Tuesday Voice: Missionary Kid

Stories in print

By Vic Midyett

JT: Another Mighty Midyett, the book about my dad that includes my Missionary Kid stories, is being typeset and will shortly be available.
    The fact that there is a book at all owes to my cousin Randy Somers, who was a small boy when his mother's brother, my father, James Thomas Midyett, left for India in 1950, where I was born within two years of my parents' arrival there. But even 12,000 miles away, Randy says, my father was a continual presence in his family's home:

Randy Somers, JT Midyett's nephew

As a boy, I was amazed at the almost obsession of my mom and dad praying for my uncle and his family. They were constantly praying for his ministry and their safety.
    When I say constant, that does not mean whenever they happened to remember. Every meal, every church service, every family devotion. Sometimes I'd walk into the house and find them on their knees in the middle of the day praying for him.
    Then, as I grew up, Mom began to tell me things about World War II that her brother was involved in: two amphibious landings in the Solomon Islands, the first at Guadalcanal. Some of the things he had told her made the hair on my neck stand up. He, like the others of his generation, just didn't talk about it. It was a fluke I knew anything at all.
    Later on in his life, he asked me to help him write sermons to help raise money for him to go back to his beloved India to see the people he had worked with. This simple one-on-one guy was going back to visit ministries that he either started or helped to build. One at a time.
    Then one day, before my mom passed away, I had a strong urge to record my uncle's life. I knew there were some things that were worthy of being told. I took him for a walk that day and told him of my desire, even though I now knew how humble he was. He told me people had suggested this before, but he was afraid that attention would be drawn to him instead of the God he loved. I assured him that would not happen.
    I told him the book was a useless endeavor unless he did two things: tell me what he actually faced as a member of the United States Marine Corps in WWII, and about the dangers and challenges he faced in India as a missionary. He agreed to tell me.
    I spent the next couple of years before his death, in 2008, gathering and clarifying stories. They were jaw-dropping. The old adage that the best stories in the world are those in someone's heart is true. The stories in this book will make you laugh, cry, shake your head in amazement, wipe tears from your eyes, and swell up with pride for a man who clearly heard the call of God and followed it.

My Uncle was a full-blooded member of the Midyett family, whose roots have been traced all the way back to Matthew Midyett in the 1600's. Since then the family names have appeared as Midgett, Midget, Midyette, Midgette, and others. The Midyett family "are" the Outer Banks of North Carolina. They have been there since before George Washington got in a fight. A few groups left in the early to mid-1800's for Tennessee (my people) and Texas and Missouri and a couple of other places, but most of them stayed put on the North Carolina coast.

JT Midyett would not back down. His life story reminds me of a quote from Rasmus Midgett (1851–1926) about the United States Life-Saving Service at the Outer Banks. He said, "The book says you have to go out, it don't say nothing about coming back."
    When Uncle JT got into it with his father, he didn't back down; he simply left to live with his aunt in Memphis. The ramifications of that move were incredible. He didn't back down when he got to Australia in WWII for some light duty; instead, he volunteered for the surgical combat team to go back to New Britain to fight back the Japanese supply lines.
    When he was offered a direct commission by the Navy, along with a free ride for college to become a pharmacist, he said, No, thank you to, not backing down from a call he felt was from God to go to the mission field. He had made a promise and would not back down. When he could easily have stayed in the safe confines of the Makunda treatment area, he chose to hit the jungles and villages and set up small clinics. He set up near hostile Muslim and Hindu villages that constantly fought. He treated them both as best he could; he would not back down. Even when the government took his jeep, his literature, and his guns, and even his kids were targets, and he had to flee the scene, he would not back down. He kept going back to India.
    JT Midyett would not back down.
    The gentleman on the cover is saying by his body language:

I have been sent here, and my mission does not involve you. I want to be your friend. You are a hundred times larger than me but I am not afraid of you. I am a highly trained warrior, but you are welcome to my home for food and water and love, and I will not back down!

That is the man I got to know through the research for this book.

For information about obtaining a copy of JT: Another Mighty Midyett, visit the author's website, due to go online this week.

Randall Allen Somers was born in 1948 and has lived in Florida since 1980. He spent most of his career at 35,000 feet traveling in sales and marketing.
    Here's an image of the book's back cover:

Copyright © 2015 by Vic Midyett