As a very young girl, I remember my parents talking about missionaries they knew in Japan, Don and Grace Bowman. Their family had been involved in a boating accident in which all four of their children and three other people died. How hard the father, Don Bowman, had tried to rescue his children, but he was unable to save their lives! After this tragedy, my father always wanted us children to learn to swim.
It was interesting reading about Don Bowman's life in two articles in a recent Bible Missionary
Church newsletter. Don's family came to the west when he was just a baby, following the harvests where the family worked at picking cotton, peas, or whatever was in season. Don's mother was a faithful homemaker, although she struggled with the after-effects of a stroke. Don's father was a hard worker, but also a hard drinker and gambler.
At the tender age of five, Don learned to pick cotton and vegetables right alongside his family. He was also the "best five-year-old shoeblack in town," who could take half a can of shoe polish and spend a whole hour making a muddy farmer's boots shiny for just five cents!
Around 1951, Don Bowman joined the Navy, serving on a seaplane tender during the Korean War. While on furlough in the States, Don attended a church service at a Free Methodist Church in Wilder, Idaho, where his brother was filling in as preacher. There God dealt with his heart, and kneeling at the altar, he found forgiveness of sins.
During the time that he was stationed in San Fransisco, Don was attending the Church of the Nazarene where J.B. Chapman's son-in-law was the pastor. There, three months after his salvation, he felt God letting him know that God was going to sanctify him that night! He was so excited about it that he hardly remembered anything from the message, only that afterward he went straight to the altar and wept his way through to the heart cleansing that he desired. He described what happened as feeling "as if God scrubbed his heart down with a brush, and hosed it clean."
Later, while on board his seaplane tender anchored at the port of Iwakuni, Japan, Don experienced an unusual call of God to preach. As a young boy, he had sold newspapers during World War II. Don would watch the papers as they came off the press. But while praying on his ship, Don saw something different. He was watching Bibles coming off the press and hands leafing through those Bibles. "Preach My Word!" a voice commanded distinctly.
Don did not know how he could preach, for he stuttered badly. But in spite of this handicap, he determined to be obedient to the heavenly vision, beginning right away to preach during the Protestant services on board the ship. Don also began preaching at the home of one of his Japanese acquaintances with the help of a translator.
On April 27th, 1956, Don married Grace Elizabeth Watson, his faithful companion for the next sixty-four years. After serving as pastor in Nebraska, Washington, and Oregon, Don moved with his family back to Japan in April of 1965. By this time, three little children had graced their home.
When Don's mother died back in the States. Don returned for her funeral. He was grateful that his mother had come to know Christ as her Savior, but he was concerned about his father who had never repented of his sinful life. One day, his father in the nursing home had a good day of unusual clarity of mind. As Don shared the claims of the gospel with him, his father responded by humbling himself to pray. Only a few days later, Don's father passed away, but one more eleventh-hour conversion was written down in the books of heaven!
The loss of all four of the Bowman children in the boating accident off the shore of Japan could have caused Don to become bitter. He could have sued the boat builder who had made a serious mistake on the boat, but he did not. Instead, as he told the judge and court officials that he loved the boat maker and would not do anything vengefully, the officials "bowed their heads in respect."
Don also could have become bitter when a fellow missionary accused him of causing the boat accident just to be famous and be in the news on television. Such a thing could not have been further from his mind! How could he have caused the death of all of his own children just for the cause of fame? Yet later when the same accuser attempted suicide, it was Don Bowman who rushed to her side to provide CPR. "Holiness works!" he thought to himself as he worked feverishly to save his accuser's life.
In 1983, Don Bowman became the first full-time General Foreign Missions Secretary in the Bible Missionary Church, serving for the next thirty-two years. He continued to travel all around the world encouraging those who were spreading the gospel.
How appropriate that on Thanksgiving Day, 2020, the man who had chosen thankfulness over bitterness went to be with His Lord and Savior! Having told different ones of a dream he once had where his children in heaven had come running to meet him, Don had looked forward to the day when that dream would take place for real. How wonderful it was to slip to the other side and take Garry, Joel, Teresa, and Donnie into His arms once again! But how much more wonderful to himself be taken into the strong and loving arms of His Savior, and to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"
