New Year’s day of 1956 started at five o’clock in the morning when I dressed, gathered my luggage, and hurried to the Houston airport where thirty friends and relatives were waiting. I was given a beautiful orchid for this special goodbye. Two teen-agers, Sue Bell and Cora Lynn Pollock, were dressed up in clownish outfits to lighten our spirits and had collected money for me to spend on the way to my destination. I boarded the airplane which would take me to Miami and on to Peru, South America, where I would be assigned to a tribe of Native Americans in the broad rain forest. It was a pivotal day in my life, a day etched in my memory.
What had brought me to this point of wanting to live in a foreign country with primitive, indigenous people? Why was I willing to learn the ways of those people about whom I knew nothing? How did I arrive at this willingness to leave my comfortable homeland?
My brother Kent was taking Spanish courses at the University of Houston while I studied Spanish in high school for two years. Together we listened to Spanish language radio programs in Houston. We immensely enjoyed learning the language; seeing how words and phrases changed and, yet, were the same in different languages. Combining this with hearing missionary speakers at church telling about their experiences in Latin America, we both felt called to missions in Latin America. At Camp Peniel campfire services, we both threw small cuttings of tree branches into the campfire symbolizing our willingness to let our lives burn brightly in service for God. After high school, my brother Kent went to Dallas Bible Institute (DBI) where he heard speakers from Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) tell of translating the New Testament into languages of tribal peoples in Latin America. After finishing high school, I also went to DBI. After his graduation, Kent was drafted into the army and went to fight in the Korean conflict. I graduated from DBI in 1953 and went to the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) at the University of Oklahoma in 1954. SIL teaches university courses in linguistics and anthropology as well as publishes technical articles in the fields of linguistics and anthropology. The courses were difficult, but I had a knack for learning languages and enjoyed the studies. At SIL I practiced by learning Kiowa, a Native American language of Oklahoma, and working with Kiowa consultants who patiently taught me their language. During that summer of study, I prayed about joining SIL and its sister institution WBT. I went through the process of application and was accepted to work in Peru. In 1958, Kent also went to SIL in Oklahoma and joined SIL/WBT to work in Mexico. I was excited with anticipation of working with SIL International (SIL), the organization responsible for fieldwork, and WBT, the organization with the vision of seeing lives changed through Bible translation.
After my acceptance into these institutions, I began to gather equipment for “boot camp”, which we also called “jungle camp.” The people at my home church had enthusiastically worked to help me obtain equipment such as a duffel bag, a machete, sneakers, a mosquito net, an air mattress, and a sleeping bag. I would be using my compiled equipment for at least five years or more. After all my needs were gathered and packed, I left Houston on January 1, 1955. My former SIL roommate, Jean Shand, and I met in San Antonio and traveled into Mexico.
