Anna Faith Fuller: Hello, this is Anna Faith, and welcome to Faith Talks. We are excited to continue on our theme of knowing the trying of your faith, that it works patience. And we are excited today; I have a special guest. We have with us Mrs. Joyce Landis. She and her husband work with a special ministry, which she will tell us about. But it is a special privilege to have her here. They come every year just recruiting at our college. And I thought it’d be exciting to have her here on Faith Talks today. So we’ll just get right into it.

Would you just be able to share with us your ministry first of all as well as just giving a brief background of yourself?

Joyce Landis: Yes, our ministry is called Make a Timothy Today, and the initials, of course, are MTT Ministries. Our goal is to take young people to different countries in the world and the US and Canada and Mexico and take the gospel to those countries by training young people to serve the Lord and then taking them with us to those countries. We have been doing this for 25 years and have had hundreds of teams that we’ve taken out so far and have gone to 22 different countries in the world and have seen many, many results of people that have come to know the Lord because of these teams. And I think the thing that sets us off differently than most mission trips is that we do training before we leave. We do a week of training at our home with the team before we even go to the mission field, and we learn all kinds of things. We’re not a drama team, but we do dramas. We’re not a Bible school team, but we do Bible schools. We do chalk drawings with a message. We do puppets. We do door-to-door visitation. We learn how to do soul-winning, and they practice with each other and just multiple things that we do on the trip so that young people can learn a lot of different skills that they can use the rest of their lives.

Anna Faith: That’s really great, and I know that several college students that I know have been blessed by joining you all with that. Now just getting into your background, would you mind just sharing just how your journey of faith began starting with your salvation testimony and your home as a child and just anything you would like to share about your background?

Joyce: I grew up in Pennsylvania, in the southeastern corner near Lancaster. My husband grew up in the Altoona area. We both grew up on farms near farming country and had a very rural life experience. When I was five years old, I accepted Christ as my Savior. I knew what it meant to be saved. I had memorized the verses and knew exactly what it meant to be saved. So I sat down with my mom. I asked her to show me how I could make sure I was a Christian. And I sat at the kitchen table with her, and she led me to the Lord, and I prayed and asked the Lord to save me from my sin.

When I was 11 at camp, I—well, before that, I started hearing messages about the unpardonable sin. I had no clue what that meant, but I thought, uh-oh, maybe I did that. So I decided to make sure of my salvation when I was 11. My parents explained to me the unpardonable sin and that that’s for people that have rejected Christ and not have accepted him. So I just made sure of my salvation at that point. That was how I started out. I knew at 11 that I was being called into missions. I believe that at that time I surrendered to missions and I told the Lord, I’ll do anything you want me to do, but please don’t send me to Africa. But amazingly enough, years later, we went to Africa.

Anna Faith: That’s great. What trials has God grown your faith through and specifically the trial with your father and with your family going through the health needs?

Joyce: When I was two, we actually lived in Ohio. I don’t remember anything of that time, of course. But it was 1955, and it was right as the polio vaccine had just been finished, and it was just starting to be put out there, but we didn’t have it because it wasn’t just ready for public use yet. So right before my second birthday, our family was in a situation where my dad was a pastor of a church in Ohio and had only been there a year or two, and it was his first church straight out of seminary. And there was a polio epidemic in our town and in the surrounding area. My oldest brother woke up one morning with a sore throat and he couldn’t swallow. My mom had tried to feed him breakfast. He was six years old, but he was quite sick and had flu symptoms. So it was bad enough that they took him to the hospital. He had a spinal tap to find out what was going on. And they found out that he had polio. And a lot of people in the neighborhood were getting it. But immediately they put him in the hospital. And then I was the second one to have polio. I woke up one day, and I couldn’t lift my arm. Couldn’t move my left arm. And so I also ended up in the hospital.

Just a few days later, my dad started having some symptoms, but he went to the doctor, and they said, “Oh, you just have sympathetic symptoms. You really don’t have anything wrong with you. You need to just go home. You just probably have the flu.” Well, he went home, and a few mornings later, he could not even get out of bed. So my mom called the deacons of the church. They came, they took him to the hospital, and sure enough, he had polio.

From that point on, he never walked again. In fact, he was paralyzed from the neck down, and couldn’t breathe on his own. So he was in an iron lung and was in the hospital for a year. My oldest brother and I were in a convalescent home after we got out of the hospital. It was more or less to keep you from infecting anyone else, kind of quarantining you, and it was also to do therapy and that kind of thing. Of course, I don’t remember that because I was just two years old. So I was very young, and my brother was, my oldest brother, like I said, was six, and he remembers it all. He’s told me all the details. It was quite a rough time because our parents, my mom would come and visit now and then, but she was also visiting my dad, who was in a different hospital.

Anna Faith: Right, and how long were you in that home?

Joyce: Six months.

Anna Faith: Six months, wow.

Joyce: So separated from my family for six months, that was really hard, especially for my brother. I didn’t know what was going on, but I’m sure I missed my parents at that young age. And of course, my dad was in an extremely bad situation, and he was in the hospital for a year. It was rough. My parents loved the Lord. They wanted to serve Him with their life. My dad had been in World War II where he got saved on the way there and he had surrendered his life to the Lord. He said, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do as long as you get me out of this war.” And so his whole platoon was killed, and he was spared. Wow, that’s amazing. And so he said, “Okay, Lord, I am gonna do this with my life,” and at that point, he knew that he would spend the rest of his life serving the Lord.

When he recuperated from polio, he still could not breathe on his own or move anything but his neck and head, but he was determined that he was going to serve the Lord anyway, somehow, some way. He couldn’t preach anymore because when you’re on a respirator, which was what they moved them onto after being in the iron lung. He could not preach because he couldn’t finish a sentence without a breath because his breaths were regulated. And my mom had to take care of him day and night. He had to sleep in a rocking bed when we moved my grandparents to Pennsylvania. And that’s why I say I grew up in Pennsylvania because we moved there because my dad had to be taken care of totally. But he was determined to serve the Lord.

Because we could see it lived out in their lives where I never remember hearing them complain about the situation they were in. They loved the Lord wholly. My dad spent hours in his Bible having devotions every morning and would turn the pages with the stick in his mouth. He just was an amazing person. My mom was an amazing person. She never complained about having to take care of him day and night. My dad had to sleep in a rocking bed that would move from head to toe. When the head was down, that’s when the air came out of his lungs. And when it was up and his feet were down, that was when the air came into his lungs.

He lived like that for 26 years, but I don’t remember them being upset about it, complaining about they were always positive, always upbeat, and just excited about what the Lord was doing in their lives. That’s why I decided when I was 11. You know, I don’t know what God has for me, but I know that I will serve him the rest of my life. And that’s why I’m doing what we are today in trying to reach people around the world and to teach others to serve the Lord also by taking young people with us and trying to help this next generation learn how to serve God and how to love him and serve him with their whole life.

Anna Faith: Unbelievable story and just hearing of his faith in the Lord during that time. I can’t imagine a trial like that, you know, speaking of big trials, you know, just to go through that and to realize that’s the rest of what your life is going to look like. But his response, I was reading a pamphlet and I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind sharing just the response that you wrote down that he said after he found out that he had polio.

Joyce: Yes. In his own words, my dad said he decided to do this:

“God’s purpose at first was not clear.” He said, “I wondered what it all meant. “Then one day a scripture verse came to mind which I had learned long ago, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.” And that’s in Proverbs three, five and six. He said, “I resolutely determined then and there to do what these verses enjoined. I began to trust the Lord for the present circumstances and ceased trying to understand the reasons.”

And he definitely did that. He lived it out in his life. I think so often it’s easy to look at a trial that God has placed into our lives and try to reason it out. Why did God do this? And…

Anna Faith: I think it’s just so amazing to see his response where he gave up trying to figure out why and he decided to do something with his life still. And just that’s amazing just how he just dedicated his life to writing like that with such a hard time still doing that. I can imagine a story of faith. And I know it is something that we’ll be encouraging for other people to hear, just to see how no matter what we’re going through, God still can use it for good. And how he used your dad in his state and even just realizing how God loves to use weak vessels. And all of us feel weakness in so many areas. I’m sure not as weak as he felt, but just how when we just surrender those things to the Lord, he can still use them no matter what.

Do you mind sharing just how that trial just grew your faith personally and even if there’s been other trials since then that have encouraged you in your walk with the Lord?

Joyce: Sure. Well, we have had many trials in our life. When we take teams out, for one thing, we have trials sometimes with the money situation, trying to raise the support. In those early years, we almost lost our home twice. And we thought, you know, God wants us to do this. He’ll help supply our needs. And he did every time, amazingly.

In 2005, I found out I had breast cancer. They said I had maybe 10 years to live. That was about almost 19 years ago. When I went through cancer, my mom also she died of the same type cancer so she lived for about ten years with that after my dad had passed away and I just remembered the way my parents reacted to everything that happened in their lives and it drew me closer to the Lord. And it helped me to realize, you know, you can do whatever you have to do with God’s help. And he can help you through all these trials. I missed going on two teams, one at Christmas and one in the spring of that year of our MTT ministry teams with the young people.

But other than that, I’ve been on all the other teams. And God worked in my life miraculously. And I believe he healed me. I went through lots of treatments and different things. But they haven’t seen any sign of it since 2006. And so I’m very thankful for what I was taught as a child because I was able to do it.

I was taught to trust in the Lord and it’s not that I’m trusting in my parents or anybody else but they were an example to me to trust in the Lord. And so that’s what I try to do and it’s not always easy and things aren’t easy but life is that way but he can show you miracle after miracle and show you how he can help you through every trial in life.

Anna Faith Fuller: And it’s neat how when you determine to trust Him, He always gives you that peace. And no matter what trial you’re going through, whether it is some sort of health need that seems like it’s going to end fatal, but He gives you that peace in it all and uses it for good. Even if you don’t understand, I think that’s just a theme even from your dad’s life and how God used him in so many amazing ways, more than we know, you know, with his writing there and even it’s impacting beyond his life to us today and just realizing just how trials, God works them always together for good and we can trust him with those things.

Well thank you so much for joining us today. I just want to ask if you have any concluding thoughts for our listeners or just points of application that you you really want to share with young girls to encourage their faith.

Joyce: Well, just that even though, you don’t know what the future holds, you just don’t. And you don’t know what kind of problems you’re going to have. But to have a close walk with the Lord, I think, is the most important thing in the world. You need to spend time with him each day. You need to. You need to learn to love him. You need to ask God to help you to have a love for his word and for him and what he did for us and and just to build a love. And if you love the Lord with your whole heart It’s not going to be so easy to fall into sin and it’s going to be much easier to make it through trials without giving up and so I would say just take the time to spend with him. I know life gets busy, but don’t get discouraged and say “well I haven’t had my devotions for three days so what’s the use? I just don’t have time.” But God always wants you to come back to him. He always wants you to come back and trust in his word and to spend time with him. He’s never going to turn you away. You need to just try to have that close walk and that close communication with him every day.

I did want to mention that this might be an encouragement to you as well. I have a blog that my brothers and I have done that tells the story of my dad in full in his own words. It might give you a glimpse of what I’m saying today about trusting in him, trusting in the Lord. And if you go to www.poliopastor.blogspot.com you’ll see just several pages in there that we’ve already posted. you can read his story and how he made it through the war, how he made it through 26 years of dealing with polio and then had cancer at the end. And there’s a devotional paper that he wrote called the ultimate test. When he went through that last test in his life, when he found out he had colon cancer that had gone to his liver and that he would not be living but a few more weeks after that. And he tells, he writes out an eight page letter there talking about how he dealt with facing death. Wow. And so that might, some of those things might be an encouragement to you as well.

Anna Faith Fuller: Well, thank you again for just sharing that story. And I would encourage all of our listeners to go over and just read more of her dad’s testimony there and just being encouraged by a man who chose to trust when it wasn’t easy and obviously now his faith is being rewarded all of eternity and that’s such a huge blessing to know that and just thank you for that and I just encourage each listener just as you go through your days and whatever trial you may be facing I know it may seem negative that we’re realizing that actually these trials are not a negative thing. But we are going to, just as the Bible talks about when we are tried, we’re going to come forth as gold. And God wants to do that refining work in each one of our lives and that is the most, the biggest blessing really that we could have from the Lord that he cares enough to be refining us and to be growing us in those ways.

So I just encourage you just to make a decision, Lord, I’m going to trust you in this trial and maybe you’re going through a trial that you don’t understand. And I just encourage you to just take Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 and say, God, I believe this. And just trusting in Him and leaning not on your own understanding and in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths. So I just encourage you as you go about your days and whatever trial you may be facing, remember that faith doesn’t just talk, faith walks.