Herbert Thomas Fuqua

Wycliffe Bible Translators'  First Agricultural Missionary 

This past several weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster for us.  I reflected on the stroke that Herb suffered in my last blog.  He was recovering and ready to go home from rehab a week ago last Thursday when he suffered another stroke and was rushed back to the hospital. This stroke was major and affected his motor functions--he was not even able to swallow.  His DNR (do not resuscitate ) order put in place over 10 years ago specifically prohibited a feeding tube.  We were informed that it could take six weeks for him to starve to death.  We were stunned and numbed.  Kay desperately wanted to go to be with the family but couldn't take the time from work.  She was so thankful that she had gone to see him after the first stroke.

Then one and 1/2 days later we got word that he had suffered another stroke and slipped into a coma, death was imminent.  We immediately booked a flight to Dallas, the earliest flight we could find was on Saturday morning.  He passed away  during the wee hours on Friday morning.  We arrived in a whirlwind of activity and preparations.  The viewing at the funeral home on Sunday afternoon, the grave side service at the National Cemetery in Dallas (Herb was a marine and a WWII vet) and then the Memorial service on Tuesday morning.  Kay claimed her right as first-born to deliver the eulogy.  It follows below.

My Dad

by

Kay Lynn Fuqua Sawyer 

We are here to celebrate! My Dad and my brother David’s daughter Kelsey are having a grand homecoming celebration in heaven. Dad loves to have fun and I’m sure Kelsey can show him a few more things about celebrating.

It’s because of Jesus Christ that we have a reason to celebrate. He took on my Dad’s sin and paid for it…wiping it all away, and bringing him into right relationship with God. The same for all of us. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice and love, my Dad’s life was a grand adventure.

Such a grand adventure it has been. When I was a child life in the Amazon jungle was just everyday normal: going barefoot despite poisonous snakes & large insects, swimming with the piranhas, riding bikes all over, climbing banyan trees and mango trees. As I have been an adult in the US raising my own family, my parents’ chosen life has become amazing to me.

When my Dad was 12 a group of people came to his church and held special evangelistic services. It was at one of those services that he gave his life to Jesus. My dad always had a dream to be a cattle rancher. But then God called him to be a missionary. We will pick up the story when Dad was in the Marine Corps. He was stationed in So. California. One weekend when he had leave he was walking around the town of Santa Ana when two men invited him to come to church. He accepted their invitation and went back several times. It was there he met a certain young lady named Grace. She greatly impressed him with her gifts of hospitality and organization. We will continue the story in Dad’s own words…

“After my discharge from the Marine Corps I went home to Colorado. My folks were away for 6 weeks leaving me to attend to the irrigation of a ten acre peach orchard. It was spring time and the water had just been turned into the main irrigation canals. I found myself spending the days leaning on a hoe handle making sure the water followed the creases through to the end of each row.

“In the house I found a little book which contained the words of Jesus lifted out of the four gospels. So I picked it up and put it in my shirt pocket to have something to read during the day. Well, as I read that little book in the succeeding days, the Lord began to work on me, and I didn’t want to get involved in missionary work. However, I remembered two of the men at Calvary Church in California who had given devotionals at the service men’s breakfasts had said that the Lord had tapped them on the shoulder when they were young and they turned the other way, and later regretted that they had not responded.

“There were 2 big things I did not want to do. I didn’t want to give up my dream of having a cattle ranch some day, and I had tried college after finishing high school and I had not done well, so I didn’t want to face that again after having been out of school for 5 yrs. by then. It got to the point that as I read that little book, the Lord would have a direct answer to every objection I brought up, just as clearly as if He were standing there talking with me.

“Finally I bargained with the Lord that since there was a junior college in town, just a mile and a half away I could go give it a try, and since I had not done well before perhaps I would flunk out and be off the hook. The first thing the next day I rode by bicycle down to the college which I knew nothing about, walked in and found myself there on the last day of registration for the summer session. There was no turning back now. I had to register to keep my end of the bargain. The Registrar asked if I had my discharge papers. I pulled the sealed envelope out of my pocket not knowing what was in it. He took it back to his office for a few minutes and came back saying that he could give me 69 hours credit for a general education test that I had taken on a whim one time when I was bored in the Marine Corp. So I spent the summer trying to get back into the books. . . the Lord won since I was not flunking at the end of the quarter.

“I transferred to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and finished college in Agriculture with good grades, since that was the only subject I knew very well or was interested in. Grace at the same time was finishing Biola, we had continued to write. We were married in June 1950 when we both completed our schooling. The following fall we enrolled at Multnomah School of the Bible grad course so that I could get some Bible courses. I had decided to try for agricultural missions so during the school year we wrote to all the missions that we knew about. Only one answered and they said they didn’t need any agricultural man.”

So my Dad decided to obey God’s call, even though he had to give up his dream. Dad continues…

“Knowing about Wycliffe we decided the next logical step would be to take their linguistics courses. So we went to the Norman Oklahoma summer course. Toward the end of the program, Uncle Cam Townsend, Wycliffe’s founder was there for a few days and announced that he would like to speak about the need for support personnel. I went to the meeting where he mentioned the need in Peru for an agricultural man soon. It wound up with him inviting us to sign up with Wycliffe at the end of the summer 1951.”

And so the adventure began. Dad thought he had given up his dream, but God gave it back to him a hundred fold!

In Dad’s words,

“I started from 1300 acres of virgin jungle, a few borrowed cows, and many samples of pasture grasses. I enjoyed 34 years of lots of fun and challenge there in Peru, and was able to send over 400 head of calves to Indian communities and sell 1500 head of breeding stock to ranchers in the area.”

“…it took 20 years to clear, fence and seed 500 hectares…one year we had 98 men, women and children picking five tons of grass seed…we also had a fence building crew that built one kilometer of 4-strand barbed wire fence per day. We built a total of 40 km of fence dividing the 500 hectares into 29 pastures and lanes.”

Dad had to develop cattle that would withstand the jungle heat. The good beef cattle stock from the US would grow old and die in the jungle within just a few years because of the heat. The local scrub stock could stand the heat, but did not produce good beef. So over the years and with great care and skill Dad began to cross some of the more heat resistant stock with the good beef stock and came up with a winning mixture of Brahma, Zebu and Santa Gertrudis. He set up and ran a training program to teach the Indians how to plant, care for and graft citrus trees, rubber and cacao trees; how to care for and raise chickens; and how to care for cattle and manage pasture. They worked on the ranch crew along side regular crew members and had a daily class that taught them how to throw a lasso, throw a calf and tie its feet, to throw an adult animal, to build a corral, what to do in case of abnormal birth, how to build fence, how to treat animals for disease and worms, how to plant and manage pasture.

But why do missionaries need an agricultural and cattle program? Many of Dad’s fellow missionaries wondered the same thing. Civilization encroaching into the jungle was changing the living patterns of the semi-nomadic Indians in Peru, forcing them into a more settled existence, for which they were not prepared. They were looked down upon by the Spanish-speaking Peruvians around them as ignorant. They were getting the Scripture in their own languages to meet their spiritual needs, but they also needed material help in the complicated processes of socio-economic adjustment to the new ways of life. The tribespeople needed to become self-sustaining, and become productive communities and gain the respect of their Spanish-speaking neighbors. As one fellow missionary put it: “We have found that the Indians are not interested in listening to the man who has no help for them besides his words.”

Cattle were a status symbol because down through the years the only cattle around were owned by Spanish-speaking community leaders called patrons. The agricultural program that Dad set up was created to help the Indians sustain their dignity as civilization moved in around them, by enabling them to compete in the production of crops and livestock. Dad was able to start the tribal communities with good quality stock that had these leaders wanting to buy the first bull calf from them! All of a sudden the tribesman had gained a position of influence where he had traditionally been looked down upon. A Wycliffe missionary had these observations after visiting one of the cattle project sites: “One of the Indian men was trained in Herb’s course in cattle and pasture management. He returned to his village, planted acres of pasture, put in a beautiful three wire fence that would have received the admiration of a west Texas cattleman, and then the first Brahma Santa Gertrudis bull was flown out in a small plane. Beginning their cattle project not only adds prestige with their neighbors, but also an economic base for the new society. It is the only cattle project on the whole river.”

Another fellow missionary said “… the cattle project has contributed to the reception of the translated Scriptures as an evidence that we are really interested in the people.” Dad’s contribution to bringing God’s Word to the Indians of the Amazon jungle was to give them the means they needed to survive and even thrive in the encroaching civilization. This opened their hearts so they could receive God’s words in their own language.

Several years ago my Dad gave me a list of some of his favorite verses. On that list is Psalm 37:3-9 & 23. These verses are a good description of my Dad.

“Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;…For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land…If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”

Being the first agricultural missionary with Wycliffe was not easy. Many people did not understand why Dad was there. Then later, there were many of our Peruvian neighbors that tried to make things difficult. But Dad never got upset about it. He was confident that this was God’s work and God would somehow take care of it. “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this.”

Dad was also the picture of contentment. He loved the work God gave him to do and did it with all his might. Prov 19:23 “The fear of the Lord leads to life: Then one rests content, untouched by trouble.” Phil 4:12 “…I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” He was content in Peru developing a cattle and agricultural program from scratch. And he did it with excellence. He was content in Columbia to bring back to life the neglected cattle program, in the midst of terror threats from the guerillas. The stock he developed there were sought after by the famed Colombian vaqueros because of their quality. He was content to work on the maintenance crew at the International Linguistic Center. Even there he found ways to minister to those around him by picking up food for those who could not get out, helping with repair jobs in people’s homes. He was always eager to learn and his desk was piled high with things to read. Contentment.

I used to love going up to the farm to sit on the coral fence and watch and help with whatever was going on. Many times when I arrived on my bike I would find Dad in the farm office at his desk reading his Bible. God’s Word meant so much to him that he committed his life to helping get it into the hands of people who had never heard God speak their language before. He kept several small Spanish Bibles in the farm office to give to cattlemen from the surrounding area that came to talk with “don Heriberto” about how to manage pasture, or what was the best grass seed, or what blood lines he used to get such good quality stock.

During the dry season, wild fires in the pasture land were a big concern for Dad. He would constantly scan the horizon hoping not to see the telltale billow of smoke. 500 hectares (1300 acres) was a lot of land to protect. Fires started from the sun beating down on a glass bottle in a field, by accident, or by arson. He would try to find help to fight the fire, but if none was available he would fight it by himself. (This greatly improved mom’s prayer life!) One time he got so dehydrated fighting a fire that he looked around desperately trying to find something that could quench his thirst. The only thing he could find was a green pineapple. You don’t eat green pineapple unless you are really desperate. Well he was, and he ate it. It took all the skin off the inside of his mouth.

Another time he was way out in the pasture looking for a new calf. He had not seen the cow, who was great with calf, in a few days, so he knew he had to find that new little calf. It had to be treated with medicine so the flies and bugs would not infect it. Sure enough, after awhile he found the cow who was noticeably thinner than she was a few days ago. Now finding the calf could take a little time in the tall grass and bushes. One thing any cattle man knows is NEVER get between a cow and her new calf! So Dad kept a weary eye on the cow as he searched for the calf. Well, evidently he inadvertently got between the cow and calf. The cow came charging and Dad when running desperately searching for a tree to climb. He found one and scooted up it as fast as he could. The only problem was it was a thorn tree with thorns an inch across at the base rising about an inch into a sharp point. But he had to stay there until the cow got bored and wandered away.

Dad had to deal with tropical disease in the cattle, cattle rustlers, and snake bites on the cattle, and even a few times big cat claw marks across the back flank of some lucky cow. Some of his cattle, especially the Brahma, were ornery. So he always carried a sturdy stick that was a little shorter than he was, to let them know who was boss. Many times he was challenged by an “ornery critter” and twice ended up being flown into Bogotá or Lima to the hospital, having gotten the short end of the stick, so to speak.

When the tractor, mowing machine or other equipment broke down, Dad could not call the nearest John Deere dealership for a new part. He had to make his own parts. He was very ingenious and could always figure out a way to make it work.

Growing up in the Amazon jungle was just normal to me. I loved the tickle fights after dinner with Dad, doing our gymnastics tricks on the living room floor, stroking the ocelot after Dad shot in our chicken coop, riding on the front of his BMW motorcycle between his strong arms, teasing Dad about his white legs and brown arms the two times he took me swimming, talking Dad into playing Monopoly or Wahoo and being soundly beaten, hearing Dad chuckle at the story Mom was reading to us, the bucking bronco barrel he made for us. I did NOT love so much having Dad take a bite of my dessert every time I dilly-dallied while eating my vegetables at dinner!

I am so thankful and blessed to be the daughter of Herbert Thomas Fuqua. He is my Dad… always will be.

Prov 20:7 The godly walk with integrity; blessed are their children after them.

Kay Fuqua Sawyer (oldest child of Herb & Grace)