After an anxious wait, a Lincoln woman finally hears from her brother, a missionary in tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka

BY NANCY ROLLINGS SAUL
THE COURIER

Horror stories of giant waves tumbling fleeing people like sticks into the deadly currents. News photos of corpses - many of them very young or very old - waiting to be buried in mass graves.

The aftermath of the tsunami that swept through the Indian Ocean Dec. 26 is gut wrenching - especially for people like Crystal Tibbs, who can name names.

Stephen Bycroft, the Lincoln woman's brother, is a missionary living and working in Kodai Kallar, Sri Lanka, one of the communities devastated by the giant waves.

Sri Lanka suffered more casualties than any other country touched by the tsunami, which left one and a half million people displaced from their homes and tens of thousands more dead. Doctors now are confirming the first cases of cholera, as infectious diseases begin to take their toll among the survivors.

Tibbs was unsure of Bycroft's fate until 4:30 a.m. Dec. 28, when she answered the telephone and heard his voice. He had made his way to a military base, where he was able to make a very short phone call.

"There are too many things we don't know," Tibbs said. "But he let us know he is alive, and that's a huge relief. He and his wife and the eight orphans he keeps at his home were saved."

Bycroft has established churches in Kodai Kallar, Trincomalee and Periyanlavanai, Sri Lanka. A building had not yet been erected for the newest church, at Mahaloor. He had also set up three orphanages.

"He said the church at Trincomalee was gone and the minister and his wife are safe," Tibbs said. "But D.J. (the minister) lost his mother and all three of his children."

Tibbs said in a teary voice the minister's children ranged from about age 3 to just a couple months old.

At the time Bycroft called, he had found only four members of the Trincomalee church alive.

"I assume the orphanage (at Trincomalee) is gone too," she said. "We haven't heard anything again. We probably won't for some time."

One Internet site reported that the tsunami reached a mile and a quarter inland at Trincomalee, killing 800 people and submerging the naval base there.

But Bycroft, who has served in the mission field for about 12 years, has proven his mettle in other difficult situations, and that gives Tibbs hope that he'll be OK this time too.

A graduate of Ozark Bible College in Joplin, Mo., Bycroft worked at several other jobs before accepting an invitation to serve as a missionary for Whitefield Missions.

"He went to all of the really awful places of the world," Tibbs said. "Chad, Africa, Haiti, Sri Lanka."

In Haiti, a voodoo witch doctor tried to have him killed.

In Africa, Bycroft was stoned, placed under house arrest and detained by the law, but was eventually able to make his way back to America.

"After awhile, he felt that he was not accomplishing much, and he wanted to put down roots," Tibbs said. "He met a woman who worked in the mission office in Sri Lanka and they were married."

That's when her brother started his own mission, Lamp Lighters World Ministries.

Tibbs said civil war has raged in Sri Lanka for the past 25 years, and even before the tsunami, the area where Bycroft lives had electricity only about 10 minutes a day.

"He had to send all of his e-mails during that 10 minutes," she said. "All of his e-mails were very, very brief.

"He had complained that he was so sick of rain. It was the monsoon season, and there was two feet of water on all of the roads - how difficult it was to get around.

"He received daily death threats this fall."

Tibbs said the threats were due to an anti-conversion law passed in the country.

Although some Sri Lankans are Christians, the majority, the Sinhalese are adherent to Buddhism while other ethnic groups like Tamils, Moors, Burghers and others practice Hinduism and Islam.

"He fought with the politicians and at one point got the law overturned for a few days," Tibbs said. "They haven't pressed him as hard (lately) because he said he is going to build a factory for weaving fabrics."

But Tibbs said Bycroft can't hold religious services in public places.

"I guess it's OK if they stay inside the church," she said. "At one point, he was holding church in a public building and they told him he had to get out.

"A woman gave her home. There were 60 or 70 people meeting in that little house."

Tibbs said her sister keeps abreast of what's happening in Sri Lanka by reading an English translation of a Sri Lankan newspaper online.

The sisters have established a tsunami fund and are collecting money in a savings account for Bycroft.

"We can't get it to him, and there's nothing he can buy," she said, "but the day we learn he can have it, we'll get it to him."

Those who wish to contribute can send donations to Lamp Lighters World Ministries, 2641 E. Sixth St., Joplin, Mo. 64801-1636, or contact Lamp Lighters by e-mail at lamplighters@joplin.com or by fax 417-624-7085.

"We're sitting on pins and needles," Tibbs said. "We're praying he has water and food."

Tibbs last saw her brother in June and did not expect to see him again until 2006.

"He's usually is in Sri Lanka for a year, and then he comes home for a few months," she said. "This time, he was expecting to be gone two years.

"I'm the oldest and he's the baby - not yet 50."