![]() Instead, the Lord brought song lyrics to mind, “I’ll live for Him who died for me!” She wrote of the experience, “I felt confused by the message of the song. They led her into another room where she saw her executor begin to draw his sword, and she prepared to meet her Maker.Īt such time you might expect the words of Romans 8:35 to come to mind, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (emphasis added). She was forced to sign an official government statement and ate what she gathered to be her last meal. One day guards led her out of the compound and drove her to a secret police headquarters. Even though diseased, alone, malnourished, and extremely uncomfortable, Darlene battled for Christ. Thinking Darlene an American spy, the Japanese interrogated her every few days hoping to uncover evidence worthy of execution. Perhaps her most stretching experience came when the Japanese summoned her away to the dreaded Kempeitai prison for solitary confinement and intense interrogation. ![]() Heeding Jaffray’s biblical charge, Darlene battled for the Lord and never gave up hope in Him. Robert Jaffray, “Lassie, whatever you do, be a good soldier for Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3). Walking by Faithĭuring challenging times, Darlene would recall Russell’s parting words and the admonition of their mentor, Dr. Had God forsaken Darlene? It sure felt like it, especially when she heard the news from another prisoner of her husband’s passing. During air raids, prisoners would sit in shallow trenches, hoping and praying a bomb wouldn’t take them or their friends. The Japanese officers often brutally beat people for small infractions as public examples in order to keep the peace and exert their authority. ![]() Food rations were small and scarcely provide energy for the manual labor POWs were forced to do on a daily basis. Rats and flies were rampant, spreading diseases like dysentery and malaria and claiming lives due to poor conditions and a lack of basic healthcare. Life as a Prisoner of WarĬonditions at POW camps barely sustained life, and many times didn’t. The day was March 13, 1942.ĭarlene and the rest of her team were soon brought to the Benteng Tinggi internment camp, the first of various POW camps and prisons they would experience over the next three years. As the truck pulled away, Russell’s parting words to his wife quoted Hebrews 13:5, “Remember one thing, dear: God said that He would never leave us nor forsake us.” Little did Darlene know that those would be the last words she would ever hear from her husband. Seeing this, Darlene ran to pack Russell a few things in his pillowcase and before bidding him farewell. Russell along with most other men in their compound were separated from the women and loaded into trucks for transport to a prison camp across the island called Pare Pare. As inhabitants on an island in the Pacific, they soon became captives of the Japanese Imperial army. Life soon began to unravel as her team heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio. Darlene was living a dream by working with a great mission team to share the love of her Savior with those who had never heard. Russell had pioneered missions work in unreached parts of Papua New Guinea and nearly lost his life doing it-several times! Darlene, a gifted linguist and speaker of several languages, loved her identity as a missionary and being the first white woman natives had ever seen. Years later as an adult, she would feel her heart warmed in a different way interacting with another missionary speaker, Russell Deibler. One year after her conversion as a young girl, Darlene felt God’s call to missions while listening to a missionary to Africa speak at a church in Boone, Iowa. (See my list of the best Christian biographies.) She shared her story in Evidence Not Seen: A Woman’s Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II, a biography well worth your time. Little did she know that she would make a return voyage as a widow and former prisoner of war just a few years later.Įven amidst terrible heartache, Darlene Deibler Rose’s story (Rose was the surname of her second husband) is an amazing testimony of God’s power and presence through some of the worst adversity this world has seen. I can imagine she dreamt of what any young newlywed on such a journey would dream of: Accomplishing great feats for the Lord, learning the ins and outs of a new culture, starting a family. It was 1938 when Darlene Deibler set sail with her husband for life as missionaries in Papua New Guinea.
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