Have you moved around much? Many people have, but before I went to college, I had not been far from Pennsylvania, except for a couple of weeks in Washington, D.C., and another trip there as a senior in high school. I also once visited a Bible conference center that was at the border of my state and New Jersey.
It was therefore a big step for a country boy like me to decide to attend college in Delaware. I had no car and getting to Delaware from my farm was akin to leaving for Mars without a rocket. However, it was a Christian college I was going to attend, and I fully expected humans, not Martians, to be there.
I often hitchhiked, which was common and relatively safe back then, but it could take most of day to get home from college. Except for long vacations and two summers, I rarely went home.
Things changed for me when a friend invited me to board with him in Detroit, Michigan, and work there for the summer. I had heard of Detroit because my dad worked there briefly during the days of the Great Depression. Pontiac, where Joice lived during the summers, was only 30 miles north of Detroit, and although I was still without a car, I was in love and would figure out how to get back and forth, even without a car. Each summer, for the next three years, I would board and work in Detroit.
After finishing college, and wanting more preparation for the mission field, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Detroit and rode (3 days) to Los Angeles, California to attend the BIOLA School of Missionary Medicine for a year.
When I completed my studies, I went back and lived in Pontiac, a town near Joice where I worked for General Motors Truck and Coach and for a pharmacy. We were married in May 1956, and then we really began to move. Our honeymoon took us through several states before we arrived at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma, to study linguistics for the summer.
By the end of the summer, we were junior members of the Wycliffe Bible Translators and told we needed additional training, this time in Mexico. We drove south through Mexico until we reached the Guatemala border and spent the next three months in “Jungle Camp.”
As new members, we needed to raise our own support so that we could go to Papua New Guinea (then simply The Territories of Papua and New Guinea). After Mexico, we traveled extensively in Michigan and Pennsylvania until we had adequate finances for our assignment.
In February 1958, we drove our car to Oakland, California, sold it, and boarded a ship that would take us to Australia, via Canada, Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand. We arrived in Sydney, Australia, took a train trip to Melbourne, returned to Sydney, and then flew on an old, unpressurized DC-4 airplane to Port Moresby, the capital of our newly adopted country.
From Port Moresby, we flew in a DC-3 (with seats along the side for parachuters), to the coastal city of Lae. A week later (again in a DC-3), we left for the Eastern Highlands, where our new main center was located at a place called Ukarumpa. It would become our first and second home for much of the next 32 years.
Two months after arriving at Ukarumpa, we moved to a village in the Southern Highlands, into a very small bush house, located in a village at 6,500-foot altitude and lots of rain. We lived there and moved in and out of Ukarumpa for the next 5 years, with time out for Kirk, other assignments, and periods of sickness.
When it was time for our first furlough we moved to Ithaca, New York while I studied at Carnell University to earn an M.A. in linguistics and anthropology.
We then went back to PNG for another term (this time 6 years), and we moved to another village and language. We also taught linguistics and translation in PNG, NZ, and Australia.
In 1965, Karol was born and we were asked to move to New Zealand to start a summer linguistics school. We taught there for two summers, and then had another move, this time to Canberra, Australia, and the Australian National University, where I pursued a PhD in linguistics. I then obtained a post-doctorate grant and was responsible for a large survey of the Gulf Province in PNG, involving several other linguists and contacting 50 language groups. For ten days, we recorded language data as we visited remote areas in a small helicopter.
Time and space do not allow me to take you on our many other moves: 20 Provinces in PNG, the countries of Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, England, Wales, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, France, Peru, Ecuador, Kenya, Cameroon, and so on.
Finally (should I say that) in 1994 and after 3 years, we moved from Kangaroo Ground in Australia to Duncanville, Texas, but stopped on our way for periods of time in Vanuatu and the Solomons. It wasn’t really “finally,” because in 2014, we moved to Waco, where we now live.
I have omitted details about many other moves, such as living in Houston for 6 ½ weeks while Joice had cancer treatment. She moved on to heaven in 2021, and I don’t think it will be long before I move there to join her.
That is the best move I can think of!
Karl Franklin
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