Hidden Heroes #4 is finally finished! This first chapter sets the stage for the great work of God that took place there in the 1800s.

Chapter 1: Keeper of the Stories

In the land of Burma, the Burmans ruled. With their education and their fine clothes and their grand books, they controlled the land.

All the tribes in the hill country lived in fear of the Burmans, fear of capture and slavery. One of the hill tribes, the Karens, kept moving from place to place as their only hope of safety.

Every place they moved, they carried their ancient stories with them. Stories of despair. Stories of hope.

One night, around a small campfire, an old man sat cross legged, his eyes darting from one face to another. A teenage boy named Thobew hurried to sit next to his uncle. The dark-skinned people, young and old, long black hair flowing, jostled for position around the flames.

Parents, children, young people, all gazed at the old man in awe. He was the Keeper of the Stories, and the Stories must be passed on. His high, clear voice began.

After Yuwah made Thanai and Ew, He put them in a garden. It was more beautiful than any garden of our world. It was full of bananas, lychees, pomelos, durians, and pomegranates.

Then Yuwah said to them, “I have given you this beautiful garden. You will tend it. I will visit you here, and walk and talk with you. Pray to Me each day.”

Yuwah said, “Seven kinds of fruit I have put in this garden. Eat freely of all of them. Except one. If you eat of that one,” Yuwah said, “you will die.”

Thanai and Ew had many children and many grandchildren. When Yuwah came to visit them and walk with them, all their children and grandchildren sang praises to Yuwah.

Then, Mukawli came.

Mukawli said to the man and woman, “Why are you here? What do you eat?”

Thanai and Ew said, “Our Father Yuwah put us here. We eat all the delicious fruit He has given us. We want for nothing.”

But Mukawli wished to trap them. He said, “Let me see your fruit.”

Thanai and Ew showed Mukawli everything. They described the color and texture and juiciness of the durian and the banana and the pomelo.

But then they came to the forbidden tree. They said, “We know not about this fruit, because our Father Yuwah has told us we must not eat it, or we will die.”

Mukawli said, “O my children, your Father Yuwah does not love you. He doesn’t want you to have the richest and sweetest fruit of all. He wants to keep it from you because then you will have powers like Him! You will be able to fly up to heaven or go down into the depths of the earth!”

Thanai and Ew received Mukawli’s words with open ears. Then Mukawli said, “O my children, my heart is not like the heart of Yuwah. I love you and I want to see you prosper. I will always speak the truth to you. If you eat that fruit, you will prosper.”

Thanai answered Mukawli and said, “I will not eat, because Yuwah has forbidden it,” and he turned and walked away. But Ew stayed, to listen more. Mukawli spoke more fair words to her of the wonders of the life to come if Ew would but eat that magical fruit. “My daughter,” he said, “I seek to persuade you because I love you.”

Finally, Ew reached out her hand and took the fruit and ate it

Mukawli could hardly contain his delight, and he trembled as he spoke his next words. He said, “Woman you must give the fruit to your husband. Tell him of the wonders of its sweetness. Tell him of the wonders of its powers.”

Not long after, Ew convinced Thanai to eat.  Then the woman cried, “My husband has eaten the fruit, O Mukawli!” 

Then Mukawli laughed and laughed and laughed. “I have conquered you! You listened to my voice and obeyed me, and now you are my slaves! You must obey me till the end!”

The next morning Yuwah came to visit, to walk, and to receive praises. But all was silent.

Yuwah said, “Thanai! Ew! You have eaten of the forbidden fruit!” The man and the woman came out and hung their heads in shame before Yuwah. They had no words.

“You have disobeyed my commands,” Yuwah said. “You will grow old. You will fall ill. You will die.” Then Yuwah went away forever.

Soon one of the children of the man and woman became ill. Thanai and Ew knew they could not reach Yuwah, because He had departed from them forever. So they went to Mukawli, because now he was their master.

“What shall we do for our sick child, Mukawli?” they asked.

 Mukawli threw back his head and laughed. “You are my slaves!” he cried out. “Now you must offer sacrifices to my servants, the nats. They are the ones who cause sicknesses, and accidents too. They will control the weather and the seasons and the wild animals and war and life and death and everything that happens to you. If you want peace in your lives, you must offer sacrifices to the nats. Now, if you want to know what to do for anything, anything in your life, you must learn to read the bones of the jungle fowl and the dung of the pig. To make war, to marry, to plant, to travel. Do nothing without finding out what the nats command.  That is the only way to keep the nats from destroying you. That is the only way to peace.”

The old man’s last words lingered in the air.

Throughout the story, the listeners had been reacting with strong emotions. Fear at the mention of Mukawli. Anger at Ew’s betrayal. Hopelessness at their enslavement to Mukawli.

But the old man’s last words trembled before them like the shout of a mocking nat. Because there was never peace.

As young Thobew listened, he knew as well as the old man that nats could never be trusted any more than their master Mukawli. That’s why his people had to learn all those magic words and rituals.  That’s why he, Thobew, tried to scare the nats away by wearing a tiger’s tooth and a bear’s claw.

A hatred rose up inside him. He hated those nats. He hated Mukawli. He hated this slavery. And then he ducked his head. His eyes darted here and there, fearful lest the nats discover his unformed thoughts.

The boy raised his eyes to the countless stars glittering in the blackness. That’s where Yuwah had gone—somewhere beyond those stars.

“Yuwah is lost to us!” The old man cried out, raising his arms in despair.

“Not forever, grandfather,” a younger man answered respectfully. “The pale brother will come.”

“Yes, someday.” The old man nodded, clinging to their only hope. “The pale brother will come to the Karen nation, with the white book. He will show us the way back to Yuwah. Someday.”

The small circle of listeners gazed into the dying embers. They despaired.

They hoped.

My editor tells me that over 43,000 copies have sold in that twenty-five year span. I’m happy.

So I’m reminiscing. If you’ve ever seen a humble green workbook corresponding to the old fourth grade reader published by Bob Jones University Press, then maybe somewhere in that workbook you saw a very short paragraph about Amy Carmichael’s work in Japan (she was there for a brief time before she went to India, where she spent the rest of her life).

I wrote that paragraph. And while I was researching that lady, I thought, “I’d like to write a book about her sometime.” (Truth to tell, I’d wanted to write a complete book since I was young, but every time I tried to undertake one, it had crashed and burned before entering completion. Maybe that was because I never could figure out how to make those mysteries interesting and realistic.)

Not long after I indulged that little thought, an announcement was made at “The Press,” as we called it. No longer would they publish textbooks alone. Now they would accept unsolicited submissions for trade books—that is, the kind of books you check out of the library.

That was it. I borrowed a biography of Amy Carmichael from a friend (the one by Frank Houghton) and began researching and then writing.

I wrote late at night at the Press, on the computers there, because we didn’t own one—after all, PCs were new and super expensive. (One of my friends got an Apple, tiny and novel, and several of us played around with its absolutely stunning ability to change type styles.) I typed away on that dark green screen with the flourescent green letters, and read printouts on huge, long perforated papers with holes running down the sides.

I was excited. It was loads of fun, writing about Amy’s adventerous childhood. After all, I had devoured the Childhood of Famous Americans series when I was young, and several biographies of great Christians, at my mother’s behest, when I was a teenager. And Amy reminded me of Anne of Green Gables—always getting into trouble by accident. I loved writing about her passion for taking the gospel to lost souls, in England, in Japan, in India.

But somewhere along the course of the writing, two things happened. I entered the middle of Amy’s life, which just sort of went along and went along, as lives do sometimes in the middle.

And I became pregnant. I was sick, really sick. Throwing up many times a day.

So here I was. Awash in misery and nausea and boredom. I had begun books so many times. I had never finished one. It seemed like, well, there was a pattern established, and maybe this book would fall into the same deep, dark hole.

For weeks, maybe months, I stayed home sick from work. On finally returning, I had no interest in Amy Carmichael. I just wanted to survive my pregnancy.

But a very persistent co-worker, Jeri Massi, who also wrote books, took it upon herself to become my own personal . . . nag.

“Becky Henry!” she said. (That was my name in those days.) “How’s that book coming along?” or “Where is that book? You need to finish that book.”

If it hadn’t been for Jeri, it probably wouldn’t have happened. Out of sheer shame, I went back to my manuscript. I sighed heavily over the middle of Amy Carmichael’s life. The sagging middle.

Did I pray over it? I would love to tell you that of course I did. But I’ll be honest and say I can’t remember. What I do remember is that I realized I could skip the middle altogether and go right to the end, where, in my mind, her life seemed to become interesting again.

Somewhere in there, we got our own computer. An IBM PC Jr. In the evening after supper my husband and I played “Pong.” Then, late at night, I wrote.

My daughter Katy was born. I held her in my lap and nursed her while I typed.

And then the middle of the book was born. The middle of Amy’s life sprang to life for me. I wrote “Debates and Devils” and “A Festival and a Funeral,” displaying one episode from each of these crucial parts of the culture of India, to represent the constant challenges Amy faced in each aspect of ministry, as she sought to point people all around her to the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

The book was finished, and was accepted and published before Katy turned a year old. Though  fifteen years passed before I wrote another book (other pregnancies intervened, child-raising, and homeschooling), With Daring Faith was the beginning of my true-adventure adventures. Thanks, Jeri. Thank you, Lord. May Your Name be praised.

It may not be much, but it’s a start. . . .

At the request of some students and educators, I’ve begun a Resources page (you can see the new link above). So far I’ve worked on the newest book, the one that’s fresh in my mind, pulling together internet resources to enhance the learning experience. They include such things as a National Geographic article from 1941 when the highland tribal people groups of (then) Dutch New Guinea were first discovered, to the World Team video made in 2010 that led me to write Witness Men.

It’s only a start, I know. But my publisher and I are putting our heads together for more ideas, so stay tuned!

Here’s a book worth reading. Don Richardson may use a hefty dose of imagination in explaining the “Unknown God” in the book of Acts, but his prose shines when he begins to describe modern-day tribal people and the legends and traditions that hark back to a great God whom they think they cannot know.

For these people—and we’re not talking about one or two isolated tribes, but many, many tribal groups scattered in different continents all over the world—when the true God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, is shown to be the God they’ve been waiting for through untold generations, the people embrace Christianity en masse. Mr. Richardson tells us a number of stories in detail, some from his own experiences in Irian Jaya (now called Papua, Indonesia), but also from Africa, the Indian subcontinent, east Asia, and more. And since the first publication of this book in 1981 (it has gone through multiple printings in its thirty years) even more missionaries have told him about evidence in the cultures where they have worked.

This book is especially meaningful to me, because when I first read it almost thirty years ago, I was inspired to want . . . someday .  . . to have the privilege of writing some of these amazing stories for children to read.

Years later, in 2007, an old cassette tape was placed in my hands that held some amazing stories that eventually resulted in a book. And then another set of stories came to me, resulting in another book. And then a video. And, though I didn’t know it at first, I came to discover that the video led me to the area where that man had worked who had originally inspired me, so many years ago.

Don Richardson’s mission work—the same work he talks about in Eternity in Their Hearts—is recounted in Witness Men: Stories of God at Work in Papua, Indonesia. It is a privilege to me to let others know about the ministry of the man who influenced me so long ago.