The Corporate Climb

A man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.
—Proverbs 16:9 (NIV)

The world we live in does not offer any lasting security. It can’t. What it does offer is trials, challenges and a whole lot of opportunity. Our security can only be found in our obedience to God’s call on our lives.
—John Maxwell

A million dollars! I had never seen so many zeroes. And my name was on the check—not as the payee, unfortunately, but as one of the cosigners at Fidelity Trust, where I worked. The check was for Gulf Oil Company, one of our clients, who maintained an account under a dummy corporation called Tremarco. Word eventually leaked out that the money would help fuel the oil company’s billion-dollar expansion program. One of my associates, who was much older and wiser than I, said, “Fletcher, buy as much Gulf stock as you can get your hands on! Oil companies are ‘hot.’ If you can ever land a job with one, take it.”

His stock advice went in one ear and out the other. I had little money to buy much of anything in those days, but a job with an oil company was within the realm of possibility. I kept my eyes open, and it wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for.

On October 23, 1956, I was interviewed for a position as a sales representative with Mobil Oil Corporation. I remember the exact date because of something even more significant that happened the very same day: Peggy gave birth to our first child, Virginia Elizabeth, named after my mother. We called her Ginny, and I wanted everyone I met to know I had a beautiful little girl.

Between a new baby and a new job, life was certainly exciting. At 24 years old, I was a father—and employed by a national icon, the same company that had lubricated America’s first automobile, the Wright Brothers’ first airplane and Charles Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis.” And this same “black gold” or “Texas Tea” was fueling America’s ascent into a season of unparalleled affluence and economic growth.

When my training period at Mobil was complete, the company gave me responsibility for my own stations. My employer, Bill Hurst, was demanding and knew how to motivate his sales force. After a year, division management asked Mr. Hurst to recommend someone for a new promotional program being launched in Richmond, Virginia. He gave them my name, and they appointed me, so Peggy and I packed our bags and were on our way.

Richmond was a tough market for Mobil. Not only were our stations small, but our main competitor, Esso (now Exxon), held a 25-percent share of the market. My first challenge as an area sales representative was to recruit, train and promote qualified independent dealers to lease and operate Mobil-owned stations.

As the business grew, so did the amount of time I spent on the road visiting the stations in my area. Peggy proved to be the perfect mate, supportive of what I was doing. At the time, our country was caught up in the post-war era of abundance and prosperity. Yet, there was an increasing restlessness inside me. I remembered the Billy Graham meeting in Korea where I first heard the Good News that God offered salvation to everyone through His Son, Jesus Christ. Ever since then, I freely shared about the Lord with my friends, business associates and people I came in contact with. I thought everyone should have at least one opportunity to know about the Lord and how to get to Heaven.

One Sunday morning shortly after we moved to Richmond, Peggy and I attended a service at our church, Bon Air Baptist. The speaker was the candidate secretary for the Southern Baptist mission board and was in charge of recruiting missionaries. He had just returned from India and shared staggering statistics of how there were only a few missionaries for the multitude of Hindu people. It bothered me that Hindus in India, and other people around the world, could live their entire lives and then die without ever meeting a Christian or hearing the gospel.

I made an appointment to meet with him at the mission board’s headquarters in Richmond, and I shared my testimony and heart with him. In essence, I was exploring what it would take for Peggy and me to become missionaries.

I was dismayed when he said that prospective missionaries needed three years of seminary training in order to qualify, and I left confused and without a clear sense of direction. People were living in far-off lands without the gospel, and it wasn’t very easy for a young Christian like me to get involved in reaching them.

Our involvement at church continued. During the week, I taught a church Bible study at the home of our neighbor, Lucille Scott. One day I shared with her that I wanted to be in a church that was more focused on reaching the lost. Mrs. Scott said she had been feeling the same hunger and said she knew just the church—Immanuel Baptist, an independent congregation not far from our neighborhood.

Peggy and I made plans to visit at an evening service. The pastor, Richard Sueme, wasn’t there that night, but it didn’t matter. I knew right away that this was the church for us. On one wall was an enormous world map with lights pinpointing different countries where missionaries worked to spread the gospel—missionaries that this church supported. There were even prayer cards with names and photos of each missionary. I got the feeling that missions wasn’t just a once-a-year event for this church; it was the entire focus of the church, 365 days a year.

On September 9, 1958, God blessed us with a son, John, and we saw the Lord moving in his life from a very early age. The Lord gave us John 1:6 for him: “There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John” (NIV). We shared this verse with our son often when he was a child, and it was obvious that the good hand of God was upon him. Even at a very young age, he gravitated toward spiritual things.

With every passing week, the Bible was coming more and more alive to me. Excited by my new discoveries about God and His Word, I tried to share them with Peggy. Although she was interested in spiritual matters, we began to realize that our faith was based on totally different foundations. I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ based on my decision years earlier to make Him Savior and Lord of my life. Peggy knew about Jesus, but she didn’t know Him personally and had not trusted Him for her salvation and was relying instead on her good works. In subtle ways, we were drifting from each other, and I was burdened that Peggy should come to know the Lord personally.

One of my favorite radio programs was “The Gospel Hour,” with Oliver B. Green, which I’d listen to each morning while driving to visit Mobil stations. Dr. Green was a powerful evangelist with a distinctive voice who had a way of penetrating deep into my spirit. He always shared his message with an energy and conviction that were contagious.

When “The Gospel Hour” began broadcasting a series of messages on Bible prophecy, I was fascinated and urged Peggy to listen. She did, and as a result, the Holy Spirit brought great conviction on her heart that if Jesus were to return, she would be left behind. The thought was so real to her that she would wake up in the middle of the night and reach over to see if I was still there, thinking the rapture had occurred and she missed it.

Then a crisis hit: Peggy contracted chicken pox while in the first trimester of pregnancy with our third child. It was the worst case the doctor had ever seen, and he said there was a 50-50 chance that our baby would be “seriously deformed.”

Peggy was desperate and had no place to look but up. Miserable in body and spirit, she began to seriously examine her relationship with God and faced the fact that her years of faithful service in the church would not save her. She was religious, but eternally lost. In brokenness, she cried out to the Lord and received His free gift of eternal life based solely on His death on the cross, not on any good works she could perform.

Now we were united not only in marriage, but also in Christ—each for the other and both for the Lord. He would be the architect of our future . . . and of our family.

When Peggy gave birth to a perfectly healthy little girl on September 9, 1960, we were thrilled. Arlene was perfectly formed, with no effects from Peggy’s chicken pox. She was a miracle baby and an answer to our prayers, and we knew from the start that God had protected her for a very special reason.

Our involvement at Immanuel Baptist Church increased steadily in the years that followed. Pastor Richard Sueme was a true shepherd who fed us from God’s Word each Sunday and challenged our hearts for world missions. As our interest continued to grow in the Great Commission—God’s command in Matthew 28:19 to take the gospel to the entire world—so did our longing to become more involved personally. The Lord reminded me of Don Gregory, one of my Marine instructors from Camp Lejeune. The reality of Don’s faith, evidenced by his disciplined walk with God and his bold witness, had made a lasting impression on me.

I had no idea where Don lived, so I wrote to a Christian organization that he once was affiliated with, the Navigators, to see if they knew where he was. They sent me an address in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and I wasted no time in calling him. Don’s desire to serve the Lord was as strong as ever. He had graduated from Columbia Bible College², married and started a family. Don and his wife, Joan, were now missionaries with The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) planning to go to an unreached tribe in Dutch New Guinea, north of Australia.

We invited the Gregorys to visit us in Richmond, and they brought with them colorful slides of New Guinea. Peggy and I were fascinated as slide after slide seared our hearts. Don told us about the tribe they hoped to reach with the gospel. The Asmat, or “true people” as the name translates, numbered about 50,000 and were scattered across the swampy marshes and mangrove thickets of the south coast of New Guinea. Living a stone-age existence, the Asmat were cannibals who slept each night with their heads resting on the skulls of their dead relatives. Newspapers were filled with reports of Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson Rockefeller, who had recently disappeared while collecting primitive art from the Asmat tribe.

This was a people and a culture that was saturated with a darkness that we knew nothing about. The outside world had no clue the tribe even existed, let alone cared for their plight. Yet, Don spoke with compassion for the desperate physical and spiritual condition of a people who had never once heard the gospel. The images of these people of the jungle seemed to cry out to me.

Don then paused and asked a question that burned in my heart: “What is the cost for people like this to be reached?”

The projector clicked, advancing to the next slide. There, on our living room wall, was a picture of two bodies being carried out of the jungle.

Don told us how missionaries Walter Erikson and Edward Tritt had gone on a survey patrol into the interior of New Guinea’s northern region. For 17 days, they pushed further and further into the jungle, hoping to make friendly contact with some new tribes.

Accompanying them were five local men who grew increasingly fearful of a hostile encounter with the Asmat. The men begged the missionaries to turn back. Frustrated and in desperation, they took matters into their own hands. Early one morning, while Erikson and Tritt were still asleep, the local men cut the ropes of the missionaries’ hammocks and beat them to death with machetes and wooden clubs.

“Martyrdom was the price these missionaries paid so that a tribe could hear the gospel for the first time,” Don told us.

I was stunned. The tragic deaths of Erikson and Tritt took place in September 1952, just as I was finishing my training to go to Korea. All three of us were young, single Americans who had willingly taken risks for a cause greater than ourselves. I went to Korea to answer the call of my country; Erikson and Tritt went to New Guinea to answer the call of their Lord.

For the first time, I realized that missions is war, and sharing the gospel is something worth dying for.

Peggy and I began contributing to the Gregorys’ financial support so that they could take the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Asmat tribe. We had been looking for a missionary to “adopt” and support and were thrilled to finally do so. We also knew, however, that the Lord was calling us to something more. In the weeks that followed, we talked about little else than the possibility of going to the mission field ourselves. The appeal of Mobil’s black gold was replaced by an urgency to reach our needy world for Christ.

My “territory,” I realized, was not just Virginia. It was the world. The thought of engaging in a mission to rescue the spiritually lost from a fierce, unseen enemy was as compelling to me as our clandestine troop movements had been in Korea just a few years before. In the Marine Corps, I had been trained to give my life, if need be, for my country. Now I was ready to give my life for my Lord and for His Kingdom.

Peggy shared my sense of urgency. We knew there was no higher calling, and we dreamed of being pioneers for the Lord among some needy people of the world—people like the Asmat who had never heard the gospel.

I sent exploratory letters to several mission boards, sharing our desire to serve on the foreign mission field. It wasn’t long before the responses arrived. They all seemed to say the same thing: Yes, we want you; but no, you don’t meet our qualifications. One large mission to Africa sent a letter asking us:

<p class="long-quote">[Do you have] any specialized Bible training such as you might get in a Bible institute or a Bible college, or did you attend Christian colleges where you might have had certain Bible courses? . . . We expect each of our applicants to be trained in the Bible.</p>

The general director of another mission wrote:

<p class="long-quote">When someone writes to say he is exploring the area of service for the Lord in the regions beyond, I . . . look for the items presented that may be considered as hurdles. We scan carefully one’s qualifications, and one’s lack of qualifications . . .  Your case, as we have discussed it at Headquarters and have prayed about it, seems to be one that does have some hurdles . . .  We accept no one unless he has had adequate preparation in systematic Bible study. I fail to find this in your case.</p>

Hurdles! Having run track in high school, I understood the metaphor well. A hurdle is a barrier in the middle of a racetrack that a runner has to leap over during a race. Each letter seemed to mention another hurdle—I wasn’t “qualified,” I was “too old,” Peggy and I had “too many children.” Added together, they seemed insurmountable.

The only positive responses were invitations to apply for administrative jobs at mission headquarters in the U.S. That wasn’t what Peggy and I wanted to do. We longed to go overseas, to be personally involved in reaching the unreached.

From my experience in the Marine Corps and with Mobil, I fully understood the need for a mission organization to maintain high standards and to make sure their members were prepared for the field. Yet, I wonder how things might have been different if only someone would have encouraged us in a personal way—or recognized the fact that while I didn’t have formal Bible training, what I did know about the Scriptures had changed my life.

I wondered if my life was to become nothing more than the sum total of my sales figures—but I refused to be discouraged. Someone once said, “Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.” That seemed to apply not just to my sales work, but also to our dream of becoming missionaries. I didn’t want to give up.

Since all the mission boards said we needed Bible college training, that’s where we would start. If I wanted to be a missionary, it made sense to be grounded in the Word so that I really knew the Bible well. Peggy and I applied to Columbia Bible College in South Carolina.

Then we got the news that Peggy was pregnant with our fourth child—very exciting, but also very confusing to us. What was God saying? Wouldn’t another child make it even harder for us to get to the field? Now that our other children were a little older, Peggy and I had both hoped to take classes, while I found a part-time job. With the prospect of four little ones to care for, however, the door to Bible college and the mission field seemed to be closing again.

Six weeks later, Peggy miscarried, and we suffered the loss of our precious baby. We were saddened, and any peace we had felt about going to Bible college evaporated. Maybe God was holding us back from the mission field because I wasn’t “spiritual” enough. Did He want me to work in the business arena for the rest of my life? We didn’t have a clue what God was saying. All we knew was that the burden to reach the world with the gospel wasn’t fading.

If we couldn’t go to the field ourselves, we would get involved with as many missionaries as we could—supporting them, praying for them, and hosting them in our home. It wasn’t hard to find quality missionaries to support; Immanuel Baptist had a mission family full of them. Among them was a couple our age that especially impressed us—Tom and Betsy Smoak. Tom was the guest speaker at church one Sunday, and when he walked up to the pulpit and turned toward us, we could see that his face was horribly scarred.

“What are you looking at?” Tom asked someone in the front row. He sounded completely serious, then told the audience, “Some of you don’t look so good yourself.”

We didn’t have a clue what God was saying. All we knew was that the burden to reach the world with the gospel wasn’t fading.

A big grin broke out across his scarred face, putting us all at ease as a wave of laughter swept through the sanctuary.

Tom preached that morning about hell. He said that he knew what hell was like because he had recently experienced scorching flames. When he was in the Air Force, he took what was supposed to be a routine flight over Little Rock, Arkansas, but something went wrong. In a split second, 50 tons of liquid jet fuel ripped apart his B47 jet bomber. The other men in the flight crew were instantly killed, and Tom was blown out of the cockpit—his body on fire. Unconscious and falling, he had no chance of survival, when suddenly his parachute mysteriously deployed. It was full of holes, however, and Tom continued plummeting to earth.

A woman on the ground heard the explosion and spotted the fireball, flaming wreckage and falling parachute. She pled for God to save whomever it was—and suddenly Tom started descending right into her yard. His tattered parachute draped itself over two large trees, as Tom’s body slipped between them for a perfect landing on a concrete driveway.

Tom endured numerous surgeries to reconstruct his face and hands, which suffered third-degree burns. His sunglasses had protected his eyes, making it possible for him to continue his career in aviation. Eventually, he was discharged from the Air Force, but was able to become a missionary pilot and fly in “God’s Air Force.” He and Betsy joined Wycliffe Bible Translators, a mission dedicated to translating God’s Word into the languages of indigenous peoples around the world. They were raising support to go to Colombia, South America, where Tom would fly missionaries and supplies in and out of the jungle.

By now, God had blessed Peggy and me with four children: Ginny, John, Arlene, and our youngest daughter, Carol, who was born on March 29, 1963. After seven years with Mobil, a restlessness began to stir within me to pursue other opportunities. In December 1963, I was hired by Dow Jones and Company, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, and accepted into their management training program in New York City. Once my training was complete, I was appointed as district manager of The Wall Street Journal in Washington, D.C. The Saturday before I started work, my brother Harry and I left a gospel tract on every desk in the newsroom. On Monday morning, my first day at work, there was a memo on my desk with a copy of the tract that I had left. “Mr. Fletcher,” the memo read, “the news department does not appreciate this literature.”

The Lord blessed my efforts at the Journal, and after a few years, I was offered the position of district manager at the company’s office in downtown New York. Peggy was getting pretty good at packing by this time, so once again we put everything into boxes and moved north.

My office was near Wall Street, close to the New York Stock Exchange. I loved working for Dow Jones, one of the most prestigious corporations in America. Each morning I traveled to work by ferry from New Jersey across New York Harbor, passing the majestic Statue of Liberty. What a reminder of my country’s role as a place of refuge and hope for those who together built a mighty nation.

In the midst of a world of stocks and bonds, my vision for world evangelism never faded, but as the years went by, I was beginning to think that the dream was going to be fulfilled through our children. By now, they were all dedicated to the Lord Jesus and standing strong as a testimony among their friends. Their interest in missions didn’t happen by accident. It was something Peggy and I deliberately nurtured in them. In fact, we prayed that God would call each of them to the mission field because we felt that missions was the highest calling that anyone could have in life. Table talks, casual conversations and prayer times for far-off lands were a natural part of the children’s lives. Our refrigerator door was covered with prayer cards and pictures of missionaries we knew around the world. We read books about missionaries, and as often as we could, we opened our home and hearts to missionaries—those who were home on furlough and those heading overseas for the first time. We always took special care to roll out the red carpet because we wanted to honor them.

Peggy and I knew that if our children were part of the process of hosting missionaries and spending their own money for missions, it would give them spiritual ownership over the projects they funded—involving not only their wallets, but their hearts as well. We set aside a big jar where our children “deposited” some of their mission money. As a group, they would decide whom to bless with the funds. For example, when one of our missionaries to Africa, Fran White, had to flee the Congo in 1964 because of unrest, she left all her possessions behind—including her Bible. Our children decided to spend some of their “jar” money to purchase a new Bible for Fran. When we saw her 20 years later, she still had that Bible.

Our children also sponsored needy children through World Vision. We started with Wawu Kalendi, a seven-year-old boy from Indonesia. His father was dead, and his destitute mother placed him in an orphanage so that his basic needs would be met. Ten months later, we “adopted” another Indonesian child, a little girl named Debra Wantania who was living in a children’s home in West Java. Wawu’s and Debra’s photos also found their place on our refrigerator. These Indonesian children captured the hearts of our own children—and kept them beating for the nations.

Another missionary who became very dear to us when our family was young was Mary Baker, who served with Unevangelized Fields Mission in the Congo in Africa. Mary often stayed in our home while she was in the States on furlough. Short, warm and outgoing, she worked alongside the national church helping to plant a church in a remote village called Benalia. Our church family supported her, prayed for her, and felt like we were on the field with her.

When violence broke out in 1964 following the Congo’s independence, we were, of course, concerned for Mary’s safety. There was no internet, e-mail or fax service in those days, and news was slow in coming. We learned that gangs of young men, who called themselves Simba (meaning “lion” in Swahili) were terrorizing government and mission stations. Disillusioned and angry that independence had not made them wealthy, they sought to obliterate all vestiges of the West and carried out a drug-crazed campaign of terror—robbing, pillaging, torturing and killing Congolese and foreigners alike.

Many missionaries left their stations for safer ground, but not Mary. She chose to stay with the people whom God had sent her to serve. Eventually, escalating tensions climaxed with an order to seize all Americans, and we feared she was among those taken hostage. Day after day, we kept up with TV and newspaper reports about the hostage crisis, and we were hopeful when Belgian paratroopers descended on the airport in the city of Stanleyville. Together with South African mercenaries, they managed to liberate the city from the hands of the rebels and free a number of hostages.

It took another three weeks for rescuers to fight their way to Benalia, some 80 miles to the north. They arrived, only to find that eleven missionaries had been killed—including our beloved Mary. One report said that rebels cut off Mary’s limbs and her tongue. All the missionaries were either shot or hacked to death by machetes, and their bodies tossed into the Aruwimi River to be eaten by the crocodiles.

The sad news left us numb for weeks. Missions is war, I reminded myself, and the price can be costly. Sometimes a person pays with his or her life, but Scripture commends those who “did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Revelation 12:11 NIV).

For some people that might have been a deterrent, but Mary’s martyrdom only strengthened my resolve that world missions was where God was calling me, and that the price to be paid was worth the cost. Maybe it was the Marine in me. Maybe it was knowing that living for Christ was worth dying for.

God often sends influential people across our paths at pivotal crossroads in our lives. Mary was one of them. Dr. Gilbert J. McArthur was another. Gil was executive director of the South Sea Evangelical Mission in Australia, and a brilliant visionary. When he visited our home in 1968, he told us about the Christian Leaders’ Training College (CLTC) in the highlands of Papua New Guinea—400 acres of almost uninhabitable swampland that he and others had transformed into the premier Christian training facility in the South Pacific. Gil was CLTC’s first principal and was instrumental in raising the funds to keep it going. He wouldn’t say it about himself, of course, but he was like a David Livingstone of the South Pacific—a pioneer who blazed paths that others followed. Peggy and I decided to sponsor a student to attend Christian Leaders’ Training College, a young man named Silas Erikali.

Gil encouraged me to refuse to let go of my dream to become a missionary myself. He was a lone and welcome voice in the midst of many who were urging me to forget my dream and instead stick to making money to fund missions. The Lord knew that Gil was the right one to break through to me, and he confronted me with one of his favorite Scriptures: “We spend our years as a tale that is told” (Psalm 90:9 KJV).

“Ted, how are you writing the story of your life?” Gil asked me. “What is the next chapter that God might have for you?”

His question startled me, and in the weeks that followed, God wouldn’t let me forget it. One May morning in 1968, I was alone in our Detroit, Michigan, living room reading my Bible, and when I came to Psalm 2:8, I stopped: “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession” (NIV).

The words had such terrific authority that I knew God was speaking directly to me. I wrote in my Bible next to verse eight, “God’s promise to me.”

The words, of course, were originally a promise to the Messianic King, Jesus, that the domain of His Kingdom would someday extend around the world and include all the nations (or literally the “peoples”) of the earth. The missionary task—sharing the gospel and making disciples—was how God the Father would give the nations to His Son.

I also took this verse as a promise to me, and I knew that through it, God had come calling in my life. He was giving me a promise—and asking me to trust only Him, because humanly speaking there was no mechanism for its fulfillment.

Yet, nothing happened. No closed doors suddenly flew open. No mission board called to offer Peggy and me a position. All I had was a promise, and that’s what I clung to for eight more long years in the corporate world—until once again the Lord spoke to me from Psalm 2:8. I again wrote “God’s promise to me” in my Bible.

By now, our son, John, had a clear call on his life to missions, and I again wondered if the promise would be fulfilled through him and our other children, rather than through Peggy and me. Despite my own sense of spiritual inadequacy, however, I knew God had a call on my life, too. I didn’t know how He was going to do it, but His voice was unmistakable.

I knew it was futile to try to make something happen before it was God’s timing. All my past attempts to serve God in full-time ministry had turned to dust, while everything I touched in the business world seemed to succeed. The Lord blessed my efforts at The Wall Street Journal, and we had record sales and a topflight management team and sales staff. The Lord promoted me from district to regional sales manager in California, and then, at the age of 39, I became national sales manager for The Wall Street Journal, in charge of the sales force for the entire country. The Lord had given me a significant job with nationwide responsibility to maintain and increase the circulation of the Journal.

We moved back across country—from San Francisco to a nice home near Princeton, New Jersey, adjacent to Washington Crossing State Park. We had a pool and a little pond, and were close to good schools and our new congregation, Westerly Road Church. I loved the Journal, and the company was very good to me. Yet there was one question I pondered night and day: What difference does it make how many people read The Wall Street Journal as far as eternity is concerned?

The sense of safety in a secure corporate position meant nothing to me. I knew the time had come to step outside my comfort zone—the same way people whom I loved and admired had done, people like Don and Joan Gregory, Tom and Betsy Smoak, Mary Baker and Gil and Pat McArthur. Each could have taken the known road, but they were spiritual pioneers, following God’s direction and blazing their own paths for others to follow.

The natural thing for Peggy and me to do would be to stay with the known and secure—but we knew if we ever wanted to see the fulfillment of God’s promise, Psalm 2:8, in our lives, we had to obey and take the first step. In December 1973, I turned in my letter of resignation and sent a memo to my sales staff: “I have attempted to conduct my responsibilities in light of my personal faith in Jesus Christ. For me, the teachings and principles of the Bible have proven relevant and meaningful in my company life, as well as my personal life. I trust that you have seen these Christian principles attend the discharge of my professional duties.”

My years at The Wall Street Journal had been a mission field of sorts, but now God was calling me out of my “Jerusalem” to points unknown, to places unseen, to people unreached. As I left the Journal for the last time, it was with a deep sense of gratitude for all that the Lord had done.

I’d love to say that He immediately opened the door to missions, but there were no big checks or letters of invitation waiting in the mailbox when I returned home that evening. Instead, I began what people often call the “wilderness wanderings.” I knew God was calling me to missions; He had made that very clear. Yet, for reasons known only to Him, He required me to go through a wilderness experience before I could fulfill that call.

This wandering went on for four years, in fact. While I waited for God to fulfill His plan, I worked as vice president for Western Temporary Services; at a car dealership that I owned with my brothers, Waller and Bill; as assistant to the president of Washington Bible College, and as marketing director at Gospel Light Publishing Company in southern California. I knew God placed me in those positions as part of His plan for my life, but it was frustrating to wait while my heart burned for missions and the call to world evangelization.

During those years, I often thought of Joseph, Moses, Esther, Paul and others in the Bible to whom God gave a distinct call, but required them to wait years before fulfilling it. Joseph languished in an Egyptian jail. Moses wandered in the desert. Esther waited while her people seemed destined for destruction. Paul was arrested, jailed and beaten.

God knew what was ahead for them, of course, and He knew what was ahead for me. He knew I would need an even deeper faith in Him for the challenges that were around the corner.