In Pursuit of Destiny - Biography of Wayman Mitchell

Chapter 2

 

EARLY YEARS

"People are serious about the non-essentials of life" - W.M.

 

It was after the conclusion of the Sunday morning service at the 25th Reunion that I had spoken with George Mitchell. He was a white-haired gentleman who bore a faint resemblance to his brother Wayman. I later found that he was the elder brother in the Mitchell family, now a man in his mid-seventies. In a quiet voice he tilled in the details of the early days in the state of Arkansas and helped trace some of the events that led the family from the town of Mitchell to the city of Prescott in Arizona. 

Arkansas to Arizona

Coincidentally, the tiny town of Mitchell had been named after earlier forbears and it was here that the Mitchell family eked out a meager living as sharecroppers. As the years of 1920's drew to a close, life for the Mitchells and multitudes of others living in the Southeast, became a struggle for existence. There were surely places where jobs could be found and a family raised without hovering above subsistence level everyday. Mitchell Sr. decided to make the trek west, and in 1933 he and his family arrived in Prescott, Arizona. There were five children, Wayman being the baby.

   Here in Prescott Steve Mitchell Sr. worked successfully as a mail truck driver but, within a short time, he applied for a private contract delivering star route mail. He was to keep this jobtor 11 years, running a rambling route through the Arizona hills and tiny villages and mining towns, some now ghost towns of yester-year.

  Unfortunately, during this period, mother and father divorced and it was left to the father to raise his children after Mrs. Mitchell departed to Phoenix. By the advent of World War Two, the two elder sons had joined the military and the sisters had married and moved. Only Wayman was left with his father who in 1946, passed away.

  After a brief spell with his mother in Phoenix he returned to Prescott to complete his schooling. He was now old enough to follow in his brothers' footsteps. So off to the recruitment oUice he went. It was 1948.

Private - First Class

Initial training was in Texas and Illinois and, with bootcamp and school behind, it was off to Guam. While working there on the ground crew for flight line aircraft, the Korean War broke out.

  Tours of duty were frozen and enlistments were extended as the Army went into battle preparation. Men in senior rank were gone at a moment's notice on their way to the Korean theatre of war. Within six months, Private First Class Mitchell found himself in charge of the whole maintenance shop on the tiny island of Guam.

Doing his Duty

It was here, during this period of isolation, that God began to work on aspects of Mitchell's character. He was not a Christian and had never made church going part of his life, but God was using this period on a remote Pacific island to form convictions in the young man's soul. Away from family and friends, and with the responsibility of millions of dollars worth of equipment and mens' lives depending upon the excellence of his performance, Mitchell decided he was going to do the job to the best of his ability. He became deeply conscious that his job was a vital contribution to the war effort. Promotions had ceased. Pay was pegged at the vast sum of $34.00 per month. His civilian supervisor was usually drunk so he supervised the boss. He gave himself to excellence of service and to studies beyond his job, knowing there would be no reward and little appreciation. He was motivated to do his job well since duty required that he should.

  Doing the task assigned to him to the highest level of ability would be his incentive although, to all intents and purposes, nobody would ever recognize or remember what was going on in this tiny U.S. base.

  By 1952 he had returned to the States and, to his surprise, discovered that his labor in Guam had not gone unnoticed. He was given two promotions to Staff Sergeant and offered a candidacy at officer training school.

  But destiny was moving him elsewhere. The Bible declares that

"The King's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers and waters, He turneth it whithersoever he will."

  God had put in place the necessary disciplines - patterns of work and study that were to remain alive in His servant's heart for the future years of labor and ministry.

To this day, Pastor Mitchell is a strong advocate for military training. He says that any pastor with a military background is immediately observable. In the absence of conscription he has incorporated the principles learned in his early days into his discipling of men, but more of that in coming pages.

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