by Duggar, Jill
One evening many years ago during Dad’s first campaign, some families met up at our house to divide into teams for some neighborhood canvassing. We don’t celebrate Halloween, and everyone totally forgot what day it was—October 31. So that evening as we girls walked through the neighborhood with an adult, all of us wearing our ruffly dresses and hair ribbons and carrying our bags of campaign leaflets, people were offering us candy and telling us they loved our dresses. We eventually caught on and suspended our campaigning efforts till the next morning, but that day we received the friendliest greetings ever while knocking on doors during a campaign season!
More than fourteen years later, in 2012, we older siblings stepped up our political work and took campaigning to the next level. First we met as a family to talk about which presidential candidate shared our values and beliefs. We older kids, along with Mom and Dad, had done our research, and we all discussed the various candidates, what they believed in and what values they would be promoting as president. We prayed, asking God to guide us in making our choice. We studied the real issues, the candidates’ core values, and their voting records. We talked about which person, running for the highest elected office in our country, would have the backbone to stand for what is right?
If we were going to endorse someone, we really wanted to make sure the person we chose was someone whose core beliefs and philosophy agreed with our own. Everyone knows that politics can be a dirty, misleading business. We’ve all seen candidates who say one thing but then do another when they’re elected.
After lots of prayer, research, and discussion, as a family, we all agreed that Rick Santorum, a Republican former US senator from Pennsylvania, was a presidential candidate we could fully endorse. We admired his courage and confidence, and we especially like that he had the courage to author the bill that finally ended partial-birth abortions in America. (If you remember from the beginning of this chapter, this was the very issue God used to bring our family into politics back in 1997.)
With the Iowa caucuses about a week away, we knew we had to work quickly. Dad said that with so many candidates in the race, he expected that this election would be very close. We discussed the idea of gathering some friends from the area and driving up to Iowa to lend a hand, and Dad added jokingly, “Maybe our mobile support team could help put Santorum over the top!”
Dad called the Santorum campaign headquarters, where the staff said they could gladly use as many volunteers as we would bring. Dad asked where the candidate would be appearing in the next few days. We called some friends we knew who would be up for a last-minute adventure and invited them to jump on the bus, as we would be heading to Iowa the next morning. Our oldest brother, Josh, had the idea of using his vinyl-cutting machine to cut out letters that spelled “Rick Santorum for President.” He and a couple of the other older boys stayed up all night cutting out the letters and plastering them onto the sides of our bus.
As we hit the road that morning, our team totaled twenty-six people, including Dad, several of the older Duggar kids, and many friends. We arrived in Iowa about 1:30 A.M. and settled into a hotel near where Senator Santorum was to appear that day.
We got a little sleep, and the next morning, Dad went down to the hotel lobby and phoned one of the campaign staff members to say we had brought a big group from out of state to help in the campaign and we were ready to get busy. While Dad was on the phone, he was surprised to see Rick Santorum himself walk into the hotel lobby. We had no clue he was staying in the same hotel.
Dad approached the senator and introduced himself, telling him we had brought reinforcements from Arkansas to help him in his campaign. Senator Santorum expressed gratefulness and said we could meet him at his next event.
One of the first campaign stops we attended with him was a meet-and-greet at a coffee shop. We pulled our bus up out front, and all of us came swarming out to stir up enthusiasm for the candidate’s appearance. More than a hundred journalists from all over the world had showed up at that coffee shop that morning, and when we pulled up, several reporters recognized our family. Dad started doing one interview after another, saying our family had driven up from Arkansas to get the word out that Rick Santorum was the conservative Christian candidate that our family was getting behind and we were asking others to join us in supporting him. Dad went on to share how Senator Rick Santorum had authored the bill to ban partial-birth abortion in America and that he knew Rick would stand for what is right. Dad said over and over again that Rick Santorum has a backbone of steel and a heart of gold.
Our younger sister Joy was happy to chauffeur US senator Rick Santorum around our home while little brother Justin served as tour guide.
At a later event, Senator Santorum told supporters he had been (and still was) driving all over Iowa in a pickup truck, campaigning on a shoestring budget. But when he pulled up to the hotel that morning, the first thing he saw was a huge bus covered with “Rick Santorum for President.” He assumed his staff had gone out and leased a very expensive bus for his campaign, and he was incredulous, demanding, “Who authorized the money for that bus? We don’t have money to spend on this sort of thing!”
His staff reassured him they had not spent a dime on the bus and that it belonged to a group of volunteers who had brought their own bus to help out. When we heard this, we all had a good laugh!
We attended several Santorum campaign appearances in Iowa, and as his crowds grew, the need for a sound system became apparent. Josh and John went to Radio Shack and bought a small portable karaoke-style amplifier for the candidate to use.
We continued to go from one rally to the next, the twenty-six of us serving as a mobile support team, cheering and handing out literature wherever he spoke. We were delighted to see his poll numbers going up—not because of our work on his behalf but because people were learning what he stood for and liking what they saw.
On January 3, 2012, Santorum ended up losing the Iowa caucuses by eight votes. Eight! We rode back home to Arkansas thinking, Oh, man! We should have worked just a little harder. We were disappointed, but we also saw that our candidate had tremendous momentum, and we still wanted to help. (Later in January, the official recount tally showed that Santorum had actually won the Iowa caucuses by thirty-four votes, increasing his campaign’s momentum even more.)
Two weeks before the South Carolina primary, Jessa, Jinger, and I (Jill), along with our brother John-David, loaded up the bus and took off for South Carolina. It was the first time we kids had taken the family bus on the road campaigning by ourselves. Other friends came along—not as many as before but enough to make another small but energetic mobile support team when needed.
At first we made calls from the campaign headquarters and served as an advance team, putting out signs and helping make sure things were ready before the candidate’s appearances.
As time went on, Santorum had a multitude of requests to hold rallies in many different states. Because he could only be in one place at a time, our team was able to join with local volunteers to hold separate events and speak on Santorum’s behalf. Grandma and Jana volunteered to hold down the fort one weekend so that Dad and Mom could come to South Carolina and help out. They did a couple of events with the candidate, and we Duggar kids did some on our own.
As the campaign grew, so did the size of the crowds—and the challenges. We would help set things up, have signs ready to hand out to supporters, hand out literature, and give media interviews when asked.
We had studied the candidate and knew what he stood for, so we were happy to share when people asked about Santorum’s stand on lowering taxes, improving education, strengthening families, and pro-life issues.
Santorum’s campaign had attracted negative attention as well as positive, and we quickly learned to recognize the people who showed up to cause disruptions and “glitter bomb” the candidate and crowd, throwing red and green glitter all over everyone. Until his campaign grew large enough to have its own security team, we helped with those jo
bs, too. When we saw the glitter bombers at a rally we would keep an eye on them and notify the police officers working at the event of what they most likely would do.
If they got overly disruptive, Josh and John, along with some of the boys in the Bates family, who had joined us, would gently but firmly edge the glitter bombers out of the crowd.
At one rally, I (Jill) was standing next to an older man, a very wealthy Iowa banker who had come out to support Santorum. I saw the glitter bombers making their move but not in time to warn the gentleman, and he got covered in green glitter. He was pretty upset! I’m not sure what the glitter bombers’ goal was, but if they were trying to win people over to their side, it wasn’t working.
We lived on the bus for several weeks during that time and actually got pretty good at understanding how truck stops work (although we never got over the sense of feeling like prisoners whenever they called our number for our turn in the shower).
In all, we campaigned for Santorum in ten states: Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, living on the bus everywhere except Michigan.
It was exciting, exhausting work—and very rewarding to watch the campaign grow from tiny stops in Iowa, where only a handful of voters showed up, and then to be thrust into a massive movement complete with professional-level event preparation, Secret Service presence, and a media frenzy wherever he showed up.
Our goal was to get the word out that Santorum was the family-values candidate everyone should get behind. We said that over and over wherever we went on the campaign trail.
Everyone on the campaign worked hard, but by early April, it was apparent that the vote had been split by other candidates running in the Republican primary and Santorum wasn’t going to gain enough delegates to put him over the top. In the first week of April, Dad was part of a conference call when the campaign team was told the campaign might be coming to an end. On April 10, 2012, Santorum made it official. His campaign had endured some losses and other setbacks—including his young daughter Bella’s near-fatal illness back home—and he pulled out of the race.
We were sad, but also grateful for all the experiences we’d shared in helping with a national campaign. We made many memories along the way, and we look forward to the next race.
Later in 2012, we were able to be a part of several local senate and representative races; many of the candidates we supported are now in office. You win some, you lose some. In the end it depends on the hearts of the voters. All we can do is get involved and do our part.
Our desire is to impact the world for God through the political scene. I (Jill) get energized by this work. We joke that it runs in our blood! And while Josh and I are willing to speak in front of crowds, others in our family would rather avoid that aspect. But we can all get involved in one way or another.
Jana, Jessa, and Jinger are happier being part of the crowd, handing out literature, chatting with the people who show up, working the phone banks, and taking care of behind-the-scenes duties. (Plus, our fearless sister Jana is right at home driving the bus—and although some of us have done it here and there, we’re happiest turning that job over to Jana and the guys!)
When we volunteered to help Senator Rick Santorum in his presidential campaign, Jinger was often called on to take campaign photos, but occasionally she found herself on the other side of the lens.
Some people think Christians should stay out of the political arena, but we strongly disagree. Our family believes faith and politics should go hand in hand, and we’ve seen countless examples of how that happens. For example, earlier this year, the Arkansas legislature passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, banning all abortions after twelve weeks’ gestation—even overriding the governor’s veto to make it final. Most of us older Duggar kids went down to the capitol to lobby for this, and our oldest brother, Josh, spent a good part of the session helping guide this bill through. The effort was led by conservative Christian legislators who campaigned on the principles they believed and then followed through when they were elected.
Our nation was founded on the Bible and on Judeo-Christian principles, and we see it as our responsibility to protect those freedoms by supporting candidates who hold true to those same values and principles. Our prayer is that by sharing our political experiences with others, many will see the need to get involved, and together we can all make a difference!
8
YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WORLD
Developing a servant’s heart
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
—Matthew 5:16
WE’LL NEVER FORGET THE girls in the cage.
SERVING OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
Locked Up and Abandoned
It wasn’t the kind of cage you might see at the zoo but a twenty-foot-high fenced area in an orphanage in Central America. Dad and several of us Duggars had traveled with some friends to El Salvador and Honduras to help and encourage Christians working in ministry there and to do what we could to help spread the gospel. We spent one day visiting a couple of orphanages, and when we came to visit the older girls who live in one government-run facility, we walked through heavy steel doors that clanged shut behind us after we passed. We could hear the security guard threading the heavy chain back through the door handles and snapping the big padlock closed, locking us in with the thirty girls, ages eleven to seventeen, who live in either of the two big rooms joined by a small, center courtyard, sleeping on bunk beds and looking out on the world through iron-barred windows.
They’re locked in this high-security area of the orphanage, not because they’ve done something bad, but because they’re thought to have the greatest potential for trying to escape or because they have noncustodial relatives who may want to kidnap them. Ironically, as soon as they turn eighteen, these girls are turned out onto the street, most likely with no skills and no means of supporting themselves.
We were there during the closing days of our latest mission trip to Central America. We had ridden in the back of pickup trucks with local Christian friends and hiked long distances to bring the gospel to residents of remote villages, visiting them in their simple, mud-brick homes. We’d attended church services and helped put on conferences with dedicated believers in area churches. And now we had gotten permission to visit a government-run orphanage, bringing the girls simple treats and gifts, including Bibles. We’d visited the other areas of the orphanage, including the section where teenage mothers tended their babies, and the areas where younger children lived. Then came the visit to the older “high-risk” girls. The girls in the cage.
In 2013, Dad accompanied most of the older Duggar kids on a missions trip to Honduras, including, from left, Jinger, Jill, Jessa, Jana, and Joy.
We gathered in the center courtyard, which was enclosed by an old, rusty, twenty-foot-high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. We began with a quick little mime skit and then shared why we had come—to tell them about Jesus. I (Jana) shared my testimony and told the girls God loves each one of them. Through an interpreter, I told them how they could have a relationship with Jesus if they received the gift of salvation and forgiveness He offers to each of us.
Then I asked, “If you were to die tonight, how many think you would go to heaven?”
A few of the girls raised their hands, but many were unsure.
Then I asked, “How many think you will go to hell?”
One girl raised her hand. She wore a black leather jacket—and a sullen, almost angry demeanor. She’d paced nervously while we’d presented the skit and then while I shared my testimony. At one point, she walked away and then came back in.
The next part of our visit was sharing a craft project and making bracelets together, which gave us an opportunity to visit informally one-on-one with the girls. I (Jill) began to help the girl wearing the black jacket make her bracelet, which gave me t
ime to talk with her. While Jana had been talking and the girl had been pacing, I’d prayed fervently that God would calm her spirit and open her heart to the good news we were bringing. I’m working hard to learn Spanish, and I was able to have a simple conversation with her. She told me she’d lived in the orphanage since she was two years old. Her dad was from Guatemala and her mom was from Mexico, she said, “and they don’t care about me.”
I was able to talk to her about how she could have a personal relationship with Jesus, who does care about her. I gave her a little Bible and showed her some key verses. I pointed them out to her and then asked her to read them herself. When I asked if she understood, she nodded. When it was time to leave, I asked her how I could pray for her. She said her prayer was that someday she could meet her mom.
I prayed for her, asking God to bring her mom back into her life. But I prayed in English, which she didn’t understand, so I prayed for a lot more than that! I asked God to help her work through the hard things of the past and find healing. And I asked that she would be able to forgive those who had offended her and break the chains of bitterness that seemed to spread such gloom over her. But most important, I prayed that her heart would be softened toward God and that one day she would be saved, remembering what Jesus told His disciples, that sometimes “one soweth, and another reapeth” (John 4:37). In other words, I hoped the seed of the gospel planted in this girl’s heart would one day come to fruition—if God would so choose, through another person—and that she would become a powerful example to other girls walking through the same struggles she has known all her life.