Missionary Maverick

Robert Goddard

Description

This account of forty years of missionary work in Paraguay and preparation for this career in the USA is a career and testimony to the faithfulness of God. It is a very informative description of the practical obstacles and challenges of missionary work.

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Biography
• Memoir
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Stratton Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781648954733
• Langue: English

Extrait

Robert C. Goddard

 

 
MISSIONARY MAVERICK
Copyright © 2021 Robert Goddard
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Stratton Press Publishing
831 N Tatnall Street Suite M #188,
Wilmington, DE 19801
www.stratton-press.com
1-888-323-7009
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in the work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-64895-472-6
ISBN (Ebook): 978-1-64895-473-3
 
Printed in the United States of America

 
Contents
Preface
Roots
Growing Pains
School Days
Move to Montana
In the CCCs
Back to the Farm
A Dream Come True
Wood Camp
Unsettled
Nevada
Logger
Drafted
Home Again
Nebraska
Operations Snowbound
Taste of Prosperity
Boot Camp
On Fire Control
Mavericks
Paraguay Bound
With the Lenguas
The Store
Testing and Trials
Pilots and Planes
Limaty
Furlough #1
With the Maccas
Ayore Contact
Move to Cerro Leon
Chief Uejai
The Ayores Go to Town
Changes
A Teaching Furlough
The Promised Land
New Beginnings
Colombia
Language School and Survey Trips
Transitions
Move to Pira
Trip to the Philippines
Golden Wedding Interlude
To a Dear Wife on Our Fiftieth Anniversary
The Last Roundup
 
 
Preface
My children and grandchildren have been requesting that I write my life story. They seem to think that there is something of value to be gained from it.
So much has been written that it seems superfluous to add more, but I realize that each individual life is unique and God in His grace deals differently with us all according to our needs and capabilities. I see my life as a very small splash in a very large pond, and though the waves are small, they keep moving in an ever-widening circle. If anything of value has been accomplished through my life, it is because of His grace and kindness to me and my family.
I selected the title Missionary Maverick for this book because we were unclaimed by any church or organization in our early days as missionaries, a good deal like an unbranded calf on the range who is such an undesirable specimen that no one took the trouble to slap his brand on it! I have tried in this account to tell it as it was, and thanks to my wife’s diary, I have been able to keep my facts and dates accurate and in chronological order. Some suggested that I should let someone else write my history, but I’ve noticed a tendency of those who write such things to glorify those about whom they are writing. I hope in this account to present the facts as I remember them and not always trying to keep my halo well adjusted!
R.C.G.
 
Roots
Both sets of my grandparents took homesteads in Central Nebraska. My parental grandfather, George Washington Goddard, located about a mile west of the small village of Weissert in the 1800s. In 1887, Grandfather Goddard died when he was only in his thirties, leaving Grandma with five young children. Being unable to manage the farm or to provide enough food to feed her family, she gave the three youngest children to neighbor friends and moved to Broken Bow where she obtained work in a hotel.
The next to the youngest child was my father who was two and a half years old, and he was given to a family named Skinner who in turn gave him to a childless couple, Bill and Hattie Menary. They treated Father well, and though they were not Christians, they sent him to Sunday school on an old white horse. In the process of time, he was saved in a revival meeting at the age of seventeen years, and though he was not well taught, he believed all the Bible. He never preached to us kids, but we all had that same confidence in the Word of God. My father struggled for years with the idea that he had to meet certain standards to retain his salvation, and many times, he felt he was lost because of falling into some sin. This struggle caused him to become very depressed to the point that at one time, he related to me years later, he told God, “I’m yours whether you want me or not.”
My maternal grandparents were Fabius and Louisa Mills. They moved to Nebraska from Seneca, Wisconsin, in a covered wagon in 1878. Grandfather was born in Ohio on December 10, 1845. His parents as well as Grandmother’s parents came from England. He received his primary education in local schools and later attended an academy in Pennsylvania. He farmed on his own, taught school for twelve years, and served two years as county superintendent of schools in Crawford County, Wisconsin.
Hearing that there was good land open for homesteading in Nebraska, he took his wife and four children in a covered wagon pulled by his only team of horses, with the milk cow tied to the rear of the wagon and they headed for Nebraska. He had only sixty dollars in his pocket; they stopped at farmhouses along the way to buy bread, potatoes, and other vegetables. At Des Moines, Iowa, he had to trade off one of his horses which had gone lame for a smaller one. They came to Council Bluffs and crossed the Missouri River on a railroad car. After a six-week trip, they arrived in York County, Nebraska, where Grandma had relatives. Grandfather left the family there with relatives and went to Custer County to prepare a home for them on the land he had homestead, which was one and a half miles north of Westerville. He built a sod house where they lived for twelve years and then a frame house took its place.
Hail and drought plagued the new land, and after six years, only two crops were harvested. Since Grandfather had a good education and had studied law, he passed his Nebraska bar exams, and between law cases and selling insurance, the family made out better than some. Seventeen children were born to the family. My mother related an interesting incident which happened before; she said, “Father called Mother to come see the first field of corn. She had just put supper on the table. As she passed the high chair, her baby held out her hands, so Mother picked her up. As she walked out the door, there was a crash. The ridgepole had come down on the high chair and the table!” Sod houses had roofs made of timber with sod laid on top, so they were very heavy. In rainy season, grass and sometimes flowers grew on the roof.
Floors were made of hard-packed clay and could only be swept and occasionally sprinkled to settle the dust. Children went to school in a sod schoolhouse with no desks, only planks on which to sit and to write. Some of the students were sixteen to twenty years old because of having to work on the farm and missing part of the school year. They, being too big for the teacher to handle, sometimes caused a discipline problem in the school. One school went through three teachers in one term, so they hired a man teacher the next year. On the first day of school, he called all the students in from recess, and when they were seated, he laid his six-shooter on the desk and announced that there would be order that year, and there was!
It would be very difficult for the younger generation to feature the hardships of pioneer life in Nebraska in those early days. The added problems of drought, blizzards, hail, and floods plus a tornado now and then resulted in only the most hardy being able to survive. The following is an excerpt from a letter written by one of my relatives, Abigail Rosie Mills Emerson, to her daughter Bessie and son-in-law in August 1885:
 
Dear son and daughter:
I now take the present time to write you a letter. It is a cold, wet rainy day. Lennie and I are all alone, and all the firewood we have is what hay we can pull out of the roof of the stable inside where it is dry. Now don’t go pitying me for I don’t need it. I have a good warm coat on, enough to eat, and I would not exchange places with anybody if I could. I have not seen Molly yet since I came home; she was going to stay two weeks, then if I want her, she will come. If I keep as well as I am now, I can get along, if she will come and do the washing once in two weeks. If I let her go down to Hamilton to work, we shall have to get a washing machine. Father sent a letter to the county clerk concerning the bounty on wolf scalps. He got two letters last night, one from the county clerk, a pretty saucy one too, stating that he was not paying the debts of the state of Nebraska and, if the state was owing him anything on wolf scalps, to get it himself or authorize someone who is buying up claims. Our pieplant nearly all spoiled; if we’d cut off the leaves, it would have been all right, but the leaves wilted and decayed, and where they touched the pieplant, it rotted and was fly-blown. Where the leaves did not touch it, it was good and fresh. Mrs. Harris gave me a little white duck and then Mrs. Hoetzel gave us a black one for company; we have them yet. They’re getting along nicely, and the pigs are doing first rate. The horses eat