Dale & Arvalee Palmer

They were both born and raised in Texas. Dale moved to California with his paternal grand-parents and his dad, when he was about eight years old. Arvalee’s parents farmed, growing tomatoes, cantaloupes and watermelon mainly, for marketing. When World War II started they moved to California where her dad began working in the defense plants.

Dale and Arvalee met in the 9th grade in their home room English class. Dale was very shy, but that summer he finally had enough courage to ask Arvalee for a date. They were both introduced to New Guinea during their high school years. The war had expanded to the island of New Guinea and Arvalee was reading daily newspaper articles called The Shangri-La Diary. Dale’s dad brought home a friend to recuperate, he was a Marine who had served in New Guinea and told many stories of his experiences there.

Shortly after that Dale started attending church with Arvalee and her mother , along with her siblings. One morning Dale went forward during the invitational hymn, telling the pastor that he wanted to be saved. That night, they were baptized together, Arvalee had been saved at age 7.

From that point on, Dale had a desire to serve the Lord. At first; they thought they might operate a Christian old folk’s home, but gradually, the Lord gave them a desire to serve Him on the foreign mission field. Ultimately, their focus was directed to New Guinea, which later became the nation of Papua New Guinea.

After their high school years, they were married and had their first baby. Then they went into missionary training with New Tribes Mission. The Palmers went to the field in June of 1953 with their three little sons. The Lord used Dale to open the remote Gimi tribal area. Later other missionaries joined that work, and the New Testament was translated into the Gimi language. Many tribal people came to understand the words of the Bible and trusted the Lord to save them from their sins.

They spent forty years in the land of Papua New Guinea and were grateful that the Lord allowed them to serve Him and reach people who had no other way of knowing the truth of the Bible.

Dale and Arvalee Palmer

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