In the Presence of My Enemies Read Online Free PDF Page B

Looking up at the sky, I found myself drifting into ragged sleep.

2
    Bright Beginnings
    (1959–81)
     
    Learning to get along in crowded conditions was a skill I had acquired early, as the fifth child of six in the Norvin and Betty Jo Jones household. In fact, I was born just as my parents were recovering from the tragic loss of my oldest sister, Terry Lynn. Only nine years old, she had been cut down by a reckless motorist who had, on June 10, 1958, ignored a bus’s flashing lights and arm signal and pulled around it anyway.
    I was in the womb at the time. My mother told me later that being pregnant forced her to keep going from day to day, to eat properly, and not to sink into abject despair. I arrived at St. Mary’s Hospital in Cairo, Illinois, on January 17, 1959.
    They named me Gracia (pronounced “gray -sha”). We moved a year later so my father could pastor a church in Ripley, Tennessee. Then in 1962, he was asked to help start a Bible college in Woodstock, Ontario, which is where my memories begin. My baby sister, Mary, was born there. I went to school in Woodstock, and of course I learned to ice-skate there. In my little pink-and-gray leggings outfit, I would fall time and time again, but no matter how many times I hit the ice, I always got up again.
    It was a wonderful childhood in so many ways. In addition to Mary, I had two other sisters, Becky and Nancy, and one brother, Paul. We always seemed to get along well, thanks to our parents’ wise guidance. They put the Lord and his Word at the center of our lives. I could sing hymns from memory even before I could read, although not always with full comprehension. I puzzled for quite a while over the song “Bringing in the ‘Cheese’ ” (instead of “Sheaves”), until someone finally enlightened me.
    Our family was in church every time the doors were open: Sunday school, morning services, evening services, midweek prayer services, plus the assorted dinners and special events that always seemed to come up.
    When I was seven or eight, I had a wonderful Sunday school teacher who explained to me the importance of committing my life to Christ. Not long after that, I remember begging for the opportunity to be baptized.
    When I was a little older, the Bible college moved northwest to Sault Ste. Marie, where it was really cold. All four of us girls had to share one bedroom, using two sets of bunk beds. Somehow we stayed warm through the long, dark winter that year. A year later, my father accepted a pastorate in southeastern Illinois, at Congregational Christian Church in Olney. I started fifth grade in Olney and built many friendships that I’ve maintained to this day.
    Somewhere around the house I picked up a book about Amy Carmichael, the young Irish woman who went to India around the turn of the twentieth century to work with children. She found out that little girls were being forced into prostitution in the Hindu temples, and she set up a refuge to shelter them. Her writings over the next fifty years of her life were profound and inspiring.
    Even more vivid in my imagination was the Scottish missionary Mary Slessor, who was the subject of another book I must have read half a dozen times. Mary worked in Africa—specifically, Nigeria—a little before the time of Amy Carmichael. There she battled witchcraft, cannibalism, alcoholism, and the particularly gruesome practice of killing newborn twins because they were supposedly a bad omen. What I liked about Mary Slessor was that she was gutsy; she’d stand up to tribal chiefs and tell them exactly what she thought! They didn’t quite know what to do with her.
    At this point I had no conscious thought of ever becoming a missionary myself. But I found these biographies inspiring.
    Our family moved once more when I was fifteen and Dad became a professor of Bible and theology at Calvary Bible College in Kansas City. My sister Mary and I attended a private academy called Tri-City Christian School, from which I