Back at Wheaton College, Betty settled into her English classes. English came more naturally to her than science had. Still she found time for extracurricular activities, including becoming a member of the college debate squad.
Like the one before, the school year of 1945–46 sped by, as did the following year, her junior year. Betty continued to study hard, make good grades, and faithfully attend the Foreign Missions Fellowship. In December 1946, when Betty turned twenty, some of the women in the dorm threw a small birthday party for her, but there were no men in sight. Betty accepted the fact. She was taller than many of the men at college and naturally thin. She also had an intense personality and would rather talk theology than flirt. And although she would have liked to meet a man on campus to be her husband, she was not sure if that would happen. In fact, as she entered her twenties, Betty thought God might be calling her to go to the mission field as a single woman. The thought did not appeal to her, but she was willing to pray about it. One night in her journal she wrote, “Read about Henry Martyn of India, who had to choose between the woman he loved and the mission field. Shall I have to choose between marriage and mission?”
Chapter 6
An Interesting Man
Betty glanced up from her classic Greek history textbook and noticed a male student across the aisle. She had seen him before but had not paid much attention to him. She knew his name was Jim Elliot and that he was a year behind her, in the same class as her brother Dave. In fact Dave, who was on the college wrestling team, often talked about his friend Jim, but Betty had never been formally introduced. Now for a split second she wished she had.
Betty studied Jim’s profile. He had a sloping forehead, lots of wavy, dark brown hair, broad shoulders, and the barrel chest of a wrestler. His clothes, however, didn’t make him stand out from the rest of the class. He wore a sky blue sweater, a well-worn gabardine jacket, a bow tie, gray socks, and a sturdy pair of shoes. Rather ordinary, Betty thought. But she had to admit that there was something extraordinary about Jim Elliot. She noticed that even when sitting quietly studying, Jim possessed an aura of confidence, of—she struggled for the words—a kind of strength of conviction. In a fleeting moment, Betty decided she wanted to get to know Jim better.
Betty had never felt this curious about a young man before. She’d had a few dates here and there in high school, but that was boarding school, and everyone there had to pair up for formal nights. The boys had to politely ask the girls out, and the rules were that the girls could not refuse. It was hardly a system designed to foster romance, Betty concluded as she thought about it. But now she was in her third year of college, and she had been on fewer than a dozen dates the whole time she had been at Wheaton. None of them had been very inspiring—just a couple of campus concerts and a hayride one Thanksgiving. Since Wheaton College did not allow students to go to movies, that was not a dating option.
As Betty prayed that night, Jim Elliot’s face kept coming into her mind. She tried to dismiss it. After all, she had given her life to God and agreed to “go into all the world” as a single missionary. She told herself she needed to stay focused on her studies, especially now. Betty had started Wheaton College thinking that God might be leading her to be a doctor, perhaps in Africa or some other place that required her to live in a grass hut. But as time went on, she felt a steady pull toward Bible translation work, and during her third year she changed her major from English to Greek. She knew she had a lot of catch-up work to do if she was to graduate on schedule. Betty planned to take second-year Greek over the summer break and then work extra hard her senior year, combining her third and fourth years of Greek. As a result, she reasoned, she had little or no room in her life for the distraction of a boyfriend.
A week later Betty found herself once again sitting and watching Jim Elliot, only this time in a totally different context. She had gone to Alumni Gym to watch her brother Dave wrestle, but also wrestling that day was Jim Elliot, the India-rubber man, as he was known in wrestling circles. Betty could see how he got his nickname. No matter what sort of positional offense Jim’s opponent seemed to apply, Jim was almost impossible to pin down on the mat. Betty was impressed by Jim’s agility.
After the wrestling match, Betty quizzed Dave more on his friend. She soon learned that Jim was a man of definite opinions. He was from a Plymouth Brethren family from Oregon, and Dave told her that he knew the Bible better than any member of the Howard family. Betty found this hard to believe, but curiosity drove her to get to know Jim better.
Once Jim realized that Betty was Dave’s sister, he often stopped to say hello to her after class. It was difficult for Betty to overcome her natural shyness around men, but she made every effort to be friendly.
Betty had less time to spare hanging around after class, especially as the Northwest Debating Championship loomed. Betty had joined the Wheaton College debate squad during her sophomore year, and now as a junior she was going to compete in the debating championship. Of course, debating wasn’t all about talking and persuasively putting forth your side of an argument. Before you got to that stage, a lot of study of the topic at hand needed to be done. The debate topic for the Northwest Debating Championship was Compulsory Arbitration. So, as well as being involved in all of her other studies, Betty, along with the other members of the debate squad, spent a lot of time in the library learning all she could about compulsory arbitration. She noted both the good and the bad things about it, since the squad did not know until the championship whether they would be arguing for the affirmative or the negative regarding the subject.
Even Betty had to admit that the subject of compulsory arbitration was dull and boring. Nonetheless, when it was her turn to speak, she argued passionately for the subject, and to the delight of her and her team members, their squad won the championship.
During the summer of 1947, Betty stayed at Wheaton College to take her second-year Greek course. The campus was completely different over the summer. Fewer students were around, and everyone ate in the same dining room instead of in separate ones. And since no clubs or extracurricular activities were going on, Betty was able to focus completely on the task at hand—passing the second-year Greek course in one summer. As she studied, from time to time Betty found herself wondering what Jim Elliot might be doing back home in Oregon for the summer.
Betty passed her summer Greek course and in the fall began her senior year. She was amazed to learn that she and Jim had nearly identical class schedules: three Greek classes (Thucydides, Herodotus, and the Septuagint) and ancient Greek. Soon she and Jim were studying Greek together almost every night.
As Christmas approached, Betty felt attracted to Jim Elliot. Her brother Dave had invited Jim home to New Jersey for the holidays. Betty wondered how she would feel when Jim was introduced to the rest of her family. Would he fit in with the very organized daily routines at home? What would her parents and siblings think of him? And then she wondered why she even cared. After all, Jim was just another study mate, someone she never expected to see again after she graduated and had gone off to Africa or the South Seas. Or was he? Because Betty had no way of knowing whether he would ever reappear in her life, the thought of spending Christmas with her family and Jim both thrilled and terrified her.
Christmas with Jim was an eye-opening experience for Betty. Jim was well up to the task of fitting in with the formal, structured routine of the Howard family. And he really did know the Bible better than any of her brothers or her sister. But most astonishing of all, Jim could recite more hymns and poems than all of them put together. Betty found herself marveling at Jim. One minute he was reciting the entire twenty-one stanzas of the hymn The Sands of Time Are Sinking, and the next minute he was quoting Amy Carmichael, Betty’s favorite author.
At home in Moorestown, Betty visited old friends in New Jersey and Philadelphia and helped her mother around the house. Meanwhile, Jim shoveled snow from the front driveway and fixed several plumbing problems in the house. At night after everyone else had gone to bed, Betty and Jim would often sit and talk for an hour or longer. They had so much in common: they were both studying Greek, they both wanted to be missionaries, and they both loved learning about the Bible and reading about great saints like Amy Carmichael and Hudson Taylor. But sometimes as they talked, Betty wondered whether there wasn’t a hint of something else in their conversations. Was something deeper going on? She could not be sure.
In January, Betty, Dave, and Jim rode the train back to Wheaton. This was Betty’s last semester at college, and she had a lot of work to do.
It was four months later, at the end of April, before Jim asked Betty out on a date. After Greek class one afternoon, Jim told Betty that he was off to a missionary meeting at Moody Church in Chicago and wanted to know whether Betty would like to go with him to the event.
Betty was happy to be asked. She had been thinking of attending the meeting anyway, since the guest speaker was one of the daughters of C. T. Studd, a brave and dedicated early missionary to Africa. And C. T. Studd’s daughter did not disappoint. Her talk was riveting, especially when she described her father’s death. Her father lived in a tiny hut with very few possessions. He looked around and said, “I wish I had something to leave to each of you, but I gave it all to Jesus long ago.”
The talk fired up Jim, who talked about the sacrifices of the soul on their trip back to Wheaton College. When she thought about it later that night, Betty had to concede that it had not been a romantic date. And she was not surprised when Jim did not ask her out again.
The end of the school year loomed ahead, and on Memorial Day the Foreign Missions Fellowship at Wheaton College met for the last time that semester. The group gathered for breakfast outside at a place called the Lagoon. It felt strange to Betty to be sitting around chatting with people she had come to know and love over the past four years, knowing that they were about to be scattered to the four winds. One old roommate was off to Africa as a missionary, another to medical school, and several others to various missionary training programs. Although Betty felt called to the mission field as a Bible translator, she was not sure just how God was going to lead her there.
When the breakfast meeting was over, a group of the regular attendees stayed to clean up. Betty volunteered to help and noted that Jim did also. Betty was stuffing the last few pieces of trash into a can when Jim came bounding up to her. “Walk you back to your dorm?” he said.
Betty nodded. She needed to get back, as she had packing to do in anticipation of graduating and leaving Wheaton College behind. The two of them walked in silence for a quarter of a mile, and then Jim turned to Betty and touched her arm. “We have to get squared away how we feel about each other,” he said.
Betty stared at him. “Feel about each other. You mean…” she said slowly, trying to create a little time to think things through. Had she interpreted Jim’s words correctly? Did he have feelings for her, and did he assume that she had some for him? Betty frowned. She thought she’d done a great job of hiding her feelings for Jim.
“Come on, Betty,” Jim said impatiently, as if she were playing a game with him. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know I was in love with you.”
“I had no idea,“ Betty stammered.
“Really?” Jim looked incredulous. He detailed all the times they had studied together, all the times he had stopped to talk with her after class, the long talks over Christmas, and the conversation on the train coming back to campus from New Jersey.
