back to indexWomen's Filmoship 5-22-21
00:01:24.000 |
>> We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:01:29.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:01:38.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:01:44.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:01:53.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:01:59.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:02:08.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:02:14.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:02:22.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:02:28.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:02:37.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:02:43.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:02:51.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:02:57.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:03:06.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:03:12.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:03:20.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:03:26.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:03:35.000 |
We waited and we knew that it would not be long before they arrived in the interior. 00:03:41.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:33:35.000 |
The love of God is greater far than tarpets can ever tell 00:33:48.000 |
It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell 00:34:32.000 |
The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell 00:34:51.000 |
It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell 00:36:33.000 |
To write the love of God above Would a dream be o'er, should you write 00:39:13.000 |
>> Ladies, rise and shine for whoever's awake. 00:39:17.000 |
Well, good morning. My name is Grace and welcome to Film-O-Ship. 00:39:21.000 |
I know that there's some ladies still in line. Don't worry. 00:39:24.000 |
It's going to be in audio, so you don't have to watch anything on the screen for a bit. 00:39:31.000 |
Those of you who are joining us in person and virtually, we're just so excited you're here. 00:39:35.000 |
It's literally been over a year since we've been able to have a gathering with just the sisters at this church. 00:39:42.000 |
It's actually so nice to be able to see everybody. 00:39:45.000 |
We are going to go ahead and I want to explain Film-O-Ship. 00:39:49.000 |
If you guys see behind me, it's Film-O-Ship Inspiration Legacy and Movie. 00:39:53.000 |
Today, it's not going to be a movie. It's going to be like story hour. 00:39:58.000 |
Let's just say it's an audio and I'll tell you it is so worth it. 00:40:03.000 |
There will be actually subtitles on the bottom if you'd like to read along. 00:40:09.000 |
You don't have to stare at each other the entire time. 00:40:21.000 |
That's okay. That's okay. It's for Avery. It's for Avery. 00:40:26.000 |
There's significance to the bananas on your table. I just want you to know. 00:40:32.000 |
Let's all stare at Grace and make her feel uncomfortable. 00:40:38.000 |
See how cute Avery is. I'm glad she's enjoying it. 00:40:41.000 |
I do want to just tell you guys, the general schedule is up here. 00:40:46.000 |
If you do have to use the restroom, restrooms are just back to the right. 00:40:52.000 |
If you guys have any questions, you guys can just find me. 00:41:00.000 |
What I'd like to do is I'd like to go ahead and open us up in a word of prayer. 00:41:10.000 |
You can grab your food and we'll get you guys situated. 00:41:13.000 |
Heavenly Father, thank you so much for just your goodness, Lord, 00:41:22.000 |
Just this gathering of sisters, Lord, those who are here, 00:41:25.000 |
joining us virtually, those who are still on the way, would you keep them safe? 00:41:28.000 |
I just pray as we learn about Darlene Diebler-Rose 00:41:32.000 |
and just the legacy of faith that she really left. 00:41:36.000 |
That we're just really inspired by just how you magnified yourself in her life. 00:41:41.000 |
Lord, she is decades removed from us, Father, 00:41:45.000 |
but the experiences that she went through, Father, 00:41:48.000 |
some of these things can really resonate with us in our own battles in life. 00:41:51.000 |
She was in World War II, Father, but there are different battles 00:41:57.000 |
I pray that we'll be responsive to just the hearing of the message 00:42:02.000 |
and how she lived out her faith in the midst of just true trial and persecution. 00:42:06.000 |
I just pray that you'd be magnified and glorified today. 00:42:09.000 |
Be with everyone as they eat their food, and I pray that it'll nourish their bodies. 00:42:12.000 |
I thank you and I praise you for just being who you are, Father. 00:42:15.000 |
You never change. You are the same yesterday, today, and forever. 00:42:23.000 |
So the audio is going to start in about a minute or so, 00:44:22.000 |
Today I had a nice experience. I was taken out to get a dress. Isn't it lovely? 00:44:29.000 |
I've received so many lovely gifts since I've been home this time. 00:44:34.000 |
Someone asked me if I was color-coded. Really didn't know what that meant. 00:44:39.000 |
But when they explained that it was the colors that best suit you, 00:44:44.000 |
they said, "Have you been color-coded?" And I said, "Yes, I have." 00:44:49.000 |
They said, "What are your best colors?" I said, "Whatever my Lord sends." 00:44:56.000 |
I thought that was nice that the gentleman who prayed for your offering mentioned the young lady. 00:45:02.000 |
And he's right. I want you to know that this is young blood you're looking at. 00:45:11.000 |
If I were to choose a text with which to preface what I would like to say to you tonight, 00:45:20.000 |
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is in me. Bless His holy name." 00:45:29.000 |
So often people say to me, "Wasn't that a terrible experience?" 00:45:34.000 |
Oh no, beloved. Have you ever thought how special it was that God took so much time 00:45:46.000 |
If I could change anything of my life, and I can't, but if I could, 00:45:55.000 |
I don't know of anything that I would want changed. 00:45:59.000 |
One of the gifts that my God has given me is found in the words of Paul, 00:46:08.000 |
"For it is given unto you." It is a gift, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer with Him. 00:46:22.000 |
No matter what I was going through, or they were going through, 00:46:27.000 |
we could kneel down together and I could say to them, 00:46:31.000 |
"Beloved, I understand. I've been there. I also have suffered that too. 00:46:39.000 |
But let me tell you what God can do for you." 00:46:46.000 |
I was the first woman from the outside world that those people in the western half of the island 00:46:53.000 |
And I shall never forget that day, after crossing fourteen mountain ranges, 00:46:59.000 |
and we came to the top of the last of the mountain ranges, and I looked down into the valley. 00:47:13.000 |
They just turned around and looked at me and they'd say to one another, 00:47:16.000 |
"Look at that thing back there. No legs at all on her." 00:47:27.000 |
And I got to the top of the mountain and I looked down, 00:47:30.000 |
and I saw those people coming out of the gardens and out of houses, 00:47:35.000 |
and they were coming up the mountainside to meet me. 00:47:38.000 |
Someone had run ahead and said, "The woman is here." 00:47:41.000 |
And when I got to the top and looked down and saw them and heard them yodeling to me, 00:47:47.000 |
half of your crowd says, "Hoo!" and the other half answers, "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!" 00:47:53.000 |
I was so excited that I began to wave my hands at them, 00:47:57.000 |
and I was running down the mountainside with the tears running down my cheeks, 00:48:02.000 |
and I was singing to the top of my lungs, "I'm home. I'm home. I'm home." 00:48:13.000 |
We came back after Holland had been overrun by the Germans, 00:48:21.000 |
and they said we had to abandon our post there in the interior of New Guinea. 00:48:26.000 |
And so we walked back down the trail and to our headquarters on the island of Salaibas in Makassar. 00:48:34.000 |
I had been there while I was waiting for the opportunity to join my husband, 00:48:39.000 |
who was the first missionary who ever went into the heart of New Guinea. 00:48:44.000 |
And he had lost over 60 pounds in just 18 days on that trail. 00:48:49.000 |
We walked back down, leaving our people there, 00:48:53.000 |
and when we got to Makassar I began teaching again in the Bible school. 00:48:57.000 |
I had learned the Indonesian language. It's a very beautiful language. 00:49:03.000 |
And one day after Dr. and Mrs. Jaffrey--Dr. Jaffrey was our field chairman-- 00:49:09.000 |
they had come back from just a very short trip up to the Philippines. 00:49:15.000 |
He had had a letter from New York headquarters to say that he should think about retiring. 00:49:21.000 |
And I was acting as his secretary at that time. 00:49:25.000 |
I remember the letter saying, "Retiring? That's exactly what I'm doing. 00:49:30.000 |
I'm putting on new tires and I'm rolling right ahead for the Lord." 00:49:35.000 |
And believe me, if--I know because at my age they would like to put me out to pasture, 00:49:42.000 |
but I put on new tires and I'm rolling right ahead for the Lord. 00:49:47.000 |
And that man was such an example to me, a man of God, 00:49:54.000 |
And then he came down and opened the first evangelical work in Vietnam. 00:50:02.000 |
He saw the great stretch of islands and knew that there were multitudes there who had never heard. 00:50:09.000 |
And then at the conference, my husband was chosen as the assistant to Dr. Jaffrey. 00:50:19.000 |
When Dr. Jaffrey and Margaret arrived back from a short visit up to the Philippines, 00:50:26.000 |
that morning I turned on the radio and we heard that Pearl Harbor was being bombed. 00:50:35.000 |
None of us, I'm sure, none of you ever realized how well prepared Japan was for war. 00:50:43.000 |
You see, we had had a Japanese there in Macassar who was a barber, 00:50:49.000 |
and almost ten years that man had been there. 00:50:53.000 |
We did not realize that he spoke a word of English. 00:50:56.000 |
Everybody communicated with him in the Indonesian language. 00:51:04.000 |
and those men had been there a similar period of time. 00:51:08.000 |
And every Sunday we would see them on their bicycles going out in different directions. 00:51:19.000 |
and they were photographing every inch of that island, especially the coastline. 00:51:31.000 |
we all held our breath and we all said to one another, 00:51:37.000 |
But, beloved, it was not long until Hong Kong had fallen. 00:51:49.000 |
They were moving down the peninsula of Malaya and then into Singapore. 00:51:57.000 |
They had those beautiful ships of war there, the Prince of Wales. 00:52:02.000 |
They thought that could never be sunk, but they did not count on the kamikaze pilots, 00:52:10.000 |
those that met their death by diving into ships. 00:52:20.000 |
We could even go up to the top of the mountains of the interior 00:52:24.000 |
and see the ships coming down the Makassar Straits. 00:52:28.000 |
All of our students that we could get shipping for from our Bible school 00:52:34.000 |
Those that could not get back, we made a camp for them. 00:52:38.000 |
And then I went out into the storehouse and I took up my five drums of wedding presents, 00:52:46.000 |
and I just laid them aside and knew that probably I would never, ever be able to use them. 00:52:53.000 |
We took just some kerosene, some rice, and other items of food, some soap. 00:53:01.000 |
And with just a few things, we went on up into the mountains to get away from the shock troops. 00:53:06.000 |
We had heard the stories of what had happened when the shock troops moved in to terrify the people. 00:53:16.000 |
And we remembered listening to Manila, the broadcast, 00:53:22.000 |
and there was a young man that was talking, and he was telling about what was happening there. 00:53:27.000 |
And he said, "I think this will be my last broadcast." 00:53:30.000 |
He said, "They are bombing the city of Manila." 00:53:34.000 |
And you could hear the sound of the bombs exploding. 00:53:44.000 |
And you could hear the sob in his voice, and the radio went dead. 00:53:50.000 |
When we were in the mountains, we were about 60 kilometers from the coast. 00:53:58.000 |
We could accommodate quite a few people at one time. 00:54:03.000 |
But Dr. Jaffrey and Mrs. Jaffrey had built a house there. 00:54:07.000 |
Miss Marsh, one of the Britishers, had also built a house. 00:54:11.000 |
And so we divided up, and we were staying in these two houses. 00:54:22.000 |
They were feared by other people because they built beautiful prowls. 00:54:29.000 |
Their boats could skim through the water, and they looted and plundered other ships. 00:54:35.000 |
And we knew that they were there, and very much aware of the fact 00:54:41.000 |
that Japan was nearing the island of Celebes. 00:54:46.000 |
They had caught four Dutchmen just down over the mountain from us, 00:54:56.000 |
And they were running--the Bugis people were running away 00:55:04.000 |
And when they went to find the other Dutch people, 00:55:07.000 |
they had been badly brutalized by these Bugis people. 00:55:12.000 |
There was a woman whom I later learned to know 00:55:16.000 |
who was trying to get up to an area just five kilometers further inland from us 00:55:29.000 |
And this woman had in her bag just her identification papers, 00:55:38.000 |
And out of the jungle came a group of these Bugis people. 00:55:42.000 |
They wanted that bag, thinking that it contained money. 00:55:45.000 |
And when she held on to it, one of them ripped out his machete 00:55:51.000 |
and almost severed her hand from her wrist, and she, of course, let go. 00:56:02.000 |
And they finally made their way up to Manila. 00:56:06.000 |
Those were the kind of people among whom we were living. 00:56:15.000 |
so we began immediately to plant some gardens. 00:56:23.000 |
We saw the Battle of the Makassar Straits taking place. 00:56:27.000 |
And we knew that within a matter of just days, 00:56:34.000 |
There was a Dutch police officer who came to our place on a Wednesday, 00:56:44.000 |
and he said, "We have one ship down on the south coast lying at anchor. 00:56:51.000 |
We're going to evacuate all the women and children that want to go 00:56:57.000 |
And when Dr. Jaffrey heard this, he said, "We will pray about it." 00:57:06.000 |
"I will be back with a truck on Friday to pick you up." 00:57:13.000 |
He said, "I don't want you to talk with one another about this. 00:57:17.000 |
I want you to go to your knees, and you wait on God, 00:57:24.000 |
so that if you go, you will know that it is God who has directed you to leave. 00:57:30.000 |
But if you stay, no matter what happens in the months and maybe years ahead, 00:57:36.000 |
you will know that you are exactly where God wanted you to be." 00:57:43.000 |
There was not one person among us that felt we should leave. 00:57:47.000 |
And so the truck stopped, and Dr. Jaffrey said, "We have chosen to remain." 00:57:53.000 |
We heard through our radio that that ship had been torpedoed three days out, 00:57:59.000 |
and as far as we know, there were no survivors. 00:58:06.000 |
I knew that I was right where God wanted me to be. 00:58:11.000 |
We heard through the grapevines some of our national workers, 00:58:16.000 |
some of the natives who were bringing food to us. 00:58:18.000 |
They would come during the night hours and bring us food, 00:58:21.000 |
and they said they had landed not where the fortifications were 00:58:32.000 |
They began to kill indiscriminately people just to terrorize the natives. 00:58:39.000 |
And then we waited, and we knew that it would not be long 00:58:46.000 |
One day I looked up from the garden, and I saw Japanese soldiers coming. 00:58:54.000 |
and they wore the tennis shoes with the great toes separated from the rest of the toes 00:59:00.000 |
so that they could climb the ropes of the ships. 00:59:05.000 |
When they came to the first house, Mr. Presswood was sitting outside, 00:59:17.000 |
The moment he put his hands up, they took their bayonets, 00:59:21.000 |
and they began to slash at his arms because they didn't want him to put his hands up, 00:59:28.000 |
He was a very tall man, and they despised tall people. 00:59:33.000 |
I have seen them jump up to slap people on the face that were taller than they were. 00:59:38.000 |
Then he came over to the house where we were staying, 00:59:42.000 |
and of course they said, "Come over and join the rest of them." 00:59:47.000 |
They had their bayonets fixed on their gun, and I tell you, that's a great persuader. 00:59:56.000 |
The one officer slouched down in the chair, threw his leg over to the side, 01:00:01.000 |
and he proceeded to tell us that we were now prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army, 01:00:08.000 |
that we were going to be imprisoned right there on the hillside, 01:00:11.000 |
that if we ever were caught outside of the premises, that we would be shot on sight, 01:00:17.000 |
that we were to have no contact with any of the natives, 01:00:21.000 |
that we were to remain there until they came back again 01:00:25.000 |
and told us what they were going to do with us. 01:00:28.000 |
Dr. Jaffrey was asked what nationality he was, 01:00:32.000 |
and of course he was as nervous as the rest of them. 01:00:34.000 |
He said, "C-C-Canada," and the man said, "Where is C-C-Canada?" 01:00:40.000 |
He did not know where Canada was, so he just dismissed Dr. Jaffrey. 01:00:48.000 |
Then he saw that Mr. Dibler had his hands folded together in front of him, 01:00:54.000 |
and he said something to one of the soldiers, and he went over, and he had his bayonet, 01:00:58.000 |
but it was inside of the sheath, and he began to pound on my husband's hands. 01:01:03.000 |
He would knock them down, and he would put them back up again. 01:01:07.000 |
Finally, Mr. Presswood spoke up, and he said, "Russell, he wants you just to put your hands down at the side." 01:01:17.000 |
I watched, and I saw how his hands were beginning to swell. 01:01:23.000 |
Then they told us that we could go back to the other house, 01:01:28.000 |
but never, ever were we to leave the premises there. 01:01:33.000 |
I remember the day when it was just two weeks after the first time they had come. 01:01:39.000 |
We heard the sound of the trucks, and of course, all of us immediately began to gather near the door 01:01:49.000 |
When the car pulled up in front of the house, out jumped the soldiers and two officers. 01:01:55.000 |
The one officer came in, and we, of course, greeted him by bowing to him, 01:02:01.000 |
and he said, turning to me, "Get some clothes for your husband. 01:02:06.000 |
Not many. We're only going to take them down for a few days to question them." 01:02:13.000 |
I ran in and grabbed a pillowcase, and I picked up my husband's Bible and put that in, 01:02:19.000 |
and then a notebook and a pen, and then the clothes that were there, close at hand. 01:02:24.000 |
Then I ran out, and I was going to say goodbye to him because I saw that he had already disappeared, 01:02:32.000 |
When the officer said to me, "What's wrong with that old man in there?" 01:02:41.000 |
He was in a coma just before we came up here. 01:02:44.000 |
He has a kidney problem. He has the beginning of Parkinson's disease." 01:02:49.000 |
When he heard all of the things that were wrong with Dr. Jeffrey, he just said, 01:02:54.000 |
"All right, go in and tell the old man he doesn't have to go 01:02:58.000 |
because anybody as sick as he is will never last anyway." 01:03:02.000 |
I ran in, and I said, "Dr. Jeffrey," he said, "you don't have to go. You stay with us." 01:03:08.000 |
I ran out then, and already they had started the trucks. 01:03:12.000 |
I thought I wasn't even going to be able to say goodbye to Russell. 01:03:16.000 |
I ran over, and I grabbed hold of the back of the truck, 01:03:21.000 |
and I handed up the little bag of things to him. 01:03:25.000 |
I shall never forget that day. It was Friday, the 13th of March. 01:03:29.000 |
I have a bit of Irish in me, but I'm not at all superstitious. 01:03:33.000 |
I really believe that God means exactly what he says in Romans 8:28, 01:03:38.000 |
that all things, all things work together for good to those who love the Lord. 01:03:46.000 |
As I reached up there and I put my hand hanging on to the tailgate, 01:03:50.000 |
he reached down and he took my hand, and he said, 01:03:53.000 |
"Remember one thing, dear. God said he would never, never leave us nor forsake us." 01:04:03.000 |
I watched the truck until it was out of sight, and then I turned to go. 01:04:08.000 |
I thought it was one of those days when God had left me, had forsaken me. 01:04:14.000 |
I looked up, and there stood my Lord on the parapet of heaven. 01:04:19.000 |
I knew that never for a moment would I be out of his sight. 01:04:26.000 |
I ran in to Dr. Jaffray, and I said, "They're gone." 01:04:31.000 |
Then I said, "That officer told me anybody who needed as much medicine as you did wasn't going to last." 01:04:38.000 |
I said, "What medicine was he talking about?" 01:04:44.000 |
He said, "I just picked up this little black satchel that belonged to my father. 01:04:48.000 |
He was a very wealthy man, a senator, the owner of the Globe and Mail in Toronto, Canada, 01:04:56.000 |
Then he said, "I knew that if they took us from here, they were going to take us to the coast." 01:05:04.000 |
He perspired freely. He just loved to put Otoclone on there, 01:05:08.000 |
and it was very refreshing to mop up his face with. 01:05:12.000 |
I looked in that bag, and he had about six bottles of Otoclone. 01:05:24.000 |
and so many people gave him his Christmas and his birthday gift together. 01:05:33.000 |
On the 16th of January, he would say, "Only 11 more months until my birthday." 01:05:39.000 |
The 16th of February, it was only 10 more months until his birthday, and so on through the years. 01:05:47.000 |
We all knew he liked Otoclone, so he always got a lot of Otoclone. 01:05:51.000 |
I loved how the Lord fooled that Japanese officer. 01:05:55.000 |
He thought that was medicine, and God knew we needed Dr. Jaffray there with us. 01:06:01.000 |
We were then seven women and Dr. Jaffray, an elderly gentleman. 01:06:07.000 |
We tried to protect all of our food as much as possible 01:06:15.000 |
Now those houses, they looked very nice on the outside, 01:06:19.000 |
but they were single-clapboard houses, and there were many places where the rats could come in. 01:06:25.000 |
As the rain started, they invited all the country cousins to join them, 01:06:33.000 |
If you left your shoes out, you could count on it that they would have gnawed on your shoes. 01:06:38.000 |
So we put everything into the closets, and we shoved the doors shut 01:06:44.000 |
and made sure that there were no places where they could enter those wardrobes. 01:06:54.000 |
Margaret Jaffray and I would go through that house, starting at the back, 01:07:01.000 |
Every rat that was there, we would run it out into the hall, 01:07:05.000 |
and we kept collecting them, and then we would run them into the kitchen 01:07:10.000 |
because it was the only room in the house where you could shut the doors and shut off their exits. 01:07:15.000 |
Then we joined them, each of us armed with a broom, 01:07:18.000 |
and we fought those rats until we had killed every one of them. 01:07:24.000 |
They would run up the walls, and they'd jump onto you, 01:07:29.000 |
and we would then start working on them with the brooms. 01:07:32.000 |
We killed them all. I said, "Someday, if I ever have time, 01:07:40.000 |
We had them in the balleam that weighed 30 pounds. 01:07:45.000 |
I have had them hanging on the screen, looking inside. 01:07:51.000 |
I said, "After I had had that one in my bed during the internment, that was it. 01:07:59.000 |
They are no longer my friends or my favorite people." 01:08:06.000 |
One night, and it must have been around midnight, 01:08:15.000 |
You know how sometimes you're just partly awake, and I could hear them. 01:08:20.000 |
There was rustling and rumbling around there and there. 01:08:24.000 |
Finally, I came fully awake, and I sat up in bed, and I thought, "Rats." 01:08:29.000 |
I reached over, and I shook Margaret Jaffrey's bed, and I said, 01:08:32.000 |
"Margaret, get out of bed because we must have left a lot of rats in the house." 01:08:36.000 |
I said, "I can hear them in all the rooms of the house." 01:08:40.000 |
She got on her bathrobe, and the two of us went to the door. 01:08:43.000 |
When I opened the door that went into a hall that ran the length of the house 01:08:49.000 |
from the living room, dining room, into a bathroom at this end, 01:08:58.000 |
When I came out into the hall, I could see someone just rush past me 01:09:03.000 |
in the dim light of a tiny little oil lamp that we had there for Dr. Jaffrey, 01:09:07.000 |
who sometimes had to get up in the night hours. 01:09:10.000 |
I thought, "What a strange way for Dr. Jaffrey to be acting." 01:09:14.000 |
But as I came out and I looked down the hall, there stood one of those boogie spandex. 01:09:22.000 |
He just grabbed that sarong, threw it up over his shoulders, 01:09:26.000 |
and then he pulled out his machete, and there he stood. 01:09:34.000 |
I'm really quite a coward, but I started down that hall after him, 01:09:38.000 |
and I know he looked at me so shocked, I suppose, 01:09:41.000 |
wondering what that crazy woman was going to do. 01:09:43.000 |
He turned and he ran, and I went right after him, 01:09:47.000 |
through that bathroom, across the porch, down over the mountainside. 01:09:53.000 |
But when I saw several others join him out of the jungle there, 01:10:07.000 |
He said, "My child, the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth." 01:10:16.000 |
I went back. I reached to pull the door shut. 01:10:24.000 |
They had carved out the nicest little porthole you ever saw. 01:10:28.000 |
By this time, Dr. Jaffrey and the rest of them were wide awake, 01:10:37.000 |
They had taken curtains, any kind of material that they could see. 01:10:42.000 |
probably thinking we had hidden money in the books that were in the bookcases. 01:10:47.000 |
But not one of the bedroom doors had been opened. 01:10:55.000 |
and I thought whoever that was knew the layout of this house. 01:10:59.000 |
After the war, my second husband took me back up to Bendintingi, 01:11:04.000 |
and I went out to find a young man that I thought would have known the layout of that house. 01:11:14.000 |
When I found him, I said to him, "Nomo, during the war, the big fight," 01:11:22.000 |
I said, "Were you at the house? Did you come in the house?" 01:11:26.000 |
He dropped his head, and he said, "Yes, Nyonya, I was there." 01:11:31.000 |
He said, "You know, we were having a very hard time, too." 01:11:36.000 |
I said, "But, Nomo, we heard you people coming back night after night, 01:11:45.000 |
I said, "We had nothing with which to protect ourselves." 01:11:48.000 |
He said, "Oh, but you had all those people in white standing guard around your house." 01:11:57.000 |
And, beloved, I believe in the angel of the Lord. 01:12:02.000 |
I know that they encamp around about those that fear him and love him. 01:12:15.000 |
We had to learn then to eat various kinds of grasses. 01:12:20.000 |
This one dear little woman, who was a boogies woman, but I had led her to the Lord before the war. 01:12:27.000 |
And one day she came running in, and she said, "Nyonya, I have something special for you people today." 01:12:39.000 |
because the flying ants were coming out of the holes in the ground by the hundreds. 01:12:44.000 |
And I had seen the children out running over the mountainside catching these flying ants. 01:12:55.000 |
And when I looked in it, here were little things that looked like little cheese tidbits. 01:13:01.000 |
Of course, you don't eat the head, you don't eat the wings. 01:13:08.000 |
You drop it in coconut oil, and they were really quite delicious. 01:13:14.000 |
I said, "I have never refused anything that my people have ever given me, nothing." 01:13:20.000 |
Caterpillars, my present husband says to me, "That must be like swallowing a toothbrush." 01:13:30.000 |
Those big cocoons out of which the men make the headpiece that they have to cover their bald heads 01:13:37.000 |
because, you know, you can take a man out of the 20th century, 01:13:41.000 |
or you can take him out of the Stone Age, and they're all the same. 01:13:44.000 |
When the forehead begins to travel, and that's our word for getting bald, 01:13:49.000 |
the forehead begins to travel, and when it gets back here, it's the past complete tense. 01:13:57.000 |
So, a Dagliowitamag goes and he gets these big cocoons, he eats the caterpillars first, 01:14:04.000 |
then he pulls that down over his head, and then he puts pure potter's clay over it 01:14:09.000 |
and gets the plumes of the cassowary bird, and he puts those in. 01:14:13.000 |
My, don't we think we're smart here in America with our good wigs? 01:14:17.000 |
Why, they've had wigs out there for centuries. 01:14:23.000 |
It's just that it takes so many of those caterpillars to make a meal. 01:14:28.000 |
But they gave us many strange and weird and wonderful things, and we ate them. 01:14:40.000 |
The more water you added to it, the more it swelled. 01:14:43.000 |
And so we kept cooking and adding water, and then it would swell and swell and swell, 01:14:52.000 |
They took us from Bentontingi up to where the Dutch people were, 01:14:57.000 |
and then they pointed across the valley and over on another mountainside, 01:15:09.000 |
And I had--Mrs. Presswood and I had sent the others ahead 01:15:14.000 |
so that they could take their time and walk, and we came with their bags. 01:15:20.000 |
One of the officers had said, "Here are some people that will help you," 01:15:27.000 |
I'm not sure how friendly they were, but I said to Mrs. Presswood, 01:15:32.000 |
"Whatever you do, make like bold, like you're very brave." 01:15:36.000 |
And so I would start from the front, and I would go down, and I would call out their number, 01:15:41.000 |
and she would start from the back, and she would count them. 01:15:46.000 |
But when they finally set down the little cases of clothes 01:15:52.000 |
that we were allowed to bring, I wasn't feeling very well. 01:15:57.000 |
And I said, "Quick, I need someplace. I'm sick." 01:16:01.000 |
And Mrs. Jaffrey had carried with her a beautiful silver soup terrine, 01:16:14.000 |
I was glad my father had felt that a girl ought to learn to use a hammer and saw 01:16:23.000 |
We were there for several months, and I'm going to skip over this. 01:16:27.000 |
There were many things that I completely blocked out of my mind. 01:16:32.000 |
The thing I remember most about that time, we had had only two letters up until this time, 01:16:39.000 |
knowing that our husbands were then down in Macassar. 01:16:42.000 |
And we didn't hear anything, and the months went by. 01:16:46.000 |
It was more than a year, but Mrs. Presswood and I would stand outside in the rain, 01:16:52.000 |
the rain beating down on us, and we had an open wood fire, 01:16:56.000 |
and we would stir that beautiful porridge, and we would sing to the top of our lungs. 01:17:01.000 |
The song I loved most of all was, "He makes the rose the object of his love. 01:17:07.000 |
He guides the eagle through the pathless air, and surely he remembers me. 01:17:17.000 |
Sometimes I wondered when they came, and they would loot and take anything that they saw there. 01:17:24.000 |
And I wondered how it was that Dr. Jeffrey's flashlight and his father's watch were never taken. 01:17:31.000 |
And I said to him one day, "What do they do when they come into that little tiny-- 01:17:35.000 |
it was just a little tiny cubicle that became his room." 01:17:40.000 |
And I said, "How is it that they haven't gotten your flashlight?" 01:17:44.000 |
And he said, "Lassie"--because he was Scotch and I was a Macintosh-- 01:17:49.000 |
he said, "Lassie, I always put it under the pillow, and I just smooth it up, 01:17:59.000 |
And he said, "That watch was my father's. That means much to me." 01:18:03.000 |
And when they would walk in the room, they would reach down at the foot of the bed, 01:18:07.000 |
and they would throw the little tiny mat up over that and look underneath, 01:18:15.000 |
You know, while I was writing this book, I thought about that. 01:18:20.000 |
That was two solid years that that flashlight had gone on every time he pushed the button. 01:18:29.000 |
He never had any batteries to change it with. 01:18:32.000 |
And I said, "No, I asked the Lord to keep it burning as long as I needed it." 01:18:38.000 |
Then one day they came, and they said, "We're going to take you somewhere else. 01:18:46.000 |
It was ridiculous, but they watched us as we went back across the valley 01:18:53.000 |
and then up onto the other side and into Molino, and they said, "Get into the church." 01:18:59.000 |
By this time, everybody was gathering in the church, everybody with a little bundle of something. 01:19:05.000 |
I had been just within six months of my furlough, and I knew that my clothes would not last very long. 01:19:13.000 |
So I put on as many dresses as I could get on, and I did not look like a POW. 01:19:24.000 |
We tried to get a bench in the church for Dr. and Mrs. Jaffray to lie on 01:19:29.000 |
and all the other older people on the benches, and then we slid in underneath on the cement floor. 01:19:36.000 |
And I thought during the night, "Lord, how long?" 01:19:41.000 |
And as the morning light was coming, all I could think of was, 01:19:45.000 |
"Oft me thinks I hear his footsteps stealing down the paths of time." 01:19:52.000 |
And the future dark with shadows brightens with a hope sublime. 01:20:04.000 |
Suddenly I heard the sound of the trucks being revved up, and so we gathered up our few things. 01:20:11.000 |
We ran outside. It was best never to keep them waiting. 01:20:17.000 |
We got up into this truck with a stake bed on it, 01:20:21.000 |
and those of us who were young—and I was only twenty when I went to the mission field, 01:20:26.000 |
and I was still in my early twenties—and I said to Margaret and Ruth, 01:20:31.000 |
"Some of the younger ones, let's get where we can grab a hold of the hood of the truck, 01:20:40.000 |
and then let's put our arms out so that we can hold these older people in there, 01:20:45.000 |
because if we don't, they're going to throw them out of the truck." 01:20:48.000 |
They would go around those corners. They were traveling at tremendous speeds, 01:20:53.000 |
I think trying to throw us off of that stake bed of the truck. 01:20:58.000 |
We finally made it down. I thought my arms would never be able to bend again. 01:21:04.000 |
I had held them so long in that position, trying to keep those older people from falling off the back of the truck. 01:21:12.000 |
Then we saw that they were pulling up in front of what I knew had been the Native Tuberculosis Sanitarium. 01:21:20.000 |
We saw that there were great long barracks made, made out of bamboo mat walls, 01:21:27.000 |
with grass roofs, mud floors, double-decker bamboo racks on which we were to sleep. 01:21:35.000 |
We found our place, and then they immediately said, "No, we want all the foreigners in this one barracks, Barrack 8." 01:21:45.000 |
That night as we came together, all of the foreigners, 01:21:51.000 |
we began to discuss someone to be the head of our barracks, because we were told we had to choose someone. 01:21:58.000 |
Why they chose me, I don't know, because I was one of the youngest of the women there. 01:22:05.000 |
I think it was probably because of my languages. I spoke Dutch fluently. 01:22:10.000 |
I spoke English, and I also spoke the Indonesian language. 01:22:15.000 |
The first night I said, "We are going to need the help of God in these months or years that lie ahead of us." 01:22:25.000 |
That night I read in their languages, and I prayed that God would protect and keep us and draw us together, 01:22:32.000 |
and those that did not know him might come to know him as Lord and Savior. 01:22:37.000 |
We learned later that many of the women from other camps, other barracks, would come over and sit down outside, 01:22:46.000 |
because they felt such a need and a hunger for God. 01:22:50.000 |
Out of all of those barracks in that camp, Barrack 8 was the one that held together. 01:22:59.000 |
As soon as they would take some of those young boys that had reached the age of 16 to send them up to where the men were, 01:23:06.000 |
there were Dutch people waiting to come in, because they had a hard hunger after God. 01:23:13.000 |
We had to work for the Japanese. We were their work crew. 01:23:20.000 |
The older women who could not do the heavy work outside were expected to knit white socks for the officers. 01:23:31.000 |
All the Omas, all the grandmothers, if you were cooking porridge, you were up at 4 o'clock in the morning, 01:23:42.000 |
There was no way we could wash it out and get that taste out until after many, many cookings of rice for porridge in the morning. 01:23:51.000 |
There was, just above the drum in which we cooked the porridge, a ledge. 01:24:03.000 |
We figured out later, it must have been, that there was a bird roosting up there, 01:24:11.000 |
In the struggle, they had fallen into the drum. 01:24:14.000 |
Well, it was so dark out there, you could not see. 01:24:21.000 |
When it was dished up, everybody said, "That's the best porridge we've ever had. 01:24:29.000 |
But when the light of day came, and we could look down into that, 01:24:33.000 |
here were feathers, the tail of a rat, carcasses. 01:24:37.000 |
Some of them gave their porridge back to Mother Nature. 01:24:48.000 |
I can tell you this, that a rat is cleaner than a duck, because most of them eat seeds. 01:24:54.000 |
Anyway, we had to, those of us who were young, we took the work, the heavy work. 01:25:06.000 |
He would go out, our camp commander, into the villages, and he would shoot the dogs, 01:25:11.000 |
bring them in. They had to be skinned, cut up, and cooked with the stems of the banana plants 01:25:16.000 |
so that those pigs could have three hot meals a day. 01:25:25.000 |
If it stuck between your fingers, it was big enough to eat. 01:25:29.000 |
Also, I could not tell the difference between a dog's liver and a calf's liver. 01:25:37.000 |
Then we had to build roads for them, out there in the sun, 01:25:43.000 |
working with those great heavy hoes and building roads for them. 01:25:54.000 |
I can remember standing on the pier down in Mecosta, watching the coolies come to unload the ships. 01:26:01.000 |
I saw that they always rolled their shoulders over and waited until that hit their shoulders, 01:26:07.000 |
and they grabbed the ears of those big sacks. 01:26:14.000 |
I wore a brace for several years after the war because of the injury to my spine, 01:26:28.000 |
We had to gather up all the manure from the chickens. 01:26:39.000 |
and then we'd stand with those big six-foot pestles, pounding that. 01:26:47.000 |
Then we had to sieve it so that there would be no little lumps in there, 01:26:51.000 |
and that was sent down for the rose gardens of the Japanese. 01:27:00.000 |
We worked in the rice fields, sometimes almost up to our hips, in mud, 01:27:06.000 |
mud that was filthy from pigs and from water buffalo. 01:27:10.000 |
We developed the big tropical ulcers eating into our skin. 01:27:17.000 |
We didn't have any medicine, so we would save soap suds, 01:27:22.000 |
and we would put our bandages in the soap suds and then put them around our legs. 01:27:34.000 |
So it became a mosaic of blood and pus and dirt. 01:27:43.000 |
To pick up the work for those that were sick in bed, 01:27:54.000 |
Those that were in the last stages of dysentery, 01:27:57.000 |
guards were set around those beds to keep the rats off of them 01:28:07.000 |
We began to pick up more and more jobs for the older ones and those that were sick 01:28:12.000 |
so that we would fill out the quota of work that was demanded of us. 01:28:19.000 |
I remember a day when the priest came down from the men's camp, 01:28:33.000 |
I don't suppose that boy was much more than 15 or 16 years of age. 01:28:53.000 |
He would come over and he would shake hands with me. 01:29:03.000 |
and then because he knew it was our custom, he would shake hands with me. 01:29:09.000 |
I didn't know why he was coming to me in particular. 01:29:15.000 |
So I asked the other women, please, to watch, 01:29:18.000 |
and when they saw him coming, just to let me know so that I could get out of the way. 01:29:30.000 |
And the Catholic priest was there, and everybody was trying to get a chance to talk to him. 01:29:35.000 |
He had been brought down to butcher those pigs so that they could be sent down, 01:29:40.000 |
already slaughtered, to the coast, to Mecosa. 01:29:46.000 |
I thought many times, I'm going over and I'm going to ask him about Russell. 01:29:51.000 |
And then I would see so many other women crowded around him, 01:29:57.000 |
women that were very anxious about their families. 01:30:03.000 |
I was concerned about my husband, but the Lord would say, "Not now. Not now." 01:30:11.000 |
And so I waited, and a month went by after he'd been there, 01:30:15.000 |
and still there were always people around him. 01:30:17.000 |
I would say, "Lord, I'm going over and see him now," 01:30:20.000 |
and he would say, "Not now, my child, not now." 01:30:25.000 |
Then one day, about three months after he had arrived in our camp, 01:30:35.000 |
head over the camp under Mr. Yamaji, the Japanese camp commander. 01:30:41.000 |
She came over to the door of our barrack, and she said, 01:30:46.000 |
"Mevrouw Daibler, I would like to speak to you." 01:30:49.000 |
And so we walked out onto a grassy plot there 01:30:52.000 |
in front of the little place where we had our meals. 01:30:58.000 |
And we began to talk about the work, and I said, "I know, I understand, 01:31:05.000 |
And I said, "I am young, and we can pick up more jobs, I'm sure we can, 01:31:15.000 |
"But I didn't come to talk to you about the work." 01:31:19.000 |
She said, "I came over to tell you that your husband, up in Pari Pari, 01:31:26.000 |
And then I saw tears in her eyes, and I reached out and I grabbed her shoulders. 01:31:31.000 |
I said, "Mrs. Joustra, you don't mean he's gone?" 01:31:36.000 |
She said, "Yes, some three months ago he died in the camp in Pari Pari." 01:31:49.000 |
I was waiting for the day when the war would be over 01:31:52.000 |
and we could go back to our people in New Guinea. 01:31:55.000 |
It was just like all my hopes were shattered and gone. 01:31:59.000 |
I just turned from her, and I started to walk away. 01:32:10.000 |
He said, "My child, did I not say to you that when thou passest through the waters, 01:32:16.000 |
I would be with you, and through the floods they not overflow you?" 01:32:23.000 |
He said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." 01:32:30.000 |
I said, "Lord, there's so much sorrow in this camp. 01:32:38.000 |
Help me not to make my sorrow other people's sorrow." 01:32:47.000 |
Oh, the nights when I lay on that rack up there, the tears would flow." 01:33:02.000 |
I learned that there is a peace that cometh after sorrow, 01:33:08.000 |
of hopes that are surrendered, not of hopes fulfilled. 01:33:14.000 |
A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow, but only on a tempest that is stilled. 01:33:24.000 |
A peace not now enjoys except in that happy life of love secure. 01:33:38.000 |
It's a peace that come from conflicts won while learning to endure. 01:33:50.000 |
Beloved, it's not the peace that over Eden brooded, that untried peace, 01:34:02.000 |
when my Lord said, "Not my will, but thine, be done." 01:34:30.000 |
God never allows anything in your life, but what is for your good and his glory. 01:34:43.000 |
I can remember the days when, if you just mentioned the shock troops, 01:34:54.000 |
But then there came a time when we learned to fear another group much more than the shock troops. 01:35:03.000 |
They were called the Kempeitai, the secret police of the Japanese. 01:35:12.000 |
Some of them never returned, but those that did return never talked about what happened to them. 01:35:20.000 |
And then I remember the day when that big black limousine—we called it the death wagon— 01:35:29.000 |
it came up and it stopped in front of the headquarters. 01:35:33.000 |
And they called for Miss Kemp and Miss Seeley, the only two other Americans in that camp. 01:35:39.000 |
There was an American woman who came from another island, 01:35:43.000 |
but we were the ones, the only two, three that were Americans, 01:35:50.000 |
that spoke the Indonesian language and were known by the people there. 01:35:55.000 |
And that day when they took Miss Kemp and Miss Seeley away, 01:36:00.000 |
we all turned around and looked at one another, and we asked, "Why were they taking them?" 01:36:08.000 |
And we waited, and we prayed, and they did not return. 01:36:19.000 |
And then one day the whisper went through the whole camp as it always did, "Kempeitai, Kempeitai, 01:36:28.000 |
And that day as I ran out front so I could see, Miss Kemp and Miss Seeley were getting out of the car. 01:36:37.000 |
And when I saw that there were soldiers and officers getting out of that car 01:36:41.000 |
and running up into the headquarter office, I knew in my heart they had come for me. 01:36:49.000 |
And so I started over toward the office because I did not want to keep them waiting. 01:36:54.000 |
And just then Sweet 17 came down out of the office, and he said, "Yes, they're coming for you. Come quickly." 01:37:02.000 |
When I walked up into the office, they were walking around me and laughing. 01:37:09.000 |
There was only one word that I understood, and that was "amerika." 01:37:17.000 |
I spoke seven languages, and I did not understand what they were saying. 01:37:24.000 |
I had certain commands I had to give in Japanese. 01:37:28.000 |
And I just closed my ears to it because it was better for you not to know the language. 01:37:35.000 |
And when those men walked around laughing, "amerika," one of them stopped, 01:37:44.000 |
And I looked down at that piece of paper, and I saw my name written on it, Darlene Dibler. 01:37:54.000 |
I said, "Yes, sir, I am Darlene Dibler, but I didn't write that." 01:38:00.000 |
But he said, "What do you know about Morse code?" 01:38:02.000 |
And he began to tap out messages on that desk to me. 01:38:08.000 |
I didn't know what he was tapping out, so I didn't respond. 01:38:17.000 |
He said, "Go over and get another dress. Come back." 01:38:21.000 |
He said, "We're going to take you somewhere else to intern you." 01:38:25.000 |
I ran over, and I grabbed a dress, which had a full circular skirt. 01:38:30.000 |
Why I had put that dress on that day, I don't know, but I had another one. 01:38:36.000 |
And so I grabbed that, and I grabbed my Bible off of the top rack where I'd been sleeping. 01:38:41.000 |
And then I ran back so that I could get into the car. 01:38:46.000 |
They ushered me in with two soldiers, one on either side. They had their band-nets fixed on the gun. 01:38:52.000 |
And the two officers were up front with the chauffeur. 01:38:57.000 |
When we came down to the city of Mecocera, I recognized the building 01:39:04.000 |
into which they were going to go into the driveway. 01:39:09.000 |
And I saw that they had made a jail out of it. 01:39:13.000 |
And there, just in front of me, as we pulled up, I saw Miss Kemp, 01:39:18.000 |
a woman who had weighed about 170 pounds, and in just two weeks, that woman looked like she was skin and bone. 01:39:24.000 |
She was hanging on to the bars and shaking her head at me. 01:39:32.000 |
And when I stepped out of that car, I just cried out to the Lord, 01:39:36.000 |
"Lord, you took Russell. Must I now go through this?" 01:39:43.000 |
He said, "My child, whom I love, they are the ones that I chase and I discipline." 01:39:51.000 |
I said, "All right, Lord, but please help me to be a good soldier." 01:39:56.000 |
And those were the last words that Dr. Jeffrey ever said to me 01:40:03.000 |
I ran up to the back of the truck, and he was being taken to the men's camp. 01:40:08.000 |
And I looked up at him, and I said, "Goodbye, Dr. Jeffrey." 01:40:12.000 |
And he leaned down, and he put his hand over mine and patted it. 01:40:15.000 |
He said, "Lassie, whatever you do, be a good soldier for Jesus Christ." 01:40:21.000 |
And I said, "Lord, I don't know what's going to happen to me here, 01:40:34.000 |
and my fellow Americans ever hear about what happened to me here, 01:40:43.000 |
The first thing they grabbed away was my Bible. 01:40:47.000 |
They said, "You don't need that, and you are not going to have it. 01:40:50.000 |
You just sit in that cell, and you would read that book 01:40:54.000 |
and not think about your evil deeds against the Imperial Japanese Army." 01:41:00.000 |
They grabbed the other dress, and I handed it then as they were trying to grab it. 01:41:05.000 |
And I said to the girl there behind the desk, 01:41:08.000 |
I said, "Would you see that Miss Kemp gets this?" 01:41:11.000 |
Because she hadn't even had time to get a dress or anything 01:41:14.000 |
except for the work suit that she was wearing. 01:41:23.000 |
there was a man behind me with his bayonet on the gun. 01:41:28.000 |
And as soon as you feel the prick of that bayonet, you move. 01:41:32.000 |
And I was moving to try to keep ahead of him. 01:41:35.000 |
I went across a courtyard, and then there was another big cell block there. 01:41:44.000 |
and I turned and I went along that cell block. 01:41:48.000 |
He came to a cell that had been completely boarded up, a window, 01:41:53.000 |
so that no one could see who was in that one. 01:42:00.000 |
"Orang ini musti mati," this person must die. 01:42:08.000 |
I could hear Miss Seeley, and I knew that within two weeks 01:42:16.000 |
And when he opened the door and shoved me in, 01:42:19.000 |
I hit the other wall, and I turned around, and I came back. 01:42:22.000 |
And I dropped on my knees in front of the door, 01:42:27.000 |
I knew when it made a complete revolution, I was locked in death row. 01:42:33.000 |
So I sat there, and I saw that man pull the key out, start to walk away. 01:42:39.000 |
I suddenly realized I was sitting on the floor, and I was singing. 01:42:45.000 |
A song I learned as a little girl in Sunday school. 01:42:59.000 |
So count on his presence from darkness till dawn." 01:43:04.000 |
And I knew that they could not lock my Lord out of that cell, 01:43:14.000 |
but that little cell became a sanctuary to me, 01:43:21.000 |
That afternoon, they threw a plate of rice across the floor to me. 01:43:28.000 |
It was in a tin plate with no spoon, nothing to eat it with, 01:44:02.000 |
Right now, we're going to go ahead and break up into discussions. 01:44:04.000 |
We're going to be discussing for about 35 minutes. 01:44:07.000 |
I'll give you a five-minute warning around 1025, 01:44:10.000 |
and then at 1030, we'll start the second part of the audio. 01:44:13.000 |
Also, if you guys could actually take a look at the sheet sets on the table here. 01:44:18.000 |
If you just turn it around to part two, the first paragraph has a word. 01:44:23.000 |
It looks like "en-pam-ing," but it's actually "en-camp-ing." 01:44:34.000 |
I'll jump up here in about 35 minutes, and then just give you guys a heads-up to wrap up. 02:26:58.000 |
One day I needed some air and I climbed up to the, up the bars of the window. 02:27:04.000 |
I was glad that I'd had gymnastics and swimming. 02:27:08.000 |
I had strong arms and I pulled myself up the bars till I could reach the transom above the door. 02:27:16.000 |
The minute I got up there and I was waiting for the air to strike my face, I looked down and there was a knife on the ledge. 02:27:32.000 |
I said, "Lord, I think they've planted that there. They're going to try to make out that I've had contact with somebody to have gotten that knife. 02:27:44.000 |
And then I got my dress and I went and I wiped off all my fingerprints everywhere that I could find. 02:27:52.000 |
And I sat down on the floor and oh, the fear that came over me because I knew somebody had put that knife there. 02:28:01.000 |
And I said, "Lord, if they find it, they will say they have evidence against me that somebody was getting a knife to me." 02:28:11.000 |
For three days I prayed and I prayed that God would remove that knife somehow. 02:28:19.000 |
And I said, "Lord, if you could make that axe head to swim, if you could lift that iron up out of that water until it surfaced to the top." 02:28:28.000 |
I said, "Lord, it's nothing for you to remove that knife, Lord, before they find it." 02:28:36.000 |
Three days I waited and I prayed and I said, "Lord, you can take it away." 02:28:47.000 |
And I went up, I pulled myself up the bars of the window and I had not left my room in all those days. 02:29:23.000 |
When I came out of that cell, I weighed 60 pounds. 02:29:31.000 |
This one day I was having a fever again, the malaria, and I would shake with the chills and then the terrible fever would come over me. 02:29:43.000 |
And it was cerebral malaria that usually is fatal. 02:29:47.000 |
And this day I said, "Lord, I really need some air." 02:29:50.000 |
So I pulled myself up until I got hold of the bars of the window. 02:29:55.000 |
And then I looked out and I saw that the guard was coming. 02:29:59.000 |
He was bringing the Native women who were there for just minor misdemeanors. 02:30:09.000 |
And I was watching them and suddenly I realized that there was something about one woman that was with the group. 02:30:18.000 |
Every time the guard with his gun on his arm went in that direction, this woman would scurry off in the other direction. 02:30:28.000 |
And I watched her and I looked down there and I thought, "There she goes and there he goes. 02:30:33.000 |
Oh, he's coming back now. Here she's standing there as though she hadn't been doing anything." 02:30:38.000 |
And he clicked his heels down here and then he went off in that direction again. 02:30:44.000 |
She was headed for that fence at the end of the courtyard. 02:30:49.000 |
And I thought, "If she wants to go by the fence, why didn't she just go over there by the fence?" 02:30:56.000 |
And when she got to the fence, I saw a hand come through that fence. 02:31:00.000 |
And on that hand was a whole bunch of bananas. 02:31:04.000 |
And she put it in under her sarong and she walked away. 02:31:07.000 |
And nobody knew she had those bananas, but I did. 02:31:16.000 |
And I looked at those bananas when he passed them over. 02:31:22.000 |
And I just dropped down off of that door and I got on my knees and I said, 02:31:26.000 |
"Lord, I'm not asking you for a whole bunch like she has. 02:31:36.000 |
Then I began to figure out how God could get a banana into that cell to me. 02:31:44.000 |
Try to figure out how God could answer your prayer." 02:31:48.000 |
And I said, "Lord, now there are four possibilities. 02:31:55.000 |
These are the two men, Lord, that have been trying me. 02:32:00.000 |
Neither one of those men would ever bring me a banana. 02:32:05.000 |
And this is that guard that's on duty in the daytime 02:32:13.000 |
And I said, "Then there is this older Indonesian man that comes at night to guard. 02:32:20.000 |
I think he might even bring me a banana, but Lord, please, you mustn't ask him. 02:32:26.000 |
If he were caught bringing a banana to me, they'd just shoot him." 02:32:29.000 |
So I said, "Lord, please don't even let him think about bringing me a banana, will you?" 02:32:35.000 |
And I said, "Lord, there's no way you could ever get a banana into this cell to me." 02:32:41.000 |
And I said, "Please don't think that I'm not grateful. 02:32:49.000 |
I just saw that banana and I thought I wanted one." 02:32:58.000 |
Often when ships were in, you were put out on display before these men. 02:33:04.000 |
And I said, "Lord, I really need strength to stand on my feet 02:33:09.000 |
so that when I get out there I can make a proper bow to them." 02:33:18.000 |
so that they won't hit me across the back with their canes which they always carried." 02:33:28.000 |
I looked and in the door stood our Japanese camp commander from that other camp 02:33:34.000 |
from which I had been brought down to the prison. 02:33:40.000 |
And the months had gone by and this was the first time I'd ever seen a smile on anyone's face. 02:33:47.000 |
I was so thrilled to see that man, to see that smile on his face, 02:33:52.000 |
and I just clapped my hands and I said, "Oto and Yamaji, 02:33:55.000 |
Seputiliyat Sova Yung Lama, Mr. Yamaji, it's like seeing a friend." 02:34:04.000 |
And he turned and walked right back out of the cell without a word. 02:34:08.000 |
And he began to talk to those two men who had been trying me. 02:34:12.000 |
And I saw their heads getting lower and lower as he talked and talked. 02:34:17.000 |
I don't really know what he said, but I've always felt that what he was telling them 02:34:23.000 |
was what I had said to him the day when I heard that Russell had been gone for three months. 02:34:29.000 |
The late afternoon, Mr. Yamaji called me over to his office 02:34:41.000 |
He said, "What you heard this afternoon, many women in Japan have heard." 02:34:48.000 |
He said, "You're very young and someday the war really will be over. 02:34:53.000 |
And you can go back to America and you can go dancing and go to the theaters 02:34:58.000 |
and you can forget all about these awful days. 02:35:03.000 |
And I said, "Sir, may I have permission to speak to you?" 02:35:07.000 |
You never spoke to them without first asking permission, 02:35:10.000 |
or they just instinctively threw up their hand and smacked you across the mouth. 02:35:17.000 |
I said, "May I have permission to speak to you?" 02:35:21.000 |
And he motioned for me to sit down at his desk. 02:35:25.000 |
There was a chair there, and he went around and sat down behind it. 02:35:30.000 |
I said, "I would like to tell you about someone that perhaps you don't even know." 02:35:35.000 |
And I didn't learn about him until I was nine years old, 02:35:43.000 |
He's the Son of God, the Creator, who created all things." 02:35:48.000 |
I said, "That's why I don't sorrow like people that have no hope. 02:35:51.000 |
I know that someday I will see Russell again." 02:35:59.000 |
You have never heard about Jesus, so I would like to tell you about him." 02:36:04.000 |
I said, "That's why I don't hate you, Mr. Yamaji, 02:36:08.000 |
because where the love of Jesus is, there's no room for hatred." 02:36:12.000 |
And I said, "My Lord gave his life for you too, 02:36:17.000 |
and God gave me the most beautiful opportunity 02:36:24.000 |
And as I talked to him, I saw the tears start down over his cheeks. 02:36:33.000 |
I said, "Maybe God brought me here just for you. 02:36:40.000 |
But if you were to believe it would be worth everything that it's cost me." 02:36:47.000 |
He got up, couldn't control his tears anymore, and he went into his room. 02:36:52.000 |
I could hear him crying and blowing his nose in there. 02:36:56.000 |
I only know this, that from that moment on, that man was my friend. 02:37:02.000 |
He made me head over the whole camp toward the end after the bombings. 02:37:11.000 |
because they became very quiet and their heads went down. 02:37:16.000 |
I didn't know at the time, but these men had been up to the camp 02:37:21.000 |
and told Mr. Yamaji and the women that I was never to be returned to the camp 02:37:28.000 |
because I was dying of tuberculosis, they said, 02:37:31.000 |
not wanting them to know that I was to be beheaded. 02:37:34.000 |
Mr. Yamaji came back into the cell, and he looked down at me, and he said, 02:37:42.000 |
He said, "I'm going back to the camp now, and I just wanted to know 02:37:48.000 |
Everybody is asking about where you are, what's happened to you." 02:37:54.000 |
And I said, "Mr. Yamaji, when you go back, would you tell those women 02:38:00.000 |
that I am all right, and they will understand, 02:38:03.000 |
and I think, Mr. Yamaji, you will understand I'm all right 02:38:10.000 |
He nodded to me, he turned, he walked out of the cell, the door was locked, 02:38:15.000 |
and as soon as I heard them going, I remembered I hadn't bowed to those Kempeitai men. 02:38:24.000 |
"God, please, why didn't you help me to remember? 02:38:30.000 |
that guard is going to come back here, and he's going to get me, 02:38:33.000 |
and he's going to take me back to the hearing room, 02:38:35.000 |
and please, God, I don't want to go back there anymore." 02:38:40.000 |
And then I heard the guard coming, so I stood up, 02:38:46.000 |
and I said, "Lord, once more, please, help me not to shed any tears." 02:38:56.000 |
and he just laid them all out on the floor in front of me. 02:38:59.000 |
He said, "They're all yours, they're all from Mr. Yamaji. 02:39:09.000 |
I don't know how you would feel, but never in my walk with my Lord 02:39:17.000 |
And I just pushed him over in the corner after counting them. 02:39:24.000 |
And I said, "Lord, I don't have any right to eat those." 02:39:29.000 |
I said, "Yesterday I was telling you, here they are, four people, and that's all, 02:39:34.000 |
and there's no way you could get a banana in here to me." 02:39:43.000 |
So sweetly the Lord said to me, "But my child, that's the way I delight to do things, 02:39:48.000 |
the exceeding abundant above anything you ask or think." 02:39:56.000 |
I knew I didn't dare to, because I knew that I would be eating it off the floor again if I did. 02:40:02.000 |
And I said, "Lord, I don't have much character, 02:40:04.000 |
but would you just help me to not eat any more bananas than my body can assimilate at each time?" 02:40:13.000 |
And one day I was very ill, and I hardly had the strength to get up off the floor. 02:40:22.000 |
And I would crawl over, and I would get the bananas. 02:40:25.000 |
They were black now, and I'd take one and then two, and then I would leave it. 02:40:31.000 |
And I sat there realizing that if they didn't behead me, that I probably would die anyway of starvation. 02:40:46.000 |
And all of a sudden I heard the most beautiful singing. 02:40:59.000 |
And it was singing in the Indonesian language because it's so beautiful there. 02:41:17.000 |
And my heart just swelled when I heard those words. 02:41:21.000 |
And I said, "Lord, I'm still under the shadow of your wings." 02:41:26.000 |
And I climbed up to the trance above the door, and I thought, "Whoever that is out there, I would like to see their face. 02:41:35.000 |
And when I got up there and I leaned out and I looked in every direction, 02:41:39.000 |
there was no one there except a guard and the girl from the desk, and they were talking and laughing. 02:41:56.000 |
I said, "Lord, that was an angel singing, wasn't it?" 02:42:09.000 |
It sang to me until my heart thrilled with his presence. 02:42:16.000 |
I don't know if you know him. He was a great man of God. 02:42:20.000 |
He said to me, "Girl, did you ever think that that was an angel?" 02:42:29.000 |
There was no one there, and yet that voice was singing to me. 02:42:36.000 |
One day the Lord began to speak to me from three phrases of a verse that says, 02:42:43.000 |
"Who delivered, delivered from so great a death? 02:42:47.000 |
Who delivered and doth deliver, he will yet deliver." 02:42:53.000 |
I said, "Lord, I know you've delivered me from the law of sin and death. 02:42:57.000 |
I know that I belong to you, and up to this moment you have kept me." 02:43:04.000 |
He would go right back to the beginning and say, "Who delivered and doth deliver, he will yet deliver." 02:43:10.000 |
I said, "God, how could you get me out of this place?" 02:43:20.000 |
That day when I picked up the last banana and I peeled it, 02:43:25.000 |
here came the guard and he said, "Quickly, we're going to take you somewhere else." 02:43:31.000 |
When we started out in that car, to go back to the camp, 02:43:37.000 |
we would have had to have turned left, and we didn't. 02:43:43.000 |
We spoke of it as the Gestapo because it was patterned after the German Gestapo. 02:43:54.000 |
Miss Kemp and Miss Seeley were told to sign and write out and sign a paper 02:44:01.000 |
how grateful they were to the Imperial Japanese Army for being so kind to them 02:44:07.000 |
and for having forgiven them and because they were going to release them. 02:44:16.000 |
She turned to me and she said, "Darling, would you write this for us?" 02:44:23.000 |
Many thanks for being so kind to us and for forgiving us. 02:44:30.000 |
She went on to say that they were grateful to the Imperial Japanese Army for their goodness. 02:44:37.000 |
Then the two of them had to put their thumbprint on it. 02:44:42.000 |
They were taken into the other part of the headquarters building. 02:44:52.000 |
He walked up in front of me, the brains of the team, 02:44:56.000 |
and he held out this big sheaf of papers, all the things that he had written. 02:45:02.000 |
He said I was guilty of having had a radio, that I had been in contact with the Allies, 02:45:06.000 |
I had reported on troop movements, that I knew where the Allies were and the Japanese, 02:45:13.000 |
and that I had been giving all of this information to their enemy. 02:45:19.000 |
Then he looked at me and he said, "You have done those things. 02:45:23.000 |
I am a member of your worthy of death," and drew his finger across his throat 02:45:27.000 |
and grabbed his sword at his side and he began to pull it out. 02:45:31.000 |
While that sword was coming out, my heart was singing, "I live for him who died for me," 02:45:36.000 |
and I said, "Lord, that's a strange song, when I'm going to die." 02:45:41.000 |
Just as he was beginning to pull that out of there, 02:45:44.000 |
I suddenly heard sound of vehicles, of all kinds of vehicles, 02:45:48.000 |
running up to the front of that building, honking their horns, screeching their brakes. 02:45:56.000 |
They wore the hijacked boots with the leather heels. 02:45:59.000 |
They were running back and forth and yelling and yelling for this man. 02:46:03.000 |
He shoved that back down into the sheath and then he ran into the headquarters. 02:46:09.000 |
They were talking in there at the top of their lungs. 02:46:14.000 |
Somebody said, "Why didn't you run away? Where would you run to? There's no place to run." 02:46:18.000 |
I stood there quietly waiting for him to come back to finish the execution. 02:46:24.000 |
Suddenly he came and he grabbed a hold of my arm. 02:46:28.000 |
He took me out and put me into a car and soldiers jumped in behind me. 02:46:34.000 |
He jumped in and then he put two bottles of wine. 02:46:39.000 |
He said, "When you get back, you give those to Mr. Yamaji." 02:46:43.000 |
We were going like we were top secret material. 02:46:49.000 |
I only know that when we lost all of our men and others of those godly missionaries died, 02:46:59.000 |
somehow in the providence of God, he spared me. 02:47:03.000 |
I vowed that day for any days that were ever left to me, they were all his. 02:47:10.000 |
When we got back to the camp and we were just across the moat and go in the gate, 02:47:16.000 |
that man behind me, who was the brains of this team that had been trying me, 02:47:21.000 |
he reached up and my arm was just the bone with skin drawn over it. 02:47:27.000 |
He grabbed my arm and I was sure he was going to break it. 02:47:36.000 |
He said, "If you ever tell anybody anything that's happened to you, I'll be back and I will get you." 02:47:44.000 |
Oh, the fear that came over me, thinking I wasn't free of them. 02:47:49.000 |
When we got there, I just motioned for someone to come please take Miss Kemp and Miss Seeley. 02:48:00.000 |
She weighed in at 90 pounds and Miss Seeley was so bad that she was beginning to run away and do terrible things. 02:48:10.000 |
So they took her down and put her in a little shed that had bars in front of it 02:48:17.000 |
so that she couldn't get out and they locked the door on her. 02:48:21.000 |
I started back. Nobody seemed to even have the courage to come and say, "We're glad you're back." 02:48:30.000 |
I looked at them as soon as I got around the bend so that nobody from the office could see. 02:48:37.000 |
Ruth Presswood put her arm around me and she took me in. 02:48:53.000 |
She just nodded and the tears started down over her cheeks. 02:49:05.000 |
I had just left her and all of a sudden, here came a woman who had been a prostitute for the Japanese. 02:49:14.000 |
Everybody feared her. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with her. 02:49:19.000 |
There she was and she motioned for me to come out into the little dining area. 02:49:26.000 |
Here she had a washcloth and I saw my name embroidered on it. 02:49:32.000 |
She said, "I was down in prison too and your Indonesian friend, Visha, was in the cell with me." 02:49:40.000 |
She said, "I asked her if she wanted to send anything to you. 02:49:46.000 |
She made this for you." There was my name embroidered on it. 02:49:54.000 |
I remembered the words of that man, "If you ever have contact with anybody outside of this camp, I'll get you the next time." 02:50:02.000 |
I said, "Mrs. Claus, I am not going to take that." 02:50:07.000 |
She said, "You have to take it." I said, "No, I don't have to take that. I'm not going to take that." 02:50:12.000 |
She told me I could have nothing to do with anybody outside. I said, "You're trying to trick me." 02:50:18.000 |
She was so angry with me. She was absolutely white. 02:50:22.000 |
She was screaming at me. She said, "I risked my life to bring that to you." 02:50:30.000 |
Mrs. Presswood heard her. She came out and she said, "What's the matter, darling?" 02:50:36.000 |
I started to cry. I said, "She's trying to trick me. She brought this. 02:50:40.000 |
She's trying to make it appear that I had contact with Visha." 02:50:45.000 |
Mrs. Presswood reached over and grabbed her arm. She said, "If I ever see you near her again, I don't know what I'm going to do to you." 02:50:52.000 |
Fear came on me, fear that I was going to be taken back again. 02:50:57.000 |
Days I would go out and I would work. I'd come home and I didn't dare to sleep. 02:51:04.000 |
I was afraid I was going to lose my mind and I would go to the hospital. Margaret Kemp's memory was gone. 02:51:11.000 |
I would go down and I'd ask if I could work with the chickens because I could be near Miss Seeley. 02:51:17.000 |
I could hear her in there and I would go up and try to put my hands around hers and talk to her. 02:51:23.000 |
Then I would turn away and I'd think, "God, look at these women. Women of such faith. Who am I? 02:51:32.000 |
I'm the youngest of all of them and look at these women of such tremendous faith. So broken, Father." 02:51:40.000 |
That fear stayed with me. I didn't care to go to sleep at night. 02:51:45.000 |
One day, two days, three days, four days, five days I worked. 02:51:50.000 |
At night I couldn't sleep. I was afraid to. I was afraid my mind would go while I was sleeping. 02:51:56.000 |
I would just drop off to sleep and then I'd wake up. I was perspired because of the fear that was on me. 02:52:03.000 |
I would sit up and I'd say, "Lord, I've tried to trust you. I've tried in every way I could to be a good soldier for you. 02:52:13.000 |
Then I walked out of the barracks one morning and I said, "I have no more strength, Father." 02:52:19.000 |
I said, "I've tried with everything that was within me to reach up to you. 02:52:29.000 |
I threw up my arms and I said, "I'm gone. I'm gone." 02:52:38.000 |
I suddenly began to sing, "Underneath thee, oh, how precious you have not to mount on high 02:52:46.000 |
but to rest upon His promise in a trustful, resting lie." 02:52:51.000 |
I saw it. He wanted to teach me, "You can't mount up to God. 02:53:02.000 |
Rest upon your God, for underneath are always and ever the everlasting arms of God." 02:53:11.000 |
We had had bombings every year and we dug our own trenches 02:53:18.000 |
to try to be protected in a measure from the shrapnel that came into the camp. 02:53:24.000 |
Then one day we looked up and we saw planes coming over. 02:53:29.000 |
Then one of them separated from the other planes and it came down. 02:53:33.000 |
It came right over the camp and he dropped something. 02:53:38.000 |
I looked and I saw a large thing that I didn't know what it was. 02:53:44.000 |
It turned out to be an auxiliary gasoline tank. 02:53:49.000 |
I felt so angry because when I looked up, who was dropping this? 02:53:55.000 |
There was the American insignia on that plane. 02:53:59.000 |
I saw the pilot and I thought, "How dare you do that? Those children are out there. 02:54:04.000 |
You could have hit some of those children. Why are you dropping that here?" 02:54:09.000 |
I realized later that that man was trying to tell us something. 02:54:13.000 |
Two days later, just about noon, we heard the sound of planes and we all ran out and we stopped. 02:54:24.000 |
We never had one Red Cross package, never any letters from home, 02:54:29.000 |
never any letters or pamphlets from anywhere. 02:54:33.000 |
We were just locked inside the barbed wire of that camp. 02:54:37.000 |
We looked up and those planes were coming, double-fuselage planes that were painted silver. 02:54:45.000 |
All of a sudden, things were dropping out of those planes. 02:54:48.000 |
We were yelling. I was screaming, "Chocolate bars! Look at them! They're chocolate bars!" 02:54:58.000 |
Suddenly, we heard the whistling of the bombs. 02:55:03.000 |
Over that little camp of just two acres square, they laid over 5,000 incendiary bombs. 02:55:10.000 |
Just within moments, everything was going up in smoke. 02:55:17.000 |
Just as my feet hit the bottom of that ditch, the Lord said to me, 02:55:21.000 |
"You borrowed a Bible from that little Chinese woman, Mrs. Lee." 02:55:25.000 |
I said, "That's right, Lord. I have no right to let it burn. My Bible had gone to pieces." 02:55:38.000 |
I saw then they had opened the gates, and we started to run. 02:55:48.000 |
here were machine guns set up and hundreds of Japanese soldiers. 02:55:52.000 |
They just whirled on you with their guns, with their bayonets fixed on them. 02:55:59.000 |
You just threw yourself out prostrate straight in the midst of them. 02:56:04.000 |
They were running over the top of us, and they were firing at the planes as they went over. 02:56:08.000 |
So the planes just circled around and laid another layer of bombs. 02:56:12.000 |
Then they came back, and they began to machine gun us. 02:56:19.000 |
"God, if anybody's alive at the end of this day, it will be a miracle." 02:56:25.000 |
When the last of the planes were gone, the smoke had died down. 02:56:43.000 |
if I have any days left to me, they're all yours." 02:56:50.000 |
"Let's go back and see if we can find our cans that we were eating out of 02:56:58.000 |
When I came back to where Barrack 8 had been, 02:57:06.000 |
somehow nobody knew that I had had my bride's book with me. 02:57:15.000 |
When that barracks had burned, the roof had fallen backwards, 02:57:19.000 |
the bed had burned and dropped down, the mat had burned away, 02:57:23.000 |
and somehow the fingers of the wind had just opened it at the center page. 02:57:30.000 |
I looked down at it, and there on that beautiful black page 02:57:35.000 |
was the certificate written in gold ink, my marriage certificate. 02:57:41.000 |
I looked down at it, and I said, "Lord, that was the only thing I had left." 02:57:57.000 |
When I reached out to pick it up, the minute my fingers touched it, 02:58:08.000 |
I said, "Lord, I don't have anything left. That was the only thing I had." 02:58:14.000 |
He said to me, "My child, that's what I want to do with you. 02:58:19.000 |
I want to make you like pure gold, even if I have to take you through the fire seven times." 02:58:28.000 |
I bowed before my Lord, and I said, "All right, Lord." 02:58:35.000 |
I saw that the woman who was head of the barracks next to me was crying, 02:58:40.000 |
and I went over to her, and I put my arms around her, and I said, "Don't cry." 02:58:45.000 |
She said, "But my mattress burned." I said, "Oh, yes, everything's burned." 02:58:50.000 |
I said, "We have much to thank God for. We're alive. We're still alive." 02:58:54.000 |
She said, "But I didn't leave that little mattress. It was just a little mat in the barracks." 02:58:59.000 |
She said, "I dragged it out, and I threw it in the ditch where you always lie." 02:59:05.000 |
I walked over to the edge of that ditch, and I looked down into it, 02:59:11.000 |
and there was the casing from the bomb and the ashes of the mattress right where I had been lying. 02:59:24.000 |
I felt I was in the presence of the Almighty. 02:59:28.000 |
I said, "God, it wasn't Mrs. Lee's Bible, was it, that you wanted me to get? 02:59:35.000 |
You wanted to get me out of that ditch, wasn't it?" 02:59:40.000 |
I walked away, and I said, "God, for any days I have left, I tell you once more, I'm available." 02:59:49.000 |
They put us in shacks. They knew that this bombing was coming, 02:59:52.000 |
and there were shacks up there in the wilderness. 02:59:55.000 |
Three days later, we had a bombing, a shrapnel bomb. 03:00:00.000 |
There were those that were killed, children without arms and legs. 03:00:05.000 |
One of the young men was from our barracks, and others whose legs had been chopped off 03:00:16.000 |
I remember the day when finally, at the end of August 1945, we were called out. 03:00:25.000 |
There was Mr. Imaji, and there were the others standing there, all in dress uniform. 03:00:32.000 |
They told us that there had been an announcement on the radio by the Imperial Japanese Emperor Hirohito 03:00:43.000 |
that there was to be a cessation of all fighting. 03:00:48.000 |
I have seen pictures of the victory celebrations in San Francisco and New York and other big cities, 03:00:58.000 |
and I thought that wasn't the way it was that day. 03:01:02.000 |
When they told us that they were going to make arrangements, when it would be possible, 03:01:07.000 |
they would take us down to Makassar, and then, of course, we would have to wait for the boats to come to evacuate us. 03:01:16.000 |
They asked if I would come. He asked if I would come, and I would take over translating, 03:01:24.000 |
interpreting for the Japanese and the Australian and the Dutch and the Americans. 03:01:34.000 |
The American told us that the Philippines had over six months been free, 03:01:39.000 |
and why nothing was ever said to us. We were still there, prisoners. 03:01:44.000 |
I one day walked back to the little shack up in the jungle, and I heard the sound of a man's voice. 03:01:53.000 |
I looked, and coming up the pathway was this young man, all in white. 03:02:00.000 |
He looked beautiful. He was so squeaky clean. 03:02:05.000 |
Here we were. We'd cut off our hair because we didn't have any combs, because livestock was plentiful. 03:02:12.000 |
We didn't have any way to keep our hair dry, so we chopped our hair off very short. 03:02:19.000 |
I was in my work shorts and a sleeveless blouse because everything else had burned in the bombing. 03:02:25.000 |
I looked at that man coming, and he had shoes that were so highly polished that you could see yourself in them. 03:02:35.000 |
I thought, "Oh, my, I've never seen such all-togetherness in my life." 03:02:41.000 |
When he got up next to me, he said, "Are you the American?" 03:02:48.000 |
He just looked at me, and I know that I didn't look like any American girl he'd ever seen. 03:03:00.000 |
I said, "Oh, no, we've never had shoes, and that's all right, because I like walking barefoot." 03:03:05.000 |
He said, "I'm going to see that you get some shoes." 03:03:08.000 |
He said, "Oh, sorry, I should have introduced myself. 03:03:13.000 |
I'm Tom Sawyer, and I'm with the American Navy." 03:03:17.000 |
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, "Sure, and I'm Becky Thatcher." 03:03:22.000 |
I didn't know if he had a sense of humor or not, so I decided I better not. 03:03:26.000 |
I said, "I'm Darlene Dibler from Boone, Iowa." 03:03:30.000 |
He wanted to know what I needed, and I said, "Oh, combs and soap, but most of all, we need food for the children." 03:03:37.000 |
He said, "Can you mark out a place where I can do a free drop for you tomorrow? 03:03:41.000 |
We'll get you food and whatever else you need." 03:03:45.000 |
They did. I marked it out. I went to Mr. Yamagi. 03:03:48.000 |
He gave me the white cloth in order to mark out the space on this old rice field. 03:03:54.000 |
That day, when the friction-type lid on the top of these tins-- 03:04:01.000 |
when the tin would hit the ground, that friction-type lid would just blow off, and everything was pouring out of there. 03:04:07.000 |
The little children were screaming. They thought they were more bombs. 03:04:10.000 |
We tried to explain to them that those weren't bombs, that those were containing food. 03:04:16.000 |
I was out there with the rest of them. We were trying to get these things up. 03:04:20.000 |
I found a can of sweetened condensed milk that had burst when it hit the ground. 03:04:27.000 |
I thought, "That's a terrible thing to let that be wasted." 03:04:31.000 |
So I pulled it out. What was left in there, I ran it into my hand, and then I licked it off there. 03:04:38.000 |
It was beautiful, but it wasn't long until it came back the other way. 03:04:43.000 |
It says, "The only time I ever enjoyed food going both ways." 03:04:47.000 |
Then one day they said, "Well, we're going to take you now because the American boys have been flown out." 03:04:58.000 |
Those boys suffered as I have seldom heard of suffering. 03:05:06.000 |
Sometimes they said it would be 200 times, and the people would faint, 03:05:11.000 |
and they would pour water on them and beat them again until their bodies were like pulp. 03:05:17.000 |
But they were flying those that had survived out to get medical aid. 03:05:21.000 |
They said, "If you want to go, we'll take you on the last plane load." 03:05:25.000 |
So I remember the day when I went down there with Miss Kemp. 03:05:30.000 |
Miss Seeley, we couldn't get her to come, so she was being put in a place where they could look after her. 03:05:36.000 |
That day when I stood there, all I could see in mine's eye were two lonely crosses on a jungle hill. 03:05:46.000 |
Under one was my husband. Under the other was Dr. R. A. Jaffray. 03:05:51.000 |
They had taken the men on a death march, and many of them never came back. 03:05:58.000 |
I thought about that, and I thought, "Here I arrived on my first wedding anniversary, 03:06:03.000 |
and I'm going home widowed at 26 with not a thing I can call my own. 03:06:12.000 |
I said, "Lord, I don't think I'll ever come back to these islands again." 03:06:17.000 |
Then I heard, as I stepped into this little boat to go out to the plane that was there anchored in the bay, 03:06:23.000 |
I said, "Lord, I hear the sound of those running feet, but I'm not going to look at them. 03:06:30.000 |
I'm not going to turn back and look at them." 03:06:33.000 |
Then suddenly I heard them calling, and then they began to sing, "God be with you till we meet again." 03:06:41.000 |
I turned, and I looked, and the tears burst out. 03:06:48.000 |
I said, "God, that's right. That's why I came to these islands, not because I was Reverend Dibler's wife. 03:06:59.000 |
I came here because one day, as a little girl, I stood in a missionary meeting, the closing service. 03:07:12.000 |
All of the appeal was made for high school and college young people. 03:07:17.000 |
Nobody noticed this little girl with brown hair sitting there at the back. 03:07:23.000 |
I stood up, and I heard the appeal made to them. 03:07:28.000 |
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I turned around and looked, and there was no one there. 03:07:38.000 |
He spoke to me, and He said, "Would you go anywhere for me, no matter what it costs?" 03:07:46.000 |
I was so thrilled to think that God had even noticed me. 03:07:50.000 |
I said to Him that night, "Lord Jesus, I'd go anywhere for you, no matter what it costs." 03:07:58.000 |
As I turned, and I looked, and God broke my heart, and I called out to them, 03:08:10.000 |
It took me three years before I passed a physical. 03:08:16.000 |
On the way home, they took us to Balikpapa, and there they put us in the hospital. 03:08:23.000 |
That night, I tell you, I didn't realize what a terrible thing a bed was. 03:08:28.000 |
That thing had a give to it, and every time in the night when I would turn, that thing was turning over. 03:08:34.000 |
I knew I was being thrown out or it was an earthquake. 03:08:37.000 |
I grabbed the sides of the bed, and I whispered to Margaret, 03:08:44.000 |
She said, "Let's get out and get on the floor." 03:08:46.000 |
I said, "That's a good idea. Let's get out, and we'll sleep there, 03:08:50.000 |
and then we'll wake up and jump back into bed before all these nurses see us." 03:08:55.000 |
Then we talked it over a little more and said, "What do we do if they catch us on the floor?" 03:09:07.000 |
They thought we—and I said, "Oh, we're used to sleeping in our clothes." 03:09:11.000 |
They said, "Tonight you're not sleeping in them." 03:09:14.000 |
All they could find were some pajamas that belonged to these Australian troops. 03:09:25.000 |
I remember putting on those trousers, and I got it right up to here. 03:09:32.000 |
But I thought I won't have much movement of my arms, 03:09:37.000 |
Then I put my arm in this one and rolled it up until I found this hand, 03:09:46.000 |
They said, "Tonight you're not sleeping in your clothes." 03:09:49.000 |
Then the next day, after we had had tea in the morning, here came a jeep. 03:09:57.000 |
They took us out, and they said, "We're taking you on the last plane load 03:10:02.000 |
of each one of the hops between here and Manila." 03:10:05.000 |
Then they took us up to Palawan Island, and I saw that large cemetery out there, 03:10:11.000 |
white stones marking the place where many American boys laid down their lives. 03:10:21.000 |
I believe in America, and I'm glad that God allowed me to be born here, 03:10:34.000 |
When I was a child, I had a compulsion to memorize scripture. 03:10:38.000 |
I memorized books of the Bible, chapters, psalms. 03:10:43.000 |
That didn't matter that they took my Bible away from me because it was all there, 03:10:49.000 |
I wonder if you lost your Bible tonight, how well off would you be? 03:10:54.000 |
You don't know when it's going to be taken away from you. 03:10:57.000 |
Even to your hymns, I see you all with your hymn books up there in front of you. 03:11:02.000 |
You ought to have it down here because God does minister through music. 03:11:09.000 |
I remember when we got into Palawan Island, and I looked down, 03:11:17.000 |
When I saw that white, white buildings, painted white, all the men in white, 03:11:23.000 |
I said to Miss Kemp, "They are not very well camouflaged." 03:11:29.000 |
There they were, and they were all in dress uniform. 03:11:33.000 |
I thought, "They don't know who's coming. We're just POWs. 03:11:39.000 |
But when we got up there, and there was a sidewalk up to this big dining hall, 03:11:44.000 |
and there were men on both sides standing at attention, 03:11:48.000 |
boy, my heart just burst with pride seeing those boys. 03:11:53.000 |
Then when we got inside, someone struck up the band, 03:11:56.000 |
and they started to play "Star Spangled Banner," 03:12:00.000 |
and they unfurled that beautiful flag down in the center. 03:12:06.000 |
I tell you, I went to pieces. I just cried and cried and cried. 03:12:13.000 |
They'd come up, and they'd pat us on the shoulder, and they said, "Don't cry. 03:12:19.000 |
But there were so many times I thought I'd never see that beautiful flag. 03:12:24.000 |
They said, "Don't cry. It's all right. It's all right. 03:12:30.000 |
I tried to straighten up my face, and I tried to get these closed 03:12:36.000 |
so they looked a little better because it was about a size 16 on a size 6 body. 03:12:42.000 |
I had taken a belt and tied it real tight and cinched it around, 03:12:47.000 |
and I bloused it up over the top of it so that the hem, 03:12:54.000 |
But when we walked in, I saw all that white linen on the tablecloths, 03:12:59.000 |
and they put us up at the head table, and everyone was smiling to us. 03:13:04.000 |
I thought, "If I eat all this that's here in front of me, I'm going to be sick, 03:13:12.000 |
Everyone was so pleased, and they just tried to do everything for us. 03:13:16.000 |
That night, they had outside a film that they were showing, 03:13:19.000 |
and we sat down. I don't remember anything about the film, 03:13:22.000 |
but I remember the ice cream and the chocolates. 03:13:26.000 |
Then the next day, they were all out there ready to see us on our way. 03:13:33.000 |
So this was the closing up of bringing the POWs in. 03:13:38.000 |
Then we dropped down in Manila, and they said, "Here's a bus." 03:13:42.000 |
I tell you, that man who drove that bus, he would have done well 03:13:50.000 |
We just hung on to the backs and the sides of the seat 03:13:54.000 |
to keep from being rolled into the aisle of the bus. 03:13:59.000 |
One of the first things they did was to give us a physical, 03:14:04.000 |
They laid out all these vitamins that we had to take and the medicine. 03:14:09.000 |
I said, "Sir, after I've eaten all those, I'm not going to need anything else. 03:14:17.000 |
We're going to see that you get a permanent." 03:14:22.000 |
I like doctors that write out prescriptions for a permanent." 03:14:25.000 |
So they got our hair fixed up, and then they brought in the boxes from the Red Cross. 03:14:31.000 |
The first place I wanted to find was the post office, and I went over. 03:14:36.000 |
I said, "Would you have any mail for Darlene Dibler?" 03:14:42.000 |
I went back day after day, and finally he said, 03:14:46.000 |
"Boy, I don't know why somebody wouldn't write to you." 03:14:50.000 |
I was so embarrassed I didn't go back again until the day I was to be taken out. 03:14:56.000 |
The ship came, the Clip Fontaine, and they had left us there for almost a month 03:15:01.000 |
because they didn't feel we were strong enough even to go on a ship. 03:15:07.000 |
Twenty-three days out, outside of San Francisco, 03:15:13.000 |
We'd just gone in under the Golden Gate, and I saw all those lights of San Francisco. 03:15:18.000 |
Everybody was so excited. Oh, that beautiful city. 03:15:21.000 |
I said, "I don't care." I said, "I don't know anybody out here, no one at all." 03:15:26.000 |
I had an auntie that lived down south, but I don't know where she is. 03:15:31.000 |
Everybody was oing and oing, and I was feeling, 03:15:34.000 |
"Lord, what am I going to do when I get off this ship?" 03:15:37.000 |
Then I saw the lights. Oh, I said to Margaret, "Don't they know that a war is on?" 03:15:45.000 |
I was so fascinated with lights that you had turned on everywhere. 03:15:50.000 |
Then we were just getting ready to pull in, and suddenly the loudspeaker was turned on, 03:15:58.000 |
and they said, "We're pulling out again because the whole harbor is full. 03:16:04.000 |
There are no berths empty, so they're going to take you on up to Seattle, Washington, 03:16:13.000 |
I was so glad to spend another two days on that ship. 03:16:18.000 |
When I got off there, I hadn't had any letter from my mother and dad, 03:16:23.000 |
I thought, "When I get there, I don't know where I'm going." 03:16:32.000 |
and they said, "Tonight we will delouse you, and then tomorrow we'll start processing you." 03:16:38.000 |
I was glad to spend another night on that ship. 03:16:41.000 |
We were sleeping three deep in hammocks out on the deck. 03:16:46.000 |
Then the next morning, I saw my friends leaving, 03:16:51.000 |
and I saw them going down the gangplank and meeting their families and their friends out there. 03:16:57.000 |
I stood there at the ebril, and suddenly it struck me. 03:17:01.000 |
The reason you haven't heard from Mother and Dad is that they're gone. 03:17:05.000 |
I went back, and I crawled in underneath those hammocks, 03:17:16.000 |
So sweetly, my Lord spoke to me, and He said, 03:17:23.000 |
I said, "All right, Father, but I need to find a Red Cross woman. 03:17:32.000 |
I came around the corner of the deck of the ship, 03:17:35.000 |
and I saw a Red Cross woman, and I latched onto her. 03:17:37.000 |
I said, "You wait a minute. Now you have to help me." 03:17:41.000 |
I said, "It's been over four years. I haven't heard anything from my father and mother. 03:17:45.000 |
I don't know where they are, but I need money. 03:17:48.000 |
I've got to get back to Iowa to trace anybody from the family that's alive." 03:17:56.000 |
She said, "I've been on the ship all morning looking for you. 03:17:59.000 |
Three telegrams. They're all from Mother and Dad." 03:18:06.000 |
Mother said, "We moved out to Oakland, California in 1942, 03:18:12.000 |
and we knew you were on the ship, and we wanted to get there in order to greet you, 03:18:17.000 |
but when they took you on up to Seattle, we wouldn't have time to get there, 03:18:21.000 |
and so we've sent money to the Western Union office, 03:18:24.000 |
and you go there and you get that money, and you get a ticket on the train 03:18:29.000 |
and come down, and we'll be here to meet you, 03:18:32.000 |
and you call collect as soon as you can get to a telephone." 03:18:36.000 |
I went to get my ticket first after getting the money, 03:18:42.000 |
and I looked at everybody who was going by me on the street, 03:18:47.000 |
and I thought, "Oh, my, just look at their coats. 03:18:53.000 |
I looked down at this coat I'd gotten from the Red Cross, and I looked like a bear. 03:19:00.000 |
I went back to the ship, and I asked the captain if I could borrow his razor. 03:19:06.000 |
He looked at me rather puzzled, and I found a secluded spot on the deck, 03:19:12.000 |
and I gave my coat a shave, and it really looked pretty good. 03:19:17.000 |
Then I went to the train station, and I went up to the window, 03:19:21.000 |
and I said, "Please, sir, I would like to have a ticket for Oakland, California." 03:19:25.000 |
He said, "My dear, don't you know a war's been on? 03:19:29.000 |
Only Army, Navy, Air Force personnel travel." 03:19:34.000 |
I was just ready to faint, and I said, "Sir, I'm sorry. I didn't know that." 03:19:39.000 |
I said, "I'm a POW, and I just got here, and I'm trying to get home." 03:19:44.000 |
"Oh," he said, "we've got lots of tickets for people like you." 03:19:49.000 |
I was in business again, and then I got over to a telephone, and my goodness, 03:19:53.000 |
it wasn't one of those things that just was on the wall. 03:19:56.000 |
You lift up the thing, and then someone says, "Number, please." 03:19:59.000 |
I said, "Here was this round thing there, and it had numbers, and it had letters." 03:20:04.000 |
I was standing there, and I thought, "Now, how am I going to use this thing?" 03:20:08.000 |
Somebody who must have known how puzzled I was, he stepped up, 03:20:12.000 |
and he just shoved the door open a little bit, and he said, "Could I help you?" 03:20:18.000 |
I said, "Yeah, I'm a POW. I don't know how to operate that thing, 03:20:25.000 |
He said, "What's the number?" I said, "This is the number." 03:20:29.000 |
I said, "Call, collect." He rang it through for me. 03:20:34.000 |
I've said so many times tonight, the Lord spoke to me, 03:20:38.000 |
and people say, "How do you know it's the Lord?" 03:20:43.000 |
When that call went through, and I heard the receiver going up on the other end, 03:20:49.000 |
and I heard someone say, "Hello, darling." I knew it was Mother. 03:20:59.000 |
I hadn't heard her voice in eight years, but it was Mother. 03:21:04.000 |
I said, "Hello, Mother." Then I couldn't say another thing. 03:21:08.000 |
She so calmly told me that my brother had just gotten in from Germany, 03:21:14.000 |
in New York, the night before, and he said, "Mother, did you hear anything from darling?" 03:21:20.000 |
I said, "Mm-hmm." Then she went on to tell me about my daddy and about everybody. 03:21:28.000 |
All I could say was, "Mm-hmm." I couldn't answer. I was crying so hard. 03:21:33.000 |
She said, "Now, honey, you just go, and you just be sure that you get on that train, 03:21:43.000 |
Somebody told me that I really needed to have a good Foundation garment. 03:21:48.000 |
Well, at that moment, I didn't have a thing to girdle. 03:21:51.000 |
I went, and I decided I'd get something that looked decent. 03:22:00.000 |
I thought, "I'm going to be on that train for a day and a night, and I'd better have a suitcase." 03:22:06.000 |
So I went and got a suitcase and a purse, and I put what little money I had in there. 03:22:11.000 |
I got on that train. I suddenly realized that Portland, Oregon— 03:22:15.000 |
I had not told Mother and Dad what train I was coming in on. 03:22:18.000 |
It was two o'clock in the morning, and so I went out, and I found a man who would take my telegram. 03:22:27.000 |
I didn't realize it was just sent right through. It was phoned right through. 03:22:34.000 |
I said, "Kill the fatted calf. Love, Darlene. I'm arriving at 930 tomorrow morning." 03:22:42.000 |
Then I got back on the train, not realizing that it was being phoned directly through. 03:22:49.000 |
Dad said that when that telephone began to ring, Mother jumped up, and she ran the telephone. 03:22:58.000 |
Then something would be repeated, and she said, "What?" 03:23:02.000 |
Evidently, the girl laughed, and she said, "Have you not heard of the lost son, the prodigal son? 03:23:12.000 |
She said, "Thank you," and put the receiver down quickly and ran in and shook my dad, and they laughed. 03:23:18.000 |
She said, "She's all right. She hasn't lost her sense of humor." 03:23:24.000 |
Then the next morning, when it rolled into the depot in Oakland, California, I was looking for two faces. 03:23:34.000 |
I finally spotted my father the time he saw me, and he was waving to me, "Darlene, Darlene." 03:23:47.000 |
He turned and yelled, "Mother, she's here. She's here." 03:23:52.000 |
My father came up, and he put his arms around me, and Mother joined us. 03:23:59.000 |
I said, "Daddy, Mother, I thought so many times I would never, ever see you again." 03:24:07.000 |
As I looked out over the tops of their heads, the sun broke through the clouds, those beautiful clouds. 03:24:15.000 |
Suddenly I thought, "Oh, Lord, someday those clouds will part asunder, and you will be there, and I will know you." 03:24:33.000 |
With the eyes of my spirit, I've looked into that beautiful face. 03:24:43.000 |
I have no regrets for any of the things that God has led me through. 03:24:56.000 |
I was on a field where we had more graves than live missionaries. 03:25:07.000 |
I'll tell you this tonight. If you don't know Him, you aren't going to make it. 03:25:20.000 |
I look at young people like you, and I often think, "God, if someday you just call to me and say, 'Come on home,' 03:25:33.000 |
I wonder who's going to step into my place out there." 03:25:41.000 |
Do you have a life to give for your Lord? He gave everything for you. 03:25:49.000 |
I heard Him call, "Come follow," and that was all. 03:26:09.000 |
I still say to my Lord at night when I lie down, "Precious Lord, I'd still go anywhere for you." 03:26:44.000 |
>> Do you mind if I have the lights turned on, Jen? Thank you. 03:26:57.000 |
I've got to tell you, ladies, there's a lot of different testimonies that I hear, but that's pretty powerful. 03:27:05.000 |
This is pretty much the second, almost third time I've heard it. 03:27:09.000 |
Just like watching a movie, every time you watch or listen to something, there's a different part of the story that comes out. 03:27:16.000 |
I think listening for the second or third time, it's like finding gems of wisdom everywhere. 03:27:23.000 |
You notice things that you didn't notice before. 03:27:26.000 |
If you would just bear with me, I wanted to share a slideshow with some pictures. 03:27:34.000 |
I know it's pretty amazing to be able to just imagine it up here, but I wanted to show you from the book that Mirian had given me. 03:27:45.000 |
I just wanted to show you what she looked like and the missionaries that she had served alongside with. 03:27:50.000 |
This is the book, amazing. She's absolutely beautiful. 03:27:56.000 |
I wanted to show you the next few slides, so you can have an idea of what they look like. 03:28:01.000 |
That's Darlene on the left, and that's Darlene and her husband. 03:28:06.000 |
If you were listening, she spoke English, Dutch, and Indonesian. She's quite sharp. 03:28:14.000 |
This is them actually over studying in Holland. They were together there. 03:28:22.000 |
Dr. Joffreyes was pretty much an amazing mentor to her, and that's him on the left-hand side. 03:28:30.000 |
What an amazing man. You can see him here. Unfortunately, he did pass away during the war. 03:28:37.000 |
If you heard just how much respect was given to him, I know there are different people in our lives, 03:28:45.000 |
and I pray that we all do have mentors similar to him or another individual that you look up to. 03:28:51.000 |
On the bottom was a drawing of her late husband and the cross that was there. 03:28:56.000 |
Her husband and Dr. Joffreys had actually passed away, so their crosses were on the hillside in the jungle. 03:29:03.000 |
There are more pictures on the right of Russell and Darlene early on in their marriage. 03:29:08.000 |
I think it's beautiful they got married so early, and so sad that she was widowed at 26. 03:29:14.000 |
This is Darlene actually as she's traveling towards the base camp in the beginning when she first came. 03:29:23.000 |
I say "Papa New Guinea", it's "Papua New Guinea", so forgive me if I say it. 03:29:28.000 |
If there's any Native people here, I do apologize. 03:29:31.000 |
They actually went into the inner-most part of the jungle. 03:29:35.000 |
This is pictures of both of them. You'll be seeing the next few slides of the individuals that they had been working with. 03:29:45.000 |
Again, you see here, this was the first time they had any Sinini foreigners, 03:29:50.000 |
so seeing a white lady was quite a shock to them. 03:29:54.000 |
Very hospitable, they came and they brought food. 03:29:57.000 |
Also, on the bottom right-hand corner, you do see her late husband with just the young people of the village. 03:30:06.000 |
I feel like Darlene and her husband were almost, in a sense, very similar to Elizabeth Elliot and her husband as well, Jim Elliot, 03:30:23.000 |
The work that they did there was life-changing for the people there on the island as well as for themselves. 03:30:33.000 |
Are you guys able to see it a little bit? I know it's a little bit bright. 03:30:44.000 |
Here, you can have an idea of what the houses look like. 03:30:48.000 |
Beautiful, but can you imagine the rat story? 03:30:51.000 |
They get into all these different spots and it's made out of thin paper. 03:30:55.000 |
Another picture, I'm sorry, it's a little bit blurry, but a picture there also of one of the camping sites along where they were. 03:31:05.000 |
It would have made so much of a difference, but you can imagine what it was like while they were out there. 03:31:15.000 |
I mean, you imagine it, but that's what it looked like. 03:31:18.000 |
I think it's amazing that she survived to go get that Bible or else she would have been killed. 03:31:24.000 |
There's numerous times she would have been killed. 03:31:26.000 |
If you take a look there, you're able to see the aftermath of what war looked like back then. 03:31:35.000 |
If you look at these individuals in the camp that did survive, they look pretty healthy there, but this was two months after they were freed. 03:31:43.000 |
They were fed, but the fact that she actually went down to 60 pounds, I can't imagine what she looked like. 03:31:50.000 |
Here, it looks like 10 months after coming back to the States. 03:31:55.000 |
Maybe she dyed her hair, maybe it grew back, because I can't believe her hair was white at 26. 03:32:05.000 |
For those of you who don't know where Papua New Guinea is, I had to look it up myself. 03:32:09.000 |
It's next to Indonesia, just north of Australia. 03:32:21.000 |
This is, again, just a closer map of the island itself, and that's the flag, for those of you who would like to know. 03:32:31.000 |
I just wanted to show some modern clips of individuals there. 03:32:37.000 |
I looked it up, and kind of like they have luau's in Hawaii, they do actually put on these shows for guests and foreigners to come see. 03:32:47.000 |
Beautiful, but that's in color, if you'd like to see what they look like. 03:32:58.000 |
OK, I have six minutes to kind of share just a little bit of what I was encouraged by. 03:33:05.000 |
I've had to cut this down quite a bit this week, but I just wanted to share why she actually decided to share her testimony. 03:33:11.000 |
And if you do read the book, in the acknowledgment she does share, "More than ten years ago, I began to write the story of my experiences during World War II for Bruce and Brian, my son. 03:33:22.000 |
I wish them to know if ever difficult circumstances came into their lives, that their mother's God was still alive and well, and his arm has never lost its ancient power. 03:33:31.000 |
I owe a special debt of gratitude to them and their father, Jerry, who supported and encouraged me to finish this story. 03:33:37.000 |
I mean, as a mother of two boys and another boy coming, I was very touched by the fact that she wanted to impart her experiences and glorify God in her testimony. 03:33:46.000 |
The fact of the matter is she left such a tremendous legacy of faith. 03:33:50.000 |
Her influence and powerful testimony is still touching lives even though she's no longer with us. 03:33:55.000 |
She lived a fully surrendered life and a full one." 03:34:01.000 |
I mean, that's the first thing that would have left the door if I was ever in a circumstance like that. 03:34:06.000 |
She was so grateful eating flies, talked about the caterpillar story, even the rat story. 03:34:16.000 |
But the question I guess I'd like to ask is how many of us would have the same sentiments and find small joys in the hard trials of life? 03:34:24.000 |
For me, it would be the first thing out the window. 03:34:27.000 |
It shows she had no bitterness in what she experienced. 03:34:29.000 |
She endured it, cherished it, and she was even thankful for it. 03:34:33.000 |
Also, she memorized verses and hymns as a child. 03:34:37.000 |
My group and I were just talking about what an arsenal of just wisdom that she was able to use. 03:34:43.000 |
I'm thankful for all of you who are in the Berean Children's Ministry and you volunteer and you desire for our kids to learn about God's word for themselves, to hide it in their hearts. 03:34:52.000 |
She was able to, even with the Bible taken away, be such an encouragement to the women in the barracks there. 03:34:58.000 |
That women from all around, Dutch women who had a hunger for the Lord, were able to really just be encouraged by her. 03:35:03.000 |
So the question is, she asked, if the Bible was taken away, how much of it would you actually know? 03:35:15.000 |
It kind of reminded me of some of the women in this room. 03:35:18.000 |
She started guardians while she was in the mountains. 03:35:20.000 |
She learned how to pick out different kinds of grass. 03:35:25.000 |
She was always giving me fruit every Sunday because she has such an arsenal of trees. 03:35:30.000 |
Sharon is saying, you all know she's phenomenal if you look at her Instagram stories. 03:35:34.000 |
All the amazing veggies and fruits that are grown. 03:35:37.000 |
She knew how to use a hammer and build things. 03:35:51.000 |
And then what's funny is she wore dress upon dress. 03:35:55.000 |
I'm like, maybe that would be me because I tend to pack too much when I travel. 03:36:01.000 |
But God gave her wisdom during this time to better serve others. 03:36:04.000 |
She didn't use her knowledge or wisdom selfishly. 03:36:08.000 |
In the second Thessalonians, what we are learning in Bible study says, 03:36:11.000 |
"As for you, brothers or sisters, do not worry of doing good." 03:36:17.000 |
I shared about the languages that she knew and she spoke of. 03:36:20.000 |
What got me was she was able to use her God-given talents to further serve 03:36:25.000 |
and minister through the war and after the war as a translator. 03:36:28.000 |
We tend to think, I think especially being maybe more of the Asian influence, 03:36:32.000 |
that the older people tend to be the leaders, but not the case. 03:36:41.000 |
She was always grateful, always thankful for the things that were given to her, 03:36:50.000 |
When she was so sick with dysentery, dropsy, and malaria, 03:36:53.000 |
she was just thankful for the rice that had worms in it. 03:36:56.000 |
I mean, yeah, something that I thought about myself. 03:37:02.000 |
Are we grateful for the small things in life, 03:37:04.000 |
even if it's maybe what we didn't expect or wanted? 03:37:11.000 |
She was always looking out for other people, elderly and those who were sick, 03:37:15.000 |
whether it would be holding up all the older people on the fast-moving transport 03:37:22.000 |
She desired to work more than what was required of her 03:37:29.000 |
whether that was manual labor, cooking, skinning dogs, 03:37:37.000 |
I don't know if you cried, but I kind of teared up a little bit again. 03:37:39.000 |
Even in her own sorrow, when her husband, Russell, died, 03:37:42.000 |
she didn't want to affect other people in the camp. 03:37:49.000 |
I'm like, okay, I've got to ask all these questions and different things like that. 03:37:52.000 |
But she waited because she knew that other women didn't know the Lord. 03:37:56.000 |
And when she did find out that he passed away, she said, 03:38:01.000 |
"God, would you help me not to make my sorrow other people's sorrow?" 03:38:09.000 |
And later on, you're going to see this in the discussion. 03:38:12.000 |
She says, "There's a peace that cometh after sorrow, 03:38:15.000 |
of hopes that are surrendered, not of hopes fulfilled, 03:38:18.000 |
a peace I'll look upon tomorrow, but on a tempest that is stilled." 03:38:24.000 |
"God never allows anything in your life but that which is for your good and his glory." 03:38:31.000 |
I just, the miracles of the angels of the Lord and camping around their house, 03:38:37.000 |
The knife story, sharing with Mr. Yamaji, she could have been killed. 03:38:46.000 |
Now you guys, please take a banana home when you guys leave. 03:38:52.000 |
In the beginning, Maureen was like, "What about bananas in the centerpiece?" 03:38:56.000 |
I'm like, "That is very random, a little bit odd." 03:39:01.000 |
But when I heard the story, I said, "Oh, it makes sense. It makes sense." 03:39:04.000 |
I've never looked at a banana the same again. 03:39:09.000 |
The angelic singing that was heard, just amazing. 03:39:21.000 |
On the epilogue of the book, it shares what had happened to her. 03:39:24.000 |
And after she was able to return home in 1945 to her family, 03:39:28.000 |
she had time to grieve over Russell's death, her first husband. 03:39:32.000 |
But she still had a desire to go back and serve. 03:39:36.000 |
"You've done your time, darling. It's been eight years. 03:39:38.000 |
You're young enough. Why don't you stay home and stay in the Comforts of America?" 03:39:42.000 |
Her heart, even when people discouraged her as a young single missionary, 03:39:47.000 |
She ended up meeting a man who was also pointing that direction. 03:39:50.000 |
His name was Gerald W. Rose, which ended up becoming her second husband. 03:39:55.000 |
And they had two boys later who were also raised in the Native area. 03:40:07.000 |
So the great thing is, later on, Mr. Yamaji actually owned a bicycle shop in Japan. 03:40:14.000 |
And a friend who was a priest met him while vacationing and talked to him about his past 03:40:18.000 |
and the fact that Mr. Yamaji had been a past POW commander. 03:40:22.000 |
Mr. Yamaji shared that he was so sorry for being so cruel to the people under his command, 03:40:29.000 |
Later, Darlene found out that Mr. Yamaji had spoken on the radio, 03:40:32.000 |
sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Japanese people. 03:40:36.000 |
Darlene felt like this was one of the greatest rewards of God's work in her life. 03:40:41.000 |
If she told Mr. Yamaji, "Maybe because of you I've experienced all of this," 03:40:55.000 |
46 years in the ministry, she ended up retiring, 03:41:00.000 |
and they ended up in Tennessee, Chattanooga, Tennessee. 03:41:08.000 |
But even towards her last breath, her and her husband, Jerry, 03:41:12.000 |
they were still inviting people and sharing the gospel with them in their home. 03:41:15.000 |
She had Alzheimer's, and he had tons of spinal issues himself later on, 03:41:20.000 |
but they were always pointing people to Christ. 03:41:26.000 |
I mentioned before that they don't make women like her nowadays, 03:41:30.000 |
but after meditating the past few weeks, I don't think that's true. 03:41:37.000 |
and the same Holy Spirit that lived in her lives in us. 03:41:42.000 |
We may not be in the same time period as she is, 03:41:45.000 |
but God can use humble and willing women like us to do great things. 03:41:50.000 |
Christ is a common denominator, and I'm so thankful for that. 03:41:54.000 |
So okay, with that, we're going to go ahead and break into 03:42:04.000 |
and then after that, we'll close in prayer and we'll have cleanup. 03:42:11.000 |
I mean, it was long, but it was worth it, right? 03:42:14.000 |
Now you can tell all your husbands to listen to it too, 03:42:20.000 |
Anyways, okay, have a good time in discussion. 04:18:56.000 |
All right ladies, I know if it were the way we'd like you would be here for days, 04:19:06.000 |
but we have to draw to a close. I wanted to go ahead and just first of all just really 04:19:13.000 |
thank the sisters who put this event together. You know who you are. All right, yeah, all right. 04:19:20.000 |
Whether logistics, buying all that food, there's a sister that went to Costco, got all these 04:19:27.000 |
bananas, probably look like a weirdo, so please take a banana with you, but I'm staring at 04:19:32.000 |
her right now. You guys follow my line of vision. And for those who were very prayerful 04:19:37.000 |
about this event and just really encouraged by the conversation. I was looking around 04:19:41.000 |
to see nobody fell asleep. Good, that's good. Everyone stayed awake, very laser focused, 04:19:48.000 |
so just really encouraged by that. Also, so we actually have, we have some brothers in 04:19:56.000 |
the back. Brothers, why don't you come on out. No, no, no, come on out, come on guys. 04:20:01.000 |
All right, woohoo. These guys, they, let's just say they're, let's say they're physically 04:20:11.000 |
and spiritually fit, so they're here to help us with cleanup. So come on guys, don't be 04:20:17.000 |
shy, come out here. Woohoo. I'm going to make you guys all take a bow. I'm just kidding, 04:20:27.000 |
I'm just kidding. But anyways, so what, after I pray, we're going to have a, we're actually 04:20:33.000 |
going to have a nice little graphic up here that a sister was so gracious to put together. 04:20:38.000 |
We're going to need to clean up all the tables, so if you ladies could help, those of you 04:20:42.000 |
who are assigned as leaders, either in the kitchen, the bathroom, or here, can you find 04:20:46.000 |
your assigned ladies. For all of you who are not assigned anything, we would love to have 04:20:51.000 |
you here, but please just maybe go outside and continue the conversation and fellowship 04:20:55.000 |
so we have a little bit of room. This does need to be set up for tomorrow. Let me see 04:21:00.000 |
what else. I think that's pretty much it. Also, the table numbers, if you guys could 04:21:08.000 |
just keep that to the side. Actually, can I have someone volunteer in the cleanup? Okay, 04:21:13.000 |
Grace, just to pick up all the table numbers, we're going to reuse those, as well as the 04:21:17.000 |
leaves and flowers. We'll probably save that for another event, but everything else can 04:21:20.000 |
be thrown away, tablecloths included. All right, would you just bow with me as we just 04:21:25.000 |
close in prayer? Help me, Father, just so encouraged, Lord, by Darlene's testimony and 04:21:35.000 |
just a life well lived. Truly surrender to you, Father. Someone who loved your word, 04:21:41.000 |
hid it in her heart as a child, and was able to encourage so, so many people throughout 04:21:46.000 |
her life, whether it was in wartime or not. I pray, Lord, that this giant of faith, Father, 04:21:52.000 |
who I'm excited to meet in heaven one day, will just be an encouragement to us for the 04:21:57.000 |
rest of our lives, Lord, but more so than her just being an empty vessel. Father, it's 04:22:02.000 |
you who worked in and through her, Father, and your glory was magnified every step of 04:22:07.000 |
the way. I pray that as sisters here, perhaps we're not in these wars, but as I mentioned, 04:22:12.000 |
there's different battles at home, different things that we struggle in, Father. I pray 04:22:15.000 |
that you just give us the strength that we need, Lord, to fight those battles with you 04:22:20.000 |
being the one to fight them for us. That we never lose that joy and that hope, no matter 04:22:25.000 |
what the trial or circumstance is, Father, to always be an encouragement to others and 04:22:29.000 |
put other people first. And just remember, Lord, that you're the one who ultimately is 04:22:36.000 |
the author and finisher of our lives and our faith, Father. I thank you so much for just 04:22:41.000 |
this time and just this sweet fellowship and the freedom to do so, Father, in this country. 04:22:45.000 |
Just so proud to be here. I pray that we just go home encouraged and being able to really 04:22:51.000 |
just meditate on this even the next few weeks, months, and years. I thank you and I praise 04:22:55.000 |
you. In your name I pray, amen. All right, ladies, thank you. 04:23:29.000 |
Also, sorry ladies, just as a reminder, don't pick up the tables. That's what these handsome 04:23:35.000 |
young men out there are for, using their muscles. So everything else but have the men do the 04:25:09.000 |
Hello, hello everyone. Oh, hello everyone. Thank you everyone for helping with cleanup. 04:25:18.000 |
Just as a heads up, we're not stacking up the chairs because we're setting up for the 04:25:22.000 |
sanctuary tomorrow. So if you can just move them slightly to the side. But we will be, 04:25:27.000 |
once the tables are folded back, we're going to start setting up and having some spot sweepers.