Ruth Ann Arthur’s Testimony
This is the first time I’ve been to Family Week for ten years, and it is a joy to be here. We were on the field for all of those years except 2011 when Dave was too ill to come.Psalm 68:19 says “Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.” I stand before you today to tell you that I am the recipient of a wonderful life from the Lord. The Lord has blessed us, has been so good to us, and I just thank Him that He has done so many things for us.
I came to know the Lord when I was 13 years old. My parents decided to get a divorce, and I couldn’t believe anybody who had been married for 14 years would divorce. My Grandmother saw that we came to the town where she lived. She was in a little fundamental Baptist church, and she took us there. It was no time until I realized that I needed Christ as my Savior, and I received Him into my life.
I had a young pastor who believed in really discipling his people. He would give me a list of verses and tell me to learn them and come to his home the next week and say the verses. I did that for weeks. I still remember those verses today. So, I thank the Lord for my first pastor.
When I was about 14 or 15, and we were having a missions conference, the Lord spoke to my heart about serving him, and I submitted then and told the Lord I’d go and be a missionary wherever He wanted me to go. I met Dave several years later at Bob Jones University, and one of the first things he said to me was “I’m going to be a missionary,” so we had that connection. We later married, and the Lord gave us 48 years on the field. I just thank the Lord – you couldn’t ask for a better life. If you want to know who has had a good life, I can tell you – I’ve had a wonderful life. But you know life is not without difficulties.
We had difficulties, of course. It wouldn’t be life without difficulties, would it? I guess one of the biggest difficulties we had was with the land situation on Pohnpei. There were squatters there and people in the neighborhood who wanted the land. They resisted when the Governor told us that we could have that land. They harassed us; threw rocks at our building and on the roof and doors. Pastor Wingard remembers that. They threw a rock when he was visiting, and just missed him as he closed the door. We had all sorts of problems.
I remember one day when several men from the neighborhood and their clan came into the yard and called for Dave to come out. Dave went out there and faced probably 15 men with machetes. They held the machetes in a threatening way. I didn’t know what to do so I stood up by our door, which was on the second floor. I got my camera and took pictures. I don’t know if that intimidated them or not! We faced this sort of thing for several years. It took us 12 years to get the lease for the land the Governor had promised us before we got there. These were very difficult times. I think my lowest point was there on Pohnpei. After so much harassment and after seeing how Dave was threatened, I came to the place one day when I thought I needed to get a large piece of cardboard and a marker, and put it out by the street and say “I give up; you can have this land.” Of course the Lord didn’t let me do that, and I didn’t tell Dave because I was ashamed, and I didn’t want to discourage him. I think one of the greatest things in a marriage is that most of the time you both aren’t down at the same time. The other one can encourage you, and Dave encouraged me plenty of times as I tried to encourage him.
Then in 2004, we faced something else. Dave was diagnosed with leukemia. The doctor told him he had about one and a half to three years to live. I remember Dave and I stood in the hospital room hugging each other and saying, “The Lord is in control.” As we cried together that day we were determined to do what we could for the illness, but to remember that the Lord was in control.
I Samuel 30:6 says, “But David encouraged himself in the Lord.” The key is “in the Lord.” We can encourage ourselves sometimes, but when it is really important, we need to encourage ourselves in the Lord. The doctor had said one and a half to three years, but God gave Dave nine and a half years. Most of that time was spent on the field, which is what Dave wanted to do. He wanted to be there serving. He actually went back in January 2012, when the doctor told him he could only stay there for three months. He told me he wasn’t coming back in three months. He did return to the U.S. in November 2012, when he got an infection, but he came back to Pohnpei. The Lord was still in control.
Dave died in September 2013, and once again I acknowledged “the Lord is in control.” We must live our lives like that. You’ll always have difficulties, and if you haven’t been to the field yet, just take my word for it – you’re going to have difficulties. Nehemiah says “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” I choose the Lord, and I choose joy.
The theme for this year’s Family Fellowship Week was “Choosing Joy.” It was taken from Habakkuk 3:17-18. The theme’s passage speaks of figs without blooms, vines without fruit, olives without oil, fields without meat, and flocks and herds who don’t return to their place of keeping. These conditions are enough to make anyone despair. However, Habakkuk states, “Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation.”
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