(The Story Behind Our Call to Japan)

Writing these books about periods of our lives, such as our ongoing call to Japan, is always an intense time for me as I pore over a multitude of journals where I recorded our journey. My biggest challenge is deciding what I’ll include in the book and what I will leave out since there is always far more material than I can use.

Not everything I record in my journals would be of interest to our readers, and sometimes things were happening in our family that required me to use discretion so as not to cause embarrassment to anyone. I also needed to exercise extreme care when I talked about some of our prayer concerns relating to our mission field and our own struggles there. Thankfully, we had friends with whom we could be very honest in our sharing while those things were taking place.

Donn provides proofreading and other input for me. As he read this manuscript, he told me several times that some of the things I’d recorded were things he’d forgotten. I told him I only remembered when I read my journal. He also told me he hadn’t realized how hard those years were for me. I said, only half joking, “Well, perhaps that a good enough reason for me to have written the book. It would be a shame for me to have done all that suffering without you knowing it!”

I also asked Donn, “When you were reading these books, were there times when you wanted to say, ‘Wait, I want to tell my side of the story!’ When he said, “No,” I added, “So you thought I told the story fairly accurately?” When he nodded, I felt relieved. It can be difficult to have someone else telling our story for the world to read, and I would never want to misrepresent anything that happened.

Some of you may not want to believe that God would speak first to the wife when He is giving a call to a married couple. Years ago, when I argued with God about that very issue, He said, “Men and women are alike in my sight.” When I asked Him if that was Scriptural, Galatians 3:28 was my answer. I believe God will speak to whoever will listen.