We are thrilled and honored to have Margaret Stringer as a contributor to our Missions page.  Margaret served 40 years and 3 months as a Missionary to Indonesia, and was greatly used of the Lord there.  You will love her story.

I am convinced that there has never been a missionary go to the field who wanted to be a missionary more than I did.

God saved me when I was 11 years old and I dedicated my life to be a missionary when I was 12. I had never seen a missionary as our church didn't have those odd creatures visit our church, and am sure that nobody really expected that I really would do it, but they had not taken God into account.

I used to cry myself to sleep in high school begging God to let me be a missionary. I wanted to go to the most primitive people in the world – only I didn't know just where that was.

After graduating from high school, I went to Tennessee Temple University where I learned a lot about missions and met scads of missionaries from all sorts of ministries and from many different places. I never heard a dull missionary speaker and wanted to return to their fields with all of them.

While waiting for God to show me “my place” I went home for vacation where I heard a missionary from my church speak about a place way off in what was then Dutch New Guinea. He showed slides from a village named Senggo of little black boys wearing bright red shorts which had been made by the missionary's wife. The people were very primitive – in the Stone Age culture – and still practicing headhunting and cannibalism.

When I saw his slides it seemed as if God said, “That is going to be your place.”

In July, 1964 I went to “my place” which at that time had become a part of Indonesia and was Irian Barat, Indonesia – now Irian Jaya or West Papua, Indonesia. After about 10 years in the Mimika tribe the Mission moved me to the village of Senggo in the Citak tribe. There I met the very ones who had worn the little red shorts and some of them became my language helpers and the first church leaders.

During my 40 years and 3 months there I never once doubted that I was there in God's will. God is so good to let us forget the difficult times and remember the good ones. I look back on my time there and wish I had been a better missionary, but would do it again in a minute.

We talk a lot about “surrendering to do God's will”. I believe that we should be standing in line hoping and praying that God will choose us to do something special for Him. He chooses us not because we are someone special but because of His grace and mercy and when He chooses us to so something for Him we have been highly honored and should thank Him every day for that privilege.

He gave me the almost unbelievable privilege of working in the Citak tribe on the southern coast of Irian Jaya where I had the joy of reducing the unwritten language to writing and translating the New Testament into two languages – Citak and Tamnim.

I got to be the first white person to go into an area where the people were still practicing headhunting and cannibalism. Just before coming home in October I got to participate in the church dedication in one of those villages and hear Boar, the village chief and former headhunter, say, “Thank you for coming. Thank you for telling us how to go to Heaven. You brought us out of the darkness into the light.”

In future articles, I will share some of those great and awesome experiences of being God's unworthy ambassador in Irian Jaya.

Margaret Stringer

Language & Culture
Margaret Stringer

I arrived in what was then West Irian, Indonesia in July, 1964 all gung ho, 24 years old and ready to win the world and about as excited as anyone could be about finally becoming one of those weird and wonderful creatures – a missionary.

My first house was an all metal building that had not been lived in for several years, nor had it been repaired or cleaned around. The result was torn screens all around, and LOTS of large jungle rats. I caught 7 in one night and loved every minute of it. I was a missionary, and missionaries have rats! The smell was a different story. Nothing would take away the rat smell except to scrub and paint over it.

I also had scads of spiders and those lovely small lizards which inhabit all the houses. Fortunately they “usually” stay pretty much out of your way – on the ceiling, etc. – and only once in a while fall off, causing lots of excitement if they fall on your head or table! Once you get use to their droppings all over the house, it isn't so bad. On the plus side, they eat mosquitoes.

Life was great until I went out to interact with those wonderful people whom I had come to win. I couldn't understand a word they said, and of course, I couldn't say a word in Indonesian. I felt like they were making fun of my ignorance. Later, I learned that I was correct! That causes one to develop real paranoia and a fear of opening one's mouth. One lady – who remained my good friend the entire 40+ years I was there – decided to take it on herself to show extraordinary patience and began to help me learn the Indonesian language.

The Irianese people are so very patient with us. Once I was talking with the village chief – “kepala” – and called him “kelapa” – coconut. That was just one of many embarrassing moments learning to communicate in the Indonesian language. I just never could remember the difference in “ rambut” ‘hair', and “ rumput” ‘grass'. On more than one occasion I got strange looks from the kids when I told them to “get the machete and go out and cut the “ rambut” in the yard”.

Indonesian culture learning was also challenging. It is very rude to use your left hand. I am left handed. When you walk in front of someone, you much bend over from the waist, put your right hand out in front of you, and walk in front of them feeling like a first class idiot. Finally, that became so normal and now I find it difficult to walk in the upright position in front of someone in the U.S.

Just when I was beginning to feel comfortable in the Indonesian language and culture I had to start all over in another language – Mimika – and finally in the Citak language.

Loving the people we minister to as missionaries is an absolute necessity, and the key to loving them is to get a good understanding of their culture, their view of the world, how they think about things and why.

I worked for 30 years in the Citak tribe in the rain forest on the south coast of Irian Jaya . Their language was not written so in order to learn it, I had to make an alphabet, write it down, figure out the grammar, and make a dictionary.

That story will come next.

Reality Sets In

Margaret Stringer

When I was a young naive aspiring missionary doing serious deputation in preparation to becoming a “real live missionary”, I was in a Missions Conference in Macon, Ga. One of the “experienced” missionaries requested serious prayer for discouragement, disappointments homesickness, etc. etc. I was shocked! A missionary being discouraged and homesick? No way! In fact, when it was my time to speak I said something like this, “You don't need to pray for me about stuff like that.” An older missionary pulled me aside and gently informed me that I had better not keep saying stuff like that because one day reality would set in. Great advice.

I remember that now as being one of the most stupid statements I have ever made!

That love for jungle rats and their accompanying odor in my house soon turned into intense dislike. Those gecko droppings all over the house became a real nuisance. Being made fun of because I couldn't speak the language became really irritating. Those people I loved sometimes got on my nerves. The heat and humidity was oppressive. Waiting for weeks for a letter from home was difficult. And I became so very homesick!

Now what? I remembered, “God called me.” Just after I had raised my support, packed my barrels and was all ready to go to the field, Indonesia took over the island from Holland and my visa request was rejected! The Indonesian authorities said that they did not want any more missionaries there. After three months of frustration, tears and praying, one night I was listening to the song, “So Send I You”. They were singing the verse, “So send I you, to leave your life's ambition.” Wow! My life's ambition was to be a missionary. Was God asking me to leave that ambition? Was all this just my own burning desire, or was it God's will? It appeared that it was not God's will for me to go, and I was not prepared to accept that. After one of the most difficult struggles of my life, I finally told God, “You know that I want to go. I will always want to go. But if You don't want me to go, please don't let me go.”

The next morning a cable arrived saying that the Indonesian government was reconsidering my visa and about three weeks later the visa was granted.

So, I remembered, “God called me. I am here in His will, and I will stay here no matter what, until I know that He wants me to go home.” For 40 years and three months God allowed me to remain on the field, and I never once doubted that I was there in God's will. When I became discouraged and wanted to quit I knew without a doubt that if I quit I would be out of God's will. He often reminded me of the time that I had begged Him to allow me to be a missionary. I was always aware of the awesome privilege it is to serve Him. He is SO good!

Next time – reducing an unwritten language to writing.

What is a Missionary?

Before I went to the field people would ask, “What do you plan to do on the mission field?” I usually found that a bit irritating and wanted to say, “What is a missionary supposed to do on the field?” I know that they meant. Would I be a secretary, bookkeeper, nurse, etc? I said, “I will tell people about Jesus.” That was my dream – learn the language, love the people, and tell them about Jesus.

I arrived all gung-ho with my dreams in the forefront of my mind. At Senggo I found people all excited about our being there and ready to hear what we had to say. There was just one BIG problem – the language. There was no language school I could go to and learn the Citak language. There was no grammar book or dictionary that I could use to learn it. In fact, I could not even go to someone else who had learned it as no one outside the Citak tribe had ever learned it.

There we were with the most wonderful news in the world dying to tell it to receptive people, but were not able to talk to them.

So, my ministry was to reduce the language to writing. I had several young men who had gone away to another village to school and had picked up just a bit of Indonesian. We began with that and accumulated hundreds of words and worked out their alphabet.

Then we faced the challenge of figuring out their grammar which was extremely complicated. How in the world did primitive people come up with such a complicated language? It involved years of hard work to work out the grammar rules and make a dictionary.

How do you like this word? “ Nandapauapauatikimatupmutmebesna.”

Nanda = Something happened at one specific time in the remote past.

pau = Verb – “to hit”

pauapaua = reduplication. “to hit over and over/repetitive”

tiki = Direction indicating auxiliary. “ go inside”

ma = Causative “caused something to go inside”

tup = Position indicating auxiliary. “above/overhead”:

m = Causative “caused something to be overhead”

ut = Time of day morpheme for the remote past tense. “morning”

mebes = Subject/object indicator for remote past tense. 3rd person plural subject, 2 nd person singular object “they” subject, “him” object

na = Indirect relating suffix “I didn't see it,”

If you haven't figured it out, it means, “They nailed Him to the cross.”

So, telling people about Jesus is just a bit more complicated that it would be in our American society.

In my next article, I will tell about how we went about telling primitive people about Jesus for the first time.

Margaret Stringer