My
Call To The Mission Field
By
Bill Baxley
(Part 1)
Brother
Al Melrose had been in the military, and he had been on Leyte Island in the Philippines during World War II. God had saved
Brother Albert Melrose in 1950. Shortly after his conversion, he went back East. It was while he was there in a city called
Antlers, Oklahoma, that God spoke to him.
He
said, “Will you return to the Philippines for me?
He
said, “Yes, Lord, I will.”
It
took thirteen years of an absolute struggle. No one would help him as he struggled to try to go to the Philippines as a missionary.
Brother Melrose had come to our church, just when I had gotten there. It was so amazing that as he walked into our church,
Brother Tilley, who had never known him or anything about him, heard God speak to him. Brother Tilley told the people that
morning, “You are looking at our first missionary to the Philippines.” Brother Melrose was overwhelmed. He couldn't
believe it because God had given him the call to the Philippines thirteen years before.
There
was a lady in the church who had just lost her husband to cancer, and she had a beautiful boat that had been sitting outside.
She had just let it become a wreck. It had two big seventy-five horsepower motors, but the entire interior was wrecked. She
gave us the boat, and we put new seats in it, and completely restored it. We sold it for $1000.00, and gave Brother Melrose
his ticket to the Philippines. Brother Melrose was a true missionary. So many today who go as missionaries are just missionary
wannabes. He was a true missionary, and I thank God that he instilled in me that true missionary spirit. When he landed in
the Philippines, he only had thirty cents in his pocket and knew nobody. I won't go into any more of the story, but how God
used him was absolutely amazing.
Brother
Melrose came back from the Philippines for a visit, and he was sharing slides. By this time, God had blessed me financially.
Brother Melrose shared many things about the Philippines, and after looking at these slides, I came home and I said to Jamie,
“Honey, I want to do to the Philippines. I want to see if those things that I am hearing are true.” I didn't know
what God had in his mind about me being a missionary to the Philippines. I was going out of curiosity. Jamie agreed that I
should go. My business partner said it wasn't a problem, and my plan was to go for one month. That was in 1977. The last Sunday
in church, I was standing there praising God and thinking about going to the Philippines. My hands were raised, and God reminded
me of the prophecy of the young, black prophet in Sacramento who prophesied that what God had for me would take me around
the world. He brought it back to my mind, but it was ten years later that God was fulfilling this in my life. That is how
my first trip to the Philippines began.
As
I prepared to leave for the Philippines that day after church, I was anxious. I was excited, but I have also always had a
struggle leaving my family. The three years I had to work away from home, only coming home on weekends, was so hard for me.
I loved being with my family. I always took my family fishing with me, and I had never been away from them other than to work.
I didn't realize that, just in that time way from home, God was preparing me for a life of separation from my family. He was
breaking me in easy.
As
I got ready to leave for the Philippines I had no idea what I was in for. Brother Melrose had tried to share with me about
the culture of the Philippines. We were taking eight tons of Bibles with us. I will never forget it. We had to go to the consulate
to get our passports. I was to follow Brother Melrose and take the truck that he was going to send to the Philippines loaded
with supplies and things that we were going to take to the poor. By the time I got to San Francisco, I had a massive migraine
headache because I hadn't eaten anything that morning, and also because of the tension of the drive to San Francisco. I was
so sick. We went to the Philippines consulate to get our passports. I was standing there in front of his desk, and suddenly
I was so sick. I was just about to die. I threw up all over the consulate's desk, and he looked at me so strangely. People
were so packed in there; I felt so sick and embarrassed. He had to have a janitor come and clean up this horrible mess. I
told Brother Melrose, “You have to help me.” I was hurting so badly that I couldn't even fill out the papers.
If Brother Melrose hadn't been there, I could never have done it. The devil was fighting me so badly to try to stop me from
going. It was a terrible experience. You can't imagine how embarrassing that is to throw up right on the desk of the Philippine
consulate.
I
had never been on an airplane before. It was a fourteen-hour flight from San Francisco to Tokyo at that time, and I was so
airsick the whole trip. I was nauseated all the way to Tokyo. We then went to Hong Kong and then on to the Philippines. By
the last part of trip from Hong Kong to the Philippines, I was starting to feel better. Even times when I would go into the
bathroom in any kind of turbulence, I would get airsick, just like I used to get carsick when I was a boy. It was a terrible,
nauseating flight for me. When we got to the Philippines, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I had a lot of earwax,
and I never thought about cleaning my ears out. Immediately, the first thing I got was a terrible earache.
We
arrived at our hotel, but before we met Brother Romy [Romeo] Corpuz, Brother Melrose took me on a little tour of Manila. He
took me through this horrible slum where there was a fish market. On the whole floor throughout this market, probably 20,000
to 30,000 square feet, there was an inch of slime. The stench was unbelievable. People were living under these hot, humid
conditions in this slime and garbage. They were living there, selling fish and vegetables inside of this horrible market for
the poor. I had to fight to keep from throwing up as we were going through it. I had on suede shoes called desert boots, and
when I got back to the hotel, the bottoms of the boots were covered with this horrible stench of slime, and I had to try to
scrub all of it off. I asked Brother Melrose, “Why did you do that?” He said, “I wanted to show you where
Romy was living before God brought him out of that horrible slime.” A big fire had burned their home, so it was an incredible
blessing that God got him out of that mess they were living in. Going through the marketplace had been a terrible experience.
We
met Brother Corpuz there, and he took us to his home. Suddenly, I began having a terrible time with my ear. Romy went all
over town for two days to finally find one little drug store that had a syringe that I could use to clean out my ear. Finally,
I got that big glob of ear wax out and it was like heaven. I had been suffering so badly. That was the first thing that I
experienced in the Philippines, just an absolutely horrible three days.
In
Romy's home, my bed was metal springs with a little flat reed mat on it. That is what I slept on for the thirty days that
we were there. It was just horrible sleeping on this metal army cot with nothing on it, no padding, and just this reed mat
for a mattress. My first trip, I didn't have much money and so I didn't hold crusades, but Romy had us preaching, and I remember
the first time I preached. More than 400 people came to the Lord, and I thought, You know, Lord, here in America, if you hold
a meeting and five people get saved, you've had a successful meeting. Everywhere I went that first trip, people were saying
to me, “You're not a pastor,” because I told them I was a co-pastor. They said, “You are not a pastor. You
are an evangelist.” Brother Ray Manulid came to me. He had been a pastor there for fifteen years.
He
said, “Brother Baxley, I don't know what it is, but I have never seen anybody who has the draw that you have with people.
I have never seen anybody that has ever come to the Philippines that is able to draw the people like you do. You're definitely
not a pastor. You're an evangelist.”
Everybody
was pounding me that I was an evangelist and not a pastor. Those thirty days were a struggle. I was so homesick I wanted to
die. Yet everywhere I preached the people were coming to the Lord.
