An Interview from Peru
By Janine C. Hagan and Heather Miller
Heather Miller is an artist/ textile designer. She is now a missionary, children’s art teacher and Bible Study leader in Peru, South America. Heather and her husband Mike, a Wycliff Bible Translator, live in the Andes Mountains.

Janine: Heather, I am so excited that my cousin’s medical mission trip has provided us with this connection! Will you tell us about your background as well as your reason (or purpose) to go to Peru? What does that involve? Please share with us about where you live and some of what that experience is like for you.

Heather: Well, my background is very checkered and my reason for coming to Peru is that I married a missionary. But this is a story of how God can use it all when you have made a mess of it! He just rolls up his sleeves and says …”Ok now, let’s see how we can turn this out for my glory!”

I grew up in a Christian family with 3 sisters and one brother in Redondo Beach, CA. I knew I was going to be an artist at a young age. I never knew how I was going to use it for God’s glory, but I kept at it. I was very independent and left home at 18 to live as I pleased. I traveled to Europe to live for a few years and then moved to the east coast, painting and working and living as a Bohemian artist. I also worked for the airlines while attending art school and the airline job gave me access to the world. I took full advantage of those benefits, traveling from Bangladesh to Egypt.

I returned at 32 finally ready to live for God. I turned my life over to Him one day. I remember going through depression and my father coming into my bedroom to pray for me and asking me when I was going to let God drive the bike for a while. I suppose I always thought that I could make my life more exciting if I did it myself. When I arrived back home at 32, I re-evaluated and decided that it was finally time to get a job in the art world doing what I studied, textile design. I got the first job I interviewed for at a swimwear company and stayed there for almost 12 years. I designed textiles for Ann Cole, Ann Klein, Catalina, and other major swimwear manufacturers. It was fun to see things I had designed in Nordstrom’s, Macys, and on the beach!

After 12 years I was feeling a little bored so I started classes at the Disney Animation Studios and also began training as a makeup artist for the film industry. This was all on the side after work and weekends. None of it seemed to be the right thing and starting over in a new industry at 40 didn’t appeal to me either, so, I plugged along at my job. I also joined a small group of 3 other girls in a Bible study one night a week.

We became fast friends, we all wanted to be married and do God’s work. We spent a lot of time together praying and playing too! One by one God brought wonderful men into our lives, just what we had prayed for. When three of us were married and I was the only one left, I decided that God’s answer for me was just “No”…so I told Noelle I wasn’t going to pray for a husband any longer, but would just pray for “a change” and do God’s work. I started working for a Christian organization called “Stand to Reason,” I signed up to teach Sunday school, and I volunteered to work on “The Pageant of our Lord” every Easter season along with taking classes at night studying numerous Christian topics from history to learning God’s will for your life.

My sister Melanie was married to a Wycliffe Bible translator working in Peru. Melanie’s best girlfriend, another Wycliffe missionary in Peru, was just diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had 4 kids and a wonderful husband. After her diagnosis, the family had to return to the U.S. for her treatment. She died after fighting this battle for almost 2 and ½ years. We were all so sad for this family and for my sister, who had to return to Peru after a one year furlough and burying her best friend. Melanie started to go through depression.

Since I had “been there, done that,” I started collecting numerous goodies to send to her and when I looked at the pile on my living room floor I knew that it would never make it through customs. So I thought and thought and remembered that Mike, the husband of the lady who had recently died, was going to Peru to check on his translation partners sometime soon. I really didn’t want to call him since he was now a single man and I didn’t want it to look as though I was running behind him, but I put it past my mom and she said, “Oh don’t be ridiculous! Just call!”

So, I called, but his reply was, “Sure, but I am leaving tomorrow!” SIGH…….A day late and a dollar short! So that was that.

The next day when I got home from work there was a message that Mike Miller had called, “Funny, I thought He was gone.” I returned the call and found out that Mike’s flight had been delayed because all the American Airlines pilots had gone on strike and he could take the package when the strike was over! Now, that is a pretty amazing stunt…..Thanks, God! I was able to talk to him a few more times before he departed and get the package to him also.

When Mike got back from Peru he called me to chat and to tell me how his trip went. This was February 10th. He called me every Sunday night until sometime in March when he asked me if he could come to visit (meet) me in person. He arrived on May 1st, asked me to marry him on May second, bought an engagement ring and flew back to Rockford, Ill on May 3rd.
Now this is really quite a funny and much more colorful story from the time he arrived until when he departed, but you will all have to write me for the details!

We were married on July 16th. I was 43, and I went from a single, career oriented life, to being a wife and a mother of four overnight! I now have 4 children: Ben 24, Kaitlyn 20, Carly 16, and Jon 15. I moved to Rockford, Ill for a year before departing for the field to start the real missionary work.

For my first assignment, I was asked to get used to my family and learn Spanish and help teach art to the missionary kids. I live 10,000 ft. up in the Andes Mountains, under the highest mountain in Peru, Mt. Huascaran at 22,000 ft. I Absolutely LOVE it here! It is beautiful, tranquil. I am surrounded by White Mountains and persimmon sunsets called Alpine Glow. For an artist there could almost be no better place for beauty.

Janine: What are some events that happen, or have happened, in a typical day or week for you or your husband?

Heather: There are always tons of events, but no week or day is typical. We have a doorbell that rings bringing good news, and bad, and flowers and cheese. We get frequent calls from neighbors or friends with emergencies such as medical problems or just needing food. We have learned to be flexible with our days since we could be spending one in the hospital with a sick neighbor. In September I was able to accompany a medical group to 4 villages. My job was a translator/symptom taker. I don’t know how many Quechua women I met who were suffering from menopause just like me without realizing it! My co- worker Rachel and I have started a Quechua ladies’ Bible study on Wednesday afternoons, and I teach art to neighbors, friends, and missionaries. I am in the process of illustrating the book of Esther for the Wanka Quechua dialect, and I am also painting a 4’X7’ banner for our annual conference.

Mike spends most of his days translating the New Testament. We are on a push to finish in 2005 and dedicate the New Testament in 2006. He just finished the final check of Philemon and is now working on Hebrews. We also go out into remote villages in the mountains a few times a month to show the Jesus video in Quechua with Mike’s co-translators. Most of these villages don’t have electricity so we have to bring a generator, gas for the generator, the projector, extension cords, a white sheet for a screen, nails or ropes to hang it… I mean, if you forget something you could be in trouble. Once they even forgot the video!

But this IS funny… When I had first arrived in Huaraz, I went down to the market, and there must have been a thousand chickens fluttering and clucking around in the street. I really wasn’t sure if this was normal or not, so I looked around and saw people trying to grab chickens by the neck. Then I looked up and saw a huge chicken truck from the coast blocking the street, and I suddenly realized that probably fifty crates filled with chickens had fallen off the truck, creating total chaos in the market street.

Then I didn’t know if the people grabbing the chickens by the necks were thieves, or were trying to help get the chickens back on the truck, or what… all I could do was stand there and laugh!

Janine: What brings you the greatest joy in your life/mission? What brings the greatest sorrow to your heart?

Heather: Knowing that God and my husband love me, and a bag of chocolate chips! These things bring the greatest joy. I also LOVE seeing our little Quechua ladies light up when they hear the Bible stories in their own language for the first time, and to see them memorize their Bible verses fervently in order to get a star sticker!

Oh, there is so much that can bring sorrow. There is so much poverty that you just can’t help them all, so you have to pick and choose who and how to help. There is spiritual warfare all around us. And it is sad to see how the Catholics and Evangelicals have a thin membrane of tolerance for the other, both thinking the other is the devil himself!

Janine: How can we help and encourage/sustain you and Mike with your work and mission?

Heather: The best encourager and sustainer is prayer. But notes and m and m’s help too!!!!

There is no school up here in the mountains that would prepare our youngest two children for college in the States, so we have decided to send them to boarding school in Ecuador. They really love and enjoy their school. I have seen them blossom into the most incredible young adults. But we have a constant battle with keeping Wycliffe Teachers at the Alliance Academy in Quito, Ecuador. Wycliffe teachers raise their own support, and then work without receiving a salary. The salary they would receive goes to help the Wycliffe kids attending. There are currently 12 Wycliffe kids from Ecuador, Columbia and Peru in this school, and when there are no teachers we just have to come up with the extra money….which is a lot for us. This for me is a constant “worry” how we will be able to keep our kids in a good school and finish the translation.

We could always use prayer for our marriage and daily life. We live and work together so it is more than the average couple. I would love some prayer for unreal fears and expectations to be exposed and certain areas of brokenness to be healed, so that we can grow together in a spirit of unity and commitment and a bond of intimacy.

Janine: Our topic is “Epiphany.” Can you share with us a particular time that was a faith/spiritual “epiphany” for you here in Peru? This would be a time that was an “aha” moment where suddenly what you are striving for takes on special meaning and significance…just as that journey of the magi.

Heather: When I first arrived here in Peru I opened a Beth Moore study. There was a little tear out verse……Isaiah 61:1

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness …….. .”

This verse just went right through me. God was telling me, “This is what I have sent you to do.”

Every time I sit next to little Armando in the hospital or little Martha reading stories, I feel like I am doing God’s work more than any other time. There is a darkness of the old Inca religion mixed with Catholicism and the rituals that they have kept and integrated into the church and some of the festivals. We, as Christians have a huge role in recognizing this and teaching only from the Bible, careful not to offend these deep seated traditions but rather, clarifying what is in the Bible and what is not so they can begin to see what is from God and what is from man.

Janine: If you had to pick one “nugget” of faith wisdom that you have to share with our readers, what would that be?

Heather: I have seen prayer answered over and over again. I tend to still be amazed at how obvious it is and how clearly it works. I worry and I have completely learned to turn those worries into prayers. But I am learning that God does amazing things when we are on our knees; he hears our prayers and answers them.

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