Outrageous Grace: A Story of Tragedy and Forgiveness

My husband, a missionary translator in Papua New Guinea, was murdered while sitting at his desk translating the love chapter into the Nabak language. As the first witness on the scene, I soon learned that the murderer was a Nabak man. We had grown to love the Nabak-speaking people and were endeavoring to translate the scriptures into their language. This memoir tells the story of my four children and me wrestling with grief and disorientation. It speaks of our quest for spiritual answers and of the difficulty of meshing two different worlds the culture of the Nabak people on the island nation of Papua New Guinea and of my Christian heritage from the United States. We faced the challenges of forgiving the murderer, rocks thrown onto our roof and through the windows, eviction notices, and twenty months later a court case. Then we discovered that God is orchestrating an amazing story of redemption. I, even in my most creative and spiritual moments, never could have conjured up the story that came from this tragedy and our family s forgiveness.