Convicted in San Francisco
By the time I was 8, I’d already figured out that my home life was not like most of the kids at school. Marijuana plants grew openly in our Mississippi home, drugs and alcohol were freely used, and lots of physical and verbal abuse went on between my young and immature mother and step-dad. My birth father, whose life was riddled with cocaine and alcohol addiction, committed suicide that same year.
My mom’s own extremely abusive upbringing overflowed into my childhood. There were many situations that I never should have seen or been a part of. And by the time I was 12, there was no place left in my heart for morality, conscience, or authority.
But that same year, my mother sought help for her addictions through Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous. She got sober and never looked back. She met a man at the meetings who was also determined to do the same. The two of them fell in love and began the long road of recovery together.
Everyone was happy but me. At 13, my behavior at home and school was at an all-time low. But then my mom found out about a Christian boarding school in Mississippi called French Camp Academy. It was for children from broken homes who had needs that their families weren’t able to meet. She sent me there the summer before ninth grade.
The boarding school was like no place I had ever been before. The people always talked about God and this person named Jesus. There was structure, rules, responsibility and love like I’d never seen. It was a shock to be thrown into such a different environment. But due to behavior issues, I was kicked out within a year.
By now, my mom was happy in her new relationship and enjoying not having kids at home anymore. So she arranged for me to live with an aunt in Southern Mississippi who was willing to tackle my behavior problems. But I quickly made friends with the wrong kids at school. Within a year, I was drinking, smoking marijuana, and getting into trouble. My aunt had to ask me to leave.
My mom tried to get the Christian boarding school to take me back. I even wrote a letter and begged to come back and they allowed me to re-enroll. I knew my options were running out if I got kicked out again, so I tried very hard to walk the line and obey the rules.
In God’s awesome foresight and plan, I "clicked" with the dorm parents I was placed with this time. My assigned bedroom was across the hall from two Christian girls that I actually liked and enjoyed spending time with. God used these important relationships and His convicting Word to show me my sin and emptiness and bring me to Himself. I trusted Christ as my Savior at 16.
My dorm mom discipled me and I started spending time with other Christian students and growing. Then a few months later, I went back to visit my aunt during a school vacation. I re-connected with my old friends and began doing the same things I used to do with them. I went back to the boarding school ashamed and upset with myself.
Still being a new believer, I figured that I was a failure at being a Christian and gave up trying. I broke the rules and was kicked out again. This time they told my mom, "We’ve done everything we can for Melissa."
My mom tried her best but I just ran away and got involved with drugs and drinking. I was eventually arrested and sent to drug rehab. When I was released, my mother just let me go to begin life on my own. I was 17.
I moved to a college town in northern Mississippi and met a group of people I’d never heard of before: Deadheads -- avid listeners and followers of the ’60s music group the Grateful Dead. I quickly adopted their way of life -- a hippy-like existence, embracing and studying New Age teachings. I felt that these new friends were the answer to all of my problems. I had always been eager to find love and acceptance "just as I am." I thought I’d finally found it.
Along with adopting their peace, love, and happiness philosophy, I also adopted all the hard drugs that came with the scene. Soon strung out, broke and homeless, my friends and I decided to leave everything behind and follow the Grateful Dead members across America to every concert on their tour’s schedule. I became a Deadhead.
But even while living in VW buses with my friends, I couldn’t escape the ever-present feeling of loneliness. If I was sober for even a short time, I was miserable. And no matter how much this new "family" of mine talked about "peace," I never found it.
The truth is we were all living a lie. But the difference between myself and my hippie friends was that I knew I had experienced true peace on that night when I believed that Jesus died for my sins. Ever since then, I’d been trying to recreate it on my own -- and failing miserably.
A year later, I woke up homeless in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco. During the day we would sit on the street asking for spare change and getting food off the tops of dumpsters. At night we’d spend the money trying to get high. But through it all, God continued to pursue me. I always had this nagging feeling I was not living the life He had for me. I would lay awake at night remembering the intimacy I had experienced with God as a new believer and I longed for that fellowship again. But I felt trapped.
Finally after another year and a half of unrelenting conviction that I couldn’t keep on going the way I was, I made a life-changing decision. I got on a Greyhound bus and headed back to Mississippi. I was leaving my old way of life behind me for good.
Once home, I moved back in with my mom and started mending our relationship. She was and still is sober to this day. The man she had met just before I left is now my step-dad, whom I love very much.
I began to be discipled again and grew in my faith. God reassured me over and over through reading His Word that His forgiveness is forever and limitless. He assured me that I truly had become His child way back at the boarding school, and that it was me who had wandered -- not Him.
A few months later, a Christian friend invited me to see a place called jungle camp at the Mississippi New Tribes Mission training center. That’s where I first heard about what NTM missionaries do. And I definitely felt a kinship with the way the missionary candidates were living.
Jungle camp was a period of their training where they went out into the woods and built homes for themselves, canned their own food, and basically had a mock run at living the way they would on the mission field. As I looked at their "camp site," I couldn’t help but remember the many camp sites I had lived at not so long ago with all my hippie friends. But these missionaries were doing it for an eternal purpose. At that moment I knew God may want to use me as a missionary too.
So I took the first step and called the New Tribes Bible Institute in Jackson, Michigan. When I found out that enrollment is open to any Christian, regardless of their past or background, and that the cost is minimal compared to other schools, I knew it was the school for me.
Going to New Tribes Bible Institute was the most enriching experience of my life. I learned so much about God’s love letter to me -- His Word. Pouring over it every single day in class changed me from the inside out.
NTBI was also where I first learned that tribal people all around the world are living in spiritual darkness. I guess I thought there was electricity and churches in every part of the world by then. And one day in chapel, God used Romans 10:13-14 to convict me personally that I needed to be a part of reaching these people who have no opportunity to hear of Jesus’ sacrificial death on their behalf. Even though I felt inadequate and was scared to think about going to the mission field as a single woman, God strengthened my heart and gave me peace and courage to move ahead in that direction.
But as I found out later, God didn’t want me going as a single woman after all. I met and fell in love with Dave Williamson, a fellow student who was also headed into tribal missions. We finished the NTM missionary training program together as a married couple.
During the language part of the NTM missionary training program, where we learn the tools of how to learn an unwritten tribal language, it became apparent that I have a God-given ability for language learning. I never would have known that I had this gift if I hadn’t been willing to trust God and serve Him on the foreign mission field. I am convinced more than ever that He gives us talents and abilities so that we can use them to glorify Him.
It’s been a long road and a great adventure with God. And now we’re finally living in a tribe. We work with the Arimtap people of the Asia-Pacific region. They live in a very remote area and have had very little contact with the outside world. We’re currently in the throes of learning both the Arimtap culture and their Nagi language, which has never been learned by outsiders before.
Living in this tribe for a year now, we have seen for ourselves the fearful lives these people lead. Everything they do is dictated by their animistic (spirit worship) belief system. They live to appease the spirits and every event in life (according to their beliefs) involves the spirit world. They are hopeless, fearful and lost.
We are excited as we look to the future and to the day that we will finally be able to present God’s message of love and forgiveness to the Arimtap people. And it’s a message I truly long to tell because I know personally and deeply how very true it is. I lived it.
My mom’s own extremely abusive upbringing overflowed into my childhood. There were many situations that I never should have seen or been a part of. And by the time I was 12, there was no place left in my heart for morality, conscience, or authority.
But that same year, my mother sought help for her addictions through Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous. She got sober and never looked back. She met a man at the meetings who was also determined to do the same. The two of them fell in love and began the long road of recovery together.
Everyone was happy but me. At 13, my behavior at home and school was at an all-time low. But then my mom found out about a Christian boarding school in Mississippi called French Camp Academy. It was for children from broken homes who had needs that their families weren’t able to meet. She sent me there the summer before ninth grade.
The boarding school was like no place I had ever been before. The people always talked about God and this person named Jesus. There was structure, rules, responsibility and love like I’d never seen. It was a shock to be thrown into such a different environment. But due to behavior issues, I was kicked out within a year.
By now, my mom was happy in her new relationship and enjoying not having kids at home anymore. So she arranged for me to live with an aunt in Southern Mississippi who was willing to tackle my behavior problems. But I quickly made friends with the wrong kids at school. Within a year, I was drinking, smoking marijuana, and getting into trouble. My aunt had to ask me to leave.
My mom tried to get the Christian boarding school to take me back. I even wrote a letter and begged to come back and they allowed me to re-enroll. I knew my options were running out if I got kicked out again, so I tried very hard to walk the line and obey the rules.
In God’s awesome foresight and plan, I "clicked" with the dorm parents I was placed with this time. My assigned bedroom was across the hall from two Christian girls that I actually liked and enjoyed spending time with. God used these important relationships and His convicting Word to show me my sin and emptiness and bring me to Himself. I trusted Christ as my Savior at 16.
My dorm mom discipled me and I started spending time with other Christian students and growing. Then a few months later, I went back to visit my aunt during a school vacation. I re-connected with my old friends and began doing the same things I used to do with them. I went back to the boarding school ashamed and upset with myself.
Still being a new believer, I figured that I was a failure at being a Christian and gave up trying. I broke the rules and was kicked out again. This time they told my mom, "We’ve done everything we can for Melissa."
My mom tried her best but I just ran away and got involved with drugs and drinking. I was eventually arrested and sent to drug rehab. When I was released, my mother just let me go to begin life on my own. I was 17.
I moved to a college town in northern Mississippi and met a group of people I’d never heard of before: Deadheads -- avid listeners and followers of the ’60s music group the Grateful Dead. I quickly adopted their way of life -- a hippy-like existence, embracing and studying New Age teachings. I felt that these new friends were the answer to all of my problems. I had always been eager to find love and acceptance "just as I am." I thought I’d finally found it.
Along with adopting their peace, love, and happiness philosophy, I also adopted all the hard drugs that came with the scene. Soon strung out, broke and homeless, my friends and I decided to leave everything behind and follow the Grateful Dead members across America to every concert on their tour’s schedule. I became a Deadhead.
But even while living in VW buses with my friends, I couldn’t escape the ever-present feeling of loneliness. If I was sober for even a short time, I was miserable. And no matter how much this new "family" of mine talked about "peace," I never found it.
The truth is we were all living a lie. But the difference between myself and my hippie friends was that I knew I had experienced true peace on that night when I believed that Jesus died for my sins. Ever since then, I’d been trying to recreate it on my own -- and failing miserably.
A year later, I woke up homeless in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco. During the day we would sit on the street asking for spare change and getting food off the tops of dumpsters. At night we’d spend the money trying to get high. But through it all, God continued to pursue me. I always had this nagging feeling I was not living the life He had for me. I would lay awake at night remembering the intimacy I had experienced with God as a new believer and I longed for that fellowship again. But I felt trapped.
Finally after another year and a half of unrelenting conviction that I couldn’t keep on going the way I was, I made a life-changing decision. I got on a Greyhound bus and headed back to Mississippi. I was leaving my old way of life behind me for good.
Once home, I moved back in with my mom and started mending our relationship. She was and still is sober to this day. The man she had met just before I left is now my step-dad, whom I love very much.
I began to be discipled again and grew in my faith. God reassured me over and over through reading His Word that His forgiveness is forever and limitless. He assured me that I truly had become His child way back at the boarding school, and that it was me who had wandered -- not Him.
A few months later, a Christian friend invited me to see a place called jungle camp at the Mississippi New Tribes Mission training center. That’s where I first heard about what NTM missionaries do. And I definitely felt a kinship with the way the missionary candidates were living.
Jungle camp was a period of their training where they went out into the woods and built homes for themselves, canned their own food, and basically had a mock run at living the way they would on the mission field. As I looked at their "camp site," I couldn’t help but remember the many camp sites I had lived at not so long ago with all my hippie friends. But these missionaries were doing it for an eternal purpose. At that moment I knew God may want to use me as a missionary too.
So I took the first step and called the New Tribes Bible Institute in Jackson, Michigan. When I found out that enrollment is open to any Christian, regardless of their past or background, and that the cost is minimal compared to other schools, I knew it was the school for me.
Going to New Tribes Bible Institute was the most enriching experience of my life. I learned so much about God’s love letter to me -- His Word. Pouring over it every single day in class changed me from the inside out.
NTBI was also where I first learned that tribal people all around the world are living in spiritual darkness. I guess I thought there was electricity and churches in every part of the world by then. And one day in chapel, God used Romans 10:13-14 to convict me personally that I needed to be a part of reaching these people who have no opportunity to hear of Jesus’ sacrificial death on their behalf. Even though I felt inadequate and was scared to think about going to the mission field as a single woman, God strengthened my heart and gave me peace and courage to move ahead in that direction.
But as I found out later, God didn’t want me going as a single woman after all. I met and fell in love with Dave Williamson, a fellow student who was also headed into tribal missions. We finished the NTM missionary training program together as a married couple.
During the language part of the NTM missionary training program, where we learn the tools of how to learn an unwritten tribal language, it became apparent that I have a God-given ability for language learning. I never would have known that I had this gift if I hadn’t been willing to trust God and serve Him on the foreign mission field. I am convinced more than ever that He gives us talents and abilities so that we can use them to glorify Him.
It’s been a long road and a great adventure with God. And now we’re finally living in a tribe. We work with the Arimtap people of the Asia-Pacific region. They live in a very remote area and have had very little contact with the outside world. We’re currently in the throes of learning both the Arimtap culture and their Nagi language, which has never been learned by outsiders before.
Living in this tribe for a year now, we have seen for ourselves the fearful lives these people lead. Everything they do is dictated by their animistic (spirit worship) belief system. They live to appease the spirits and every event in life (according to their beliefs) involves the spirit world. They are hopeless, fearful and lost.
We are excited as we look to the future and to the day that we will finally be able to present God’s message of love and forgiveness to the Arimtap people. And it’s a message I truly long to tell because I know personally and deeply how very true it is. I lived it.