REEFLECTING ON THE JOURNEY (26)

In 1990, we thought we had left PNG permanently, but God had plans for us to return, so during several months from 2002-2004 we went back to help with the revision of the West Kewa NT and the translation of the East Kewa NT. God brings things into our lives that can completely change our directions.

It happened this way: Joice and I were working at the Wicliffe and SIL center at Dallas and we were quite happy in our jobs. However, in about the year 2000 a package arrived and was on my desk. Someone had brought it from Papua New Guinea and inside were several notebooks and a letter from a Papua New Guinea man whom I had met but did not know well. He explained that the notebooks were handwritten copies of parts of the West Kewa New Testament that he and a committee had revised. He said that they were having some difficulties and questions, and he wondered if we could come back to help them.

We went back intermittently to PNG for 3 years, staying several months each time, and when in the U.S. we interacted regularly by internet and a computer program that SIL had developed. I gave the primary Kewa translator, Wopa Eka, a computer and when we weren’t in PNG we worked by internet, using a program the SIL computer department had devised.

Although Wopa did not have Internet connections in his village, he would go some distance to a town or occasionally to our center at Ukarumpa and we would relay his work to me.

While we were at Ukarumpa for our visit in 2003, a woman from the East Kewa asked us to consider helping with a translation for that language, where we had lived intermittently from 1958-1962. She contacted several pastors and I began the arduous task of converting the West Kewa NT to the East Kewa. It took two years, but in 2005 Kirk and I attended the dedication ceremony for the East Kewa in the town of Kagua, where we had dedicated the first West Kewa edition in 1973.

We did not return to the Kewa area after 2005, although I have had some limited contact with the people since then—mainly a nephew of Wopa Eka’s, who is a policeman.

Joice and I worked at our Dallas center school (now called Dallas International University) from 2005 until 2014, when we moved to Waco. 

As I have outlined in some detail, Joice was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, for which I she had treatment in Houston from 2013-2018, until she was declared “cancer free.”

Moving to Waco was not an easy decision: we had scores of friends and colleagues there in  Duncanville, where we also owned a house. We would be leaving that and embarking on a new (and final) venture.

Mike and Karol found as a townhouse in Waco. and we moved in March of 2014. We quickly found a church and began making new friends. I joined a men’s Bible study, Joice took part in women’s meetings, and we were warmly cared for by our family.

We knew that we were in the “winter” era of our lives and that either of us could leave the other behind in death. We prepared ourselves by praying and enjoying our lives together.

Of course, no one knew that Covid would hit in 2019 and we would be very uncertain of the future, including our health. However, from 2018, when she was declared “cancer free” until Joice died in 2021, we did enjoy our lives. Cancer was no longer an issue, but, with Covid, we had limited personal contacts as long as we wore our masks and had our shots. We often ate outside on the back veranda at Karol and Mike’s.

Few people are completely prepared for dying and death and when it comes suddenly, as it did for Joice, it is more difficult.

She had some urinary and heart problems—nothing serious we were assured—but they quickly esculated and she was taken to the emergency room of the hospital. She never returned home and in two weeks, on March 22, 2021, was in heaven, which she had prepared for all her earthly life. She was meeting Jesus, whom she loved.

Our family had a memorial service for her in April, and it was beautiful to sense the spirit of her life and observe the nature of her witness and death.

Of course, it was devastating to me—part of me was cut off, amputated, and it has taken me years to get “used to” living alone.

Missionaries go through the same personal loss and trauma as anyone else. We (or at least I) are not super-spiritual, and depend every day upon God for grace, mercy and peace.

Karl Franklin