Epilogue

“Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on.”
—Philippians 3:13

“One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.”
—Sophocles

For more than 47 years, it was my privilege to be married to the most wonderful man I have ever known. Ted was a man unusually blessed by God. He devoted his entire life to the Savior he loved, to his family and to an ever-widening circle of friends, supporters, former schoolmates, Marine buddies and missionaries all over the world. He regularly witnessed to unbelievers, sharing his personal faith even with complete strangers. He had an uncanny ability to get things done and desired to complete all that God had intended for his life’s work.

Ted led others with a vision enlarged by his gift of faith, and he used his spiritual gifts of exhortation and giving to encourage others in their work for the Lord. He genuinely and deeply loved people, and in return many felt that he was their best friend. To me, Ted was my greatest model of love, tenderness, prayer, faith, encouragement and gentle godly wisdom. I could always count on him to know the right thing to do and to say, often interspersed with timely humor to lighten a difficult situation. His love and guidance are still a great loss to me.

Ted’s final words—“I want to finish well”—marked his last months of life. In the weeks leading up to his passing, Ted worked daily to help a team of Ghanaian missionaries (serving with Pioneers–Africa) to raise funds to start their ministry among the 350,000 Banda/Ligbi people. On the day Ted was buried, the final funds were pledged to support the team and provide a vehicle for their ministry.

Ted saw God open the way before him wherever he traveled. Now it was my turn to face the challenges of life and ministry and “keep climbing,” without him by my side, so that I, too, might finish well. Taking my first “baby steps,” in 2004, I traveled to Ghana with our son John to visit the team serving the Banda/Ligbi.

The Banda and Ligbi are two closely related animistic-Muslim tribal peoples who live as small-scale subsistence farmers in a very remote part of Ghana. Their villages were a few days’ walk from the nearest small town, so I was thankful for the four-wheel drive vehicle that took us hours beyond where the paved road ended and a dirt trail began. Our joy was great as we learned that several churches were being planted—one even meeting in the shade of the village’s massive jacaranda tree! One of the tribal chiefs gave us a royal welcome as we were ushered into the walled courtyard outside his home, with hundreds of villagers gathered to the sound of the beating drums. When we asked him what the needs of the people were, the chief explained that the children of the surrounding villages would leave to attend secondary school in the big city. Some would never return. He appealed to Pioneers to help them establish a secondary school to be shared by the villages. In the months that followed, we saw the Lord provide the funds to establish this school and to open doors for the gospel among these needy people. Later, the Lord led Dr. Margaret Mensah, formerly on our team in Mauritania, to demonstrate the compassion of Christ even further through the Banda Health Centre, a church-planting focused health ministry.

While in Ghana, I attended Pioneers–Africa’s “Desert Streams Consultation on Reaching Arab North Africa” held in the capital of Accra. Fifty like-minded mission and church leaders from Africa and around the world attended and pledged themselves to work toward a plan for sending teams to the countries of Libya, Sudan and Mauritania. I was thrilled, as I knew Ted would be, to anticipate the potential of an African missionary force empowered to assume their God-given place in the Great Commission.

The following year, I traveled to Afghanistan, one of the world’s least developed and least reached countries, enmeshed in a seemingly unending war. I was shocked by what I saw—the rubble of bullet-riddled mud brick buildings, beggars and signs of poverty everywhere. Only a few adult men seemed to be around. Years of war had decimated their numbers.

I was captivated by the young children and their burkha-clad mothers who suffered exclusion and oppression as their unique, God-created beauty was hidden behind the veils. I was especially touched by the widows who, like me, would live on without their life partners. Amid the overwhelming needs, I was encouraged to see the gospel taking root through the witness of our first workers and teams there. Pioneers missionary women were helping the Afghani women pursue their education and gain work skills. Since Ted’s death, God has impressed on me more than ever before the need to devote myself to prayer for missionaries such as these who serve in incredibly challenging circumstances. They are my heroes.

Almost immediately following Ted’s passing, I moved back to Orlando, Florida, to be near the Pioneers-USA office and my four children and 16 grandchildren. I remain involved in various programs and events, and especially enjoy getting to know our new missionary candidates during our candidate orientation programs. This year, we will see about 200 new candidates attend our orientation in the USA, and many others through mobilization offices around the world. My move was also timely as I joined my daughter, Arlene, in a new Pioneers ministry. Now called Latitudes, this business-ministry venture provides an income for many struggling and disadvantaged people from unreached groups around the world by marketing indigenous, handmade crafts, furniture and direct-trade coffee. Latitudes continues to grow, with a shop on our Orlando campus, a warehouse and shop in Texas, an online store (latitudestore.com), and craft showings at churches and special events around the country. I find joy in knowing that needy people, including persecuted believers, experience some economic relief as their craft provides a basic income. In addition, the gospel gains a hearing in the marketplace as people are helped in the name of Jesus.

Our Finest Hour

The world of missions is changing rapidly. More than 300 Pioneers teams now serve in more than 100 countries, helping to plant the seed of the gospel in challenging environments. A growing number of our workers are serving in marketplace roles, sharing their faith and making disciples while meeting the health, economic, educational and agricultural needs of unreached communities. We work in collaboration with thousands of churches and organizations that are part of the Great Commission community, helping to ensure that their workers serve effectively. Here in the U.S., Pioneers serves as a partner to more than 3,000 mission-minded churches who are committed to obeying Christ’s mandate to take the saving message of the gospel to the nations.

I imagine that Ted would have been amazed to see the way in which God has continued to multiply the impact of our small steps of faith years ago. Today, 40 years later, Pioneers is still helping to “blaze new paths” in mission—in global partnership, church planting, mobilization of new workers, financial stewardship and innovative strategies. Our overarching goal is to honor the Lord and His mission in all that we do.

Winston Churchill once said:

To each there comes in his or her lifetime a special moment when they are tapped on the shoulder and offered the opportunity to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talent given by the Lord, and the strength to do it. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.

When Ted and I answered God’s call four decades ago, we did so without the missionary training, degrees and experience that one would normally expect of someone qualified to start a new mission agency. We ventured down this path by faith, just two ordinary people with little idea where God would take us and no master plan to guide us. God brought around us many wonderful people with similar vision. Together, we clung solely to God’s promises. Today, I marvel at all the Lord has done in shaping the original vision, increasing the numbers of workers and expanding the work in ways we never dreamed possible.

Hebrews 11 lists many of the ordinary men and women of faith who responded to the shoulder tap when God came calling. They were faithful to the Faithful One, believing that God Himself would enable them to do the extraordinary things He asked of them. Among those mentioned is Moses, who spent 80 years being prepared by God for a job that would last 40. It seems much of Ted’s life and mine were spent getting ready for what seems in retrospect like a brief season. At the outset of Pioneers, everything we did may have appeared to be small and insignificant to the casual observer. Yet Ted and I learned that if we are faithful in doing what God wants in that little thing, then God can make it great for His glory, and for our blessing and the blessing of countless others. This is the same lesson and principle that our missionaries learn and practice around the world in the hard places among the unreached.

A man or woman who walks with God creates a pathway for others to follow. I wonder if you will join us on this path of faith to take the gospel to the ends of the earth in obedience to Christ’s last command. For years, simple words on a wooden plaque that hung on the wall of our home reminded me, Ted and our four children that—

God never asks about
Our ability or our inability
But about our availability.

When God comes calling in your life, will you answer His call and make yourself available, despite how you might feel about your inabilities and your past mistakes? Whatever your journey or career successes, is there something more that God has planned for you in the area of mission work to touch the nations and peoples of our world? Now may be the time to step out in faith and discover His calling. Do so without further delay. The Living God who calls you to serve Him—however big or however small the assignment, whether at home or in some foreign land—will give you all that’s needed to fulfill that call.

The Great Story

The Greek playwright, Sophocles, once wrote that “one must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.” In these evening years of my life I not only see how splendid the day has been, but by faith, I see the first light of the morning sun rising on a new day of mission work to be done in the far-off corners of the world. The great challenge now and for the next generation is to carry Christ’s vision for the unreached forward to completion—with unceasing prayer and Spirit-empowered creativity, energy and boldness.

Jesus is coming again soon  . . .  and the best is yet to be! C.S. Lewis captured something of the wonder of the eternal joy that awaits us when he concluded the drama of apocalypse and redemption in volume seven of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle:

<p class="long-quote">For us, this is the end of all the stories . . . But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures . . . had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.</p>

Soli Deo Gloria – To God Alone Be the Glory!

Peggy Fletcher
Orlando, Florida, July 2020