When visitors arrive, Ann is quick to offer authentic green tea in little cups with no handles.
“When you go into anyone’s house, they serve you this tea,” she explains about the Asian country she and her husband, Howard, had left only weeks before to return to the United States, where they awaited another assignment to the missions field.
For five years, Ann and Howard served as Southern Baptist missionaries in two Asian countries. The first four years they were in the Philippines. The fifth found them in a “Last Frontier” country.
According to Julie McGowan, associate director for editorial services at the International Mission Board (IMB), “The Last Frontier of missions is that part of the world with little or no access to the gospel. So Last Frontier personnel are Christian workers who take God’s love to that part of the world.”
Because of serving in a Last Frontier country, where the government tries to keep tabs on the Christian locals, Ann and Howard’s full identity must remain guarded.
The couple, whose home church is James Memorial Baptist, Gadsden, in Etowah Baptist Association, answered the call to missions when Howard was 60 and Ann was 56. They were part of the IMB’s Masters Program for people 50 and older. This program “enlists Southern Baptists who have invested their lives in business or another field, have retired early, and now can offer IMB career personnel support and encouragement in a variety of ways,” according to the IMB Web site.
In the Philippines — on the island of Mindanao — the couple’s focus was church planting and health education.
Ann, a former nurse at UAB Hospital, did some health teaching through an interpreter. In some cases, she was the first Anglo female to visit the villages.
“Most of them have never seen a Bible,” Howard said. “They don’t know who God is. They don’t know who Jesus is. But they have a name for God and Jesus.”
The couple’s subsequent assignment to a second Asian country was to teach conversational English, using the Bible and Bible stories. “Some day, there will be a lot of (Asians) saying, ‘Y’all,’” Howard joked.
When they went into this country, they were to find English speakers to draw into the conversational English study. Ann said God sent someone to them very quickly, creating the interest that brought another and another and another, until there were many to whom they could teach conversational English.
The couple found that even government workers came to them to learn. And because the students would invite Ann and Howard to their homes, the couple went into provinces where other missionaries perhaps hadn’t been able to go.
“They don’t realize that they’re looking (for the one true God) but they are,” Howard said. He explained that the people want something other than what their government can offer.
Howard described the inhabitants of this Asian country as the “kindest, lovingest people. … Everything is done through relationships, just like Alabama.”
It was Ann and Howard’s desire to be sent to a place to share about Jesus in an environment that may not be completely tolerant of Christianity. Howard said honoring God may mean going to places where believers might not want to under normal circumstances. After that year in this Asian country, though, they found it difficult to leave the people to return to the United States. Howard said he wishes now that they had been on the missions field for the last 40 years instead of five.
Ann felt the call to missions when she was 14 years old. Howard, who had an insurance firm in Gadsden, began to feel God was leading him into missions through a series of events later in his life — visiting a missions center in Atlanta while there for a baseball game, talking with homeless people, going on a missions trip to Ukraine and, finally, teaching a Sunday School lesson about missions.
The couple — married now for 43 years, with two grown children and four grandchildren — said serving on the missions field is about “just falling in love with people.”
Ann and Howard also found that their own journey with God reached a deeper level.
Serving in obedience to God gives him a great amount of joy, Howard said.
Ann said she gained a complete trust in God from being on the field. Prayer time and Bible study always had been important, but being in the circumstances they faced on the field took her to a new level. “I knew that God could take (a troubling situation) and make something good out of it,” she said.
Ann said they also could feel the prayers of others covering them. During a medical emergency with Howard, Ann saw how God works out all the details and takes care of His children. When Howard’s medical emergency arose, Ann said they were taken to the right hospital, even though they could not speak the language to express where they needed to go. An IMB staff member happened to be in that area and was able to assist with the insurance matters that came up.
Also Ann wanted to contact her son to give him details about the emergency but knew she could not call out from the hospital. She said she prayed that her son would call. Five minutes later, as she was standing near the person who answered the phone at the hospital, her son called. “God is faithful,” Howard said.
Going on the missions field meant giving up some things, such as good, old-fashioned pones of buttermilk cornbread, Howard said. Cornmeal and buttermilk just don’t exist in some regions of the globe, although Howard was able to find one store owner who could order cheese for him.
But Howard said following God into missions requires a readjustment in thinking. He said people who desire to serve cannot have anything they are not willing to give up for God. “If you’re not willing to give up everything, you’re not going to give up anything.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Real names were changed because of IMB concern for missionary safety in the ‘Last Frontier’ country.
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