Marilyn Mason, Missionary Through the Impossible

Reprint

Sunday School Times

1 SEPTEMBER 1980

Photo of Marilyn Mason, taken by United Methodist Church Board of Global Ministries photographer at the Département d'Entraînement des Laďcs (DEL) de l'Église Méthodiste d'Haďti (Methodist Church of Haiti Department of Lay Leadership Training / Methodist Publishing House Complex) Inauguration Ceremony, 1976.

MARILYN MASON:

MISSIONARY THROUGH THE IMPOSSIBLE

BY ELIZABETH W. CRISCI

ONE thousand feet down from the top of Mount Ruwenzori in Zaire lay the body of David Mason, missionary, father of three, and husband of Marilyn. As relaxation before returning to the States with his children to be with his hospitalized wife, Dave took the climb with another missionary. He was an expert at scaling difficult passages, but an unexpected landslide struck him on the head. His body had to be buried on the slope, but Dave himself went immediately into God's presence.

Within two days the news reached the new widow. Her tropical disease was serious, perhaps incurable. What was happening to her? Her children had to be flown home alone to face an uncertain future. Through the tears, Marilyn proclaimed, "God makes no mistakes!" She had come too far to give up now. "The facts didn't take away my sense of call," she declared. "They only rearranged the circumstances!"

Marilyn Mason was born during World War II. Her days in church as a child were meaningful, yet missing an important ingredient - the Bible. From her first communion to her confirmation, she struggled to please the Lord. Often she sought an answer to a perplexing question: What really determines whether a person goes to heaven or hell? Because her parents would occasionally swear, she wondered, Will that keep them from heaven? Because she argued with her sisters, Will that keep me from heaven?

After graduation from high school, Marilyn secured a job as a clerk-typist with an insurance company. Every lunch hour was spent in confession and communion at a nearby chapel. But still her spiritual longing was present. When a favorite cousin died, she cried, "Where will he spend eternity?"

Marilyn remembers, "Finally, in desperation, I asked God, in conversational prayer, to reach down to me and help me."

Within a few weeks, a worker from another department was lent to the office where Marilyn was working. His name was Dave Mason. He had just come to Christ after spending his young life in drunkenness and ruined career opportunities. On their second date, they sat by themselves at a small table and Marilyn asked about the book that was in Dave's shirt pocket. He opened the New Testament and confused her by saying, "It's my food and drink!"

"Explain," she insisted.

Dave recounted his story. He had been a football player, a state trooper, a worker in the forestry service, and a champion weight lifter. Everything he had accomplished disappeared because of his lack of self-control. Finally, he got caught stealing liquor from his best friends. Life wasn't worth living. He took out his loaded revolver one night and put it to his head. But before he could pull the trigger he asked himself, Where does a person go after death? What if there really is a God? If God is real, then maybe heaven and hell are real! He was twenty-six years old and couldn't answer those important questions. He put the gun back into the drawer and began to look for answers to his questions.

The next day, he apologized to his friends. Then his neighbor, a minister, noticed his dejected look.

"What's wrong, Dave?" he asked.

The young man unburdened himself to a pastor he didn't even know. Invited to a Bible study that night, Dave found himself searching the Scriptures for answers to life. And he found them. Soon Dave discovered new life in Christ. As he shared his faith with Marilyn, she felt God telling her, "Believe what he's telling you. But more, act on what he's telling you!"

She did! That night she received Christ. "Dave gave me his New Testament, and over the next couple of months he guided me in my reading and understanding." And added to that joy, the two fell in love and were married the next June.

Immediately, they became active in their local church and grew to love the Lord more each day. They soon longed to serve the Lord full time. But they had no training, and children were on the way. The second one nearly died. As God spared his life, the couple knew God was speaking, and they responded to God's call. The Masons sold their home, and Dave enrolled in a Christian college.

A missionary revealed to Dave the need for a laboratory technician in Zaire. Dave changed his major and set his sights toward Africa. In 1971 the Masons left for Zaire, where Dave worked in the lab and taught Africans how to diagnose abnormalities and do routine laboratory work. Marilyn used her time as a secretary when she was not caring for their three little ones.

Days in Africa were happy and busy until Marilyn began to feel weak and sick. Blood tests seemed to reveal a strange illness. Dave helped the Africans with their medical problems, but his wife's tricky bug escaped him. He decided she needed a Boston hospital to get the help desired. Reluctantly, she flew away from her loved ones, never to see Dave again.

There were long days of separation and recuperation. They proved hard. Tears were evident at Dave's death. But Marilyn knew, "God makes no mistakes!" She recalls, "I was led to Joshua 1:2, 6, where God says, 'Moses ... is dead; ... arise, go over this Jordan, ... Be strong and of a good courage.' I trusted God to order my steps."

Marilyn was asked to speak in a few churches as she became stronger. She shared from her heart what God was doing in her life. The message reached people. Lives were changed through her faith. Still connected with the mission, she helped with a missions project in Newark, New Jersey. Then her speaking took her thousands of miles away. God always supplied just the right people to care for her maturing family. From New Jersey to Great Britain, to Belize and finally to Haiti, God led each step of the way. Burdened for the neediest country this side of the Atlantic, God allowed her and her children to go to Haiti to serve together in the work of preparing Sunday school curriculum. Zaire uses French; Haiti uses French. God's hand was in this move, too!

In 1976, the family settled in Port-au-Prince. Unrelentingly, she plunged into editing and developing Bible-based Sunday school materials in Haitian Creole. It sapped her strength. Slowly, Marilyn noticed definite signs of weakening. Bed rest didn't help. After fourteen months, it was necessary for her to fly back to a New York hospital for diagnosis and treatment of yet another tropical disease.

"Was I ever heartbroken," Marilyn recalls about her forced trip away from Haiti. She was so immersed in the culture that her thought patterns were still in Creole. As she entered the hospital, the guard at the front entrance was chatting with a friend, not in English but in Creole. She heard him say, "Sak pase?" Marilyn turned quickly to inquire, "Eske se Ayisyen ou ye?" (Are you a Haitian?)

The guard discovered that Marilyn was there without her family, and he assured her, "We'll be your family!" Marilyn shared the Creole New Testament with him and his wife, and they learned about true Christianity.

Long months of rest and drugs would be the only way to a cure. Her children were flown home again to be near her. For two years she had to rest.

Marilyn doesn't look at her months in bed as wasted time. "I spent the time in deep study of the Bible and the humanities. It was a time of taking in, a time of reevaluating goals and priorities for the future."

Not long ago, her regular doctor announced, "You are well! You may go back to Haiti if you wish!" Marilyn is now waiting to see how God leads.

Marilyn's children are very precious to her. In all the struggles with illness and death, they have developed into solid Christians themselves.

There is a closeness that few families experience. It was evident when Dave was alive to head the household; it is clear now with Marilyn's leadership. "Everywhere we have lived as a family, the children have participated in our work." Some wonder how Marilyn can serve without neglecting her teenagers. She is quick to assure friends, "The children have never been ignored because of the work, and the work has never been ignored because of the children."

God has led in exciting ways as He has provided loving families at precise moments to keep the children content and cared for.

And the future?

"The next big step is being readied at this very moment, and I'll know the details when I need to!"

ADDENDUM:

By the middle of 1979, I finally passed through all of the required recuperation period and antibiotic treatment and considered very seriously a return to the work in Haiti. However, such hopes were dashed when the secret work done by the sprue over years came to light - so much calcium had been drained from my body that my spine crumbled and I faced years of grueling reconstructive surgery, isolation, bedrest and then rigorous physical rehabilitation to return to strength and full functionality. Immersion into non-formal, at-home studies of Haitian Creole, Haitian culture, business management, sociology and cultural anthropology kept my mind occupied over the long years of recuperation. And I continued over the years to collaborate long-distance on special projects with Rev. Alain Rocourt, my Haitian mentor and colleague, whether he was in Haiti or briefly in exile in Miami, especially with the development of Sunday School curriculum materials.

One of the greatest sadnesses to enter my life, however, came at the end of my extended period of physical recuperation and rehabilitation (1986). Skeptical of my recovery and concerned about their stewardship of God's resources, the churches which had financially supported me over the years discontinued that support and the church which had commissioned my husband and me as missionaries formally "retired" me. I was devastated and I felt stripped of my reason for being and my reason for having survived. However, basic survival mechanisms were "alive and well" and within months I embarked on a second career as an Administrative Secretary - Technical in the Department of Chemistry at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (I early-retired the end of 1999).

Over that period of thirteen years, I kept busy earning my living at MIT, all the while (1) making use of the incredible tools at my disposal to train myself in the latest computer technology, as it can be applied to Haitian Creole literature production, and (2) spending most of my take-home pay on Haiti and Haitian Creole research and R&D toward the creation of Haitian Creole-language computer-based tools.

Such persistence over those years produced tangible fruit: (1) creation of an electronic version of the Haitian Creole Bible in order to prepare it for orthographical updating, and (2) creation of a unique computer-based tool to automate the orthographical updating process for not only that book, but all other outdated Haitian Creole literature as well.

From 1996-2002 I served as Founder, President & Chief Operating Officer of Mason Integrated Technologies Ltd (MIT2), a corporation I created to research the potential for commercial development of more robust natural language processing and localization software for Creole languages. I identified and recruited specialists -- not only linguists and "natif-natal" speakers of Creole languages, but also computational linguists and specialists in the fields of minority languages and authoring, translation, optical character recognition and speech technologies -- who were willing to work in the name of MIT2, once adequate start-up funds were received to hire them and fund their MIT2 research and development activities. Such funding never materialized so, in 2002, MIT2 closed up shop.

However, over those 6 years, many doors were opened to me to advocate on behalf of the technological support of Creole languages at the highest levels of governmental and non-governmental agencies, industry, language technology conferences and academia and those doors are still open (see publication list). Creole advocacy, team building, and networking are the lasting legacies of MIT2.

Building upon this past experience, I have formed a Consultancy Network called The Creole Clearinghouse (TCC) to, in collaboration with Creole specialists with whom I have established a basis of mutual trust, make use of the tools I created before the birth of MIT2 to improve the consistency and excellence of materials translated and produced in Creole languages.

In other words, the commercial and corporate context of MIT2 has died but the dream lives on -- in much scaled-down form and within a non-corporate context.

These years on "the backside of the desert", instead of destroying me, have in a unique way better prepared me for this next stage of life: as advocate, administrator, orthography specialist, consultant, publisher, author, and mission strategist.

During these "hidden years" God has shown me that the term "missionary" is not so much a "title" or a "profession", but a "state of being".

BREAKING NEWS!

I am now faced with a new health crisis, totally related to the old, longer-term health context.

Over the past several years, I have experienced more and more marginalization of my physical movements (especially while standing and walking, let alone walking and carrying!), while running from one airline gate to another, from one hotel to another, from one speaking venue to another. With my traveling office suspended from my shoulders in carry-on bags and lugging behind me (with my free arm / hand) my rolling luggage, in the midst of all my travels in the past decade to advocate on behalf of Creole languages, I have found that the "wear and tear" on my body was increasing and that the "recovery time" after such a trip was taking longer and longer in order for me to return to some semblance of physical normality.

What did I do in response to the body messages?

- I cut back on the international travel. Then, I cut back on the U.S. travel. Then, I cut back on the regional travel. Then, I cut back on the local travel. Before I knew it, I was stranded in my 4th floor walk-up apartment, not daring to navigate the staircase in order to do my outside business, even personal business, such as running local errands, going to the local Post Office, grocery shopping, etc.

- I refocussed my mental energies to editing and online publishing activities, which I still could manage to do because sitting at the computer was something I could do without a lot of pain. That is, until the carpal tunnel syndrome set in and my hands were forced into immobility.

- My son David Mason, Jr. (who lives in my same neighborhood) began to take on the "empty the garbage", "buy and lug up the stairs the water supply and groceries, check the mail for Ma, etc." responsibilities in order to shield me from the bottom-line ramifications of my being trapped at the upper levels of my urban apartment.

(But, that's not all Dave, Jr. began to absorb over recent years. Because MIT2 had no money, because I had no money, because I still had to pay the MIT2 bills held in my name (not the company's), he began to absorb into his own financial picture all my and MIT2's financial obligations. It barely matters now that Dave, Jr. has been a professional software engineer working for one of America's top software development companies for the past 21 years; he is so financially marginalized from taking on my and MIT2's debts, I am embarrassed!)

As a person with a high tolerance for pain and inconvenience, I put off to the very end checking in with my doctor to give a name to what I was experiencing. I knew that as soon as my condition was diagnosed, I'd be side-lined officially for not just a few months, but for several years, if not forever. And, if I was out-of-work, there'd be no chance whatsoever of my paying Dave, Jr. back for his financial sacrifices!

Finally, in November 2002, I could subliminate the physical pain and marginalization no longer. I presented myself to my doctor and asked that she figure out what was going on. She referred me to one of the orthopedic specialists at the MIT Medical Center, he ordered x-rays, he then referred me to an orthopedic surgeon, as well as physical therapy sessions and MRI and myelogram / CT scan studies at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Here's the diagnosis:

Post-spinal fusion degenerative scoliosis with lateral listhesis. What does that mean? It means that the spinal fusions done to rebuild my spine in 1982 and 1984 (to correct the damage done to my skeletal system by tropical illnesses) have managed to break down and parts of my skeletal system are now aiming more left and right than up and down (needless to say, I have lost height!). The fused discs had been immobilized by the earlier surgeries, so my skeletal system made up for that by over-extending mobilization at all other levels. I've now been referred to another orthopedic surgeon at MGH, who specializes in such complex cases.

What's the prognosis? I need surgery. "Big" surgery (to quote the MGH surgeon), involving laminectomy and fusion, along with the implanting of metal rods to straighten up and stabilize the spinal column, with incisions in the front and the back so as to get to the necessary places. I'm now facing additional years of side-lining and rehabilitation, once that surgery is performed.

What would I do, facing such a prognosis?

- First, I filed a disability claim with the Social Security Administration, which fortunately was successful. That makes it possible for me to be financially self-sufficient now that I can no longer work for a living.

- Second, I applied for and now have obtained affordable disability housing in Boston. It was essential that I stopped navigating all those stairs at my previous residence!

- From this new reality, I will use my brain to continue to "problem solve" some of the very same issues I've been addressing over recent decades.

- I will continue to "match notes" with trusted partners in the "Haitian Creole wars".

- I will work on my "memoirs". I've been through a lot. I am going through a lot. I still face going through a lot. There's a story to be told!

I have no more intention of giving up now than I had in 1973! I said it then and I say it now:

"The next big step is being readied at this very moment, and I'll know the details when I need to!"

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