Last month I participated in the mission conference at Maranatha Baptist Church in Charleston, WV. Dr. Ron White, veteran missionary to Japan, was the conference speaker. Dr. White is someone I could listen to talk for hours. I can’t recall all the details of his testimony but it goes something like this… One day a preacher moved to the coal mining town where he lived as a boy to start a church. The preacher tried to no avail to get a work established. Although he had several evangelistic meetings there was very little results to show for it. The preacher packed his bags and returned home to report that he spent much time and effort in that little coal mining town, and the only person to get saved was one little boy… Ronnie White. As a result of Dr. White’s ministry, dozens of churches were started in Japan and hundreds of Japanese have been won to Christ… all because of “one little boy.”
The thing that impressed me most about Dr. White was his love for his wife Odessa. You couldn’t talk to him long without hearing him mention her name. They met as children. Ronnie’s father (or step-father, I don’t recall) did not have much use for Christianity. Ron would walk 20 miles to the nearest church only to have his father drive by and mock him as a fool. On one of those long trips to church a car pulled over to give 12 year-old Ronnie a ride. It was Odessa’s father, and sitting in the car with Odessa young Ron fell in love. He knew from that moment he wanted to marry her. Someone from the church told me Dr. White never considered remarrying after Odessa died from cancer over ten years ago. He apparently said, “How could I marry a princess when I was married to a queen?” During one of Dr. White’s sermons he quoted a poem he wrote as a young man about how he’d do anything and go anywhere the Lord wanted but he only wanted one thing from the Lord: Odessa. The line in the poem was something like, “If you give me that which I most desire.” He said when Odessa was real sick he changed that line in the poem to read, “If you take that which I’ve most desired…” It was an emotionally moving time in his sermon. I can’t do any of his story justice. I was just so impressed with his love for his wife. I never heard him tell a derogatory joke about her nor their marriage… In a day when marriage is laughed at and made light of, it was truly heart-touching to see one man’s devotion to the love of his life.
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” Song of Solomon 8:7
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