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Dear Friend: Deciding Whom to Marry

Your daughter feels called to missions. Show her the Great Commission in Matthew, Acts, Luke, and I Timothy 2. All nations include the U.S. (and the U.S. Navy). However, her call may be very clearly to an aboriginal people or to Saudi Arabia. If so, she should tell this naval officer to give her another call when he has a call to Saudi Arabia.

Bessie had many reasons for telling me “No” in the spring of 1951. Some of them were: she was 31, I was 23, she had been a Christian 16 years, I had been a Christian only 3 years, she was a Canadian, I was an American, she was a career missionary in Japan to women, and I was a career naval officer. In July 195 she said, “Yes.” We were married in Yokahama in April 1952. She was a very gifted naval officer’s wife.

Four years later, God was clearly leading me out of the Navy to be the Officers' Christian Union Academy staff member ministering to all of the service academies. Bessie was not willing that I get out of the Navy. She thought I was wrong. She said, “I prayed all night to be willing to be a naval officer’s wife, and I am going to be a naval officer's wife.” I hated to override her vote, but it was the right thing. She was very effective in ministry, being a wife, and raising kids.

I remember asking a young woman who was engaged to a Naval Academy midshipman, “Are you willing to be a naval officer’s wife?” She replied, “I am willing to be Joe’s wife. He happens to be a naval officer.”

Unless your daughter is called to be celibate, then it is only a question of who she marries and when. When that happens, her primary calling is to be a godly wife and mother to wherever God leads the family.

In the Lord Jesus Christ,

Jim Wilson

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