After reading the amazing lives of missionaries living in remote areas of South America and Indonesia they inspired and motivated me to start this blog. These wonderful people, who sacrificed their lives for the sake of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ must be shared to inspire others to go beyond their limits and serve the best that they can in the lives they were gifted.
After pondering these thoughts of sharing their stories, I did not have time to begin creating the blog as we needed to return to serve in our church in Florida. We travelled to eastern Canada, stopping to visit friends and family along the way.
While visiting our nephew in the Sudbury, Ontrio area, we were able to attend the church that his son is now a member at Whitefish, Ontario. This was a special time, as this actual church building was moved by my husband and his brother to this location many decades ago.
While visiting with the members following the service we exchange conversation with many but my husband was speaking with one man in particular, Rick Mitchell. That morning the pastor was away on holidays and Rick had delivered the morning message. Rick was a retired school teacher and was an excellent communicator. As I joined the conversation he was having with my husband I soon discovered that we had some common ground. Rick had a relatives in the same area of Ontario that I had spent my childhood. One in particular was a childhood missionary hero of mine, Don Phibbs.
Don was Rick’s paternal grandmother’s brother, his great uncle. Don was born in Ontario and raised on a 3/4 section homestead outside of Glenside, Saskatchewan. He trained as a chiropractor but doesn’t seem to have pursued that line of work for very long. Rather, he was a preacher/evangelist, initially associated with Apostolic Churches in the west and later in northern Ontario where he started and pastored the Bethel Mission from 1939-1949 in Timmins and then for a few years in southern Ontario near Sarnia where he conducted Bible studies at the Oban School in Plympton Township and some gospel activities at a little community called Becher.
Becher was where I attended church as a child and where my husband and I exchanged our wedding vows. It was a little white country church that was started by my great uncle Frank. I could digress at this point and share lots as to how this little church came to be, but I must not, as the life of Don Phibbs left an indelible mark on my childhood years and will continue to share his story.
As an evangelist in the west, Don often conducted series of meetings in rural school houses and even did open air preaching, at least once, in Carlyle, Saskatchewan. One person saved under that ministry was Don Merritt who was later the leader of Christian Service Brigade in Canada. Dot and Ed Johnson were saved at meetings he held near Nipawin, Saskatchewan; they became godly leaders for years at the People’s Church outside Wyoming, Ontario, which was formed with people who attended Don’s Bible studies at the Oban School.
Don Phibbs met his wife Ellen who was a pianist at such a meeting in the west. Their oldest son, Paul, became a deputy police chief in Calgary, and after the death of Don’s first wife, he married “Mim”, the daughter of the founder of the Prairie Bible Institute. Their younger son was David and their daughter was Donna Bell; unfortunately she suffered from emotional/psychological problems.
After World War II General Douglas Macarthur called on Western nations to flood Japan with 10,000 Christian missionaries to effectively change the character of the Japanese people. Don felt the call of God to go there and headed there with his family in the early 1950’s. I only met Uncle Don about a half dozen times but I do know he was a man of faith who saw some tremendous answers to prayer.
By the time, he went to Japan, he was completely independent and supported by no mission board. Later New Tribes Mission asked him if they would like to come under their umbrella so he did but he remained very much an independent. As an example, unlike most missionaries, he did not seek to establish churches, rather giving attention to “making disciples”. Just how he did this, I’m not entirely sure, but I am sure he had many inovative ideas.
He would put a sign in his window that said “English spoken here” and dozens of university/ high school student came to hear him speak English; some of them became believers as he only spoke to them about the Bible. For a time he had a short radio slot in the wee hours of the morning. I am sure he had many strategies that he used.
His family were with him for his first term in Japan but found it necessary to remain in Canada for the balance of his ministry there. His wife Ellen taught music in the area of Three Hills, Alberta in that time. Later in his time in Japan, he was joined by his widowed sister, Myrtle Baker, who was a practising chiropractor. Don had become conversant in Japanese but Myrtle did not have time to do so. She used English to teach cooking classes and became the chiropractor for the basketball team at the Christian Academy of Japan, a school for missionary kids.
Here are a couple of antedotes:
Don never had a bank roll for his needs. He depended on the Lord to look after them. On one of his returns to Canada with two young adult Japanese believers, they arrived mid-week at a town in the lower mainland of British Columbia … with only pocket change. However, it was mid-week so they resolved to find a church meeting and found themselves at an intersection with three churches, all of them holding mid-week meetings that night. After prayer, they decided which to attend. The others in attendance inquired of them, their plans and needs, etc. In short, they were hosted that night with someone in the church and went by transport the next day to Calgary with a trucker who relayed ahead to his dispatch office that he had passengers who needed to get to Sarnia, Ontario. Even though it was a great distance from British Columbia, via Calgary, all the way across the country to Sarnia, Ontario, God provided the means and the next Sunday they were at the People’s Church in Sarnia, Ontario. His nephew Rick was not sure if Don still had his pocket change!
On another occasion, Don was with a group of people who secured a less expensive trip travelling via Hong Kong, India, Israel and Britain than travelling directly east to North America. Just before their departure, he received a cheque which he did not have time to cash in Japan but which he needed to fund some of the expenses such as hotels and meals for that trip home. The plane landed in Hong Kong late on Friday afternoon and Don only knew one person who could verify the cheque for him and he did not have that man’s phone number. What to do? Well, he prayed, grabbed a taxi and asked to be taken to the nearest bank only to meet that very man at the door of the bank … with only fifteen minutes left before the bank closed for the weekend.
Don never had anything much more than his clothing and sometimes that became rather thin and shiny. Rick’s father once bought him a new suit as the one he had was so worn. Rick and his wife Donna visited Don and Ellen in Vancouver in August of 1980; they were living in Ellen’s brother’s home, her brother having gone to a nursing home. As for income, I didn’t know their circumstance. Ellen may have earned a small Canada Pension (which wouldn’t have started to accumulate until the country introduced it in 1965). Don did not qualify for Old Age Security until he had had a couple of years of employment in Canada; whether he had that or not, I do know that even in 1980, he went and preached to the men at a downtown mission a couple of times a week.
When I think of people who lived by faith, a few names come to my mind, but Don Phibbs is the name that is most prominent in my memory.
My grandmother who was part of the Ladies Missionary Circle at the Becher church would receive in the mail Don’s letters. These letters came on “airplane paper”, so light and fragile with such small writing to be able to fill every inch of the page with the lastest news of what Don was experiencing in his work in Japan. As these were shared at the monthly circle meeting they would be discussed, prayed over, and many at the church would contribute and participate in any way they could to help with Don’s work in Japan.
We will never know until we reach our eternal home, what an impact Don had on this world. But, certainly we know he was a man of faith and worked sacrifically for his master.