Small Beginnings

Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. – Psalm 2:8 (NIV)

My father, Ted Fletcher, was Grandpa and Grandma’s third child. He was 19 years old when the Korean War broke out and had always been drawn to Marine Corps posters that called for “a few good men.” Patriotic and adventurous, he found the thought of serving his country tremendously appealing. Dad enlisted in August 1951 and soon found himself on the front lines with the reconnaissance division of the Marine Corps. He was the first to volunteer for dangerous missions behind enemy lines. Many times, he risked his life to drag wounded comrades back to safety.

One day in Korea, a young evangelist named Billy Graham visited the Marines on the front lines. When Dad heard Billy Graham was coming, he could hardly wait to hear him. Dad had always had an interest in spiritual things because of his parents’ respect for God and His Word. He had already witnessed the deaths of some of his buddies in the war, and thoughts of eternity were on his mind. Was he next? Was he ready? When Billy Graham concluded his brief message, he gave an invitation to the gathered Marines to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. My father was one of the first to step forward.

Shortly after his return from Korea, Dad’s siblings fixed him up on a blind date with a beautiful redheaded schoolteacher named Peggy Close. Dad had always wanted to marry a redhead. At the time, she was dating a young man from church, but that didn’t stop my father from asking her out. They had both graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. He had a degree in business and she had a degree in education. He won her heart from day one, and Mom went home that night and told her best friend that she was going to marry Ted Fletcher. Dad was equally convinced about her.

They were, indeed, married in 1956 and moved to Richmond, Virginia, where Dad had landed a promising job with Mobil Oil Company managing several gas stations. He was energetic and excited about the future. He grew rapidly in his faith, spending hours in the Word. Mom, on the other hand, found herself struggling with depression.

My sister Ginny was born in 1956 and my brother John in 1958. When Mom was a few months pregnant with her third baby, she came down with a serious case of chicken pox. There was hardly a place on her body that did not have a red, itchy mark on it. Daddy was on a business trip, and our family doctor made a house call.

After examining Mom, the doctor soberly explained that the chicken pox virus often caused children to be born blind, deaf or with malformed limbs. He told Mom she had the option of aborting the baby and that many doctors would advise her to do so. Statistically, there wasn’t much chance she’d have a normal child. To his relief, my mother said she would not consider an abortion. Even so, the exchange fueled the emotional turmoil in her heart. Questions flooded her mind. Could she handle a disabled child at a time when she already felt so inadequate?

A short time later, Dad opened his Bible to read at the kitchen table, as he often did in the evenings. He had such peace and seemed to be confident about his eternal destiny. Just as importantly, he was enthusiastic about his life on earth—something Mom sensed she lacked herself. Feeling caught in a downward spiral and without any answers, Mom asked Dad to explain once again how a person could experience this kind of peace and freedom. He showed her passages of Scripture that spoke of salvation as a free gift from God—not something people could earn by their own efforts.

“The Lord Jesus gave His own life as a sacrifice to pay the price for your sin,” he explained, “so that you can live a victorious life and enjoy eternity with Him. All you have to do, Peggy, is simply acknowledge your reliance on God and accept His wonderful gift of salvation.”

Mom had heard these things before, but this time it was different. Her heart melted with a realization that these words were truer than she’d ever realized and that she needed a savior. She bowed her head and, with Dad’s encouragement, invited Jesus to take over her life. Then, together, she and Dad committed their unborn child to God’s care. They asked Him to spare the baby’s life and to bring something beautiful out of the crisis.

On September 9, 1960, I was born—a healthy baby girl. The doctor said it was an absolute miracle. As Mom watched me grow, I was a constant reminder to her of God’s amazing grace.

My mother’s life changed noticeably after her salvation. A growing confidence and peace replaced her prior withdrawal. Instead of watching television alone, Mom started engaging more with people and meeting their needs. She was truly “born again,” just like the Bible describes.

After Mom’s spiritual rebirth, Dad settled the whole family into Immanuel Baptist, a Bible-teaching church in Richmond. Relatively new in their faith, Dad and Mom were excited to learn as much as they could. What was God’s big picture? Where was history heading? The first Sunday, Dad walked into the foyer of their new church and saw a huge world map highlighting pictures of missionaries and their locations around the world. The map fascinated him. He had been in Korea as a Marine, but he wondered what it might be like to volunteer for another kind of risky mission, this time for the purpose of taking a life-saving message to the ends of the earth.

Pastor Richard Seume saw a lot of potential in Dad and took him under his wing. It was a friendship that made an indelible mark on Dad’s life and on our whole family. Dad was like a sponge, ready and waiting to do God’s will—whenever, wherever and at whatever cost. He still thought like a Marine, but this time he was responding to God’s call. Mom, too, was influenced by what she was learning.

The church had frequent conferences during which missionaries would share their stories and reports. The missionaries often needed a place to stay, a hot meal and a listening ear. Mom and Dad often opened their home to honored visitors from distant countries. The conversations around our table were absolutely fascinating to my young ears—stories of danger, miraculous provision and answered prayer. It seemed as though the Bible was still being written in the lives of these amazing people. They became heroes to me and my siblings. Our eyes were constantly being lifted off ourselves and beyond our four walls to a world of adventure and need. The four children—by this time Carol had joined us—were rapidly becoming “global Christians.”

As they became personal friends with more and more missionaries, my parents began to contribute to the financial needs of some of them. These missionaries were not guaranteed a monthly paycheck. They relied on the faithful giving of God’s people to meet their daily needs and carry out their ministries. Dad and Mom would mention these needs to us around the dinner table, and we talked about ways we could all be involved. Sometimes they would let a missionary family borrow one of our cars for weeks at a time. Sometimes Dad would give his credit card to a missionary and tell them to go out and buy new clothes for the whole family.

We thought of missionaries as royalty—God’s ambassadors. They deserved the very best. Mom and Dad believed not only in tithing their income, but in giving generously, above and beyond the call of duty. They taught us children how to tithe, too. I remember collecting coins in a jar to purchase a new Bible for a single missionary named Mary Baker who lived in Africa. Miss Baker’s Bible had fallen into a river when she was traveling by canoe, and we wanted to help her get a new one. Projects like that animated our family. They transported us to distant lands to be part of a bigger picture than we saw in our suburban Richmond community. When Mary Baker was brutally martyred in the Congo rebellion years later, our whole family grieved her loss. It caused us to think deeply about what it meant to be committed to Christ, especially on the mission field.  

One day we packed a huge metal barrel for a missionary family working among the Asmat tribe on the south coast of New Guinea, just north of Australia. Their children were the same ages as my siblings and me. I put my favorite doll in the drum for their daughter and we shipped the barrel to New Guinea. It was really hard for me, but I was learning important life lessons.

That same family later stayed with us for several weeks at a time when they were in the U.S. between field assignments. During high school, their oldest daughter lived with us, attending school with my older sister and brother. Hearing exotic stories from these missionary children excited me. It created a longing in my heart to experience the world. They certainly were not children who were deprived, as some might think. Their lives were full of adventure as they were part of their parents’ team, bringing the gospel to a culture still living in stone-age conditions.

Our family also began to pray regularly for missionaries. Our kitchen refrigerator became a prayer depot, with pictures of families working all over the world. The pictures reminded us to back them up with prayer. The four of us children watched the growth of a world vision right within our own home. Although Dad and Mom might not have realized it, we weren’t missing a thing. My parents brought the world to our dinner table in conversation, to our living room as we assembled care packages for those living on other continents and to our bedrooms as we prayed for individuals each night before drifting off to sleep. These prayers were very meaningful to me, and I felt like I was making a difference in their lives and in the world. We were small, but God was planting seeds that would grow strong through the years.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Dad and Mom were praying their own serious prayers regarding their involvement in God’s global cause. In his reading, Dad came across Psalm 2:8, “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession” (NIV).

Dad’s heart and mind were riveted on that verse. He took God’s promise as applying not only to the Lord Jesus, but also in a personal way to himself. Increasingly, my father felt that this ancient promise would be fulfilled, in part, through our family. Dad and Mom prayed that they would somehow have the privilege of going to a distant country. More than that, they prayed that their four children would all have that opportunity. Often Dad would spontaneously quote William Carey to us: “If God calls you to be a missionary, don’t stoop to be a king.”