Arlita Winston: Well after Mother and Daddy left Sumatra they had to flee though the jungles with all of us children with just the clothes on our backs. The Japanese were just a few hours behind and we caught the last ship going out of the harbor. And we went for three months dodging submarines on the high seas.

Lisa Barry: If you've been with us all week, you know we have been visiting with a very special guest. Elisabeth Elliot has been talking with her good friend Arlita Winston, who has a wonderful story to tell. Having been raised on the mission field, she's faced many challenging circumstances. Today on Gateway To Joy she'll tell us more about the early years with her family overseas and some of the dangers they faced. It's a true-life account of God's protection and power in the lives of a family committed to doing His will.

Whether overseas or right here, you too can live out the exciting plan God has for your life. Let's join Elisabeth and Arlita right now as they open another chapter in this exciting story.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." This is God's word to us. He loves us. He loves you and me and He wants us to know that "underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot delighted to have again today with me my friend Arlita Winston.

Arlita, you've been telling us some fascinating stories of your parents' experience as missionaries in Sumatra. Your mother had to learn some severe lessons of relinquishment. When her sister died and your mother was left with her sister's four children in addition to her own and she tried to do everything and thought she could fix everything, including her brother's broken heart over losing his wife. Your mother discovered that she couldn't do everything. It was a lesson, I'm sure, in death to her self-image perhaps, her pride.

Then you mentioned those four years when you were so far away from the Lord. Your mother came to your house and for two weeks washed and ironed and cooked and mopped floors and took care of your children, and not once said a word of admonishment to you about what you ought to be doing until she was about to say goodbye. What did she say?

Arlita Winston: She said, "Arlita, without a true death there can be no resurrection." And she knew I was dying inside, that I hadn't quite died. I was still holding on to a little bit and with that I gave in and relinquished everything to God and came back to Him totally. I wasn't able to talk to her about it just yet, but it was at that time when she said, "Arlita, without a true death there can be no resurrection."

Elisabeth Elliot: And I know what kind of resurrection there was in you, because I've known you for all these years. It's a transformed life. And through your life, Arlita, I know that God has produced fruit beyond anything that any of us could have imagined. Please carry on with your mother's missionary story.

Arlita Winston: Well after Mother and Daddy left Sumatra, they had to flee through the jungles with all of us children with just the clothes on our backs. The Japanese were very close behind us, just a few hours behind, and we caught the last ship going out of the harbor. We went for three months dodging submarines on the high seas without any radio contact with America. They didn't know we were even alive.

We dodged the submarines back and forth for these three months. Mother had the six children to take care of all those times during the air raids. Well they came back to America, but very shortly after that they went to Shanghai. There were new lessons for Mother to learn then. But it was here that I learned probably one of the most important lessons of my life.

The year was back in 1948. The newspapers were screaming that Shanghai would fall to the communists any day. My sister Andrea and I were accustomed to walking past sandbags piled high on the sidewalks, hundreds of nationalist's soldiers lining the streets between our school and our home. On this particular day we passed them standing at attention, their guns with their bayonets fastened to the ends were resting on their shoulders.

As we bounded through the front door Mother met us with such shinning eyes. "I have a surprise for you, but you'll have to discover it yourself," she said. We began looking all over the living room and the dining room for a clue and at last we found it tucked behind the folds of the draperies--it was a pair of tiny hand-crocheted booties. "A baby!" We both cried it at the same time and Mother's face was just beaming with joy. "Yes," she whispered, "we're going to have a baby."

Now there were already five of us, and Shanghai was just about to fall to the communists, bombs were falling everywhere. We found out years later that they had been so embarrassed when they discovered they were pregnant that they didn't let the families in America even know about the birth until after John Robert was born. They were afraid, I guess, that everyone would say, "What? A baby in the middle of the war, don't they have better sense than that."

Well, Shanghai did fall to the communists and so did the bombs. We had to vacate our home and move to another compound, and Mother kept mothering us. The week before her due date she decided she didn't want to be caught in an air raid when she went into labor and so she decided to just check into the hospital early. Meanwhile, Daddy had to be taken to the hospital with an acute attack of asthma, and two of my little brothers had to be hospitalized at the same time.

That left one little brother that was taken in by another missionary family, and Andrea and myself. We could stay at home with the cook. I will never, ever forget the day everyone came home bringing Baby John Robert. We raced home from school that afternoon, ran up the stairs two at a time bursting into the bedroom. A sudden hush gripped me as I shut the door on all the turmoil outside, and I saw Mother holding our new baby, calm, content.

Her face was just shining like the sun. I still remember the drapes were pulled to keep out the winter cold and she was dressed in this beautiful satin robe with roses spilling all over it, some ladies in America had given it to her. I can still remember the light on her dressing table spilling out all over. Then she handed Baby John to me. I still feel the weight in my arms as I nestled him and in that moment right then and there, there was born in me probably one of the strongest desires I have ever had in my life.

That was the desire to be a mother. Not just any kind of mother, but a mother who in the face of turmoil and war and devastation, could give birth and know for a certainty that it was a gift. It was a gift to celebrate and she knew her Lord and she could safely trust everything to Him in the midst of a war. She could trust everything to Him who had chosen her, and I wanted to be like her. I wanted to know her Lord that same way.

I don't know that she knew she was discipling her children at that time. When we talk about discipling she probably wouldn't have called it that, but what we children knew was that she and Daddy were plugged into that Vine that we were talking about in John 15. They were abiding in Him so that His life was flowing in her, giving her that joy unspeakable in the midst of turmoil.

Mother and Daddy taught us how to live and how to die. They also taught us how to die hundreds of deaths while we were living, to submit to this pruning process of the Lord. And there were times when He cut deep and sure. And in those times we learned acceptance, knowing that fruit would be the result. I know Mother often said she felt like she was of no use. Here they were in Shanghai as missionaries and Daddy was in the hospital, half her children were in the hospital, she was in the hospital giving birth--whatever good were they to the missionary cause?

Elisabeth Elliot: I'm so glad you told that part of the story, Arlita, because one of the things that distressed me most when I was a new missionary was the attrition rate. In other words, missionaries just leaving the field. I believe that 20 missionaries left the field in the first year that I was in Ecuador, which is a very small country. We didn't have thousands of missionaries.

Since then, I've done a lot of thinking about a missionary's expectations. I often say to perspective missionaries, "I can guarantee to you that the will of God is going to be different from what you thought. The will of God is going to be more difficult than what you thought, but I also want you to know--and I believe this with all my heart--that the will of God is always going to be more glorious than anything you ever thought."

Surely the will of God was very different for your parents than they had imagined. I suppose they thought they were going to be in Sumatra all their lives. Then they were in China. Carry on with this lesson of relinquishment that you've talked about.

Arlita Winston: While Mother was in the hospital giving birth to John, one of my little brothers was staying with a missionary family, the Wilhelms, in the Chinalin Mission. He was only five years old. Every single morning this little five year old would waken the entire family at the crack of dawn with his little high-pitched voice singing, "Trust in the Lord and don't despair, He is a friend so true, no matter what your troubles are, Jesus will see you through. Sing when the day is bright, sing in the darkest night, every day, all

the way, let us sing, sing, sing."

Now you have to understand the bombs were falling, most of the Westerners had fled, there were just a few of the families left. And this one family that had my little brother taking care of him were waiting to receive their visas so that they could get out. Every day, he would go down to the Consulate to see if he could get the visa for his 18-year-old son. If it didn't come through, their son would not be able to come with them to evacuate and the family would be separated.

He would waken every morning and hear this little voice, "Trust in the Lord and don't despair." He would get dressed and quickly run down to the Consulate to see if it had come through. Every day that little message from heaven came to his heart until the very day when the visa did come through.

Now Mother didn't know about this. She had been worried sick about the burden she was on the missionary community. It wasn't until we finally evacuated and we boarded the ship in the middle of the night when Mother ran into Mrs. Wilhelm and just hugged her and said, "We're on free soil, we're on free soil, we're free." Then she heard Mrs. Wilhelm tell her of how that little song had carried them through some of the darkest days before the light shone.

Lisa Barry: I guess it goes to show how God can use anything He wants to, to see His will fulfilled. Who would have thought He would use a song a little boy learned, to offer hope to a couple much older and more spiritually mature? Out of the mouth of babes. Maybe after listening to today's program you've whet your appetite for a missionary story.

Elisabeth Elliot's first husband, Jim, was martyred by the Auca Indians in the 1950's. In the book The Shadow of the Almighty Elisabeth tells the entire story of that experience with vivid description and spiritual insight. If you haven't heard the story before then I highly recommend it. We are making this resource available today when you ask for it. I'd like to suggest a donation of $11.00 for that.

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There's more to come on the Thursday edition of Gateway To Joy, so I hope you'll make it a point to join us then for more of Arlita's story. That's next time on Gateway To Joy.