By a most unusual set of circumstances, Joy Anne Mykytiuk came to a deep love of everything in one part of Asia-the Filipino people, their languages, music, and all. That love became ever broader in the people it included and ever deeper in her heart. It never left her.
A graduate of Moody Bible Institute, she grew beyond her Baptist background and called herself only "an interdenominational, born-again Christian." At the beginning of 53 years of marriage, she and her husband served in the area of Manila, Philippines, on teams of Filipinos and Americans that started two local churches.
Later, starting with nothing but a stack of copies of donation receipts, Joy founded the development department of Asian Theological Seminary, where leaders from many places across Asia have received their training. In another organization, with "hard labor and encouraging prayers," she served the worldwide Concerts of Prayer movement, which her supervisor nurtured by countless international trips.
In mid-life, during a severely bewildering but transformative crisis, Joy came to treasure this Bible verse, which rooted her even more deeply in Christ: "I will lead the blind by ways they have not known; along unfamiliar paths I will guide them" (Isaiah 42:16).
Continually serving internationals, she also reached out to them by offering conversational English practice in informal settings near two universities. Despite recurring serious illness, she reached out to them as long as she was physically able, until her dying day.
Growing up in the U.S., because of parental and other abuse that was emotional and verbal, Joy was pushed out into a lifelong search for a safe home that was hers. Through a remarkable series of events, she found wonderful acceptance among young people of her own age in an Asian culture, which served in many ways as an adopted home. Encouraged by their warmly shared faith in Jesus Christ, Joy began to trust in him as well. Her years of sincere service to him were fruitful in many ways.
Eventually, however, a more urgent crisis led her to seek the Lord at a deeper, more desperate level. Joy saw that she needed to shed her former, habitual ways of thinking in order to find her true, secure home in Jesus himself. How she walked that path is the story of this spiritual memoir.
