Our mission suggested that my husband, Robert, and I spend two years in the States to earn higher degrees and then return to continue our teaching ministry at the Bible institute and seminary in the Philippines. Since both of us had prepared for that and had reveled in the opportunity to multiply ourselves by preparing young people to carry on the task, we heartily consented..There was no other place on earth that we would rather be than in the classroom in the Philippines! Our two sons, ages 11 and 13, happily complied since they liked their "foreign home".
My EL SHADDAI sustained me at the time of my husband’s death and He has done so ever since. God promised that He would never leave nor forsake His own (Heb.13:5), and He has lived up to His promise just as we would expect. However, such a sudden change in my plans made me wonder how God would lead. I did not question "why". The clay never asks the potter that question. Romans 9:20 speaks clearly to this point: "...who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus?" (cf. Dan. 4:35; Jer. 18:6.)
The logical thing for me to do was to continue what I had started – the completion of my Master’s degree in educational psychology as well as a teaching degree in art . Psalms 33: 18-22 was my assurance. My JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH was there all the time! The door opened for me to set up an art department and conduct educational counseling in a Christian school in Kansas! His ways are past finding out! JEHOVAH-JIREH provided. Paul assures us in Philippians 4:19 that "my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus."
The mission invited me to return to my teaching position in the Philippines with my two sons. That was the plan, so I thought. Again, the Lord had another plan. "In [her] heart a [woman] plans [her] ways, but the Lord determines [her] steps" Proverbs 16:9. The wife of Dr. John C. Whitcomb of Winona Lake, Indiana, had been ill for several years. The Lord called her to Himself, leaving him with four children. The story unfolds in a spectacular way which I will share by bits and pieces in my "Windows for Women." God developed a dramatic series of events that is second to none. He always does ALL things well. (The word "all" throughout the Bible makes an enlightening study).
God had plans for a widower with four young children who had suffered long–term trauma, and a widow with two young children who experienced an over–night trauma.
(To be continued)
