Growing Dreams

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. – Proverbs 16:9

After our cross-country drive, we settled into yet another new home—this one in Arcadia, California. Dad began work at Gospel Light Publications in nearby Glendale. One day he came home from work and told us he had taken an author to lunch: Don Richardson. I was amazed that my father got to meet the author of the book I’d fallen in love with. I was intrigued with New Guinea and began praying earnestly for its many tribes. I glued a map of the island into my Bible and whenever I met missionaries who had lived there, I asked them to sign the map.

By this time, I was over my shyness, and in high school I found it kind of fun to be considered a person who went “against the flow.” Sure, I was an easterner, but it was more than that. I wasn’t interested in the usual things that high school girls were interested in. My confidence as a person had grown substantially. I was excited about my faith and made no apologies for it.

That year I was selected best-dressed girl for the school yearbook. My mother and I really laughed about that. The picture the yearbook committee chose showed me in an outfit that cost only 25 cents. I had rummaged through a second-hand store and found some pink material for a quarter. Mom and I made a skirt and top out of it. We spent a lot of time on the sewing machine, and I made many of my clothes for school. I enjoyed finding old clothes in second-hand stores and taking them apart to create something new. I felt like I was making something out of nothing. I had picked some things up from being around Grandma Fletcher all those years.

In 1978 I graduated from high school and joined my brother, John, and sister Ginny at Washington Bible College in Maryland. I was a family girl, and I wanted to be with my siblings. Besides, I wanted to study the Bible so that I could prepare for missionary service.

Shortly after my departure to college, Dad took the next step in his own journey: he decided to leave the business world completely—not just The Wall Street Journal, but also Christian publishing. He was on a quest to pursue his life-long dream of direct personal involvement in global missions, and our entire family cheered him on. Dad and Mom sold their beautiful house in Arcadia and moved back to northern Virginia to follow their friend’s advice from a few years earlier. Gathering a group of friends around them, they launched a new mission organization called World Evangelical Outreach. The office was in our basement and Dad and Mom interviewed the first missionaries in our living room. Their vision was based on Romans 15:20, to “preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named,” but in places where there was no gospel witness.

During my first semester at college, I heard that Don Richardson would be the speaker at the coming missions conference. I organized a group of students to have lunch with him so I could pepper him with questions about Peace Child. I couldn’t wait to call my parents and tell them that I’d had lunch with Don Richardson, author of my favorite book. Dad knew Don from Gospel Light, of course, so he invited him to our home in northern Virginia, just an hour away, for dinner. He suggested that Don spend the night, and Dad would take him to the airport the next morning.

When I heard about this arrangement, I decided to go home for the weekend, too. I couldn’t get enough of Don’s stories about life in New Guinea. Over the weekend I also heard more about little Stephen, Don’s oldest son who was just a baby during the events of Peace Child. He had survived all sorts of exotic adventures, like nearly drowning in a crocodile-infested river as a baby when the family canoe capsized. Now Steve was all grown up, a year younger than I was and attending high school in Pasadena, California.

The next morning, my parents took Don to Dulles Airport to catch his flight back to L.A. When they returned home, they both had mischievous smiles on their faces. It seems that Don had asked my father if he could initiate contact between his son Steve and me. He thought we might make a great match! Dad was surprised but also intrigued by the idea. For the remainder of the drive, the two dads joked about being like a couple of Asian parents arranging a marriage. Don would talk to Steve and ask if he wanted to have a pen-pal relationship with me. All I had to do was wait to see if he wrote.

Two weeks later, an envelope arrived in the mail. I opened it and pulled out a letter on stationery from the U.S. Center for World Mission’s Institute of Tribal Peoples Studies. Each sheet of paper was decorated with sketches of war-painted tribal faces—men with bones through their noses. It wasn’t the kind of decoration that most girls would find romantic, but Steve had picked exactly the right letterhead for me! I reciprocated with a letter of my own.

One day Dad came into my room to tell me that Don Richardson was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. Dad and Mom’s mission organization had a summer program for young people, and Don heard that I had signed up to join a team going to Papua New Guinea. He thought I might be passing through the Los Angeles airport and wondered if he and Steve could meet me there. In fact, I had an overnight layover, so the Richardsons invited me to stay with them.

When we finally met in person, Steve was interesting and polite. Our conversations centered on his upbringing in the jungle and transition to life here in America. I could feel my heart race, wondering if I was talking with the person I would spend the rest of my life with. Did he like me? Would I be a disappointment to him? Was I the kind of person he was looking for? Was he having similar thoughts?

I left for New Guinea the next morning hoping Steve would write me while I was there. I was assigned to a remote jungle station among a cannibalistic tribe called the Biami. Interestingly enough, this tribe was quite similar to the Sawi people. Once every week or two, a small plane would land on the airstrip, bringing mail and supplies—but never a letter from Steve.

My summer in New Guinea was full of challenge and adventure. We started each day with a huge bowl of porridge followed by long hours of physical labor or typing the Scripture translation. I quickly fell in love with the tribal people. The highlight was a multi-day trek through the jungle, traveling with Biami guides to look for a site for a new airstrip. Each night we slept near an open fire to keep the mosquitoes at bay. During the day we hiked, climbed over logs and crossed streams. At one point along the trail, we saw a human jawbone hanging from the branch of a tree. One of the Biami men traveling with us looked at the jawbone and said something to me in his Biami language which, of course, I could not understand.

I waited while someone translated and just about fainted when I learned what he said: “I ate that woman.” This man had killed and cannibalized her because she had wandered into an area of the jungle forbidden to women. It was a point of much discussion the rest of the hike as the Biami Christians and the missionary talked to this man about the freedom that can be found in Christ.

I loved my time in Papua New Guinea, and the only real disappointment was that I never got a letter from Steve. I returned to Maryland and started my junior year. One day—nine months after I returned home—a very worn letter arrived in the mail for me. It was from Steve. He had addressed it to me in Papua New Guinea while I was there, but somehow, I never got it. Instead, it had gone to all the wrong places around the world and was finally forwarded to me at Washington Bible College. The envelope was tattered from almost a year of international travel. It was a great letter, and I called my parents to read it to them. My father urged me to reply, despite the long delay.

By this time, Steve was studying at Columbia International University (CIU) in South Carolina. He, too, was preparing for overseas service. Steve received my letter, and he replied, re-starting a steady flow of correspondence. Each letter fueled our interest in each other a little more. It rapidly became a long-distance romance. Steve’s confidence and directness surprised me, but also attracted me. I felt God was bringing us together, but neither of us was quite ready. Everything seemed to fit—our families, our life goals, our values and standards. Even though we still had college and a lot of learning ahead of us, the Lord seemed to be orchestrating the connection. At least it was fun to dream.

One day when I was a senior in college, my mother called to say that Grandma Fletcher had passed away. A sense of profound sorrow came over the family. Our amazing grandmother had been the head of the family since Grandpa Fletcher died almost 20 years earlier. Everyone gathered for her funeral. Each family member was given an opportunity to choose something from Grandma’s antique shop. Instead of the heirlooms and antiques, I was drawn instead to an old box of scrap cloth I found in a corner. Why is this here? I thought to myself. Grandma Fletcher never sewed. She was into furniture, frames and silver. Perhaps she got this box as part of some furniture deal at an auction.

Regardless of its origin, I chose the box of scrap cloth, thinking I might make a quilt. I knew how to sew but didn’t know the first thing about quilting. Maybe I’d learn someday. After the funeral, I stored the box in Mom and Dad’s attic in northern Virginia. I hadn’t the faintest inkling of the role that box of scraps would play in my life, and hundreds of other lives, a few years and ten thousand miles away.