Marja Waldon was raised in a devout RLDS family who attended church Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings and Wednesday evenings. Joseph and Emma Smith were her heroes. At age seventeen she attended Graceland College and then entered the school of nursing in Independence, Missouri, where she later graduated first in her class. It was a little Gideon Bible she was given while in nursing school that played a strategic role in opening her eyes to truth of the Biblical gospel. In April 1970, Marja accepted Jesus Christ as her personal Savior. From that moment on she had a peace, hope and joy that she had never before experienced in her life and she testified; “Whatever crowns I may have earned will have a little Gideon nurse testament engrained on them when I cast them at the feet of our lovely Lord.” This is her testimony.

God’s Word from a Gideon Testament

“Amazing grace – how sweet the sound–
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found–
was blind, but now, I see!

For the first thirty years of my life I had no hope, no peace, no joy. Born in late 1939 I was the third daughter, and last child, my parents had. They named me for each of them: M-a – r for Mary and j-a for James, I became a fifth generation saint. All of my family were members of the RLDS church, believers in the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. I would become a member, as were my parents, their parents, their parents and their parents. The RLDS church began in April, 1830 – I was born just a little more than 100 years later. The roots of this form of Mormonism were deep in my family.

As a child I grew up going to church on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights. We went to church camps called “reunions.” In the summer I went to Vacation Bible School and saw flannel graph stories of Book of Mormon events. While children in Bible believing, Christ teaching, Vacation Bible Schools were singing: “I’ve got the love of Jesus Christ my Savior, down in my heart,” I was singing, “I’ve got the Bible and the Book of Mormon down in my heart.” I was taught more church history than Bible doctrine or Book of Mormon stories.

Joseph and Emma Smith were my heroes: I had a worship center in my bedroom – a kind of altar, with a white linen cloth covering, flowers, a candle, pictures of Joseph and Emma Smith, and the three books of Mormonism: the Bible, as translated by Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants. I had no idea that the Bible says that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” that “the wages of sin is death,” that “all our works of righteousness are the same as filthy rags.” I was taught that I was good and getting better – humanism. But, I was bad and getting worse – a wretch!

In my teens both my grandfathers’ died – and for the first time in my life I faced death and dying. I came to think of death as an eternal black void. I began to cry myself to sleep at night several times a month – in fear of death and dying. At age 17 I began my college studies at the RLDS church college, Graceland, in Lamoni, Iowa. Out professors were RLDS priesthood members who tore down every thing we believed in. One of my classmates was so devastated he shot and killed himself. I became an agnostic – I wouldn’t say there is not God; I had to admit I didn’t know if there was a God. I was still afraid of death, sometimes crying myself to sleep at night.

In 1958 I entered the RLDS church school of nursing in Independence, Missouri. A few weeks after we began our studies, ladies from the Gideon Auxiliary came to present us with nurse testaments. We stood in a circle, those Gideon ladies prayed and we were given our nurse testaments. From then on that beautiful little white nurse testament was as much a part of my uniform as was my cap, my white starched uniform dress, watch, white stockings, shoes and bandage scissors. Off I went to take care of patients – in one pocket my nurse testament and in the other, my cigarettes. On my breaks I would smoke and read my Bible. I tried to read that testament many times – it was the seed of the Word of God, sowed by faithful women, but it wasn’t breaking through the ground – yet.

Graduating first in my class in clinical care, I began to practice nursing. I went on to school working toward a graduate degree. The world, the flesh, and the devil now entered my life. After a car accident and knee surgery I returned to my parent’s home to recover. At the invitation of my School of Nursing I returned to teach operating room and emergency room nursing.

In some ways my life was empty and I was lonely. Like Potiphar’s wife, I didn’t know God; anyone who does not know Him is likely to behave in any number of wrong ways. I found I was without moral values and with no supernatural power on which to draw. As I continued taking classes, teaching nursing, and living life pretty much without a value base, I became more involved in sin.

In time I met and married my husband and we were blessed with four sons. From time to time I cried myself to sleep – still afraid of death and dying. In those turbulent days of the late 1960’s my husband and I joined my parents in political activism – we became active members of a political – educational organization. We met Christians who began to witness to us. Life at the grade school of our oldest son became complicated over fights among black and white children. Some black children fought with our son; the teachers said, “we can’t say anything – that would provoke a racist incident.”

We looked for a private school for him – it could have been Hindu or Buddhist. God led us to a Christian school. The application asked: “Are you saved!” We had no idea what that meant. We said, “We’re as good as they are” – and we signed “yes.” We had no idea what it meant to have a personal Savior, to be born again, to be forgiven, to be saved, to have peace, joy, and hope. We had attended college several years but we had no definitions for those words.

Slowly, very patiently, Christians that God brought into our lives used His Word to show us His truths and to water the seed of that Gideon testament sowed years before – and God’s Word began to send out roots in our hearts, to break through the hard dry soil of our sin and our pride. In April of 1970 I confessed my sin and accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior; three weeks later my husband did the same. God gave me His peace, His hope, His joy, His forgiveness. Never once since that moment have I cried myself to sleep in fear of death and dying.

For almost half of the 36 years that I practiced nursing I was a teacher. I witnessed to my students and to patients. There are three patients that I led to the Lord who had amazing conversions – that is another story. God has allowed us to grow as Christians; He has given us ministry in reaching the lost. Through chalk drawings He has let me lead the unsaved to Him, to challenge Christians to a closer walk and to missions. I have shared in at least a dozen meetings of the Gideons across Iowa, and even in Oregon, as well as with many churches. God has allowed us to serve as missionaries to missionaries through my having been missions director of a several thousand-member church for almost five years. He has given us an e-mail prayer network (e-Prayer) that reaches over 520,000 people in more than 75 countries. He let me go to Honduras in 1994 to help plant a church. God has given me the desire, and conviction, that every one whose life touches mine should have the gospel in some form – whether through my testimony, my witness, or in a tract. I’m not there yet but we’ve got a goal and He has the power!

“When we’ve been there, ten thousand years–
Bright shining as the sun…
We’ve no less days to sing God’s Praise
Than when we’ve first begun.”

Whatever crowns I may have earned will have a little Gideon nurse testament engraved on them; when I cast them at the feet of our lovely Lord, those nail scarred feet, whatever I have done in His name – is all the fruit from that seed of His Word, a Gideon nurse testament placed in the hands, with prayer, of an eighteen year old nursing student…who would fall to the world, the flesh, and the devil…but who would be raised up – a new creature in Jesus Christ, with my sins forgiven, bound for heaven, with my Gideon nurse testament in my hand, with our Lord in my heart! May Jesus Christ be praised!