Once the introductions were over, the president invited everyone to be seated, with Cam on his right and Elvira on his left. The nine-course dinner took two hours to serve. President Cárdenas talked to Cam nearly the whole time, asking questions about the various students and what they hoped to achieve in Mexico. Cam answered honestly, as he always did, explaining that they had come to do translation work that would eventually lead to translating the Bible. He pointed out that the students would also do whatever they could to improve the lives of the Indians they worked among.
Every so often Cam looked down the long, flower-decorated table at his new recruits. He wondered whether the president would notice just how much they were eating! After surviving on a diet of fruit, milkshakes, and bread on their journey down, many of them were ready for a good meal. And the courses kept coming, along with President Cárdenas’s questions.
Near the end of the meal, the president leaned over to Cam. “My government will do everything it can to help you,” he said. He then glanced at Walter Miller, the skinniest of Cam’s students, and asked Cam, “Do they have enough money to live in Mexico?”
Cam hesitated for a moment. He could not tell a lie, but he hoped the truth would not put their mission in jeopardy. “Two of them have been promised support from friends and family back home, but not the other eight,” he said.
President Cárdenas’s eyes lit up. “Well, in that case, there is something we can do to help right away. I will arrange for the others to be paid as if they were rural schoolteachers.’’
Cam was speechless. If there had been any doubt the president was behind the work of SIL, it was swept away at that moment.
“And,” President Cárdenas continued, “my wife is greatly interested in your work, though she could not attend the banquet tonight. She would like it very much if your wife and the two charming young ladies in your group would pay her a visit. I will send my car for them, of course.”
“Gracias, señor presidente,” replied Cam. “You have done so much for us. We will work hard to be worthy of the trust you have placed in us.”
It was after seven when Colonel Beteta finally escorted them all back to their apartment. When they got there, they sat around too full to move, except for Cam, who had spent so much time talking that he had eaten almost nothing at all. Cam related to the students the wonderful offer the president had made, and everyone was excited. Now everything was in place, and soon it would be time to spread out around the countryside.
There was growing concern for the two single women, however. The women hoped to go to the remote mountain village of Mazatec in Oaxaca, but when other missionaries in Mexico City learned of the plan, they were horrified. Norman Taylor, a veteran missionary in Mexico, visited Cam and urged him to reconsider sending the two women to Mazatec. To him it was inconceivable that two single women in their early twenties with no experience would be sent to an area where no male missionaries had ever settled. Norman had been through the area once himself and reported that there was a high rate of murder in the province. Cam was almost swayed by his argument, until he talked to Eunice Pike and Florence Hansen. The women were both surprised that Cam was having second thoughts about sending them to Mazatec. “But Uncle Cam,” Florence asked, “don’t you believe God will take care of us?”
Cam had no answer to their query. “Well, if you put it that way,” he said, “go right ahead.”
And so they did. Ken Pike escorted his sister Eunice and Florence Hansen to their outpost. In the meantime, Brainerd Legters and his new wife, Elva, headed for the Maya tribe on the Yucatan peninsula. Walter and Vera Miller took a train to Oaxaca to work among the Mixe tribe, and Richmond McKinney chose the Otomis tribe in the Mesquital Valley to work amongst. Eugene Nida took a bus into the Madre Mountains to work with the Tarahumara tribe, and Landis Christiansen hiked into the steep Puebla Mountains to work with the Totonacs.
Once the students had departed, the Townsends, accompanied by Ethel Mae Squires, headed back to Tetelcingo, where for the next several years Cam continued his translation and community work.
Chapter 16
New Recruits
It was October 1941, and Cam and Elvira were visiting the Lathrops, who lived in a house on the edge of Lake Pátzcuaro about two hundred miles west of Mexico City. As usual, Cam rose early in the morning to read his Bible. It was a picture-perfect morning. As the sun rose over the lake, Tarascan fishermen paddled their canoes out from the shore and threw their nets into the deep blue water. From his seat on the porch, the scene reminded Cam of the verses he had just read in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 4, where, as Jesus watched the fishermen on the Lake of Galilee, He turned to His disciples and said, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Something stirred deep within Cam as he thought of the millions of people who still did not have one word of Scripture written in their own language. He wondered how these people could possibly follow Jesus if they didn’t get to hear or read about His invitation.
As he sat watching the fishermen rhythmically pulling in their catch, Cam somehow knew it was time to redouble his efforts. He reached for a piece of paper and began drafting a letter to the forty-four Wycliffe workers who were now spread out across Mexico. “Will each of you be responsible before the Lord for one new Bible translation?” he wrote. He then went on to tell them of his goal of recruiting fifty more workers within a year.
When he was finished writing, Cam went inside to tell Elvira about his new goal. As usual, she brought him back to reality with questions. Where would the recruits get their support money? Who would process it for them? And where would they train? The tiny camp in the Ozark Mountains could not fit that many people for training.
Cam agreed that the questions were good ones. He decided that the best thing to do was to take a trip back to the United States to get things in order for the fifty new recruits he was believing would join SIL that year. It was an ideal time to take a break from Mexico. Dick and Karen Pittman were now in Tetelcingo carrying on the translation work Cam had begun. And the work in Mexico was progressing well. Indeed, just days before, Cam had hosted a banquet in Mexico City to honor five years of cooperation between SIL, the Ministry of Education, and the National University. Elena Trejo, the young Guatemalan girl who, along with Joe Chicol, Cam and Elvira had taken into their home to live, was the speaker. She was grown up now, of course, but she had made the most of the education the Townsends had offered her when they sent her to California to live with Cam’s parents so that she could attend high school. She had gone to medical school from there and had become a skilled surgeon. Finally, she had returned to Guatemala, where she was the first woman doctor in the entire country. Cam invited her to speak and tell those at the banquet how educational opportunities had opened up a whole new area of opportunity for her. Elena gave a fine speech, and Cam was very proud of her.
Two years before, Cam’s father had died, and five months after that, L.L. also died unexpectedly. As a result, Cam was anxious to visit his sisters and other friends back home.
Cam and Elvira crossed the border back into the United States just as Japan was bombing Pearl Harbor, thrusting the country into the Second World War. Some of the people Cam stayed with doubted he would find his fifty new recruits now that the government was busy drafting so many men into the war effort. Cam, though, was undeterred. He remembered how twenty-four years before his captain had signed his release from the draft. He was sure that war would not stand in the way of Bible translation.
In Los Angeles, Cam and Elvira stayed with Will Nyman, their faithful supporter who had hosted the two students from the first Camp Wycliffe. Will had a gift for organizing, and he agreed to take over the administration work that L.L. had been doing for Wycliffe Bible Translators. Cam still believed there would soon be fifty new recruits arriving, and there was more need than ever for a team of people in the United States who could arrange visas, send out newsletters, and process support money for those translating the Bible out on the mission field. Will plunged into the job with his usual enthusiasm. He converted the room above his garage into an office, and soon things were running more smoothly than ever before.
From Los Angeles, Cam and Elvira made their way to the University of Oklahoma. The year before, Della Brunstetter, a French teacher at the university with an interest in the Cherokee language, had attended Camp Wycliffe. She had heard about the camp’s lively teachers and their methods for quick and reliable results in the field. Della had been more impressed by the program than she had expected, so impressed that she went back to the University of Oklahoma and requested a meeting with the board of regents. At the meeting she suggested the university allow Camp Wycliffe to use the facilities for its summer linguistics camps. Furthermore, because the school was of such a high standard, she also suggested the college give Camp Wycliffe full academic credit. The Board of Regents studied the idea and agreed to the request. Cam came to Oklahoma to meet with the board, and soon afterwards a formal invitation was issued for Camp Wycliffe to be held at the University of Oklahoma campus in 1942.
Cam was overjoyed with this unexpected new development, as well as with the news that Ken Pike was negotiating with Briercrest Bible School in Canada to hold a Camp Wycliffe there. Max Lathrop was busy, too. He had started a magazine called Translation to keep the public up-to-date with information on the work of SIL.
The applications for Camp Wycliffe began to flow in until 130 young people had signed up for the school. Indeed, the summer of 1942 Camp Wycliffe turned out to be the best ever. That fall, at the end of the school, fifty-one of the students set out to work among various Indian tribes in Mexico. Cam was elated. Despite the war, God had given him the fifty recruits he’d asked for, and one more!
Cam and Elvira continued touring the United States, speaking publicly and privately to anyone who would listen to what they had to say about linguistics and Bible translation. They also spent a number of weeks helping Will Nyman, since there was more work than ever to do now that they had an additional fifty-one workers in the field.
Doors of opportunity seemed to be swinging open everywhere. Ken Pike, who now had his Ph.D. in linguistics, visited Peru and wrote that the government there had invited SIL to begin working among the Indian tribes of the Amazon jungle. And three translators who were working among the Navajo Indians joined SIL, making them the organization’s first translators outside Mexico. This pleased Cam greatly. He was concerned at the way Native American Indian speakers had been neglected by linguists even though they were within the borders of the United States.
With 103 workers fanned out across Mexico, Mexico City became a hub of activity for SIL. There was always someone passing through the capital on his or her way home or to a new assignment. Cam decided it was time the organization purchased its own building. He found an old boarding house that had once been used for tourists. The house had twenty-five rooms, which seemed a lot of rooms at first, but within months the rooms had been converted into guest bedrooms, offices, and a room for the printing press. The place was soon dubbed “The Kettle” by SIL workers because it was always “boiling over” with workers and activity.
While back in Mexico, Cam had another of his “bright ideas.” Over the years, he and Elvira had become close friends of President Lázaro Cárdenas and his wife, Amalia. Cam greatly admired the way the president had tried to improve the living conditions of the lowest classes of Mexican society. He believed that such a great man should have a biography written about him to be an example to other leaders. Cam decided to write the book himself.
