Making Plans

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. – Psalm 30:5

Steve and I spent spring break of 1983 at my family’s home in Washington, D.C. One evening, as we were enjoying dinner together at a beautiful restaurant overlooking the Potomac River, Steve surprised me with a diamond ring. He was a senior in college, and I was working on my master’s degree, both studying at CIU. I knew he was exactly the kind of person I’d dreamed of sharing my life with. He was the adventurous visionary I wanted. We were filled with high hopes for the future, so we decided to get on with married life and not wait until school was over. We married on December 27, 1983, on a snowy northern Virginia night.

Steve and I were both still finishing our study programs. We had no income and used wedding gifts to pay our rent and put food on the table. We managed to save money by eating a lot of macaroni and cheese, eggs, hot dogs and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Things continued to be very tight for our first few years. It was stressful, but we learned to live frugally and depend on the Lord.

Steve and I pondered our future and wondered what God had in store for us. We knew He wanted us to be His ambassadors to a needy group of people, but where did He want us to go? It was a big world, and there were so many options and needs. For Steve, returning to a tribal setting would be like going home. It would be easy and make sense in some ways—yet he really wanted a new challenge, perhaps even an urban environment with a larger population. We thought of traveling to China to work as English teachers or going somewhere in the Middle East or Turkey. We had an interest in Central Asia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, but there was no way for Americans to go there at the time. Then there was the Muslim world, which had such a vast need.

In time, we began to focus our attention on heavily populated Indonesia. It seemed to be a natural destination for us. Some large people groups there numbered in the millions with little or no Christian witness. Steve knew some of the Indonesian language from his childhood experience at a boarding school. There were also several large cities where Islam was the dominant religion.

By this time, the organization my parents had started had been renamed Pioneers and was beginning to expand around the world. We learned that the board of directors had identified the Kantoli of Indonesia as a group needing a missionary team. Although Steve had grown up in Indonesia, he’d been in an isolated, tribal part of the vast island nation, and he had little awareness of larger people groups in more developed parts of the country. We both began to read about the Kantoli—and, of course, to pray.

Choosing a people group to work with seemed like a huge commitment, almost like marriage! We would be dedicating years of our lives to learning their language, adapting to their culture and living among them. This decision would shape our entire lives and the lives of our children. It felt overwhelming.

One day Steve was getting his hair cut in the basement of the men’s dormitory at the university. A freshman student swept the floor nearby. Steve had heard that he was a missionary kid from Indonesia. Thinking he might know something about the Kantoli, Steve struck up a conversation. The young man—Mike Casey—had not only heard of the Kantoli, but his parents, Roger and Janice, had worked among them for decades.

When Steve told me about the encounter, we knew it was not a coincidence. God was giving us direction. Even more strategic, Mike told us that his parents would be in the U.S. a few months later. We visited them, and their stories and insights were tremendously helpful. The more we prayed and the more we learned, the more we felt drawn to that part of the world and that particular culture.

We decided to plan a survey trip to Indonesia during the summer of 1984. Our goals were to see the needs firsthand and to determine how we could best secure entrance into the country. What an educational and eye-opening experience! Over and over, we kept hearing a recurring theme: “The Kantoli are very hard to work with.” After a while, we began to wonder if we were really ready to embark on such a mission. Even Indonesian Christian leaders thought the Kantoli were “impossible.” Several of them had tried to reach them and failed. To make matters worse, I got very sick from the food on the trip.

In spite of sickness and discouraging words, in the end, Steve and I were united in our desire to embrace the challenge of helping to bring the gospel message to the Kantoli people. Although I had always envisioned myself working with a tribal group in a jungle setting, I felt some relief that we would be going to a densely populated area.

By May 1986, we were ready. Our hearts were full of faith and anticipation. We boarded our flight in Los Angeles with two large suitcases and two carryons containing everything we owned. This was going to be quite an adventure.