(Viv wrote this in 1998 – Myke)
I am eighty-three years old and was converted at the age of twenty- four-that’s a while. My husband and I were living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1946. He was a technician for the Power Company. One day a salesman came into the office and asked Hamp if he would like to go in business in Panama City, Florida. He said a man there would furnish a truck and building free to anyone who would go in business so that he would have someone to service the air conditioning equipment he sold.
Well, we went and were there almost three years when again a salesman came in and asked Hamp if he would be interested in selling the business-he replied that he would think about it. That night we prayed and put out a fleece. Hamp asked God to have this man just pay the fair price he put on the business without haggling about it-by this we would know that it was what He wanted.
In a few days the gentleman came back, Hamp told him what he wanted for the business and he took out his checkbook and wrote the check. Without being aware of it at the time, we had just received the money we would need to go to South America.
We pushed on a few doors but none opened, and then Mrs. Chas. Cowman, president of the Oriental Missionary Society, came through town and we invited her and her traveling companions, Arthur and Mrs. Ball, to thanksgiving dinner. We were telling them what had happened when Mr. Ball, who had just returned from Colombia, S.A., asked us why we didn’t go to Colombia and work at our trade and, at the same time, give our testimony as we worked. The whole thing seemed pretty far-fetched. We were in our mid thirties and didn’t know word one of Spanish so we just shrugged it off. But one night at the end of three weeks, when we still didn’t know what to do, we told God that we didn’t know where to find Arthur Ball but, that if this was really what He wanted, He was able to send Mr. Ball to us.
The next morning at 7 o’clock I answered a knock at the door and there stood Arthur Ball. He said he had been coming back through Panama City in route to Los Angeles and God had awakened him that morning and told him not to leave town without first talking to us again about going to South America. You can imagine the scene around the coffee table that morning as we all realized what had happened.
Due to the fact that Colombia was in a state of revolution, it was a little over a year before we found a way to get into the country, but we made it. From that time forth, God took us from one country to another, usually through Carrier Interna- tional. Hamp passed on thirty some years ago and is buried in Guayaquil, Ecuador; and I am still walking on led step by step by the wonderful miracle-working hand of God. How wonderful He is!