While thumbing through a Good Housekeeping magazine, my mouth dropped open and tears came to my eyes when I saw the picture. Out loud, I exclaimed, “I know that little girl!” As I gazed at the small black and white photo in the corner of the page, my mind sped back many decades to when I was five years old in church on a Sunday night. There stood James and Alice Taylor, with their five children across the platform, including Mary, the 12-year-old girl in the picture in the magazine. (Today, Mary is a high-ranking politician in New Jersey. The magazine featured her story about being captured, along with three of her siblings, by the Chinese while in boarding school and placed in a concentration camp for four years, separated from her parents.) I could see this family as plainly as that night so many years before. James, the grandson of Hudson Taylor, the well-known missionary to China, and his family had just returned from China and were at my church to share their experiences.

I don’t remember what they said, but God definitely spoke to my heart that night. From then on, I knew that someday I would be a missionary to the Chinese people. Some 35 years later, I arrived in Taiwan. God and I had traveled many roads together during those years, yet I never lost sight of the goal—becoming a missionary to the Chinese.

I wonder, what keeps the goal in sight for some who have heard the call and yet diminishes it in the hearts of others? Certainly a constant close walk with the Lord is a part of that answer, but I am reminded often of the people God put in my life that were like embers that kept that fire lit. The first was my pastor’s wife. She led the “Junior Missionary Society,” a children’s department within our denomination. She made sure I was at every meeting. When I was 15, Henry (and Valetta) Steel became the pastor of our church. Henry took a group of us teens to the OMS conferences in Winona Lake each summer and often had missionary speakers at the church. It was no coincidence that my parents were often asked to host these missionaries in our home. I went to high school in Spring Arbor, Michigan, where many missionaries took their furloughs, including James and Alice Taylor. These missionaries often spent time with the students, and I relished every moment of it.

One hesitation always in the back of my mind was that my father was reluctant to let me go overseas. He and I were very close, and the last thing I wanted to do was go against his desires. One night, at the OMS conference, Dr. Eugene Erny gave a powerful sermon on commitment. At the end of the message, he asked for those willing to commit to serve God to come forward. Then, he asked all parents present to stand if they were willing to let their children obey God no matter where He called them. Later that night, my Dad called me aside to let me to know that he had stood and that I was free to obey God.

On March 20, 1980, my husband Phil, our six-year old son Ted and I boarded the plane in Los Angeles for the final leg of the journey that brought us to Taiwan and the Chinese people. How I praise Him for 19 wonderful years of service there. Though the heat was oppressive, and the language an enormous hurdle, I knew I was home.

A missionary doesn’t come to their place of service on their own. It takes a lot of obedient people that give their time and resources to teach, nurture and pray for them along the way. God doesn’t look at the missionary’s obedience as being any more significant than the sacrificial service of each of those along the journey.

Top photos from Good Housekeeping magazine, May 2001, page 85, “Finding her angels."