God's Secret Weapon

September 1994

At the Feast

"Na'e Yan Meeli, na'e Yan Meeli Gel." It seemed everyone was going out of their way to greet me with this new name, looking so pleased when they used it.

"Hello, Bad Legs. Hello, Bad Legs Woman."

Polio at age five had left me with an abnormal gait.

"But what," I pondered "is the real significance of my new name?"

The Kimyals are a tribe of about 8000 people tucked in the high interior mountains of Irian Jaya, Indonesia (the Indonesian half of New Guinea). They live in tiny round huts in tightly packed villages. Theirs is a face-to-face culture with a face-to-face attitude. You always know exactly where you stand with them. Though short fused, cruel, and fierce at times, mostly they are friendly, animated, delightful people. They need little excuse to turn routine into an event to relish.

Siud chose my "welcome back" feast to announce my new name. Having lived among the Kimyals for several years, I had recently returned from a break in the U.S. to spend several more years at Korupun.

One day I found my chance to ask Siud, "My legs are bad for sure, but what is the source-thought of naming me 'Bad Legs'?"

"Your bad legs are important to us. In our villages people with bad legs can't get out of this valley. But even with your bad legs God brought you all the way here to give us God's Word. People with good legs have come and not stayed. Yet you Bad Legs, God has helped you stay with us. He did all this because He loves us so much. "Bad Legs. What a great name!

A day during my first year at Korupun came to mind. That day I was sitting with some small boys at the end of the airstrip, looking down into the deep river gorge below us. Putting to use the linguistic skills of learning a previously unanalyzed language, I tried to solve some points of grammar by testing with use and listening. I talked about my original Polio.

"The doctors told my parents, 'Somagdoblag.' ('She might die')."

"Somagdobso," one of the boys corrected me.

"Y-yes," I said, not sure if that really was what I meant.  Switching from conversationalist to analyst, after some probing I discovered that the boys were right. "Somagdobso" means "She will likely die." Many children with polio symptoms as severe as mine had died.

"But you didn't," the boys continued, "Because God wanted you to come here and give us His Word." What simple insight. Far greater insight than that of all those people who told me, while I was growing up and training, that becoming a missionary was an impossible goal. They didn't understand. Siud and those boys did: my bad legs weren't a hindrance. They were a tool - God's tool to demonstrate to the Kimyals how very, very much He loved them.

All those people who had told me that becoming a missionary was an impossible goal didn't understand. My bad legs aren't a hindrance, they are a tool. At Korupun, they were God's tool demonstrating to the Kimyals how very, very much He loved them.

"Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, 'You are my servant, . . . in whom I will display my splendor."
(Isaiah 49:1-3)

Though Post-Polio Syndrome finally forced me to leave my special people, my weak body remains a clever disguise: God's tool. His secret weapon.