Dr. Martha Myers has been described as a modern-day Lottie Moon, a Baptist version of Mother Teresa and a martyr for Christ. And while the endless number of testimonies attest to these descriptions, it may be the more subtle parts of Myers’ life that tell the story she would want told.
“Martha was a victorious Christian and was obedient until death,” said Rick Evans, pastor of Myers’ home church, Dalraida Baptist in Montgomery. Evans spoke to more than 1,200 family members and friends attending a Jan. 4 memorial service for Myers at the Montgomery Association church.
She was known for living out gently and quietly, yet impressively, her Christian faith, other friends remarked. Energetic and full of life, Myers also could be found riding a camel one moment and teaching a young Yemeni to drive on already hazardous terrain the next.
Myers, a 57-year-old obstetrician and gynecologist, served as a Southern Baptist International Mission Board (IMB) medical missionary in Yemen for 24 years. She was murdered Dec. 30 when a lone gunman attacked the Baptist hospital in Jibla, Yemen. Also killed were two other IMB workers — business administrator William Koehn and purchasing manager Kathleen Gariety. A fourth worker, pharmacist Don Caswell, was wounded.
The gunman, 35-year-old Abid Abdul Razzaq Al-Kamil, reportedly gained entrance to the hospital by cradling a semiautomatic rifle under his coat as if it were a sick infant. He burst into a room where the three who were killed were holding an early morning meeting and opened fire on them, then moved to another room where he wounded Caswell. The gunman is being held by Yemeni authorities.
Although the exact cause for the shooting has not been determined, IMB workers and others reacted quickly to show their continued support for the Yemeni people.
“We are not angry,” said Myers’ father, Dr. Ira Myers, Alabama physician and former state public health department director. “Our faith in God is what we depend upon, and God is love,” he said. “There is no place for hate.”
“The real tragedy here is that the very people Martha, Bill and Kathy loved are the ones who will be blamed for this,” Caswell said during a Jan. 1 memorial service held in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. “This shouldn’t be. Our hearts are still in Yemen, and we will continue to seek ways to serve here in the months to come,” Caswell remarked. About 275 Yemenis, Americans and other internationals attended the service.
John Brady, who leads IMB work in northern Africa and the Middle East, said numerous people in Yemen recalled “Martha’s great passion for the Lord and the selfless way she gave herself to Yemenis, no matter what the cost.”
“Selfless” became the buzzword that surfaced for Myers again and again by those that knew her.
Evans noted that Myers gave every penny she had to the Yemeni people. In fact, she literally died without any money, he said, explaining that just before she was killed she had used all of her money to pay for a kidney transplant for a young Yemeni patient.
“She had no life of her own,” Evans said during the Montgomery memorial service. “It was of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Likening Myers’ faith and service to that of the Bible’s descriptions of the apostle Paul and the deacon Stephen, Evans quoted Philippians 1:21 which states, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” and 2 Timothy 4:7, which says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
“All three stayed on God’s course,” Evans said. “[Staying on course in His will] is not easy because it is a life of self-denial, but they never denied His will.”
Pat Harris, a close friend of Myers, said she got to know Myers in 2001 when she was home for the year due to technical problems returning to her missions field.
Myers wished every second she were back in Yemen, but Harris said Myers still allowed God to use her that year in Montgomery.
“I already had a walk with the Lord, but Martha … in her gentle and soft ways … showed me that I was not a selfless servant,” Harris said.
“She was a wonderful mentor,” Harris said. “She was so close to the Lord that she didn’t realize how much wisdom she had.”
Randy Braden, a deacon at Dalraida Baptist Church, fought back tears as he recalled Myers’ many visits with the group of boys in the Royal Ambassadors (RAs). “I served as RA counselor for a while, and I would get her to speak to them when she was home,” he said. “The kids loved her. She never wanted anything for herself. It was only what she could do for the people of Yemen,” Braden explained, noting Myers touched many lives at Dalraida. “Everything was just matter of fact with her. She was in harm’s way every day, and she wouldn’t have been anywhere else.”
In fact, Myers survived a carjacking and kidnapping by Muslim militants several years ago and never thought of leaving.
Ira Myers — also a member of Dalraida Baptist Church — said his daughter never blamed the Yemeni people for the kidnapping.
“She said they were after her vehicle, not her,” he explained. “The incident did not upset her.
“[Martha] had an insatiable compassion for people, especially people in need,” said Ira Myers.
Evans agreed and even joked at the memorial service in Montgomery that the only disappointing part of heaven for Myers will be that there are no people in need.
During a Jan. 2 memorial service held at Dauphin Way Baptist Church, Mobile, church member Lynette Granade said, “She was our Baptist version of Mother Teresa — that says it all.”
Granade and her husband, Jack, developed a relationship with Myers when she came to Mobile to do her medical residency at the University of South Alabama School of Medicine in the 1970s. She joined Dauphin Way and met the Granades.
“Over the years we stayed close friends, and our children just loved her too,” Lynette Granade said, noting Myers stayed with them numerous times throughout the years when she was on stateside assignment from Yemen.
The more than 250 people in attendance at the Mobile memorial service heard several testimonies about Myers including remarks from Jim Fisher, first vice chairman of the board of trustees for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo. Fisher, who is pastor of Sage Avenue Baptist Church, Mobile, represented the seminary where Myers studied before leaving for the missions field in 1978.
Myers was a 1967 graduate of Samford University, majoring in biology. She earned the doctor of medicine degree from the Medical College of Alabama at the University of Alabama in Birmingham in 1971.
It was while in Mobile as a medical resident that Myers first visited Yemen and fell in love with people and the country.
“I felt a special assurance from the Lord that this was where I would be and, single or not, I would be happy,” Myers reflected in a 1994 interview provided by the IMB.
“Yemen was where her heart was,” said Myers’ younger sister, Joanna Kingery. “She had become Yemeni, and they counted her as one of them. She was committed to them.”
Co-workers of Myers agreed. “She ate, lived and breathed Yemeni,” said IMB worker Cecilia Sharp, known to her friends as Cas. “She was Yemeni in every way, and that is what endeared her to them.”
And while Sharp recalls the many times Myers “broke the rules” in order to serve more people and work longer hours, she said it was obvious how much she loved the Yemeni people.
“She worked all the time and napped when she could,” Sharp said. “She lived on Coca-Colas and bread, and whatever the Yemeni fed her.”
Along with her overwhelming workload at the hospital, Myers also visited throughout the isolated villages surrounding Jibla and Ibb, where she lived. She immunized children and provided whatever medical care was needed in between patient rounds and surgeries.
Kingery, who visited Myers once in Yemen, said, “She was radiant over there. She loved the people, and they loved her.” One man called her “mother of all Yemeni,” Kingery recalled
Even if Myers had known she would be killed, Kingery believes she would have stayed anyway.
“She wouldn’t have done it any differently,” Kingery said, noting that Myers once said, “If I’m fortunate enough to be here when I die … .”
So, Kingery and the entire Myers family see it only fitting that she was buried in the country she loved so dearly.
“In Alabama, Martha’s grave would just be a grave.” Ira Myers said. “In Yemen, her grave is a testimony.”
The Yemeni people built a casket for Myers and Koehn, who had also requested to be buried in Yemen. “It was built with love by the people who loved her,” Kingery said.
Myers and Koehn were buried together Dec. 31 in one of only two Christian cemeteries in the country. The one where they were buried is located at the top of the 22-acre compound where Jibla Baptist Hospital sits.
During the funeral 40,000 Yemeni nationals gathered at the hospital and lined the street for a half-mile outside the hospital gates to pay their respects.
And in a country where professing faith in Jesus Christ could result in death, mourners sang “He Is Lord” in Arabic and recited the Lord’s Prayer.
“They had to be sensitive, but they were there,” said Jerry Rankin, president of the IMB, during the memorial service in Montgomery. “Something motivated them — Jesus Christ. … Our Father is being glorified in the lives of those who gave their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ,” Rankin said.
“The Yemeni people are grieving (along with her family here),” he said. “Could it be the gain (of death) will one day be the salvation of the people of Yemen?”
As those attending the Montgomery memorial service prepared to honor the Yemeni mourners by singing “He Is Lord,” Evans said, “[The faith of the missionaries who died] is becoming reality because they and others have given their lives to sharing the gospel.”
(Anthony Wade contributed)
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