This is the true story of a young American missionary woman’s courage and triumph of faith while she survived four years in a notorious Japanese prison camp set deep in the jungles of New Guinea. Never to see her husband again, she was forced to sign a false confession to a crime she did not commit and face the executioner’s sword, only to be miraculously spared.

Darlene Mae McIntosh was born in Boone, Iowa, on May 17, 1917, and grew up with an ailing father. At the age of nine she put her trust in the Lord and became saved by excepting Jesus Christ as her savior. At the age of 13 she attended a Dr. R.R. Brown revival meeting where she felt the hand of God urging her to go forward and give her life to missions for Christ. In her late teens she began studying to be a missionary where she met Russell Deibler a pioneer missionary to Southeast Asia, and they married on August 18, 1937.

In 1938 Darlene and Russell set out together with the purpose of evangelizing the backwoods island of New Guinea. Darlene worked at a stationary mission station while Russell took further journeys. Eventually Darlene joined her husband on the island of Celebes. Together they learned the spoken language and taught the people about Jesus.

March 1942, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded the island of Celebes and placed the Christian and Missionary Alliance team under house arrest. On March 13, they came and took all the men to Pare Pare prison camp, Russell’s last words to his extraordinary wife were, ‘Remember one thing, dear: God said that he would never leave us nor forsake us,’ Darlene never saw her husband again. All the women and children were taken to different prison camps.

The Japanese falsely accused Darlene of being an American spy, a crime she did not commit. She was a christian missionary, not a spy. In the notorious prison camp for women at Kampili she survived four years of horrific beatings, merciless starvation, ferocious forced labor, brutal interrogations, and the constant threat of execution. Prisoners came down with deadly diseases like dysentery and malaria. Darlene developed a nutritional disorder called beriberi (which can cause pain, tingling, and loss of muscle function.)

Every night in the beat-up barracks where she stayed, the women called upon God and prayed together in a group. Darlene was miraculously spared when she shared Christ with the murderous camp commandant just before she was going to be executed .Her Christian faith sustained her during those horrendous years.

On September 2, 1945, World War ll was over. Darlene and her fellow prisoners were finally liberated. She left the island of her barbaric captivity as a grieved widow, as her husband died in 1944. At an extremely low weight of 80 lbs., she flew to the States in a very ill condition as her body looked bony, and scrawny. She then returned to her family who lived in Los Angeles and with a very slow recovery recuperated there.

n 1946, some friends introduced Darlene to a Reverend Gerald “Jerry” Rose who had already been assigned a mission post in the primitive Papua New Guinea. The two fell in love and were married on April 4, 1948. For nearly 30 years Darlene and Jerry, along with their two sons, Bruce and Brian, served together by teaching the natives and preaching the word of God. The family worked together by building landing strips and faced headhunters. They delivered babies and lead people to Christ.

With the Indonesian takeover in 1978, the family relocated to the Australian outback to continue their mission work. Together, Darlene and Jerry brought hundreds of Aborigines to the Lord and led them to Christ. They were also influential in starting several local churches that are now Pastored by natives.

After decades of bringing people to Jesus Christ, they returned to the United States in 1993 where they became advocates for missions. Darlene Rose was called to her heavenly home on February 4, 2004 at the age of 86. Jerry Rose slipped quietly into heaven on August 10, 2004.

Darlene admitted that during the frightful four years in a prison camp, she was regularly pushed to the point where she felt she could endure no more. She shares her true story of survival in this incredible account of enormous faith, immense power, and amazing courage; with Jesus Christ our Lord.