Extraordinary Ordinary!Sýnishorn

When Darlene Rose was ten years old, a missionary gave an altar call begging young people to give their lives to foreign missions. Darlene could not ignore the voice that she heard audibly behind her, “Would you go anywhere for me no matter what the cost?”

After marrying Russell Diebler, they landed in Java, in August 1938. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Darlene and Russell were taken as prisoners of war.

The Dieblers were taken into the mountains where all of the men in their group were viciously beaten. As Darlene’s injured husband was loaded into the enemy’s truck, he said to her, “Remember one thing, dear. God will never leave us or forsake us.” Darlene never saw her husband again.

Darlene recalls that as the vehicle pulled away, she experienced complete peace because she knew Romans 8:28 means exactly what it says it means.

Darlene and her fellow missionaries were imprisoned in shacks on the side of a remote mountain and knew that without a miracle they would never be rescued.

One night, Darlene heard a noise and went out into the hallway of the ramshackle POW building. She saw a man wearing a black sarong and holding a machete in his hand. She recognized him as one of the Boegis people who were savage murderers. She chased this daunting enemy out the door and down the roadway. On the mountain trail, was a gang of Boegis men who had been marauding homes and raping the women there. When these enemies saw her, they ran in fear of their lives down the mountain trail.

Night after night the Boegis pirates came back, but they only stood outside the shack in which Darlene lived and never entered it again.

Years later, Darlene met a young man who had been part of the Boegis gang during the war. This handsome young man was now a Christian. When Darlene asked him why the pirates had never again attacked her home, he replied, “Because of all those people in white who stood around your house night after night.”

This story will continue tomorrow.