Like David, I was born in 1955 and 2^nd born in a family of 4 kids. I had a sister before me, and 2 after me — all 4 of us girls, much to the dismay of my US naval officer father! We never sensed his disappointment but always felt his love and we got a ‘kick’ out of being referred to as “men”. (“Come on men, let’s get going!”)

So, as a navy brat, I moved with my family every 1 to 2 years. The most exciting places we lived were the Philippine Islands and Hawaii — otherwise it was California, Pennsylvania, California, Alexandria, VA, California, Oxen Hill, MD, etc (east coast, west coast, east coast, west coast).

I enjoyed all the moving because it meant starting over again with new friends everywhere we went. I think I must have been a pretty ornery kid and wasn’t too kind to my friends, though I don’t exactly remember that part.

In our family, I felt sort of like a black sheep — I was more angry and ornery than the rest, and more openly rebellious as a teenager. I was raised in a Christian home, though, and always had a soft spot in my heart for the Lord. I knew what the Gospel was and what Jesus had done for me, but I didn’t know Him personally. When we prayed, it was usually a written prayer at church or a memorized prayer such as the Lord’s prayer or the common table prayer or “now I lay me down to sleep… .” It was rare that we ever prayed personally from our hearts, though we did sometimes. I remember my sister praying once for God to protect us from “black widow spiders”

Anyway… it was at church one Sunday in Alexandria, Va. that as I was sitting with a friend and snickering during the sermon, that somehow God got my attention. I think I was in 6^th or 7^th grade then — and God opened my ‘eyes’ just a bit to His reality. It’s like He spoke to my heart and said, “Yes, this is all true. I Am real. Listen up.” I didn’t hear those words, but I got the meaning, and from that point on, I no longer argued with my folks about having to go to church.

Well, those wonderful years of adolescence continued to take their toll on me and my rebellion grew. In 9^th grade I was ‘turned on’ to smoking pot (in Hawaii) and in 10^th grade (Virginia) some mildly hallucinogenic drugs were added to the mix, along with some friends of questionable character. Even in the midst of this, I continued to hold on to some sort of faith in God. If my friends ever used God’s name in vain, I would be quick to get on their case and let them know that God was someone that they shouldn’t do that to. And even though I hung out with the wrong crowd, I knew there were things that a person oughtn’t do – because the Bible said so – and I told that to my friends, including my drug-dealing boyfriend. I guess they were actually a pretty decent crowd because they accepted my position.

At this time in my life, I sensed a growing desire to really know God. I didn’t like myself and was keenly aware of my sinful rebellious heart. Two things stand out to me from this time in my life: the first was that my older sister, Monica, and my folks were discussing what further education she should have — and what occupation she should pursue. Well, this got me thinking about what direction my life should go when I graduate from high school. I thought… well, how about the Peace Corp, or Vista or missionary work? (It’s all the same, right?)

I wanted to do something for the good of others. Well, there’s this wonderful person called the Holy Spirit, whom the Heavenly Father was using to draw me to Jesus and He reminded me of what I’d been taught: that Jesus is the only Way, Truth, and Life and that no one can come to the Father except by Him. He is the ultimate. Without Him, we are all lost. What good is it if the people I go to work among gain something good in this life, but then loose their own souls? My thought processes went something like this: if I go to some 3^rd world country and live in adverse conditions, working my tail off, in order to provide a clean water supply or whatever good humanitarian thing I could do, and then those people die and go to hell in their sins because they don’t know Jesus, what good is that? What is the point? Do I want to throw my life away for that? Just that? This hit me like a revelation and it set me on a course to seek, with all my heart, the Living God… a course that I will never regret.

I wanted to know if what I’d been taught was true. I had to know. My life depended on it. In His grace and in His plan, God made me seek Him for about a year. I went to Young Life meetings and heard wonderful testimonies of lives that were changed by Christ — decisions for Christ were asked for and I raised my hand — I don’t know how many times — but somehow just couldn’t connect with God. I chased down Jesus freaks on the streets of Old Town Alexandria, to hear their wonderful message (the same message of salvation I’d heard all my life. And I could see that Jesus was alive in them, which made me hunger even more to know Him) … but somehow I still felt deeply the guilt of my own sin.

The 2^nd thing I remember from that time in my life is how God used my sister by having her get on my case for smoking too much pot, and for going overboard with my foul language. For me, when I learn something, I tend to go overboard with it. (I can hear you snickering out there) Yes, I admit it is true, and I can hardly ever keep anything to myself — I have to plague others with it as well). Anyway, God knew I would listen to my big sister whom I held in high esteem. And those two things — the dope and the foul language — I took to the Lord in prayer, and before I knew what happened, my language cleaned up, relatively speaking. And it blew my mind because I didn’t even try to change. It just sort of happened. And concerning the marijuana, I knew as soon as I prayed, that I had to give up pot and other related vices (after all, it was illegal, wasn’t it? But the Bible never spoke directly about smoking marijuana like it did about being drunk with wine).

At that time (1971), my father retired from the Navy and we moved to Michigan where he began to work for the state, setting up their Medicaid program among other things… I was still tempted by the drug crowd, but by then, I was desperate for the Lord. I knew He was there and I HAD to know Him. There had to be more than just going to church on Sunday.

Back then, in the 70’s, a lot of people were checking out Eastern religions in their search for God, but I knew deep inside that that was not the place to find God. Like Jesus’ disciples said to Him years ago, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”.

Then, one night I was alone in my bedroom. It was late at night and the whole house was asleep except for me. I was reading the Word of God — reading that same old familiar story of Jesus dieing for my sins and rising again… and in a fit of desperation, my spirit cried out to God from deep within and, without words, said “God I believe this, but… (so what? What difference does it make to my life?) … instantly the gift of faith was given to me. All of the following happened at the same time: I saw what must have been a vision of Jesus dieing on the cross — and I KNEW it was for me. His blood was poured out for me… me a wretched little nobody. HE LOVES ME! HE’S THINKING ABOUT ME… RIGHT NOW… in this place. There must have been a beam of Light coming down from Heaven and resting on me. It felt like there was, though I didn’t see it. What I really felt, though, was something like liquid love that just whooshed through me, cleansing me of all yuck, all the sin and self hate, removing from me a “heart of stone” and replacing it with a “heart of flesh”. A huge weight was lifted off of me, and I was free. My response was to cry and cry and cry, all the while blessing and praising my precious Savior. I knew I had exited the kingdom of darkness and entered the Kingdom of God’s own Son.

The thought has just occurred to me as I write this… before I met Jesus, I was blinded by the darkness. Now, I am blinded by the Light. People of the world are critical of Christians for this “blindness”, which comes across as stupid or foolish, narrow-mindedness. Which sounds like a better deal to you? Being “your own man”, living without God, without hope, living a life that is substantially less than what the Intelligent Designer of all things has in mind for you OR waking up to the reality that God, your Creator, does more than just exist, He is actually intimately involved with His creation and He loves you personally and has made a way for you to be reconciled to Him. I have a Friend in ‘high places’ who will never leave me nor forsake me… I have the highest of all causes for which to live — and die. I have peace with God, the Living God, my Maker. And I think that is pretty cool. My hope is secured. “On Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand”.

Back to my life story… after that intimate meeting with Jesus, I knew that my life no longer belonged to me, but to Him. I now had a keen sense of who I was and who my brothers and sisters in Christ were — we were God’s holy or ‘set apart’ people, called to carry on Jesus’ work in the power of His Spirit, which He gives freely to all who believe. Wow! It was no longer “what do I want to do, but, what do You want me to do, Lord?”

To make a long story short, God used my parents to direct me to Concordia Lutheran Jr. College (funny how God uses parents) It was at Concordia that I met my precious husband, David. And it was at Concordia that we first learned about the need for the Word of God to be translated into the heart languages of thousands of people groups around the world. These are the millions of people who will never learn English or any other major language of the world, and will therefore not be able to understand the Gospel. It will be akin to what Paul said about speaking in tongues to the congregation without an interpretation: ⁹So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air. ¹⁰Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. ¹¹If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and he is a foreigner to me. (1 Corinthians 14)

I once heard a Papua New Guinean, named Tumuw, tell the following story in Pidgin English. I couldn’t remember exactly what he had said, so I asked Mark Hepner, the man who translated the Bible into Tumuw’s mother tongue (the Bargam language), to write it up for me, and this is what he wrote:

Sometime after Tumuw became literate in our first literacy class he began using the published book of Mark in his church work. As a Catholic and a member of the Legion of Mary, he along with other members would take ‘church’ to those who don’t come to Sunday services. Every week they’d go and hold ‘Baibel lotu’ (Bible church) services at a house or hamlet where there are unchurched people. That’s a little background.

One time he was at the house of a man named Yaog. During the Baibel lotu, Tumuw read from Mark, prayed in Bargam and the songs and the message were also in tokples [the vernacular]. (This is a real departure from the normal way of doing things all in Tok Pisin. [Pidgin English, the trade language of PNG]) After the service Yaog, who is a middle aged person and a clan leader, came up to Tumuw and shook his hand and said, “Before when I heard the priest read the Bible in Tok Pisin I would think to myself, ‘That must be the whiteskins’ God. There must be some other God for us Papua New Guineans. But now, hearing God’s word read and taught in my language, it makes me feel like the God of the Bible is my God too.”

Going back to 1975… this is what we learned from the Wycliffe literature we were reading and later from our first summer semester of linguistic studies at UND — that people need to have God’s Word in their own mother tongue in order for the Gospel to be clearly understood and received by people of other cultures.

So, we prayed and asked God if this was what He wanted us to invest our lives in. We took the first step of attending SIL school (undergraduate and graduate level training in applied Linguistics, literacy and translation). It was the most difficult education I have ever received! And through a series of answered prayers over the space of 3 years, we came to see that this is what God had for us.

The only time that I regretted going down this path was our first year on the field (‘79/80), while living in Sunvahoara Village on the coast of Bougainville Island. I was stressed to the max with cultural adjustments, tropical heat, flies and mosquitoes, language learning and people laughing at me as I butchered their language, etc. etc. That first year I said to myself, “I will never again tell anyone to join Wycliffe Bible Translators!” Well, to make a long story short, I knew I was where God wanted us to be, and as we stuck it out that first year, we began to understand the culture (they were laughing at me because they loved me and were VERY pleased that I was even trying to learn their language). It was a humbling experience, like being a child all over again, as we entered their culture and tried to participate in it. Thank God for the Holy Spirit… it wasn’t easy, but with His help, I bonded with the Teop people, and never wanted to leave them. We were in an internship program at that time and our commitment to live among the Teop people was only for a two year period and then we had to move on. To this day, I would love to go back and pick up where we left off.

It’s a long story — all the moves we have made, the changes that have taken place in ourselves and in our work…

6 years after we arrived in PNG, our first child, Sarah Kovin, was born at Ukarumpa on January 16, 1982. Three years later our son Micah David was born, also in January, at Ukarumpa on the 26^th 1985.

We have enjoyed raising our kids in Papua New Guinea, and they have enjoyed growing up there for the most part. They grew up with great friends in a multicultural environment. We were glad that for the most part we were living at Ukarumpa during their growing up years so that they could attend the International Christian school located right there on our translation center campus. Only a couple of times did they have to stay at a children’s home or with friends when our work called us back to Bougainville or out of the country. Some of their friends and classmates were from Korea, the US, PNG, Holland, England, Finland, and Australia.

And some of the things they grew up with were bicycles, motorbikes, horseback riding, computer games, rocket making, dolls, swimming at the ocean, riding in fixed wing airplanes to exotic places, riding in outrigger canoes and banana boats, eating tropical fruits, owning pets, both common and unique, such as cats, a horse, a rainbow lorikeet, a cuscus (opossum type of critter), and a barn owl named Buzzy. They had birthday parties, did wood-working with their dad, made guitars from scratch both electric and acoustic, helped me to make bagels, cinnamon rolls, gyros, tortillas, salsa, buckeyes, donuts, pizza and numerous other goodies in the kitchen.

And now, how many years later, we are serving God in the States, tho for how long, only He knows. God has blessed David with a gift of administration and is in great demand in the world of Wycliffe. We sense that this is a season for us to be working here in the States rather than overseas, tho his work may take us overseas from time to time. Since it is God’s choice for us we are happy with it. We know that without the Wycliffe team hard at work here in the States, the work on the field would be near impossible, and so we still feel intimately connected to the field work and rejoice that we can make a difference in reaching the remaining 2529 language groups around the world with the Word of God, and that we can be of assistance to those teams who are presently working in the 1000-some language groups where translation is presently in progress. They need our support in order to keep on keeping on. The Body of Christ is dynamic — we need all the parts working and doing their part to bring in His Kingdom.

Say “YES” to Jesus! May His Kingdom come!