Schellers worked with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Philippines

Don Scheller was born in Des Moines, Iowa, during the time his physician father was an intern there. Following that training, his parents and one-year-old Don moved back to their home state of South Dakota to Arlington, which is about 20 miles west of Brookings on Hwy 14.
His father took over the medical practice of a retiring doctor. Don has two younger brothers and they all graduated from school in Arlington.
He said when he was in grade school that the students would participate annually in the school’s declamatory (speech) contest. Even though Don had his speech memorized, he lacked confidence and was not able to finish his talk.
Every year parents would ask, “Is Donnie Scheller going to finish his piece this year?” Finally, in eighth grade, Don managed to complete his speech. When he was a senior in high school he and two other classmates—his best friend and a girl—ran for class president. Speeches were required and successfully done. The two boys split the vote, and the girl won.
A curious twist happened later in his life, he said, when God called him into the ministry to preach the Good News about Jesus Christ.
Don had planned to follow his father in the medical field and attended the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, S.D. majoring in zoology with a pre-med focus. Don said his grade point average wasn’t high enough to qualify for medical school.
Enlisting in U.S. Navy
After graduating in 1967, Don worked for the local lumberyard for a year and then enlisted in the Navy for four years to be a hospital corpsman (or “medic”). After Basic Training and Hospital Corps School at Great Lakes, IL, he was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. where he was trained as an operating room technician.
While there, Don said he and a fellow corpsman watched a Billy Graham Crusade on TV. As he and his friend discussed the implications of following Jesus Christ, Don said that he thought he was a Christian. Earlier in life at age 12, Don had taken an important step when he confirmed his Christian faith in their local Methodist Church.
Even so, he said, he lacked assurance that he indeed was one. He resolved if he ever had an opportunity to attend a Billy Graham Crusade he would attend and “go forward” and be sure. (He later did.)
Then Don extended his enlistment in the Navy for an additional year for more training, Tissue Bank-Tissue Culture School. This job involved collecting bone samples, portions of skin tissue, and corneas from human cadavers within 24 hours of their death.
This was done, of course, with permission of the next of kin. The corpsmen retrieving these samples needed to wear double masks and double gowns. The bone samples would be freeze-dried and then could be used to replace bone at a wound site. The treated bone samples would form a “bridge” to the host’s own healthy bone which would begin growing back together and in time replace the engrafted bone at the wound site. Remarkably, there would be no rejection!
Skin grafts were sent to an Army base in Texas, where they were chemically treated and used in healing burn victims. The corneas were given to the Lions Eye Bank. Don actually removed a cornea during his time there. He said that one of his naval school classmates quit the program after he had nightmares of a cadaver getting off the table and chasing him.
From Bethesda, Don was transferred to the Naval Medical Research Unit #1 in Oakland, Calif. He worked on medical research projects there, in San Francisco, and also on two of the Channel Islands of California, namely St. Nicholas and Santa Cruz. Research on the islands was led by military veterinarians and consisted of gathering tissue samples on sea lions and feral hogs, respectively, looking for re-discovered diseases that had been eliminated on the mainland. During this time, Don acquired a taste for abalone.
While Don was living in Oakland, the Billy Graham Crusade came to town in 1971 and Don took advantage of his desire to attend and “went forward” at the service. From that point on, he has had the assurance of his salvation and his life really began to take shape, he said. He was honorably discharged in 1973, technically a “landlubber,” because he never served on a ship. Then came the question about his future: medicine, ministry, or perhaps both.
When Don finished Navy service, he attended South Dakota State University in Brookings to prepare for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). He passed two of the three sections which he understood was adequate. Then he learned that one of the sections needed to be math, which was his downfall.
Called to the ministry
The interviewer told him he could spend another year to prepare, but Don realized that ministry was his calling. He enrolled in Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky in 1974 to prepare for the ministry. During his studies, Don sensed he was being called into some form of mission but he did not know what, where, or when.
After completing a three-year program, he graduated in 1977 with a Master of Divinity degree. He was ordained a deacon in the South Dakota Annual Conference and later as an elder in the Iowa Annual Conference.
Don served in pastoral ministry for five years in the United Methodist Church in Gilman, Iowa. During that time, he married Brenda Trapp, a Kasson area native. Don and Brenda met through a mutual friend who played the role of match-maker.
At the time, Brenda was teaching elementary school in Peever, S.D. Their friend gave Brenda’s address to Don, and while on a pilgrimage in Israel, he sent her a postcard from Jerusalem. Eventually, they became engaged and exchanged many letters and phone calls as they lived 500 miles apart.
In addition to teaching in Peever, before their marriage, Brenda had also taught missionary kids in Bolivia, South America for two years as a Short Term Assistant with Wycliffe Bible Translators USA. After leaving Bolivia, she maintained contact with colleagues and exposed Don to the organization.
After their time in Gilman, Don and Brenda moved to Ayrshire in northwest Iowa where Don served as pastor for three years in the Ayrshire and Curlew United Methodist Churches. Their son Paul and daughter Elizabeth were born while they lived in Ayrshire.
Also during this time, they had an opportunity to attend a banquet program sponsored by Wycliffe Associates. This was a life-changing event for Don because after hearing the speaker, a Bible translator working in Mexico, Don knew this was the mission activity he was called to do, to become a Bible translator.
From pastoral ministry to Bible translation
They left the pastoral ministry in 1985 and with a toddler and an infant, they moved to Dallas, to enroll in a study program for three semesters. They were enrolled as students at the University of Texas at Arlington and studied linguistics, literacy, anthropology and translation. After the first semester, they were accepted as members of Wycliffe Bible Translators USA. Once they completed the study program, they looked for opportunities where they might serve and decided on The Philippines.
In the fall of 1987, they attended the three-month long Americas Field Training Course in Texas and Mexico. This course helped prepare their family to live in and adapt to another culture. Since Don was the oldest male in the group, he was considered the “Esteemed Elder.”
Since Wycliffe Bible Translators USA is a faith mission and as such does not provide salaries, the Scheller's were also involved in Partnership Discovery. They traveled and spoke to a number of congregations and other groups, inviting people to partner with them in prayer and finances.
After the many preparations in the study program, training course, and partnership discovery, the family packed up and flew to the Philippines, arriving in Manila on Aug. 1, 1988. They lived in Manila for almost a year while Don and Brenda studied Tagalog, the national language.
In 1989, the Scheller's moved to the large southern island of Mindanao where they purchased a home at Insulin, the southern research center. The Seagull* (*pseudonym) people, the small language group to whom they were assigned, lived in the southernmost part of Mindanao. Schellers maintained their home at Nasuli for 20 years, and both Paul and Elizabeth attended and graduated from the K-8 school there.
After the family was settled at Nasuli, Don and three other men, including his director and the former translator, traveled at night on a cargo boat to a small island where many of the Seagull people live. This was the only means of transportation available in those days, he said. While there, the four men made arrangements for the Scheller family to live and work there. The next order of business was to get an airstrip prepared on the island so there would be two means of arrival and departure.
After a few weeks, Don returned to the island alone, lived with a local family for six weeks, and managed the preparation of a grass airstrip suitable for a STOL aircraft, i.e. Short Take-Off and Landing. All this time, Don was using Tagalog to learn the language of the Seagull people.
It was an exciting day for all to see the small airplane land on the island, and Don had a plane ride back home to Nasuli!
After a time there celebrating Christmas with his family, Don returned to the island—by air—and supervised the building of a small bamboo house (18’ x 20’) and an outhouse (10’ x 10’) After that, the plane picked up Don from the island and flew back to Nasuli. After a time of preparation, the Scheller family of four packed up for living in their new community and flew to their island home. In time, a study house (12’ x 10’) was constructed. They used a Stoner radio to communicate with the Nasuli center.
Brenda homeschooled their children on the island, but at Nasuli they attended the K-8 school on center. Their family stayed in the Seagull community for up to eight weeks at a time.
The first language team to study the Seagull language arrived in the early 1960s, and the second team followed in the late 1970s. The Schellers were the third team and began in 1989. The Seagull people follow a major world religion.
After living in the Philippines for five years, the family came back to Arlington, S.D. for a one-year furlough and lived with Don’s dad. During this time, a veteran translator in the southern Philippines was kidnapped for 28 days and was later released. As Don reflected on this event, he recalls that perhaps they were being “cased out” while still on the island.
When the Schellers returned from their furlough, their supervisors advised only short visits to the island. Don and Brenda set up a home in General Santos City (GenSan), a boat ride away from the island, and began doing translation work there. Paul and Elizabeth attended school and lived in the Children’s Home at Nasuli when their parents were in GenSan. Don and Brenda rotated between their three homes for a season, but eventually gave up the island home.
While on furloughs, Paul and Elizabeth each attended a year of elementary school in Arlington, S.D. and a year at Triton High School in Minnesota. They attended and graduated from Faith Academy (on the outskirts of Manila), the largest school for missionary children in the world.
Paul went on to attend and graduated from the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks in computer science. He and his wife live and work in Bismarck, N.D. Elizabeth graduated from Bethel University as a registered nurse. She and her husband live in the Twin Cities where she is a Family Nurse Practitioner in student health services at her alma mater. The Schellers have three grandchildren.
Don and Brenda have translated a number of Old Testament books and Messianic passages and New Testament books. The highlight for Don was completing the Gospel of John. After working one-on-one with Seagull speakers to translate Old Testament portions, Jonah, and Acts, Brenda was asked to mentor a team of six Seagull speakers, training them to translate Scripture into their own language.
Four are still actively translating. Brenda spent three and a half years as the primary mentor for this team, and a colleague who had also been involved in the training took over the role of mentor upon Schellers’ departure.
Twenty-seven years after landing in Manila for the first time, Don and Brenda flew out of Manila, landing in Minnesota on Aug. 1, 2015. Shortly after arrival, they purchased and moved into a townhouse in northwest Kasson.
Switching to a new role
Schellers are now in a Remote Assignment Status with Wycliffe USA. Using computer programs designed to aid in the process, Brenda remains involved in the Seagull translation. Currently, she is writing and updating the back translation into English of the team’s translation of 1 and 2 Corinthians into their mother tongue. Don works on dictionary management and archiving language data.
Don said he really loves music! Earlier in his life, he enjoyed playing the cornet in the school band and in later years, singing in group choruses, especially the Messiah Oratorio (twice). He enjoys listening to a variety of music, especially the sound of the big band.
He is passionate about reading – especially topics that focus on the Christian faith – and in particular, Messianic Judaism.
Regarding high school athletics, Don said he was too small to play in most sports, but was pretty good at bowling (a 267 score) and shooting pool. Later in life, he became a scuba diver (PADI), with at least 125 dives, mostly in the Philippines but also in Cozumel, Belize, and some areas in the United States. He likes being with people and this pandemic has significantly curtailed that activity, he said.
Don has dealt with digestive issues for years and has followed a number of different treatment plans. After his 75th birthday last year, he was admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital (Mayo Clinic) with severe malnutrition due to malabsorption. A Hickman catheter was placed in his chest and now he receives 100% of his nutrition directly into his bloodstream by a process called Total Parenteral Nutrition. He is connected to a pump and a bag with the nutrients sixteen hours a day. He and Brenda follow a connect protocol late each afternoon and a disconnect protocol in the morning. It is keeping him alive as he is now absorbing nutrition and has gained weight.
Don retired as a UMC minister in 2018, and he is a K-M Lion. He and Brenda attend the Pleasant Corners United Methodist Church in rural Kasson.
Don’s life verse from the Bible is, “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song; and he has become my salvation.” Isaiah 12:2 RSV
 
Photo: Don Scheller holding books of the Bible that he has translated.   He is proud to wear his Navy Corpsman cap.