In 1957, Joice’s church (1st Baptist, Pontiac, Michigan) “commissioned” us as their “missionaries.” I was not ordained and had never been to seminary, but both of us had served in her church. Some of its members gave us our first regular donation.
It happened while we were in Mexico attending Jungle Camp. On our monthly financial report from Wycliffe, we noticed a gift from the First Baptist church of Pontiac, Michigan. The church supported us throughout all our years in PNG and even during our assignment to teach at our school in Dallas. When we retired in 2014, they prolonged their giving with a small quarterly gift up until 2024. By then, the church had become part of a larger megachurch, and few knew us. When they needed to remove us from their list of missionaries, they gave us a generous departing gift (a golden parachute?).
My church in rural Pennsylvania also supported us for many years. However, while teaching at Dallas, we were informed that the church “[holds] the position that the Authorized KJV is the Bible that has been preserved for the English-speaking people,” and that we were clearly not in line with that position because we used many other versions of the Bible personally and in translation. There was no reasoning about the matter, and that “Wycliffe” had nothing to do with what they considered heretical “Wycliff" [sic] commentaries.
Bad judgments seem to be best healed by forgiveness, not argument.
Now a bit more about missionaries and money, sometimes a touchy subject. Some mission agencies pay their members with salaries. WBT did not. We were required to “raise” (like from the dead) our monthly “support,” determined by a “quota” set by WBT based on factors like travel, medical, equipment, supplies, children, and, much later. retirement. The slogan we were given by WBT was “full information without solicitation.” In other words, we were not to ask for money. We could tell those who were interested what we were doing and, if they wished, they could contribute towards our monthly quota. We followed that principle all our lives.
As young missionaries, we did not think about retirement. We thought we would die “with our boots on” and admired some of the German Lutheran missionaries who, when they arrived in New Guinea, stored their coffins under their houses. We were naïve, enthusiastic, and thought that the overseas missionary calling would be our life experience.
Early missionaries, like Hudson Taylor, who served in China in the mid to late 1800’s believed that borrowing money was a contradiction to the Bible. This idea, of course, is foreign to our generation of missionaries and the credit card is available and a crutch for all of us. I was Director of our organization in PNG for several years and one of the perpetual problems was to help members who were short of funds.
God encouraged us during our 5 years in Papua New Guinea. An instance happened, one that Joice recounted many times, when we were living in the village of Muli, a 4 to 5 hour walk (depending on weather) from the nearest airstrip. Once a week we would send carriers to pick up mail or supplies, and they would also visit the Catholic mission to buy eggs for us. We had a small Qantas carry-on bag into which Joice put an empty egg carton. However, on one occasion, one of the boys returned with a pineapple in the bag and the egg container and eggs under his arms. The eggs had broken and spoiled the egg carton. Joice was annoyed, Her method had worked fine for weeks, but now there was an egg bomb. A bit later, a second carrier arrived, carrying our mail. Among the contents was a package that Joice’s mother had sent three months earlier. On top of the package was an empty egg carton and, when asked later, her mother knew nothing about it. But it reminded us that, even in very small ways, God was encouraging us.
During our first term Kirk was born. The Kewa people were delighted because they did not consider us married until we had children. It was a difficult birth for Joice at a small jungle hospital and, thankfully, a “visiting” forceps specialist extracted Kirk, who still bears small indents on his forehead as proof of his unusual entry into the world.
Joice needed time to recover from the pregnancy, so we lived at our center for several months. During that time, Harland Kerr and I were asked to go to Rabaul, on the Island of New Britain, and prepare a language learning manual on the Tolai language. Tolai was an Austronesian language, which I knew nothing about, but Harland and his wife had worked in the Philippines for two years and studied an Austronesian language. We completed the task in 6 weeks, with much help from a Methodist missionary who was fluent in Tolai. At Ukarumpa I finished the editing, and the manual was published by the government in 1962.
It was also in 1962 that our Branch Director and his family left for Canada on a short furlough, and I was asked to be the Acting Director while they were gone. It was indeed an “act” because I know nothing about directing a mission. I learned on the job and realized that I could not possibly be prepared for all I would do as an overseas missionary.
Karl Franklin
