May 27, 2008
Lyon College News Bureau

With tears in her eyes, Martha Fast thanked Presbyterian Women and praised God as she humbly accepted the 2008 Woman of Faith Award presented on May 12 at Presbyterian Kirk in the Pines.

“I have had such an incredible life,” she said. “I am amazed at what our great God can do. My life has been such a wonderful journey.”

Born to Presbyterian missionaries in Korea, Martha Paisley Fast spent her early years surrounded by other missionary families in a compound in Kwangju. She and her twin sister and an older sister attended a one-room school for missionary children taught by teachers from the States. She was home-schooled during her seventh grade year, and the following year Martha left to attend boarding school in Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea. At that time the country was united.

During Martha’s childhood, the family returned on furlough only three times. However, in October 1940, the war loomed close, and she left the boarding school to meet her parents in Tokyo. With heavy hearts, she and her sisters and parents left their Korean friends and sailed to America.

“I have never known anything different than to believe in God and love him,” she said. “I never had any reason to question the faith of my parents or my ‘extended family,’ the other dedicated missionaries who surrounded me in Korea.”

Back in the United States, Martha attended a girls’ high school in Decatur, Georgia, then completed her high school education at a consolidated school close to Atlanta. She and her twin sister were separated for the first time when Martha left for college. But that was a good thing, she said. She wanted to establish her independence, and she attended a Presbyterian school, Arkansas College, now Lyon College, where she met her future husband, Stan. After graduation, Martha became a Director of Christian Education and served Presbyterian churches, in Warren, Meridian, Miss., and North Little Rock.

Following her father’s stroke, her mother and father also moved to North Little Rock. She says an “angel friend” talked with her, and said, “Martha, has it ever occurred to you that you need your parents now as much as they need you?” She said she thought about that and knew her friend was right. Martha moved in with her parents for a year, and her father passed away two months before she and Stan married in 1952.

In 1990, she returned to Korea with her twin sister and other missionary friends and spent two weeks touring the five mission stations where they had been. In Seoul, South Korea, she worshipped in the largest Presbyterian Church in the world, Youngnak Presbyterian Church, now with 50,000 members.

“It is incredible what the Presbyterian Church has done to spread Christianity in Korea,” she said. “I am so proud to know my mother and father were part of that. The Korean people are wonderful. Their strong work ethic and faith are inspiring. God indeed works in amazing ways his wonders to perform.”

Presbyterian Women Moderator Charlotte Massey, left, presents special pendant to Martha Fast, recipient of the 2008 Woman of Faith Award at Presbyterian Kirk in the Pines.