"Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" The words of the Lord in Isaiah were answered by Joe and Edna Smith as they set sail halfway around the world, there meeting the challenge of bringing the Good News to a people in darkness. From the prairies of South Dakota, with a commitment to their Lord, a gift of life and love and the indomitable pioneering spirit, with the word of God and technical know-how to share, they answered "Here are we Lord. Send us."

Joe, born in 1895 in Sioux Falls, was the seventeenth in a family of twenty children. (His father had married twice). After his schooling in Brookings was interrupted by World War I, he received a degree in 1923 in scientific agriculture. This would be put to good use when he reached Burma. Joe could speak enthusiastically about improved farming methods, healthier hens, and fatter pigs, but he had an even greater enthusiasm for Jesus Christ. Big, genial, kind-hearted - there was nothing stuffy in his make-up. This was how his friends knew him.

On his first and second mission terms in Burma he saw a vast movement underway. Almost one billion Southeast Asian people were determined in some way to change their living conditions. Joe said repeatedly, "Let us fail to establish mission stations and we will again have to bare the breast of our strong young men to the bullets and bayonets of the foe." But that was 1935, and no one was in a mood to pay much attention to the things he said, six years before Pearl Harbor. When, if ever, will the world learn that if it fails to know the teachings of Christ it will pay an awful price in the blood of its people?

The Joe Smith family returned on furlough to the United States in June, 1941. Joe was scheduled as a missionary speaker in churches around the country. He was also the missionary advocate in church assemblies like Camp Judson in the Black Hills. During the 1942 spring semester at the Louisiana State University, he attended the graduate school to take new courses in agriculture. This would help him at Pyinmana Agricultural School when he returned to Burma after the war.

The theme of the 1942 Northern Baptist convention in Cleveland was "A Ministering Church in a Stricken World." Joe gave a stirring address at this convention. Though specializing in agricultural work for sixteen years in Burma, his emphasis was always on evangelism. The acceptance of his message by those who attended the convention was so enthusiastic, Joe's calendar quickly filled up with speaking engagements. He always gave a vigorous defense of foreign missions. After hearing criticism about the amount of money spent on missionary efforts in China, Japan, and Burma, he responded "You cannot wipe out the picture of American missionaries ministering to the broken bodies of men, women, and children, feeding starving babies, and protecting Chinese girls. The lives of these missionaries have not been wasted - the gospel they have preached can never be blasted out of Asia."

In the summer of 1942 he was again assigned to work in church camps in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. At Camp Judson, one of the young pastors wrote, "I did not know anyone I learned to love so much with so little contact." It was noted at his Camp Judson appearance that his burning message would never be forgotten. His spirit goes marching on. Joe still lives and his work will continue. It was while he was at the camp in Wisconsin that he took ill and was rushed to the hospital for gall-bladder surgery. Although the initial prognosis was favorable, complications set in and he died unexpectedly.