As she flew south, Betty wondered what lay ahead for her. She had read so much about missionary work and had studied foreign cultures for her degree. Now she was actually on her way to a foreign culture to meet real missionaries. She only hoped that a new, inexperienced organization like CAMF, with one full-time worker and no aircraft, could actually find a way to help a large, established ministry like Wycliffe Bible Translators.
Chapter 8
Mexico
The taxicab stopped in front of the Posada del Sol Hotel. Betty gasped when she saw the place. It was the most opulent hotel she had ever seen. For a moment she frowned, wondering how Wycliffe missionaries could possibly afford to meet in such a fine and expensive hotel as this.
The cab driver opened the door, and Betty followed him to the trunk to retrieve her two bags. Ten minutes later she was shown to a beautiful tiled room overlooking a small courtyard, complete with a trickling fountain. She unpacked her bags and put the book she was reading, History of the Conquest of Mexico by William Prescott, on the nightstand. She wanted to finish it while in Mexico to try to understand as much about the culture as possible.
Betty heard a knock at the door. When she answered it, there stood a vivacious young brunette. “Hello, I’m Marianna Slocum,” the woman said, holding out her hand to shake Betty’s. “I’m with Wycliffe Bible Translators in southern Mexico.”
“Hello,” Betty replied, shaking Marianna’s hand. “I guess you already know I’m Betty Greene from CAMF.”
Marianna nodded. “Uncle Cam told me to keep an eye out for you and bring you down to the conference room to meet the others. Are you ready, or do you need some time to freshen up?”
“I’m fine,” Betty replied, eager to meet the missionaries.
As the two women walked together down the ornately carved staircase, Marianna Slocum explained that the hotel owner, Señor Galvant, a former governor of the state of Mexico, was a good friend of Cameron Townsend. Because of their close relationship, Señor Galvant was proud to offer Wycliffe Bible Translators hotel rooms at a fraction of their normal cost. Betty heaved a sigh of relief. She had been wondering whether she could actually work with an organization that would spend such large amounts of money on hotel rooms for its staff conferences.
Once she entered the meeting room, Betty was quickly introduced to about thirty people. (Betty was thankful that they were all wearing name tags.) Then she spotted “Uncle Cam,” as Cameron Townsend was affectionately called, in the corner talking to a middle-aged couple.
“Over here, Betty,” Cameron called when he saw her. “It’s good to see you. I have some people I want you to meet. This is Bob and Lois Schnieder. They’ve offered to give you a tour of Mexico City when the conference is not in session. You’ll be in good hands with them.”
Betty smiled at the Schnieders.
“Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?” Bob Schnieder asked.
Betty’s mind ran wild. “You’d be better asking if there’s anything I don’t want to see!”
They laughed together and started planning a trip to Chapultepec Castle, which Betty had read was built on the ruins of a gigantic Aztec temple.
The first two days of the conference passed quickly. While the Wycliffe missionaries met to discuss their common concerns about Bible translation and how to overcome them, Betty set about finding her way around Mexico City. She contacted a woman she knew from the WASP who was now vice president of Braniff Airlines and was visiting Mexico City at the time. Betty was particularly pleased when the woman arranged for her to fly a small plane at an airfield on the outskirts of the city. It was the first time she had flown in months, and she loved the freedom of once again soaring above the clouds.
On a visit to the federal aviation office to study Mexican aviation rules, Betty found that the rules were very similar to U.S. rules. She took a test on the spot and was given a pilot’s license to fly in Mexico. It all happened so fast she could hardly believe it.
Between sessions at the Wycliffe staff conference, Betty talked with the missionaries. She asked them many questions about their aviation needs and jotted down pages of notes.
On Sunday she attended a Presbyterian Church with the Schnieders. While Betty herself was a Presbyterian, the service in Mexico was like nothing she had ever seen before. She sat wedged between an old Mexican man who constantly scratched his neck and a middle-aged woman with seven children neatly arranged to her left. To Betty, the church service was a mass of moving people. Old men constantly shuffled up and down the aisles, and women sitting near the open windows would yell to people outside. Without the crackling loudspeaker system that raised the pastor’s voice above the crowd, Betty would not have been able to hear a word of the sermon, not that she understood it, since it was in Spanish.
The following day, the halfway point of the Wycliffe staff conference, Cameron Townsend asked Betty if she would consider extending her stay in Mexico and traveling down to Wycliffe’s jungle camp where Bible translators did their final training before heading out to work in the field with a tribe or people group. The jungle camp, he assured Betty, would give her a taste of real missionary life and a chance to see the way airplanes could be used to help spread the gospel message.
Betty thought about it for several minutes. She had no pressing need to get back to Los Angeles. Jim Truxton’s sister Margaret and Selma Bauman were quite capable of running the CAMF office, and a lot could be gained from seeing missionary work firsthand. She agreed to Cameron Townsend’s request. On October 12, 1945, Betty was one of a group of six people who boarded a narrow-gauge train bound for the city of Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico. She sat beside Marianna Slocum as the train jostled them from side to side. Sometimes the carriage creaked so loudly Betty worried it might break apart, but somehow it held together, and the train chugged on through the day and into the night. To give herself some padding from the hard wooden slats of the seat, Betty curled up in the two blankets she had bought at an open market in Mexico City.
The night passed slowly. The train blew its whistle constantly and stopped often. At each stop, brown arms laden with items of food were thrust through the window at the group. “Compra esto, sólo dos pesos,” they yelled, each trying to outdo the other. Betty was very hungry, and she waved two pesos in the direction of a young boy who was carrying an enormous bunch of thick bananas. The boy grinned, took the money, and handed three bananas to Betty, who sat back proudly and began to peel one. Howls of laughter filled the carriage. Betty wondered why everyone was looking at her, until she took a bite of her “banana.” The fruit was hard and waxy!
“That’s a cooking plantain,” Marianna Slocum explained with a big grin on her face. “I’ve never seen anyone eat one raw.”
Betty began to laugh. She had a lot to learn about living in another culture.
Finally the train arrived in Vera Cruz, and the six missionaries climbed out of their carriage. Since none of them had much money, they decided to spend the night sleeping on the dock instead of renting hotel rooms. That night Betty was introduced to coconut milk. She didn’t like it much, but since coconuts were everywhere and were cheap, she forced herself to drink the liquid.
The next morning, feeling stiff and hungry, Betty climbed aboard another train, this time headed south toward the Pacific Ocean. Their destination was Juchitan, a short bus ride south of the train station at Ixtepec. They would spend a couple of days in Juchitan visiting two Wycliffe translators who had not been able to make it to the staff conference in Mexico City.
Marjorie MacMillan and Velma Packet stood at the side of the road waving as the dilapidated, overcrowded bus pulled to a halt to let the missionaries off. Betty was glad to get out and stretch her long legs.
Staying with the Bible translators was an eye-opening experience for Betty. Marjorie and Velma were in their early twenties and worked tirelessly to translate the Bible into Zapotecan, the local language. The group was scheduled to stay with them for only two nights, but Betty became ill with malaria, and it was a week before she felt well enough to travel again.
This time they headed east to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas. Cameron Townsend had arranged for the new missionaries in the group to take a crash course in Spanish at a local high school there. Since Betty was with them, she took advantage of the opportunity to learn as much Spanish as possible. Who knew where her work with CAMF might take her—quite possibly someplace where Spanish would be useful.
While in Tuxtla, Betty visited the local airfield, where she met a man named Joe Urguidi. Although he was Mexican, Joe had learned to fly in St. Louis, Missouri, and was eager to speak with an American. He quickly offered to take Betty up for a spin in his 1927 model Travel Air.
Two weeks later, Betty was again in the cockpit with Joe Urguidi. This time she was on her way to El Real, a tiny airstrip three miles from Wycliffe’s jungle training camp. With her were Cameron Townsend and an American businessman, Al Johnson, who was interested in the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators.
As the old Travel Air lumbered over steep mountains and across heavily forested valleys, Betty could see for herself the value of an airplane in such terrain. By the time they touched down at El Real airstrip, Betty and Cameron had decided an amphibious airplane would be the best choice for remote jungle flying, since it could land on the numerous rivers and lakes as well as on jungle airstrips.
As the airplane decelerated on the rough fifteen-hundred-foot-long airstrip at El Real, Joe Urguidi guided it to the right following the dogleg path of the runway. The reason for the dogleg was a small shed. Betty later found out the shed belonged to the airstrip owner Don Pepe, who used it to store chicle latex waiting to be flown to market. As the airplane rolled by the shed, Betty gave it a passing gaze. She had no inkling of the problems that shed would cause her and CAMF in the future.
Throughout the next two months living at the jungle camp, Betty had to keep reminding herself she was in a boot camp designed to prepare missionaries for remote and primitive situations. She shared a small mud hut with another woman, while another mud hut with a single stove in it served as camp kitchen. The schedule was every bit as demanding as her days in the WASP. She rose at 6 A.M. had breakfast at seven, and studied Spanish language from eight until ten. Then it was time for two hours of work in the garden, hacking away at the rocky ground in an attempt to grow vegetables to eat. Lunch was at twelve-thirty, followed by another hour of language study. The remainder of the afternoon until dinner was taken up with various other tasks. During this period, Betty studied maps and wrote a detailed report on the type of aircraft and support system that would be most suitable for Wycliffe Bible Translators work in Mexico and Peru.
Every day seemed to bring some new adjustment or challenge. Most had to do with the local animals. Rats scurried around the wooden beams in the kitchen, wild burros (donkeys) sneaked into the compound at night and ate the laundry from the clothesline, and a huge cow crashed through the kitchen door, knocking over everything. Mosquitoes hungrily swarmed around the missionaries wherever they went. Despite the hardships, Betty found it difficult to leave the group when Joe Urguidi flew his airplane in to pick her up on December 12, 1945. She’d had so many good times with the others and learned a lot in a short time.
Betty expected to be back in Los Angeles by December 18, but she had an unexpected delay along the way. When she got off her commercial airline flight in Mexico City, she felt almost too dizzy to stand up. Something was wrong! She collected her baggage and took a taxi straight to the nearest hospital. It turned out to be malaria again, only this time it was much worse than the bout she had experienced in Juchitan. Her doctor was puzzled by how sick she was, given the fact she had been taking quinine pills every day to ward off the disease. It was a medical mystery, but thankfully, once under the care of the hospital, Betty made a speedy recovery. On Christmas Eve she finally arrived back in Los Angeles.
