The Apostle Paul’s call to be a missionary was dramatic! God confronted him as he traveled the road to Damascus. His mind and heart were filled with ill intentions to imprison and kill Christians. The phenomenon spooked his horse, and Paul was thrown to the ground. All was confusion and bright lights. The lucent brilliance blinded him for three days. From out of all that chaos, Jesus spoke to him personally. He commanded Paul to go to the Gentiles as a missionary! The apostle knew God had called him, and from that calling he never wavered!
Some of you may question my telling of this story. Nowhere does the Bible say that Paul was riding a horse. I confess, I base my version on a painting I saw years ago. The artist’s rendition of the story showed a bright light from Heaven, a rearing horse, a thrown and blinded Paul, and pandemonium all around. Also, I read one scholar that believed Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was a bad case of childhood rickets. The disease deformed his body and made his legs grow crooked. That intellectual said Paul was bowlegged, and on top of that, bald! Upon what he based his suppositions, I do not know, but it was not the Book of Acts!
Well, there are a lot of bowlegged cowboys, too! Some are even bald. However, their leggy parentheses, sheathed in leather chaps, develop from can see to can’t see hours in the saddle. Perhaps, if Paul was truly bowlegged, it was from long hours on horseback rounding up Christians and driving them to prison and death. Really, horses in this story are not farfetched. Besides, I like horses!
The ranch house were we lived
As a child growing up on the lower SS Bar, a ranch owned by my grandfather and run by my father, I wanted to be a cowboy. My heart’s desire was to get my own horse. I wanted a big one, sixteen hands high! I dreamed of riding through the junipers and sagebrush on our acreage and working the cows alongside of my grandfather and uncles.
My father was not a horseman. He had trained our White-Faced Herefords to come by ringing an old cowbell when he fed them winter hay. When it was time to work the cows, he would drive out into the fields and ring that bell. The bovines would come from every direction and follow that old GMC pickup back to the corrals. Where was the fun in all that?
Consequently, we did not have a horse in full time residency on the ranch. Old Bones resided with us briefly, until my grandfather hauled him to the upper ranch. We were not allowed to ride him while he was with us. My parents deemed us too young or the horse too mean! I never knew which.
Ranch work was a 24/7 job. My father did it well. He still found time to preach every Sunday at a church in the nearby town of Grenada. However, his heart was in full time Christian service! Therefore, in my tenth year, we left the ranch. My father became the pastor of a small church in a city hundreds of miles away. So much for me becoming a cowboy!
At thirteen years of age, I fell in love! It didn’t matter that she had three legs, or that she had 88 teeth, some ivory white, but many ebony black! To me, she was beautiful! My Aunt Wilma started teaching me to play the piano. I loved it! I kept hammering away at the keys even though my formal lessons from her ended after three short months. After that, I played what I liked and didn’t worry about technique or timing. Soon, becoming a cowboy was a distant memory. It was replaced by boyish dreams of becoming a concert pianist and even attending Juilliard School of Music.
I sat on some tall piano stools in those days, up to six hands high. Once, I had a bench with a broken leg. I had to shoot it! It was the saddest day of my life!
Growing up, especially when I was a full time PK (preachers’ kid), I was exposed to missions over and over. Missionaries came to our church. Missionaries ate meals with our family. Occasionally, missionaries even stayed the night in our home. When they did, my older brother and I gave up our room and slept on the couch or living room floor so they could have a bed for the night.
I heard their stories. I heard what God was doing around the world. I was challenged with the need for more missionaries to finish the job. I knew the Bible commanded believers to go into all the world, but that was not for me. My plan was to find success in the field of music, not the mission field!
My dream piano, hope there are some like this one in Heaven because I can’t afford one down here!
In my senior year, I applied to a Midwest university. I hoped to get a music scholarship and sent them a cassette tape of me playing one of Beethoven’s sonatas. I thought my choice was called Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. They wrote back, basically saying it was pathetic!, I was told to find a good classical teacher to instruct me in the months before I traveled east. The scholarship they offered me was so small it was like a 128th note in one of Beethoven’s fast runs.
That summer I worked a few weeks at a Child Evangelism Camp. The director and his wife, the camp cook, the maintenance man, and one of the girl’s counselors all planned to attend a small Bible School in Canada. I decided to go with them. Tuition would be cheaper there than the school where I was accepted. Their music program followed the Royal Conservatory of Music course, one of the best in the world. That, also. influenced my decision. Besides, having new friends made it easy for me to change schools.
Someday, when I grow up I want to play this correctly!
In the fall, I traveled north to attend the Bible school. It was one segregated to the extreme, not by race, but by gender. Students were separated in classrooms, chapel, and the dining hall; Men sat on one side and women on the other!
Halfway through my freshman year, I decided to switch from the four-year to the three-year diploma course. I had to double up on my Bible and doctrine classes doing both freshman and sophomore studies. It was in Bible Doctrine II that missions finally got my attention. I wished I could say that summons came through the gentle urging of the Spirit through the Word.
The persuasion for me to go to the mission field was neither spiritual nor spectacular like the Apostle Paul’s. He knew Jesus had personally called him and there was no turning back. In my years as a jungle missionary, I faltered in the pursuit of my calling. I wanted to quit, time and again! However, if I had been thrown to the ground, blinded, and audibly heard the voice of Jesus telling me to go to Bolivia, I believe my time in the tropics would have been easier. Oh, to have had the clarity that Paul received! He fell off his horse! I fell in love!
In a moment of boredom, seeking a short distraction from the mundane lecture of the professor, I let my eyes wander across the aisle, or as it was called back then, the Jordan River. On the other side was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen (Of course, I had not met Jackie, yet)!
Over the next few weeks, I learned her name (Brandi, not her real name, but it fit because I was intoxicated just by the sight of her!). I also discovered that she wanted to be a missionary. School rules did not allow frequent or prolonged conversations with the opposite sex. I was afraid of breaking or even stretching that regulation, and for someone as shy and socially awkward as I was, the chances of friendship with her were almost nil.
In February, the sophomore banquet became reality. It was a fancy affair that all second-year students were required to attend. We would be seated around the tables in a male, female mix, every other one. The girl would not be of our choosing, but one assigned by the staff or our class social committee.
I did not want to go! I was timid, hated crowds, abhorred my ill-fitting polyester suit, and my communication skills with girls were gawky, at best. The night of the banquet, a great weight of dread pressed on my heart. The walk from the dorm to the dining hall seemed longer that usual! Some of the distance was over ice and snow. I prayed, strongly hinting to God, that a slip on the ice, a broken leg and a night in the infirmary would be preferable to whatever fate awaited me at the night’s venue. If God failed me in that request, then, “Please, please, God,” I begged, “let my seatmate be my undeclared love!”
Brandi entered the room borne on the arm of an usher, an upperclassman. She looked like a Princess, dressed in a beautiful light blue dress. Her dark blonde hair was shiny, and her eyes sparkled. Instinctively, I knew she was going to sit at my table. Her escort led her to the empty chair beside me. I was elated! God had answered my prayer!
Nothing happened between us for the rest of the year and for most of the next year. However, towards the end of the second semester, our junior year, we started talking. Time and “Sometimers” have erased from my memory the catalyst that lit the spark.
I wanted to take her to the big city on our first date, the night of graduation. That did not happen! She already planned to spend the evening at a friend’s house and invited me to tag along. Holding hands, we took a long walk on campus and ended up at the elementary school. We sat side by side in the playground swings and talked for a long time. At one point our faces were so close together I could have kissed her. Maybe that was what she wanted! I felt the magic, but fear held me back, and the spell was broken!
April nights in Alberta could be down right chilly. Being with Brandi drove the cold from my heart, but the rest of me was freezing. I did not have a decent coat. Alone, in her presence, the night was filled with enchantment. I wanted it to never end, but the night air drove us back to the house of her friend.
I was so adolescent in matters of love and relationships. I never dated during high school. I was not comfortable in my own skin. Really! I didn’t like me, and asked myself, Why would anyone else like me? Especially, a creature so lovely as Brandi! She sent my emotions soaring higher than they had ever been. I felt helpless! At the same time, I was exhilarated by the gravitational pull that pulled me into her orbit. She had captured my heart and my soul.
The next day, I went home to Kansas and she to a state far away. I anticipated meeting up with her in our senior year. We wrote letters back and forth, but hardly a month of summer break had passed when she shot me down. She had met someone else! My heart crashed and burned, the wreckage smoldering for weeks. I did not handle rejection very well!
Friday night, at the beginning of our senior year, I waited for her after our class meeting. I was in turmoil, and I could see she was, too. My agony of spirit was from a broken heart. Brandi was unhappy because she sensed my anguish and knew she was responsible for it! When I got her attention, all she said was, “I’m sorry, I’m just not sure about guys, right now!” Her summer fling, the one after me, had ended, also.
I was business manager for the school yearbook, and I had to work that night. Somehow, I held it together until midnight and quitting time. When I got back to the dorm, I was glad my roommate had gone home for the weekend. I could mourn in private! When there were no more tears, I opened my Bible at random, hoping to find comfort. My eyes fell on Romans 8:35-39, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, not any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”
“Nor Brandi,” I thought! I felt mutilated, even murdered inside. I had questions for God, doubting His love for me. However, in those wee hours past midnight, that Scripture thundered louder than the din of my doubt, rebutting the dubiety of my emotions. Broken relationships did not separate me from God’s love!
My senior photo from Bible College
I still hoped for a miracle. I wrestled with the idea of going to the mission field, too. The next week, I marched into the school office and canceled all my music courses; piano, harmony, music theory and composition. I wanted God to know that I was serious about being a missionary. To be really honest, I hoped, by my action, to manipulate Him to work in Brandi’s heart in my favor. A short time later, I applied for missionary training. Though I would have said I was going for God, in my hearts of hearts, I knew I was going after the girl!
By the time graduation rolled around, my hope was renewed. Maybe it was because she had heard that I was headed for the mission field. My brother and his girlfriend, a recognized couple, invited us to go on a last week of school picnic. The dean of men told me that would only be possible if we became a recognized couple.
I talked to Brandi. At first, she agreed. We completed all the red tape and jumped though all the hoops the school required. We became an approved couple. I was excited, but an hour and a half later, she called me. She told me the picnic would be nice, but she had second thoughts about becoming an item on campus. It was over before it started! We didn’t go and our sanctioned relationship unofficially ended!
Even so, we wrote back and forth a few times during the summer months and after she started missionary training. During my last semester at Bible College, I broke my kneecap playing basketball and needed surgery. I had to put missionary training off till the spring semester. As soon as my knee healed, I planned to join her there. Before that happened, she became sick and dropped out of the training. I went anyway, hoping she would return.
Three months later I heard, third person, that Brandi was getting married! How could she? I believed God spoke to me back in my sophomore year about missions and about her. Why didn’t God send her the same memo?
Missionary training center
The day of her wedding, I marched out to the incinerator where we burned our trash. In my hands were her letters and all the photos I had of her. With a heavy heart, I lit a fire. One by one, keeping them in order from the earliest to the latest, I committed them to the flame. After they turned to ash, I did the same to the photographs. I saved my favorite, a large black and white photo for last. I watched the paper curl, the emulsion crinkle, and her visage fade to nothingness. When the paper was consumed, the flame died. A thin ribbon of smoke spiraled upwards, like the final vapor from a funeral pyre. My hopes and dreams of love died that day!
I closed the incinerator door, overwhelmed with despair. For three years, I had chased a dream, but in the end got a nightmare. In that moment, I was forced to face reality! I had to admit to myself that I entered missionary training for the wrong reason!
In my short time there, I had become accustomed to life in the training. I made new friends. I did want God to use my life. I knew what the Bible said about all believers having responsibility to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. I had resigned myself to the fact that since I could not read music, there was no future for me as a concert pianist. Maybe it was time I followed God’s Word instead of my desperately wicked and deceitful heart! So, I stayed. If God didn’t want me on the mission field, He could close the door. To be honest, I hoped He would!
So you haven’t been called! There is nothing in the Bible that says you can’t volunteer!
In 1977, Dun Gordy, one of the mission’s representatives, wrote an article entitled, So You Haven’t Been Called? He knew that too many Christians rejected Jesus’ last command to go to the ends of the earth. They copped out of obeying that mandate by saying it was written for first century Christians only.
At the time I was spending a few months getting to know the people of a small Bible Church in Ulm, Montana. That group of believers became my first supporting church. My older brother was the pastor and he invited Mr. Gordy to share one Sunday morning. Dun put forth the same challenge he wrote about in his article. He said, “So, you haven’t been called! Well, there is nothing in the Bible that says you can’t volunteer!”
I latched on to that phrase! Yes, that was me! I was a volunteer for Jesus! It helped ease my doubt, sometimes. However, becoming a missionary for the wrong reason always plagued me, especially when life was hard. Satan, or my flesh, came to accuse me often. When heat and humidity robbed me of all energy, when bug bites made me itch to the point of insanity, when language learning seemed impossible, when the problems of bringing hunters and gathers into the twentieth century overwhelmed me, when the Indians emphatically stated that a good missionary was one who gave them all they wanted for free and told me I was not a good missionary, that was when the deceivers, Satan and Self, would scream into my ear. They chided me, “You fool! You are a missionary for the wrong reason! You don’t deserve this abuse. You should just go home!”
The one horse I dismounted properly
I have fallen off horses more times than I wish to recount because the beast stopped or changed direction abruptly and I didn’t. God could have spoken to me on any of those occasions and told me what to do with my life, but He did not. Brandi was my Damascus Road, a path strewed with rocks and potholes, for sure, but it got my attention! It changed my attitude, and set my life’s compass to a new heading!
Oskar Schindler
Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist and a member of the Nazi Party. During the Holocaust, he was credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews by employing them in his enamelware and ammunition factories. He bribed the SS officials to prevent the execution of his workers until the end of World War II in Europe, May 1945. By then, he had spent his entire fortune, over a million dollars. He used it to bribe and buy black-market purchases of supplies and gifts for the SS. He bought food and medicine to keep his workers alive. He died on October 9, 1974, and was buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion.
After the war, the immensity of cruelty committed against the Jews became apparent to Oskar. Millions had been gassed and shot, but he had only saved 1200. In the movie, he bemoaned the fact that he still had a ring on his finger, set with a huge ruby. With tears in his eyes, he asked himself, why he had not sold it and used the money to bribe the Nazis and save a couple more Jews from certain death. Why had he not sold his shiny black car, so he could purchase more Jewish lives from the SS? In that moment, luxury was not so noble a priority for him. He wished that he had lived his life differently during the war years. He saved lives for the here and now.
As believers in Christ, our commission is to save souls for eternity. God gave us a mandate to take the Gospel, the Good News to the ends of the earth. Yet how often we waste our time, talents and resources on frivolous things that rust and corrupt. How much better to lay up treasure in Heaven!
Someday I am going to stand before God and tell him why I went to Bolivia, why I went to the Yuqui people group and took my wife and children into the jungle to reach them. I think that will be much easier than having to tell Him why I stayed home!
I would rather stand before God and. . .
. . . tell him I laid up treasure in heaven, than why I spent my time and resources on things that do not matter!
. . . tell Him I encouraged my children to go to the mission field and even take my grandchildren with them, than why I discouraged them just to keep them close.
. . . tell him why I prayed for missionaries, than why I didn’t have time to pray, or thought it was unimportant.
. . . tell Him I was interested in the work missionaries did, than why I showed no interest in His work around the world.
Some say it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. I am not so sure about that! I could have done without the heartache Brandi brought me. However, I do not wish to be harsh on her in sharing my story. Grudgingly, I admit that meeting her changed my life, my profession, and so much more! I traveled to the Philippines, lived in Bolivia for 22 years, I met Jackie, we had four wonderful children, and so far six beautiful grandchildren. Though I never became a concert pianist, I played concerts, playing mostly hymns, in churches and at our mission’s retirement center. I also learned woodworking and get to do something I love as I serve on the mission’s maintenance team. God is good!
Wow Phil, that was the realist testimony I have read in a long time. I remember my first visit out to the Yuki and seeing your house and the village. I remember thinking must understand the love of God for them to value it worth giving up what the world tell us we deserve for those people living so remote. Blessings.
Writings By Phil 
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