I agreed that if this was what being missionaries was actually like, then we were going to have a great time. Warm sunshine, coconut fronds rustling in the breeze, fruit drinks on the beach—yeah!

Somehow, I'd thought that missionaries were martyrs for the faith—whatever that meant. There had to be some suffering involved in helping poor people on the other side of the world. I mean, those old ladies back at First Baptist Church in Memphis getting all teary-eyed over our great sacrifice had to mean something terrible would happen. We might even get eaten by cannibals. Steve, Stacy, and my other friends at church had looked at me like I already had barbecue sauce smeared on my blond hair. It was glorious to be a hero and, oh, so brave and handsome to face such a terrible fate.

I'd worked that line to get a few extra lemon drops from Mr. McCann a few times just as we went into church. It helped get through the sermon if you had some extra lemon-drop balls—just as emergency food supplies, of course (though they were kind of handy to flick at Stacy's big ears in the row ahead of us when no one was looking. I'd be piously looking up to heaven listening to Dr. Caudill preach when Stacy looked back, rubbing his ear and pretending to be real mad—then grin and eat the lemon drop). Missionaries have to be prepared for everything, you know.

One thing that kinda irritated me about Mr. McCann was that every time he gave me a lemon drop, he'd say, Jim Polk [including my middle name], you must ask God to forgive your sins and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Couldn't he see that I was already a missionary for Jesus along with my whole family? I even bossed the other kids around telling them to be good, like when I caught Stacy running around through a side door to line up again for an extra lemon drop. Aha! I saw that, Stace! Hand over that second lemon drop so you don't burn in hell forever! Stacy guiltily gave me one of the two in his hand, and I popped it into my own mouth along with all the others. This being a missionary stuff was working out pretty well! But what Mr. McCann said still bothered me.

Our airplane had to fly over a storm on the way to Hawaii from San Francisco. The Boeing 707 was already as high as it could go and was bouncing really hard. The wings snapped up and down like they were about to break off. Everybody was sick. It was getting hard to breathe. Above us, the sky was a darker blue than I'd ever seen before. Below, we couldn't see the ocean, just white swirls of hurricane clouds. Then all the oxygen masks fell down in front of our faces. Everybody was sick, even the adults, so I didn't feel so bad about it. It helped a lot to hold that yellow oxygen mask against my face. This was just part of the great sacrifice we were making to leave home, family, and friends—perhaps forever. These were the trials and tribulations that proved I was a real missionary now—or so I hoped. But what did old Mr. McCann mean?

Anyway, in Hawaii, Mac and I figured the suffering part must not have really kicked in yet as we played on the surfboard all day. My dad had been pretty smart to fly us to the islands while our ship, the SS President Wilson, fought through the storm on its way across the ocean. The blue Ford station wagon that had driven us from Memphis, Tennessee, to San Francisco, California, was already on the ship, along with most of our stuff.

The Foreign Mission Board had argued with Dad about our not using the cabin that they'd already paid for on the ship to get us to Hawaii. No missionaries had ever gone to the field in an airplane before. Tradition dictated that we had to set sail in a ship to cross the ocean. But being a very successful and rather independent-minded doctor, he'd simply bought the airplane tickets himself and let the ship struggle along through the storm without us. So much for suffering for the faith.

The night after playing all day on the surfboard though, we began to learn what suffering meant. Our sunburns hurt so much we couldn't sleep. It was torture just to let Dad gently spread lotion across our pink cheeks and shoulders. The backs of our legs and even the bottoms of our feet were burned from lying on top of the board.

After that, we wore T-shirts while swimming or just sat in the shade of the coconut trees along the beach hurting and thinking this must be some kind of fiery punishment. I mean, aren't you supposed to burn in hell for sin, like I'd preached to Stace and the other kids at church? This sunburn sure felt like we'd been toasted a little for something really bad. But I couldn't figure out what we'd done wrong. Maybe Mac and I liked that surfboard too much instead of unselfishly loving the heathen or something. There'd been a few long-haired beach-bum characters hanging around that kind of looked like heathens. Should we have preached to them or maybe even let them use my surfboard? But we'd just ignored them. That may have been it. On the other hand, maybe we just stayed out in the sun too long. Anyway, I knew that if I had another surfboard, I'd do the same thing all over again.

At the end of the week, the President Wilson arrived in Honolulu Harbor. We moved our few bags into our cabin and ran around all over the ship. It was a big deal when people started throwing lots of colored streamers of crepe paper from the rail to people waving on the dock. All those little lines of paper began to snap and flutter down into the water as the ship pulled away.

Some of the other passengers wiped at their eyes. I'd never before seen adults cry except when we left the church in Memphis and Grandmother too, of course, when she boo-hooed all over each one of us, but especially on Mom.

But, Mother, Mom had said, you prayed every day for one of your children to be a missionary!

I thought it would be one of the boys, not y-o-u-u-u! Grandmother had wailed.

Then they were both bawling in each other's arms. In those days, crossing an ocean to be missionaries for years on end must have seemed rather final. For Grandmother McCall, it was. She and my mom both knew that she was dying of cancer. Maybe that was part of what those teary-eyed old ladies at church meant about such a great sacrifice.

Despite all the feelings, the Wilson churned on and on westward across the Pacific Ocean toward Hong Kong. From there, we'd go to Singapore, then Jakarta, Indonesia. Somewhere on the island of Java—the name sounded pretty neat to us boys—Dad would become one of the doctors for a large mission hospital. But all that was still far ahead as the ship drove on—endlessly onward, it seemed—toward the western horizon.

Days passed. We crossed the international date line on my birthday. I was kidded about having my eighth birthday twice—two days in a row—since the date was the same the next day as the day before. Or maybe it was the other way around, and I completely missed my actual birthday, so we celebrated it twice. I've been confused about how old I am ever since.

Then came the big storm. They call them typhoons in the Pacific, but this one would pass as a hurricane back in the Atlantic. The crew told us there would be a lifeboat drill as part of our getting ready for the storm. Meanwhile, they ran around hammering on things and stringing ropes down the middle of the hallways. When the storm hit, none of the passengers were supposed to go out on the decks unless there was an emergency.

That especially meant us kids—the captain growled, glaring down at us with those fierce bushy eyebrows. He'd been real nice to us when it was our turn to eat at the captain's table, just like all the rest of the crew had been really friendly to us as we ran around the decks playing. But now, Stay inside! he repeated. Understand?

Y-y-y-y-yes, sir! I mean, uh! Aye aye, C-c-captain, sir! we stammered. I guess he really meant it. This must be a really big, bad storm ahead. Maybe the ship would sink or something.

We were in our little cabin when the ship's horn began blasting. That was the signal for the lifeboat drill! We grabbed our life jackets and hurried up through level after level of hallways and stairs to the dining room. We were counted in groups to be sure all the passengers were there, then hurried after our assigned crewmen to our lifeboat stations. The men pulled off boat covers, worked controls, and swung the boats out over the side of the ship.

An officer walked back and forth with a stopwatch in his hand to see how long it took. Our crewmen were really fast and ahead of everybody else. One of our guys looked back and grinned when Mac and I cheered for him just when he was unhooking something. But that's when it happened.

Suddenly, our boat came loose from the ropes holding it to the davits. It was hanging there over the side like all the others, swaying slightly as the Wilson rolled, then—bang! One end dropped, and the boat hung there straight up and down. After a few swings, the other end let go also. It's a good thing we weren't in it, or it would've dumped us all into the water, then landed on our heads. There was just a glimpse of it going away behind the ship, right side up but mostly full of water. I was impressed at how clear the water inside the boat looked when the rest of the ocean was so dark blue or foamy white.

The big ship slowed, then circled around to pick up the dropped lifeboat. We'd been churning along really fast all the way from Hawaii, but now the Wilson eased to a stop alongside the little, broken boat, bobbing lonely on the waves. We weren't allowed to lean over the side to watch, but soon the lifeboat came lifting back up on the ropes to be tied down in its old place.

There was a Ping-Pong ball in a little cage beneath the boat that let water drain out of a hole in the bottom. When the boat was floating, the ball would float up and stop up the hole to keep water out. Pretty neat!

We watched the last of the clear seawater dribble onto the deck beneath the lifeboat. The bottom was badly bent, but everything inside looked okay. It was obvious though, that we wouldn't be using that lifeboat if we had to leave the ship in a hurry. Maybe some of the other passengers would move over and let us ride in their boats, I hoped.

The ocean began to get rough. Our cabin swayed and tossed things around. Shoes tumbled across the floor. Towels and clothes that hung on the corners of the bunks swung back and forth. Some of it fell. Nobody bothered to pick them up. Too sick. Started to smell bad in there too, but we couldn't open the porthole. Sometimes it was underwater. The cabin would get real dark when the ship rolled onto its side except for the little yellow light on the ceiling.

Mac and I were really hungry when the dinner chimes sounded in the hallway. No one else wanted to go eat though. We scrambled out into the brightly lit hallway and raced up the stairs, bouncing off the walls as they banged into us. Laughing, we caught the ropes that had been strung tightly down the middle and swung back and forth like little monkeys. This was fun!

We reached a set of double doors that lead onto a side deck but remembered what the captain said. Stay inside!

Wow! Look at that! Mac yelled, staring at something outside. He had to hold me up to see through the bottom of the glass panel. A river of frothing white water was rushing past just on the other side of the doors! No wonder the captain had ordered all the passengers to stay inside. We'd have been washed away out there!

Usually, the dining room was crowded at mealtimes. For some reason, Mac and I were the only ones in there this time. We lurched from table to table to our own. No plates were set—no knives and forks, or glasses of juice—which couldn't have stood up on that crazy table, anyway—and no food. This was getting serious. We were about to starve to death out in the middle of the ocean just because of some little hurricane.

Fortunately, a pale-looking steward rescued us. There was lots and lots of cold food waiting in the kitchen. We stuffed ourselves while the steward hung over a sink, not paying us much attention. He managed a weak smile when we yelled thanks and ran out with a bunch of really good fruit—just in case of future crises, of course.

I hoped one of these bright red apples would make my poor mother feel better down in that dark cabin. We bounced our way off the walls back the way we'd come, laughing and shouting as we were flung about.

Mom, here's a really nice juicy apple, I whispered, leaning into her bunk. Baby Sam was curled against her, finally asleep after crying for a long time before we left. She gazed at the apple for a moment, then went cross-eyed. I jumped back, dropping the apple as she heaved into her most expensive pair of high-heeled shoes on the floor. I felt really bad about that.

Mac climbed up to join me in the square box around the porthole where I was doing penance for the apple. The wretched thing was still rolling around through the puddle on the floor and Sam was whimpering again. Mom's favorite shoes were ruined. All my fault. My life as a heroic good-guy missionary was over.

Whoa! We nearly fell out of the box that time. We were suddenly staring down into the cabin below. Then it swirled around like we were in a rolling barrel. Now we looked up into the cabin above. The dim yellow light on the ceiling was the only way to know which way was supposed to be up.

Mac slammed shut the wooden shutters of the porthole box just as things hit against it. It was really dark in there. Then the ship rolled back the other way. Greenish light flashed into pearly gray as we fell against the shutters, staring up through the porthole into stormy whiteness. Maybe that was heaven and we were about to go on to glory, as they used to say in church.

Down again. Water burst past our porthole, inches away. Lots of shiny bubbles streamed past, then blackness. We lay against the glass below the giant mass of the ship, deep beneath the ocean surface. Maybe that is what hell is like—all dark and scary. But we knew Mom was doing all the praying that was needed for us even if she was seasick in her bunk, so sinking down into that blackness didn't worry us. This was really neat!

Again and again, two small boys inside of a wooden box with a glass hole in it were lifted and plunged from high in the sky to the black depths of the ocean. It was something I will never forget. It went on and on and on. And we loved it.

The battered SS President Wilson glided smoothly among the glittering lights of Hong Kong harbor. We could hardly wait for the gangplank to be lowered onto the dock. But it was the next morning before our missionary friend, Kitty Anderson, met us at the ship to take us on a shopping tour of the crowded Chinese city.

Colors, smells, strange jabbering words, rickshaws rhythmically bouncing us along through narrow streets, cries of, Amelica boy! You buy this? as cheap toys were thrust in front of my face. I tried to be polite, shaking my head no, but there were just too many of them trying to sell stuff. Amelica boy! Amelica boy!

Finally, we were inside a quiet shop pungent with incense. Tendrils of smoke wafted up from two sticks in front of a fat, golden Buddha statue. The owner offered us little round cups of bitter tea. Then the folks bargained for some beautifully carved ivory; one piece was a Chinese ship inside a black glass-fronted box that I liked. They bought a Chinese emperor and empress set also. Everybody smiled and bowed when we left.

At another shop, a smiling Chinese man unrolled long art scrolls—one was a running black horse, tail flying, painted with just a few masterful brush strokes of ink. I have that one still, hanging six feet long high up on our living room wall more than half a century later. It was a gift to us from Kitty, the long-forgotten missionary of Hong Kong—no, not quite forgotten, Kitty. Not so long as that black horse gallops across the scroll you found for us. And not in eternity either.

The rest of the trip to Indonesia is another story. But we had crossed the Pacific Ocean and crossed from one life to another. Was I a missionary now? I seemed to be the same even if the rest of the world had changed around me. Maybe there was something more to becoming a real missionary—something that had to happen inside rather than just outside, like old Mr. McCann said? Dr. Caudill had told us boys some funny thing about becoming missionaries not by crossing the sea but by seeing the cross, whatever that was supposed to mean. But that's another story too. It's the story of my life—and it's not over yet.

Bandung Battles

Bu-u-leh! Bu-u-leh! the Indonesian kids chanted, pointing at my eyes.

Hey! I'm not a bully! You are! Give me back my kite! I yelled.

The big one twisted away, holding it up out of my reach. Ti-i-dak! Ini kepunyaan saya sekarang. He laughed, easily holding me back with one hand.

One of the other brown, black-haired boys pointed up at the sky. Eh! Lihat! Satu lagi! Suddenly, the whole bunch was racing off again, chasing a brilliantly painted little kite falling with swoops and twirls over the trees. Another kite danced victoriously up there where the battle had been taking place.

I was still mad when I got home and started rolling up what was left of my kite string. Pak (father) Unus was cutting the grass in the backyard by squatting on his heels and swinging a long, very sharp machete-sword sideways. He chuckled when he saw my red sweaty face. Tidak apa apa! You learn, Yim Po, he said, pronouncing my name the way it would sound in Indonesian.

They stole my really good American kite, Pak Unus! And called me a bully!

Buleh?

Yeah! That!

He laughed again, gently. Buleh not bad, Yim Po. Buleh is ‘round eyes.' Dutch people all round eyes, like you. Indonesian eyes like this. He pulled his eyelids nearly shut with a finger on each side.

Oh! But what about my kite? They took it!

Amelica kite no good for fight. I teach you to make good kite. We put glass on string. Then I show you how to fly. You win many kite, yes?

No good? My big American kite was a lot better than those little pieces of newspaper and bamboo sticks they have! And glass? So that's how they cut my string? That's cheating!

You learn, Yim Po, Pak Unus repeated, not smiling now. You learn, then you talk.

Kru-u-u-puk! the vendor's cry could be heard far down Jalan Hegarmanah, the street where we lived. That sent us four brothers running out to the roadside with whatever coins we could find. We loved those big round puffed-rice cakes he carried in two woven bamboo baskets hanging from the ends of a slender pole balanced on a shoulder.

Another call that we listened for was, Sa-a-a-tay! That was our favorite. The satay man would come jogging up our hill with his baskets bouncing up and down. If we had any money and caught him before he went past, he'd squat between his baskets, leaving the shoulder pole held up by the long thin tripods of bamboo that were part of the baskets, and start fanning a smoking charcoal brazier in one. From the other basket, he'd unwrap strips of goat meat stuck on thin slivers of bamboo and spread them on the little rectangular stove. Then our mouths started watering from that roasting smell as he patiently turned the skewers of meat! We'd get so hungry we could hardly stand it.

Just as we thought we were about to die, he gave us five satay sticks each and a square of newspaper with brown peanut sauce on it. Oh, boy! Was that good! We never had enough money to buy all we wanted.

Bami basah was another favorite. Bowls of steaming soup with noodles and round meatballs, maybe a krupuk on the side, umm! Yet another was a real delicacy that we had only when my dad paid for them—frog legs! At first, we'd just grimace and say, Yeeach! without trying even one. Eventually, I got a whiff of that lemony smell and tasted just a bit. Wow! Better than fried chicken back in the States!

Gradually, I began to realize that a lot of things in Indonesia were better than expected. I mean, we came here to teach the poor heathens how to be good Christians, right? To me, that meant everything in America had to be better than here. But for some reason, most of the people were not very interested in us. Like my big lost kite and our warm winter coats that we needed so much back at home, a lot of what I thought was better wasn't much good in Indonesia. Like Pak Unus said, You learn, then talk!

So instead of worrying about how to be a missionary, I learned how to lay a square of newspaper on the floor, cross two very thin slivers of bamboo (shaved off a big round section of a bamboo tube with Pak Unus's machete), tie the four tips with a piece of thread, smear smushed-rice paste along the edges of the paper, and fold each side carefully over the thread. Once the rice-glue was dry, the kite could be turned over and painted with a special design. That was how you knew who you were fighting up in the sky, by the designs on each kite. Some of the really good ones became famous among us boys and won a lot of battles.

For the string, first pound a bunch of broken glass into a fine powder, mix it with more rice paste, then pull the thread through a handful of the mixture. It had to be hung up to dry overnight on bushes or from a tree limb, then rolled up around a spool, tin can, or even a thick stick.

The glassed end of the string was then poked through two tiny holes in the center of the kite and tied around the cross bars. A fancy paper tail was hooked to one corner, and the kite was ready for a test flight. How long the tail was would make a big difference to how fast the kite could spin to wrap around another kite's line—or how fast I could make it dive away to escape being wrapped. Three wraps around another kite's line and a few quick sawing jerks usually won the battle.

Sometimes, if the lines were wrapped tight enough, both kites could be pulled down by the victor. But if the loser kite came loose and drifted away, then every boy in the area would take off after it. Crowds of kids raced through and over anything in the way, chasing a falling kite. Whoever caught it got to keep it. Electric wires and trees along the roadsides were speckled with the ruins of old kites that didn't reach the ground.

It wasn't long before my brothers and I were competing to see who won the most kite battles. I was proud of my collection, though some of the ones that were easy to capture and pull down weren't very good kites and were just as easily lost in the next battle. Our best ones could win as many as ten fights before the string wore out. Then it was a crazy race to try to catch the lost kite before anyone else got it.

So now instead of being just a strange, pale-eyed buleh, I became Yim Po, an accepted part of the pack of brown Indonesian kids streaking through the kampungs of houses and shops in chase of falling kites. I also found out that a lot of Indonesian food for sale in the kampungs was pretty good. What else?

Eventually, I would learn that Indonesians had colonized parts of the South India coast and the huge island of Madagascar just east of Africa, long, long ago when Europeans were still barbarians. How had they crossed the Indian Ocean?

My dad took us to visit the vast ancient temple of Borobudur, which has a carving of a big sailing ship chiseled into the stone, as well as hundreds of other beautifully detailed carvings. These people were certainly not ignorant, heathen savages! Well, maybe they were heathen by our thinking but in their thinking, we were the heathen. Anyway, they are really smart people.

Modern Indonesians are mostly Muslims, but it is obvious that these people have been very religious for thousands of years. Was it possible that God had already shown up here and planted some seeds in their hearts long before we came? To be an effective missionary in another culture, you have to find those seeds that God has already planted. But I didn't know that yet. For me, one of the first big steps toward becoming a real missionary was to do like Pak Unus said, Learn first, then you talk.

But there were other battles that had to be fought before I could become a real missionary.

Obstacle Course

What was keeping me from being a real missionary? I knew the answer to that. I was not a Christian! But how to become one? I knew the answer to that too, but something was in the way. Something held me back. What was it? I'd soon find out.

At the top of Jalan Hegarmanah, the road we lived on, was a huge Indonesian army base. Ten-man patrols marched past our house every day. Sometimes, Mac and I would fall in behind the soldiers and march along with them up to the army base. The men laughed and made jokes about us, but we didn't care. We wanted to be soldiers too!

They had a really neat obstacle course on the other side of a fence from the road. There were big holes in the fence, so Mac and I snuck through and ran the course with the new recruits who were in training. Crawling under barbed wire was pretty hard, as was dancing through barbed wire strung tight about a foot off of the ground. Then we had to run really fast and dive out across the water to grab a knotted rope and swing across to the other side—well, that was what was supposed to happen. Mac and I were not heavy enough to make the thick ropes swing far enough. But we dried off fast as we kept on running.

Next was a wooden wall. The soldiers would jump up, kick the wall with their boots, and try to grab the top. If they made it, they'd flip over and drop down on the other side, then run on. Mac had to help push me up to reach the top, but sometimes we'd just skip that one to keep up. We did push-ups and pull-ups, jumping jacks, and all kinds of exercises. The men loved it, and even the officers would grin and yell orders at us.

Finally, the time came for the recruits' graduation from boot camp. A lot of people watched as they marched around with flags on poles and stood to attention while General Suharto made a speech. At the end of it all, they had a huge water fight. We got into that. It was a lot of fun. The winners hoisted a water-scoop captured from the other side up the flagpole and cheered. Mac and I made sure we were on the winning team, since we were friends with everybody and could switch sides when we wanted.

The purpose of the training seemed to be to obey the officers no matter what they told the soldiers to do. It wasn't up to the individuals to decide what they wanted. There was a real civil war happening in Indonesia at that time. Everybody had to follow orders, even General Suharto.

Well, maybe that was what was wrong with me. I had a hard time learning how to obey orders. At first, I couldn't even figure out what the Indonesian officers were yelling at me in their language, but I caught on pretty quick because I had to. Maybe that's how we learn to hear God. To be a real missionary, you have to hear what God says and then do what you're told, like a soldier in God's army.

My best friend, David, hadn't been baptized as a Christian either. We talked about it when he spent the night at my house. We were both too scared to ask any adults about it then. But the next week, when we were spending the night at his house, we both suddenly understood. It was like there was a voice telling us to follow Him—to do what He wanted instead of whatever we wanted.

It was easy then to run find David's dad sitting in his living room and tell him what we were ready to become Christians. After he led us in a prayer to receive Jesus as Lord of our lives, I felt a tremendous sense of release and a warm, happy feeling. I was clean from something that I hadn't even known was there! Maybe salvation is simply allowing God to erase that big me first—the big I in the middle of the word sin—and put Him first in everything.

A week later, I stood in front of the Bandung Baptist Church congregation and told them that I wanted to be baptized so that I could become a real missionary. That was just the beginning of a spiritual boot camp and of running an obstacle course of faith that continues to this day. And it is great!

Grambolan Attack

Uwang—money! The small aluminum coin was pressed into the mud of the rice paddy path and had probably been stepped on many times. I saw it only because I was looking down trying not to fall off the narrow path into the mud of the rice paddies on either side. I picked the little coin up and rubbed away a coating of sticky mud.

It was ten sen! I could buy a little packet of roasted peanuts or one of the crispy fried rice cakes called krupuks with that much. Every morning we eagerly listened for the call k-r-r-r-u-puks! as an Indonesian man jogged along with two baskets of the treats balanced over his shoulder on a bamboo pole.

I looked around to see if any of the ladies planting new rice stalks in the flooded paddies around me had noticed that I'd found a coin. My grin froze. They were not ladies! Beneath the wide, round cone-shaped hats of all the black-clad figures were the faces of men—angry men. Grambolans!

Many nights since we came to Bandung, we stood on our balcony watching mountainside villages burn that had been attacked by anti-government guerrillas, called grambolans. In the mornings, streams of injured villagers walked or were carried past our house. My dad and others would go out to help the hurt people.

The grambolans had been trained and armed by the Japanese during World War II. After the war, they fought the Dutch who tried to reestablish their colonial control over the country. Then they fought the corrupt government of President Sukarno that had been set up when the Dutch finally gave up and left. Now those ruthless, veteran fighters were trying to make a sneak attack against Bandung! If they got past the government soldiers into the city, they would kill a lot of innocent people.

My fingers stared rubbing the thin coin again. I held it up to look at it more closely, making sure the men could see that I was more interested in the coin than in