As a little girl Marilyn Laszlo was shocked to hear that there were people who had never heard of the Gospel message. When she gave her life to Christ at a very young age, Marilyn began a journey of unwavering commitment to her Lord. In 1967, Laszlo went to Hauna Village in Papua New Guinea, ready to share God’s love. For the next couple of decades she lived with the Sepik Iwam people and completed a Bible translation  for their previously unwritten language. This passionate and energetic woman is currently a national speaker for Wycliffe U.S.A. at missions conferences, colleges chapels, youth events, churches and women’s retreats. She challenges and encourages God’s people with her amazing testimony.

EN: You grew up on a small farm in Indiana. Can you tell me a little about your family background?
ML: My grandparents came from Hungary and settled in northern Indiana here on the land that we live in today. That was in the mid-30s. So this was during the Great Depression. It was a wonderful way to grow up in that era because in that era everyone was poor and so everyone helped everybody. My sisters and I certainly learned a work ethic. We learned to work hard. We enjoyed our work. And the four of us, I am the oldest of four girls, didn’t realize we were poor because we had made everything that we had. We milked our own cow, had a smoke house. So we made everything—made our own sausage and ham and chicken, made our own soap, cottage cheese and butter. We also had a big garden so my mom kept everything. We never had to go to the store. You know if you have food, clothes and shelter, you don’t feel poor. That was a good background.

EN: How did you accept Christ?
ML: I was in elementary when I went to this little country church just down the road from us. It was a one-room school building that was converted into a little church of about 35 members. I remember sitting in the front pew. I just loved going to church and hearing those stories, the Creations story and all the stories of Abraham, and the stories of the disciples following Jesus. I remember I was in elementary when I asked Jesus into my life. Then when I was 12 years old in junior high, I heard my first missionary at this church. We didn’t travel and go very far so I didn’t know a whole lot about the world, but that just astounded me, just the sound that there’s a world that doesn’t know Jesus. And then he said there are people in the world who don’t even have the opportunity to know Jesus. As a young girl that thought had been tossing and turning around in my head. The next morning I had to get up and get the field ready for my dad. He didn’t have any sons so I became the son. I was out on the tractor plowing the field. I was just singing and praising the Lord. I remember saying this prayer: “Lord, when I grow up and I’m a big girl, I want to tell others about You.” It may have been innocent but it was my prayer. The rest is history. Well, I went on to teach high school for six years. I taught history and physical education and that was also God’s preparation for me. I tell young people, especially in college campuses, there’s a time of preparation we all have to go through. Sometimes it’s painful and sometimes it’s hard. But God has to take us through those times for us to be prepared for what He has called us to do. And I think I was well prepared to go.

EN: Did you ever sway from or doubt your commitment to God?
ML: I had too much fear of God… of turning my back on Him. I played semi-professional softball. I remember before the game, I tried to think of all the things I did wrong and I’d get on my knees and say, “I know Lord that I haven’t obeyed my mother or whatever it may be, when I get up to bat I’m going to strike out.” I just had this innocent incredible fear of God throughout my whole life. Once you know the Lord, I think it’s scary. Once you get the Holy Spirit in you, you start praying. He convicts you and leaves a deep impression that you’ll never flounder around.

EN: It’s wonderful that you never lost that fear.
ML: I also ask people in my meetings if they started the day with God. Did you start the day reading the Bible? Because when you get angry and things aren’t going right, these kinds of things happen when we’re starving ourselves. The Bible’s got meat. It’s got water. There are very few of us that would miss three meals a day. But we neglect our spiritual life. We’re starving for the Lord. We don’t think of the Bible as our food, our water.

EN: How long is a person committed to a certain area when serving with Wycliffe?
ML: Well, we know it’s long term and there’s no way to really predict how long. It depends on what area of the world you’re working in. If you’re working with bilingual people, that’s really easy, much easier. You could do it ten or twelve years. If you’re working with monolingual, it’s going to take anywhere from 20 to 30 years. A lot depends on the level of where those people are. So we have people in Wycliffe working with very intellectual people like in Africa, who have PhDs. So we’re more like facilitators. We send these people who are interested in having the Bible in their own language and send them to seminary and make them leaders. The actual nationals are doing the translation in Africa. We still have to learn the language very thoroughly to control the translation so there are no wrong interpretations going in there. We see if the translations match the Hebrew and the Greek. We have to make sure that the meaning of everything is right. So it goes faster. Like in Africa, nationals can translate within seven years when it takes us 15 to 20 years. It depends on what part of the world you’re working in. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you want to look at it), we were the first white females to enter the language colony. There had not been white people living there. So we were starting from ground zero… no paper, no pencil, no books, clothes, pots or pans. It started at a very low level before we could do anything and establish. We had to understand their culture. Before we start translating we have to write an anthropology paper of their living structure, political structure, and their religious structure. You know the Bible will plug-in in any part of the world. When you think of the Bible, it’s a whole Jewish culture. It’s about the Hebrew children from Genesis to Revelation. Again, it worked fine in America. It works fine in China, Africa, and Russia. There’s no place it won’t work.

EN: Were there any difficulties in learning the language of the Sepik Iwam people?
ML: Because you’re right there you don’t hear anything except that language. No matter where we are, we are expected in six months to speak on a simple level. We have a lot going on at the same time. We have a responsibility toward our organization. They expect the alphabet to be figured out. Then they’ll say to write a little about the men’s work for anthropology. So we take it one step at a time and we know we’re staying for a long time.

EN: So through Wycliffe you have opportunities for people to use their skills.
ML: Just about every job that exists we need people. It’s like any huge business. In order to make it work, you got to have a lot of people. We couldn’t stay out there in these remote areas without all these other help, not only on the field but here in the states where our headquarters are.

EN: Then you also have a lot of short-term mission opportunities?
ML: We do a lot of short-term missions. They’re doing this a lot more going down to a lot of the younger ages, like for high schools kids and something like that. But for college kids who are interested in translation, they could sign up to go and work with the translation team like in New Guinea for four or five weeks. It’s a really good experience to live like that with the translation team.

EN: What a great opportunity!
ML: I think in a month we have about 200 job openings. And then we have about 2,000 retirees. They have their social security, have their pension, and they’re not worried about making it anymore. They have their expertise in their work. We have many of those kinds of people who are willing to go for a time of two weeks, sometimes a month, offering their services.

EN: How long did it take you to translate the New Testament?
ML: All together, including Genesis and the panorama of the New Testament, 44 years. Whatever you feel God calling you to do, you stick with it, especially if you enjoy what you’re doing. I mean if people enjoy teaching, they’ll teach a long time. Or a pastor of a church for 20 years, we don’t think anything about that. If we think of the privative situation, we think it’s a long time. It’s a calling. It’s not for everybody. I mean, I don’t think I could work at a hospital or be a secretary. It’s really finding God’s purpose in your life and then following it.

EN: That’s so funny you would say that because so many people would say the same thing about what you have done.
ML: Probably they could. I mean I don’t think God calls us to do something we can’t do. He equips us very early for what we are called to do.

EN: I know this comes with every job, like you were saying, but were there times when you wanted to give up and go home?
ML: Oh, absolutely! I’m not a quitter. It’s hard for me to quit. Sometimes you wonder, “Are we ever going to get the job done?” At times, it seems impossible. There’s no training that could prepare you for long, long times of isolation. We try to come out every three months. Wycliffe policy is that you come out when you feel you have to come out. You got to watch yourself. You can’t try to be heroic and think “I’m going to stick it out.” That’s when you get discouraged and stressed. That’s the time to go. So once you start developing a rapport and speaking the language—people are fun. Then the work starts moving along. The last ten years, I hardly came out now that I think about it. In the beginning years, you got to come into the mission station and do workshops and turn in your papers, get a little bit more training. I would say the first seven or eight years you’re in-and-out of the mission station. That’s how you make it work. You make a lot of friends. You start to learn the language, stay on top spiritually…but there’s no church.

EN: How do you stay healthy spiritually?
ML: Well, I get a lot of tapes. I get churches with many of my favorite speakers to send me tapes. I would get on my bike and put on my walkman and I’d be off listening to a great message. So there are different ways. You know, we have a lot of time ’cause they don’t go by a calendar. Nobody says you have to get up at 6 o’ clock, but you know what you have to get done. There’s a lot of freedom. You’re not driven by the watch. You’re not driven by a calendar. Where’re you going? There’s no place to go! There are no stores, no malls, no restaurants, no McDonald’s… there’s the jungle. So you spend a lot of time with the Lord. You have time to read and appreciate nature. You walk through the jungle and it’s wonderful—the flowers, the orchids, the butterflies, no pollution, no noise except for the jungle sounds.

EN: It sounds like a great place to get away, to retreat and have time with God.
ML: Well, it’s really very difficult in this country [USA] because the social structure is such a fast pace. And you are sucked in. It’s hard to go against your culture. You got telephones. You got emails and the TV going all the time. It’s hard to find a place of quiet and to be away. We’re driven by time—be here at this time, do this at that time. We could get really busy. Even at church we could forget about Whom we’re serving. So the only thing is that it’s hard to walk by faith in this country because we’re so blessed with so much. Back there [Hauna], if you don’t walk by faith, you’re not going to make it. If you get sick or have a tragedy happen, there’s no 911 or telephone. You have to get directly to God. How is our faith challenged in this country? God says to “walk by faith.” In Hebrews it says unless you walk by faith you can’t do anything. But it would be foolish not to call 911 when you’re in trouble. It’d be foolish not to call the ambulance when you’re having a heart attack. Our faith is challenged in different ways than back there.

EN: What did you do when you were sick?
ML: We have helicopters. We have planes. Living by the river we had motor to get to the village. We had radio contact so we would call for help. It’s only been a couple times when it got serious that I had to have a helicopter get me out of there. Wycliffe takes care of us best as they can. There are all kinds of risks.

EN: What was the peoples’ first impression of you?
ML: At first they were afraid of us, but most of the people there are really gentle even though there are cannibals. Everybody helps each other and shares.

EN: Is there anything that you learned from them?
ML: I learned a lot from them. I learned a lot about helping. Nobody’s ever left alone.

EN: So they’re just like real family.
ML: They’re just like a family. There are four clans, but there are 800 people in the village. They all work together. They have incredible structure there, all very tight.

EN: What was the greatest reward working with these people?
ML: The greatest reward is always somebody coming to know the Lord. The final climactic reward is leaving them with the Word of God. If we’re going to leave anything with anybody, it’s the Word of God. God’s Word can’t be destroyed. So the reward is translation verse by verse and how it impacts the people.

EN: Do you still go back there and visit the village?
ML: The last time I was there was in ’98, I think, because I came home to take care of my mom and dad. I had finished my work. And now that they’re gone, I have another opportunity to go back, and I plan to do that.

EN: What advice would you have for people who are going into missions long-term or even short-term?
ML: First of all, finding the right mission organization that you want to work with. Here in the United States there are about 250 mission organizations. And become as much involved as you can in any kind of mission conference that’s going on. Reading books about missionaries, reading their biographies…I know reading a lot of books makes you more and more excited about being a missionary. Also exposing yourself in the area that you’re interested in. If you’re a graphic designer, get with the right people. I think also with the way the world is a degree is very important. I know a lot of these countries, like Indonesia, you can’t get into unless you have a Master’s degree. So education right now is very, very important. You can’t have enough. There countries want educated people to come into their countries. They want us to teach their people how. The early day missionaries just did well with the Bible. That doesn’t work these days. You have to be educated. Otherwise, it’s very short-term. But for long-term, you got to have a degree. So get as much education and experience as possible in the area that you are passionate about.

Posted: April 10, 2007
*This interview first appeared in Encounter Monthly Journal, March 2006