The Caribbean. The very thought evokes images of beaches, sunshine and bright colors. And, for Fred and Janice Day, lost souls who need salvation.
The couple will retire after almost 30 years on the missions field, 22 of those serving the Caribbean. From 1975 to 1982, they were church planters in Suriname. When Fred was named associate area director for the Southeast Caribbean in 1982, they moved to Puerto Rico. In 1991, Fred became associate area director for the Caribbean region. The Caribbean Basin region was recently combined with the Middle America region to become the Middle America and Caribbean Basin.
In 1994, the regional office was moved to Coral Gables, Fla., where the Days currently live. After a year on a pre-retirement stateside assignment, the pair will retire.
Janice is from Newton (Ala.), where her home church is Newton Baptist Church in Dale Association. Fred was born and raised in Louisiana. The Days will live in Mississippi.
Both Fred and Janice recall being touched by missions as children through Royal Ambassadors (RA) and GA programs in their churches. Growing up in Baptist churches, they listened as missionaries shared about taking the message of Christ beyond the borders of the United States.
The couple met in 1959 while in college in Louisiana, and the first stirrings toward a calling for themselves came while they were dating.
“Both of us were deeply moved by God’s touch when we attended a missions conference at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1961 while we were in college,” reported Fred.
After marrying in 1962, Fred served as a pastor in Louisiana churches for 14 years. God’s call to missions did not leave the couple. In 1970, Fred “was again touched by God’s call.”
The call of God
When he told Janice his experience, she said she had sensed God’s call that very same week.
The Days knew they were being called to missions, but it was not until 1975 that they knew where God was leading them.
Fred recalled, “God showed us Suriname while we were at Foreign Missions Week at Glorieta in the fall of 1975. We made contact with the personnel department at the Foreign Mission Board (now the International Mission Board), and were appointed shortly thereafter.”
They packed up Connie and Anita, their two daughters, and moved to Suriname in December 1975. A third daughter, Mandy, was born in Suriname.
“One of the greatest challenges was separation from parents during our early years of missionary service,” Fred recalled.
Although they missed their parents and made frequent trips back to the United States when their parents were sick, the Days enjoyed Suriname. Their children thrived while on the missions field.
Two of the Days’ daughters are trilingual, while the youngest grew up speaking four languages.
Fred recalled, “When we first arrived our daughters began playing with other Suriname kids in the community. They picked up the languages within a few months.”
Fred and Janice, on the other hand, had to formally study and work at it for more than a year.
Learning the language was not always easy for the Days. Fred went into a grocery store early in their first term in Suriname and thought he asked for a jar of strawberry preserves. Watching the reactions of the employees, he quickly realized that something was wrong. Instead of the word for strawberry, he had used the Dutch word for hemorrhoids.
Later, they faced separation from their children as the girls became old enough to attend college.
“Parenting from the distance of thousands of miles is one of the most difficult parts of serving overseas,” Fred said. “Learning a foreign language and adapting to new cultures pales in comparison to separation from family.”
The Days’ only regret is that “we did not obey the Lord sooner when we first sensed that God was calling us to missions.”
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