I was brought up in Vancouver, Canada in God- ordained surroundings, graduating at an early age as a school teacher. When about to apply for my first position as a teacher in the British Columbia schools, missionaries from the Dominican Republic, Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Peterkin, came to our city on furlough, making known their need of a teacher for their children.
To make a long story short, I was commended by my home assembly as a teacher and helper to the missionaries, leaving home at 19 years of age.
Brother John Jenner had also been commended to the work in the Dominican Republic as a full-time worker from Victoria, BC. John and I got together to drive across the continent to New York in an old Overland touring car. The trip ended in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I was rushed to the hospital with a ruptured appendix. In those days before antibiotics one out of ten recovered from that condition. The Lord’s continued faithfulness was manifested in His healing hand so that four months later, on February 8, 1928, I landed in Santo Domingo, ostensibly to teach some missionary children for a suggested two years.
In my mind I had concluded that I was willing to sacrifice that space of time from my worldly ambitions and aims. There was no vision of a missionary care; no audible call from on high. Yet the two years became 64 in happy, soul-satisfying proclamation of heaven’s Good News to Dominican men and women, boys and girls. In great faithfulness the Lord thrust me out in spite of myself and my carnal motives, sustaining an unworthy servant for such an extended time.
At the end of this term on the field as a teacher of the missionaries’ children, I made reservation on a small freighter to take me to New York. I was in Puerto Plata on the north coast, waiting to sail the following day, when I discovered that an exit permit was needed to sail, obtainable only in the capital on the south coast. Communication by telegram got the permit on a vehicle which would reach the interior city of Santiago that evening. This meant that we had to make the trip across the mountains to find the car or chauffeur. Where in that city could they be found?
After stopping for prayer outside the city, we drove down the street to see that the first car parked beside the road was the one we wanted! So a very happy passenger boarded the ship the next morning as it sailed for the United States.
Previous to this, besides teaching the missionary children, I had taken the position as English teacher for two hours a day in the local Dominican high school. However at that time the government was unable to pay teachers’ salaries and was eleven months in arrears. Yet out of a blue sky, I received a check for the salary owed me. No one else in the whole country received their back pay. Now I had enough to pay my fare to Buffalo, New York, where I had arranged to meet and marry my engaged sweetheart, Dorothy Taylor.
It was His provision at that time, and the Lord supplied every other need for that wedding in the Assembly Hall in Buffalo, from which Dorothy’s mother, Nellie Atkinson, later Mrs. Cuthbert Taylor, had been commended many years previously to Angola.
Even a summer cottage in the Muskoka Lake District of northern Ontario was provided for a month long honeymoon. The “Hand that moves the universe” was clearly evident in such special provisions for poor missionaries.
But if every day were cloudless, a desert would be produced. On our last Sunday evening of the honeymoon, we had gone to the dear friends’ house who had loaned us the cottage. Suddenly someone appeared at the door, shouting, “The cottage is on fire!”
It was too late to save anything. All I had in my pocket was the change from a ten dollar bill resulting from a purchase that morning. Everything—many wedding presents, a good sum in cash (the result of monetary presents) went up in smoke. All Dorothy and I could whisper to each other as we watched helplessly was, “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Job learned the great lesson: “I know that Thou canst do everything.” The Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. The poor missionaries who had a fire on their honeymoon also learned it. We had arranged to sail for Santo Domingo to be there for Christmas. It seemed impossible to buy everything to replace the loss in the time available. But the money was supplied abundantly by the One who took away and then restored. Sail we did, and on time, with every loss replaced: Glory to His name!
Years later, I was invited to perform the wedding ceremony for the daughter of a son in the faith, Mariano and Pearl Gonzalez, in Chicago. After the wedding I took very ill and was rushed to the emergency ward in a nearby hospital. The diagnosis was that a heart operation was urgently needed. When told the operation would cost over $35,000, I told them I didn’t have such a sum. So they moved me to the county hospital; there the operation would cost less, they said. However, after the operation was performed, and I had experienced the Lord’s power to heal, I was told that the cost would be the same sum of $35,000. But in the meantime that sum had been provided by the One who fulfills His promise, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory.”
Written by Ian Rathie