My mother, Elizabeth DeCamp, was born on this day in 1908. She and my father, Otto DeCamp, served together as missionaries to Korea for 37 years. Here are some ways I admire, and am grateful for her:
WELL-READ
> She had the benefit of a classical education and had studied Latin for years. She had read countless historical novels, and all of Winston Churchill’s works.
> She knew her Bible. Well.
> Her allusions to literature and Scripture are legendary.
COURAGE
> When her husband of six weeks was taken from her and placed in solitary confinement for five months in a Japanese prison in Korea the winter 1941, she trusted God.
> When she kept her four children for four years in Tokyo while her husband cared for war refugees in Korea during the Korean Conflict, she displayed a core of steel.
> She taught perseverance, one day at a time.
EDUCATOR
> She taught me the books of the Bible, and how to apply life lessons from cover to cover.
> Our school produced two plays every year––operettas for grade schoolers, and Shakespeare or Rogers and Hammerstein plays in high school. She ensured I knew my lines.
> Her way of answering a question with another question would send me thinking for hours.
FAITHFUL
> As a nurse, for years she ran the Foreigner’s Clinic of Severance Hospital in Seoul, Korea.
> Pouring out her life amidst trial and sacrifice, a calm demeanor revealed her abiding faith in Christ.
> She had always wanted to cruise through the Panama Canal. When I learned this late in her life (after my father had become ill with Alzheimer’s), I offered to cruise with her. She declined, in order to be by the side of her husband of 60 years.
I remember her singing to herself around the house. She loved this hymn; it was often on her lips:
“Out of the Ivory Palaces”
By Henry Barraclough, 1915
My Lord has garments so wondrous fine,
and myrrh their texture fills;
its fragrance reached to this heart of mine,
with joy my being thrills.
Refrain:
Out of the ivory palaces,
into a world of woe,
only His great, eternal love
made my Savior go.
His life had also its sorrows sore,
for aloes had a part;
and when I think of the cross He bore,
my eyes with teardrops start. [Refrain]
His garments too were in cassia dipped,
with healing in a touch;
each time my feet in some sin have slipped,
He took me from its clutch. [Refrain]
In garments glorious He will come,
to open wide the door;
and I shall enter my heavenly home,
to dwell forevermore. [Refrain]
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“To God be the glory, great things He hath done.”