Mertis B. Heimbach, 102

November 01, 2023

Mertis Byram Heimbach left this life to be with her Lord at 5:09 pm on Wednesday, November 1, 2023. There will be no public viewing of her remains but a service memorializing her life will be held in the chapel at Calvary Fellowship Homes, at 502 Elizabeth Drive, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at 1:00 pm, on November 7, 2023. She will be interred along with her husband, the Reverend Ernest Everett Heimbach, at Magnolia Memorial Park in Garden Grove, California. Mertie Heimbach prepared the following statement for those who knew and loved her.

“The song, All the Way My Savior Leads Me, has been my song all my life. When I left home to go to college, this was the song God gave me, and He has truly led me all the way. He led me to my dear husband, Ernie; He gave me 5 precious children, Dan, Ruthi, Jim, Paul, and John; and He has given me 9 grandchildren and 26 great grandchildren. How good God has been to me over the years.

“I was born in 1921 to Roy and Bertha Byram. Both were medical doctors, and they were preparing to go as missionaries to Korea when I was born. I was 7 months old when they sailed for Korea. They settled in Kangkei, in what now is North Korea, just 40 miles from the northern border of Korea with China.

“I believe I came to know the Lord when I was 4 years old. My mother had been telling me stories of Jesus when I began to cry. ‘Mertie,’ she asked, ‘why are you crying?’ ‘Because Jesus loves me so much,’ I replied.

“It was when I was in high school at Pyongyang Foreign School that I first knew God was calling me to be a missionary. Later, when I was at Wheaton College, I realized that the man I would marry would have to be called to be a missionary too. I met Ernie Heimbach at Wheaton who was also interested in the China Inland Mission (CIM). After getting engaged, we applied to the CIM. But World War II was on and they were not taking new missionary candidates. They advised us to get married and after the war to reapply to the mission.

“While at Wheaton, my parents, who stayed in Korea as WWII enveloped the Pacific, were arrested by the Japanese 2 weeks before Pearl Harbor, which broke off communicating with them. On March 5 (my father’s birthday), the Daily Light (a devotional book) reading was, ‘He preserveth the way of His saints.’ It was as if I had gotten a telegram from God saying that my folks were okay.

“Ernie and I were married in 1944. We were accepted by the CIM in 1946 and immediately sailed for China. It was only 3 years later that the Communists took over China. We stayed as long as we could, which was 2 more years, before being expelled from the country. Our first child, Dan, was born while we were traveling with a convoy of Communist soldiers, and my husband Ernie (who has not medically trained) had to deliver him himself. Finally, after the baby was just over 1 year old, the Communist government ordered me and my baby out of China and gave us 48 hours to leave. Ernie was not allowed to leave with us. We were in central China and I had 3,000 miles to travel to the coast. But God was with me all the way. The verse He gave me was Isaiah 40:11 which says, ‘He will gently lead those that are with young.’ Ernie was then ordered to leave 3 weeks later.

“After leaving China, the mission name was changed from CIM to the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) and our mission headquarters shifted from Beijing to Singapore. But where were we to go? We had only just started working with the Hmong people in China, but we discovered there were thousands more living remotely in the jungles of North Thailand. These were people related to those we began working with in China, but the Hmong in Thailand had never been touched with the Gospel. God was calling us to take the Gospel to an entirely unreached people group.

“Reaching the previously unreached Hmong people in North Thailand became the most exciting period of my life serving as a missionary. They built us a house just like their own (with a dirt floor, a roof made of palm fronds, and no plumbing or power), and we lived in the remote jungle covered mountains of North Thailand with our family. It was exciting to see God planting a church and using us to help do that.

“At first I was afraid to go live in the jungle with two little children, Dan and Ruthi, so far from civilization. But God spoke to me through Isaiah 40:11 again. And God drew my attention to a couple of verses before that, in verse 9, where it says, ‘Get up into the high mountain’! God was speaking and I had to obey. God was calling and would be with me as before. ‘All the way my Savior leads me.’ God was at it again and He always knows best.

“Those were wonderful years, and God gave us a third child, Jim, while living in the jungle. We moved out of the jungle when the mission asked Ernie to serve as Superintendent of the work in North Thailand, and our fourth child, Paul, was born in the city of Chiang Mai. Later God led us to Singapore when Ernie joined the mission headquarters staff. Our fifth child, John, was born in Singapore and spent his earliest years with us there.

“We moved back to the States when Ernie became the OMF Home Director for the United States and Canada. In 1978 we were loaned by OMF to assist in developing the US Center for World Mission in Pasadena, California. Ernie died in 1991 and I continued serving at the US Center for another 8 years. Finally in 1999 I moved to the Lammermuir House, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which became part of Calvary Fellowship Homes in 2008.

“Truly I can say my Savior led me ‘all the way,’ and when you read or hear this you will know I have ‘heavenly peace’ and ‘divinest comfort’ in the presence of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As you think of me, I would like you also to discover, as I have, that ‘Jesus doeth all things well.’”