Psalm 90:17: Establish the work of our hands, O Lord

Sitting at an OCW conference next to Geni White, you’d never guess she spent eight years living in Dubai working as an undercover Mennonite missionary.

Or that the past three years, she’s been battling colon cancer.

Geni White, who lives in Eugene, wrote her first book at age nine and it was “100 percent plagiarized.” She was heartbroken when her mother said it couldn’t be published.

They had been living in Dubai, one of the seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates, a fairy-tale land along the shores of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula.

The UAE government supported the family “royally,” Geni said, because Robert worked as head of electrical engineering at an Arab men’s college.

“I did undercover counseling with people sent to me by various churches in the city,” Geni said. “I also helped other missionaries (of all denominations) deal with problems.”

For example, she worked ten days with a family in Nazareth, Israel, but eventually sent the family home for a few years until the father could deal with his abusive childhood and realize that God truly loved him.

“Getting to Israel from an Arab country was an adventure in itself,” Geni recalled.

Geni earned her registered nursing degree from Wheaton College and West Suburban School of Nursing in the Chicago area, and a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology. She also has a master’s degree in counseling. Over the years, she has worked in emergency rooms, intensive care units, psychiatric wards, and church clinics before spending the 1990s in Dubai.

Then they retired to Eugene.

“What a surprise Oregon was,” Geni wrote one day last fall. “Dubai, if blessed, has four rains a year. Eugene had four just today.”

Turning her attention to writing, Geni has been published on the Internet and in magazines (such as Christian Communicator) more than 300 times.

“I’m working on a book now that might be worthy of publication, but I’ve done four books that I know are not ready,” she said. “Each has been a great learning experience.”

She enjoyed writing humor essays that she sometimes posts on her blog. She reviews books for Thomas Nelson Publishers and Asia East News blog from Taiwan.

One of her stories appears in the best-selling anthology Christmas Miracles, edited by Cecil Murphey and Marley Gibson. It was released in mid-October 2009 and had already sold 47,500 copies by November 1.

She may find another book sharing how God’s grace and peace sustained her during a battle with colon cancer, a disease that afflicted her mother and her mother’s father too.

“It seems like I’ve had about every possible complication during all this time—infections, blood clots, near death during radical surgery, severe radiation burns, etc., but God’s peace has been constant,” Geni said. “I’m amazed because I’ve not tried to stay peaceful … it simply has happened and God is responsible for that. He is so amazing and wonderful and great and merciful and loving and wise and ... you know what I mean!”

She recently finished four months of chemotherapy and had planned to have the colostomy removed earlier this month.

“In all this, God has been so amazing, always letting me know that He’s right here with me and will use all this to His glory,” Geni said. “I don’t yet know how He’ll do that, but I know He will.”

She and Robert, who have lived in 11 states and four countries during their marriage, have three grown children: Ruth in Chicago; Anne in Pasadena, California; and Dan in Taiwan, “married to a wonderful Taiwanese woman, Wanyin,” Geni said. “We have no grandchildren, and it looks like that’s not going to change.”

Her blog can be read at http://geniwhite.typepad.com/a_candle_in_the_dark.

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