Growing Up Duggar: It's All About Relationships

by Duggar, Jill

  Another girl, about fourteen, also left a lasting memory. She cried as she told us she’d been there only six days and she knew she would stay until she was eighteen.

  Our most common way of traveling while on our missions trips to Central America is standing with others in the back of a pickup truck, holding on to the enclosing metal framework. Only the bravest travelers stand on the back bumper!

  It was hard to leave those girls, and we were all in tears as we said good-bye. It wasn’t only their day-to-day situation—in essence, living in a locked cage—that broke our hearts; it was that we knew that, aside from Jesus, they had no hope. They longed to escape from the orphanage, but at the same time they knew they had little chance for a better life outside its walls. Many had been taken out of abusive situations, but now the system that was set up to protect them was creating a different kind of abuse.

  Shalom Children’s Home

  From there we traveled to another orphanage, this one run by Christians from the States, and it was completely opposite to the sad facility we had visited earlier. The children there were happy—and loved. In fact, one of the challenges the Christian orphanage was facing was that children who grew up there and turned eighteen didn’t want to leave! The couple who ran the orphanage accommodated those requests by giving the former residents jobs at the orphanage or letting them live there while they volunteered their services. But two weeks before our visit, government officials had told the owners the “children” had to leave when they turned eighteen—no exceptions. It was a heartbreaking situation for everyone involved.

  There was a lot of sadness and heartache in the places we visited in Central America, but the Christian orphanage, Shalom Children’s Home, also was a place of great inspiration, especially when we heard the story of the Americans who started it.

  Don and Rose Ann Benner had enjoyed a comfortable life in Colorado, where Don worked as an executive for an international corporation. In 1976, when Don was fifty-two, the Benners felt called to do missionary work in foreign lands, and they sold their home and possessions and traveled by land with their two children to Costa Rica, where Don spent a year in language school, learning Spanish. They asked God to show them where He wanted them to go—and that prayer led them to El Salvador.

  You can read their amazing story in full at their website, hisdonations.com, but to keep things short, in 1983 they started Shalom Children’s Home with thirteen children who had been orphaned during El Salvador’s long civil war. Since then they’ve welcomed hundreds of other children into their love-filled facility, and they’ve also opened a Christian school and now operate feeding facilities for area residents in need. Their work is totally supported by donations—and by groups of volunteers who come from America and other countries to help.

  We’ve worked in children’s shelters here in Arkansas as well as those in Central America. We also visited an orphanage last year during our visit to China (more about that later). Our family is drawn to children’s facilities in part because God says true ministry is visiting the widows and fatherless, and also because of the stories Mom’s father, our Grandpa Ruark, told us about the years when he and three siblings lived in an orphanage.

  Grandpa’s father died at a young age during the Great Depression, and his mother wasn’t able to earn enough money to provide for her children. She had no choice but to put them in a children’s home. After a short while, Grandpa’s sister was placed in a loving foster home, but Grandpa and his brother and other sister lived in the orphanage eight long years, until their mother remarried and was able to bring her children home with her again.

  Grandpa said it was a hard life, but he was glad to have food and a bed. He told us he was grateful for everything that was done to help and support him and his siblings while they were there, and he seemed to remember every kindness, no matter how trivial. Even when he was our gray-haired Grandpa, he still remembered the Christmas when the Salvation Army brought each child in the orphanage a stuffed animal.

  Remembering his stories motivates us to be that kindhearted person who makes a difference, however small, in someone’s life, especially the children we meet in orphanages. We are often reminded that we may be the first glimpse of Jesus anyone has seen. It’s important to us to keep that in mind as we go about His work.

  And it’s another reason why we’re so inspired to see the impact the Benners, now in their eighties, have made in so many lives. Understanding that they’ve fed these children not only with food for their tummies but also food for their spiritual lives is a powerful, living testimony that shows what one person can do to make an eternal difference for others.

  That lesson was also brought home in the Christian school we visited in El Salvador. Dad had been invited to speak to parents of the students, so he shared his thoughts on the importance of raising children to have a ministry mind-set and a servant’s heart, always looking for ways to share God’s love.

  He expressed to the parents the needs that we had seen all around them, practically in their own backyards, and how that was what brought us back to their country time and again. At the end of Dad’s talk, he welcomed questions, and all of us participated in answering. The questions continued for nearly ninety minutes. We were amazed at how eager the parents were to know more about the work our team was doing and how they could get involved.

  Our family gathered at a local airport for a prayer and encouragement-filled sendoff when our brother Joseph left for nine weeks of Air Land Emergency Resource Team training.

  Even after the program officially ended and we were making our way to the door, parents continue to reach out to us. For example, one mom asked me (Jessa) for ideas about how she could encourage her daughter regarding proper relationships with boys, and I was glad to step aside with her and share the guidelines we older Duggar girls have adopted for ourselves with the help of our parents.

  Many of the families whose children attend the school are quite wealthy, and they pay a substantial tuition, which, in turn, pays the way for the poorer children who also attend. The main message our team hoped to impart during our time there was the urgent need for those Christians to reach out to others in their area, including the children in the orphanages, with the gospel message and the love of God.

  The same goes for all of us. Wherever God has placed us, there are needs all around us. We pray that each one of us will be attentive to see the needs of others and take the opportunities God gives us to share the love of Jesus with others.

  It is so neat to see how God works. We are praying that someday many of these El Salvador Christian school students may be the ones God uses to reap the seeds we have sown at the orphanage and guide someone into a relationship with our Savior. And also, in a future visit, maybe we will reap the seeds they sow.

  We had come on this trip to help and encourage others, but on the last night of our trip, as with every trip, it was clear that we were the ones who’d gotten the biggest blessings, a reminder of Jesus’s teaching that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” We were greatly blessed—especially as we considered the work of those who had devoted their whole lives to helping the people we had only briefly visited.

  The Power of a Single Life

  In addition to the Benners, who started the orphanage and school, our friends Mike Schadt and Alex Lara have also impacted many for Christ. Mike is an ex-pro beach volleyball player who was radically saved. He and his wife, Sandy, became missionaries to Italy but had to come back to the States after his wife ended up with Lyme disease. After they returned, Mike prayed about how he could minister to those around him, and he got an idea to offer to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at a local college in Clearwater, Florida.

  Alex Lara was a young Salvadoran rural health worker who was awarded a scholarship to come to America for additional medical training. While he was attending medical-related courses in Clearwater, he also signed up for Mike’s free English classes. Mike used the Spanish-English
Bible as the textbook.

  As Alex soaked up the English lessons, he also heard a clear gospel message and ended up committing his life to following Christ. Mike went on to share many Bible truths with Alex over the next few months, but then the time came for Alex to return to his own country. Mike told Alex to stay in touch and asked him to let him know if there was ever anything Mike could do for him.

  After Alex returned to El Salvador he did just that. He called Mike and asked him to consider coming down to help the people in his country. Mike agreed and ended up bringing a small team to do ministry work. They organized a special presentation in the center of town and also went door-to-door sharing the gospel. The team fell in love with the people in El Salvador, but eventually they had to say good-bye and return to the States.

  A major earthquake struck El Salvador one month later. Villages were destroyed by the quake itself or the resulting mudslides. Alex made another call to Mike, and Mike quickly organized some Christian friends who collected cash, food, clothes, and other much-needed items and headed back to El Salvador. They went to work in devastated villages, clearing debris, handing out clothes and personal items, and sharing food, along with the gospel message. Alex and the people who received help were grateful for the relief efforts.

  During the past twelve years, about every four months Mike Schadt has taken a group of people to Central America to do ministry work. Every year around Christmastime the teams take gifts with them and hold Christmas parties in the poor villages for the children; they also take beans, rice, and other necessities to the needy families there. Alex is now a leader in the church, and his wife, Mida, leads the women and children’s ministry.

  Today, Mike and Alex’s legacy is shown in the Christian churches they have started in El Salvador and Honduras and in the lives of the many people they have helped. By helping restore homes destroyed by natural disasters and by assisting the poverty-stricken residents in other ways, they have helped hearts of the villagers open up to the gospel, and many have received God’s gift of salvation.

  Mike’s ministry in El Salvador eventually turned into SOS Ministries International (soshope.org), which now sends Christians who have a desire to serve on mission trips to impoverished areas in Africa, Asia, and the Americas to share the gospel while also helping with physical needs.

  We joined Ray Comfort in sharing the gospel during our visit to Washington, D.C.

  Again and again in their work they have seen what happens when a single heart is turned toward God. Just as Alex’s faith eventually inspired his wife and other family members to believe, one person who becomes a Christian and dedicates his or her life to living for God can have a powerful impact on his or her family. And that family, in turn, can impact dozens of others.

  It’s the same way Grandma Duggar, after becoming a Christian at age fifteen when no one else in her family believed, has had such a widespread influence as the years passed. She planted the love of God in the hearts of her children, who grew up to share that love with their own children. That would be us!

  When we truly turn over the control of our lives to Jesus Christ, God’s spirit then lives in us, and His love will overflow out of our lives through our words and deeds. Once we experience His love and forgiveness, we want to share it with others! And that relationship with others is what this chapter is about. The Bible tells us we are not supposed to express love only through our words but, even more important, through our actions as well, so serving others should be the primary focus of true Christians (see 1 John 3:18).

  Jesus taught that we’re to treat others as we want to be treated. And He also said we’re to extend kindness to “strangers.” He told His disciples a parable about a time when God will separate “His sheep from the goats”—in other words, the blessed from the cursed. Describing that time in the future, He said the blessed ones were those who had fed Him when He was hungry, gave Him a drink when He was thirsty, sheltered Him when He was a stranger, clothed Him when He was in need, looked after Him when He was ill, and visited Him when He was in prison.

  In the parable, Jesus’s followers were confused, thinking they hadn’t done any of those things for Him. They asked, “Lord, when did we see you hungry?”

  Jesus explained, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40).

  Those words empower us to carry His love out into what Christians call “the mission field,” whether it’s “the least of these” in a family living in a mud hut in Honduras; a confused, hard-hearted girl living in an orphanage in El Salvador; or someone living closer to home.

  Jesus’s words also influence us Duggar girls in the way we’ve prepared for our adult years. We all hope to be wives and mothers someday, if that’s in God’s plan for us, so in the meantime we’re preparing for marriage and motherhood by acquiring as many skills as possible. We believe one of the best preparations for marriage is to develop a selfless, giving mind-set that is always looking for ways to serve others, which is another way of serving the Lord.

  Discovering Our Own Ministries

  In considering ideas and opportunities for training, education, and ministry, our parents have been of great help; they’ve encouraged us to build on our strengths and talents, and not to fear stepping out into something new. We want to learn all we can and prepare to do work that gives us tools and brings opportunities to share God’s love with others. That’s the career we want in life.

  In the rest of this chapter, we’ll share how God has opened doors for us to let us see work we can do for Him—and where that work has taken us.

  Volunteers in the Fire Department

  After our brother John-David joined the local volunteer fire department, Jill and I (Jana) became interested in the work he was doing (and the adventures he was having!). So we joined, too. The three of us completed emergency response training and became Certified First Responders.

  Our purpose in joining the department was to gain practical medical skills that would enable us to help the people in our community and in our own family. Since then, we’ve had hundreds of opportunities to assist in a variety of emergency situations, from car rollovers caused by drunk drivers to people having heart attacks. Sometimes in our small town we even get called out to things like a little old lady’s cat stuck in a tree or a kid with his lip stuck in a sippie cup (true story!).

  Even though Jill and I have been trained in how to put out fires, we’ll probably stick to running the pumps on the fire trucks. Since there are plenty of guys in our volunteer department, we’re not the ones going into burning buildings; we leave that to the men. At the same time, we know that a woman’s presence—say, in the case of a woman in labor—is much appreciated!

  Jana also completed the emergency-response training and served with our volunteer fire department, but she’s discontinued that work since her involvement with Journey to the Heart retreats takes her away from home.

  In May 2011, our training led us to Joplin, Missouri, after the devastating F5 tornado destroyed parts of the city. Joplin is just a ninety-minute drive north of our home, so we gathered up equipment and supplies and headed up there within hours of the tornado hitting that area. As the sun rose over the city, we joined a special response team from Arkansas assigned to search the local Home Depot, which had been leveled by 189-mile-per-hour winds.

  The former building was nothing but a tangled mass of steel, concrete, shelving, merchandise, and other debris that had blown into the site. As our work began, we hoped to find survivors but knew it would be difficult to get them out of the wreckage without causing further injury. Several people had been shopping in the store as the clouds started to swirl late in the day on May 22. Several others were driving nearby and, realizing it was simply too dangerous to stay on the road, rushed into the huge store, seeking shelter from the storm.

  One such driver was a dad with his two small children, an eighteen-month-old boy and a five-year-old girl. He calle
d his wife to let her know they were hurrying into the Home Depot for safety. A worker inside the building was finding customers and rushing them to a safe room in the back. Suddenly, the tornado’s fierce winds smashed into the store, knocking the thick exterior walls to the ground and caving in the roof from front to back. The worker who was rushing others to safety was among the dead found by Jill and John’s team at the front of the building. He had been coming back to the storefront to help more people when the building collapsed. Many survived because he led them to the safe room, but he did not.

  The search process grew increasingly grim as the work shifted from trying to be careful not to crush potential survivors to simply avoiding doing more damage to the bodies buried beneath the tons of rubble. The team pulled body after body from the wreckage, some of us holding up tarps to shield the scene from bystanders, many of whom were anxious family members hoping their loved ones had survived.

  Workers cut chunks of concrete so we could pull the pieces off crushed victims. As one large chunk came up, we saw a man lying facedown. Over his shoulder we could see little fingers, and on the other side another little hand reached from beneath him. It was the man and his two young children.

  We held it together as we plowed through the dreary day. There was too much to do to stop and think about how awful it was. But later on, during debriefing, the day’s events began to sink in. So many lives were lost, so many families were ripped apart, so many hearts were broken; the grief threatened to overwhelm us. But at the same time we were thankful God had allowed us to receive emergency-response training years before, which enabled us to serve the people of Joplin in this very challenging situation.