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CHAPTER EIGHT
JIM BERRYHILL "Friendship is rare on earth. It means identity in thought and heart and spirit" (Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dodd, Mead and Co., p. 7).
Texas gained itself a new little cowboy when Jim Berryhill entered the world on February 23, 1948, and my good friend was born, although I didn't know it then. Jim was born into a Christian home. He never knew his father, who died when Jim was just six-months-old. Jim's mother remarried when Jim was three, and his step dad loved Jim like his own son. The family attended church together in Dallas.
In his early years Jim enjoyed a stable Christian home life. He trusted Jesus as Saviour at the young age of eight. Jim enjoyed both Sunday school and church, but when he was around 12 years old, his family stopped attending services. Jim stopped going to church when his family did, and he entered his teens a rebellious young man. Of those years Jim confesses, "I had no spiritual desires at all."
Every good Texas cowboy has a horse, and what is a horse without a girl? It was at a riding competition that Jim met his Jeanne, and it didn't take him long to notice her vibrant appearance. When the competition ended the sky looked like it was brewing an ominous storm, so Jim offered to put Jeanne's horse into his trailer and to give her a ride home. She accepted, and they began dating.
Jeanne's home life was very unlike Jim's. The family struggled under financial and emotional stress. Her parents were having problems. Her dad wanted to move to California. Jeanne's father asked her, "Do you want to live with your mother or with me?"
Jeanne wanted to run. How could she choose between the parents she loved? Escape looked good to her troubled young eyes.
Jim and Jeanne planned their scheme and lied to carry it out. They married secretly in Mexico, but on the way home their car broke down, and they were discovered. Their parents insisted they remarry legally in Texas.
Jeanne soon found herself expecting a baby. As invariably happens when children assume adult responsibilities, the road ahead was long and tough for the two newly-weds. Jim's attitude complicated matters. "I'm a grown-up man now," he thought to himself. "I don't need to obey anyone, not my parents, not my teachers, not even God!"
Problems multiplied. Jeanne was the first to feel spiritual hunger. She found comfort in church, but Jim insulted the visitors from church who came to see her and even refused to let them enter the house. Rebellion ate at Jim's heart, until God began gently calling him back home. Jim says of those days, "Had it not been for God dealing with me, our marriage would have broken up for sure."
One night, when Jim was spending the usual amount of hours drinking well past bedtime, he suddenly realized, "Hey, I am utterly miserable. This is no life for me. I am running away from God and being a rotten testimony. I belong to God! What kind of Christian am I, anyway?" The next morning Jim shook Jeanne awake. "Honey," he said urgently, "get up. I want to go to church."
Jeanne was too surprised to ask questions. She got up and dressed both children. "What church should we go to?" Jim wondered. He felt too ashamed to visit the church where Jeanne had friends. He had insulted those friends and refused to allow them into his home. They visited a church where Jeanne had been saved a few years earlier. Several young couples in the church "adopted" Jim and Jeanne. Jim enjoyed their friendship and returned Sunday after Sunday. Gradually God's tender love healed the open wounds in Jim and Jeanne's marriage. Jim found himself hungering for the Word. He devoured it, was consumed by it. Soon he was not only teaching Sunday school but praying about attending Bible college.
When he began attending Bible school in 1971 Jim felt remorse for all the years he had wasted. "God, will You do something special for me?" he prayed. "Enable me to finish the four year course in three so I can gain back a little of the time I wasted."
Faith was the most important subject Jim learned in college. Each semester God stretched Jim's faith muscles a bit more. No one can take a final at Dallas Bible College unless his bill is paid. The first semester Jim and Jeanne prayed, and God provided funds for Jim's bill a whole month before finals. The next semester money came in at the last minute. The third semester Jim went to the office and sadly told them, "I can't take my exams. I don't have any money to pay my bill."
"Yes, you do!" The office girl smiled. "A gift just came in for you, and it covers the exact amount that you still owe."
The Lord sent more than one missionary to Venezuela into Jim's life while he was in Bible school. Jim felt God nudging him toward missions and decided to go to Venezuela on a summer mission's internship. He needed money for a round-trip ticket. The day he needed the money he was still $200.00 short. The money came in just in time. Over and again the Lord built faith into this man He planned to use in a special way.
Working with Indians was the last work that naturally interested Jim. He wears a grin on his voice when he remembers why, "I didn't like bugs, snakes, camping or roughing it." That summer in Venezuela Jim exposed himself to areas of mission work that did interest him: working in a Bible book store, institute work, the academy for children. He even considered church planting with one mental stipulation: "Not in the bush!"
God directed Jim's path to cross Merril and Louise Seely's. The Seelys worked with a savage tribe of Indians who were, at that time, hostile to outsiders. Merril asked Jim, "Have you ever considered work with the Indians?"
"Not me!" Jim responded firmly. He gave his logical explanation. "You see, we are afraid, not just of bugs and snakes, but of lots of other things too."
"Oh, that," Louise Seely responded calmly. "I'm afraid of all those things too." Her eyes danced with amusement, and then she laughed out loud. "I have a deathly fear of all crawly things. I even fear ants and spiders! You know, in the jungle I see far fewer creepy things than I do in my house in the city here in Venezuela. The Lord never gives me more than I can handle in His strength."
The Seelys were just too enthusiastic to ignore. They told Jim about the Pemon tribe. They had done a survey trip among them and were impressed with their hunger for spiritual things. The Seelys begged Jim, "Will you at least ask God if He wants you to work with the Pemon? The Pemon people need a missionary, and we can't be in two places at once." The Seelys even gave their own money to send Jim and Jeanne into a village situation so they could see for themselves that jungle life wasn't as awful as they imagined it to be.
How could Jim and Jeanne refuse the offered trip into the village? In the village they found a simple, plain people hungering to know of the true God. They saw pathetic striving to reach God by man-made effort. They noticed some awesome physical needs too. A voice called to Jim and Jeanne to join hearts with the Pemon people, and the voice was not just Mr. Seely's.
Seelys gave Jim and Jeanne wise advice. "If you feel God calling you to work with the Pemon, ask Him to give you another couple to work with you. It's so hard to be alone. You need someone to encourage the two of you when you're down, someone to help with the burden of translation. The work will go faster and smoother that way. In the jungle, two are better than one."
Alexander Maclaren would have agreed. He wrote, "A solitary heart is timid and weak.... Loose grains of sand are light and moved by a breath; compacted they are rock which the Atlantic beats in vain" (Maclaren, Colossians and Philemon, Hodder and Stoughton, p. 158).
Any contemplating isolated missionary work should heed these words said by Hopeful to Christian, "... Had I been here alone, I had, by sleeping, run the danger of death. I see it is true that the wise man saith, 'Two are better than one.' Hitherto hath thy company been my mercy; and thou shalt have a good reward for thy labor" (Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, Fleming H. Revell, p. 123).
Jim and Jeanne began earnestly praying for that couple to work with them among the Pemon.
Jim plunged into his last year of school. He would graduate in three years, even though he had to carry over twenty hours a semester to do so.
Jim graduated and went to Norman, Oklahoma, to attend S.I.L. He sat now with Jeanne in his apartment, telling Patty and me some of the story I have just shared with you.
Jim finished the story in his quiet way and then showed us his slides of the Pemon. He spoke with a full heart of the need of this tribe who had no part of the Bible in their own language. I'll never forget Jim's next words, "Bob, the work is too big for us. Will you come with us?"
Jim voiced his question quietly, but it seemed a shout to my ears--the impact was that definite. Impulsively I wanted to say "Yes!", but Patty and I had long before agreed that God's blessing requires prayer.
Patty and I wanted yet another verse. We hadn't even considered the country of Venezuela before Jim spoke to us. We needed confirmation that this country was God's choice for us.
F.B. Meyer wrote, "Do you need guidance as to your path? Do not look to impressions.... Do not seek for guidance from friends, ... but look away to Christ; throw on Him the responsibility of making you know the way you are to take; leave it to Him to make it so abundantly clear that you cannot do other than follow; even tell Him that you will stand still until He puts His arms under you, and carries you where He would have you be" (Bryant, ed., Climbing the Heights, Zondervan, p. 43).
"I can't answer you now, Jim," I told him. "I need to pray and get my answer from God." Patty and I walked home on shouting ground. Excited is an understatement of how we felt.
Our custom is to read the Bible together before sleeping. That night brought us to Psalm 118. Verse 23 startled us. "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." We read the Scofield marginal note, "This thing is from the Lord."
Neither Patty nor I retained a doubt in our minds. We fell to our knees and thanked God for His faithful leading. What a wonderful thing to trace God's hand leading us through long years and varied circumstances to bring us to this point. I feel yet that I was brought forth from the womb to be used as God's missionary to the Pemon. That night Patty and I offered ourselves to be used of God in Venezuela, not to work for Him there, but that He might there do His own work through us.
Patty and I lost no time hunting up Jim and Jeanne the next day and sharing our news with them. The four of us began praying together daily, meeting on the lawn during class breaks. We prayed about the many unknowns. Jim and Jeanne had a year of language school ahead of them and support still to raise. We didn't even know if Jim and Jeanne's mission would allow them to work with us.
We prayed fervently for the work and for each other, and God built into our foursome a wonderful friendship. I think He has knit our hearts together, not just for time, but for eternity. "There is no limit to the extent and devotion of true friendship" (Miller, The Beauty of Every Day, Thomas Y. Crowell and Co., p. 163). I think of David and Jonathan, Paul and his co-workers, and I compare our relationship with Berryhills to that. It has been a sweet, close friendship for many years.
The long summer of study felt eternal to the four of us, but it finally ended. Lo and behold, it finished before it finished us, and to our joy, we even passed our exams. Both Patty and I made B's. If you think, Hey, that guy is bragging, you are right, but I brag on God, not on us. We know we don't have what it takes to earn high grades in a place as tough as S.I.L.!
Parting time with Berryhills came all too soon. We entered into a solemn covenant with them. Our family would go, search out the land and begin the work. Berryhills would join us as soon as possible, if God led them on that way. We longed for God to join our lives and theirs in service, but we wanted then, and still do, His glory above our friendship. We prayed; we clasped hands; we parted.
"Many a thought of God has been hindered (to use the speech of earth) because two friends refused to separate. ... So few are prepared to be, like the pine on the hill top, alone in the wind for God" (Carmichael, Gold by Moonlight, S.P.C.K, p. 160).
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