Missions Textbook 3
Move to Austria

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

Spring 1980 – Graz Wants You

On Fasching Tuesday, Floyd packed a small bag and drove to the province of Styria in southern Austria, to the second-largest city, Graz (pronounced “Grahts”). Missionaries often talk about their “calling” to a specific country or to enter a particular ministry. The calling is usually not as simple as it sounds. We were in Europe (#1), learning German (#2), but the third item on our list was to move to Austria, and while Austria is only the size of South Carolina, we still had to decide where in Austria we would live. Were we “called?” We would find out.

We had heard of a German missionary couple in Graz, who had told others they would be willing to work with and train new missionaries. We knew we needed a lot of training: hence, the trip to Graz. We prayed that if we were meant to move to Graz, God would provide three things: 1) A friendly missionary or church to get us started in the new location. 2) An affordable place to live. 3) A way to get a long-term visa so we could stay in the country. Floyd prayed that all three would fall into place in this one trip.

He drove into downtown Graz, to be confronted by a life-sized cardboard tank, rolling toward him in a Fasching parade. Colorful brass bands played Austrian tunes, and all sorts of bizarre, masked creatures danced and staggered down the street. What kind of a crazy town was this?

The following morning, he was welcomed warmly by the German missionary and his wife. Over coffee and pastries, they told him of the little Austrian church that was about 14 years old. Herman seemed very willing to help us adjust and was glad that we were going to work together. That was #1. (With Floyd speaking rudimentary German, and Herman, speaking a less-than-fluent English, the two men would discover a few years later that they had seriously misunderstood one another. But I am getting ahead of myself.)

Floyd wanted a specific German Bible, so Herman sent him to the tiny Christian bookstore near the center of town. Two sisters ran the shop. While Floyd butchered the German, asking for a Bible, they asked him in English if he was a missionary. Because they were believers, he admitted he was – complete with a wife and two kids.

“Do you have a place to live?”

“Not yet.”

“It’s practically impossible to find a place to rent unless you know someone or pay a realtor several months’ rent.” The two sisters looked at one another. “Well, we have been in Graz for 25 years, and we have never known of a place to rent until this week. It’s an older house on the edge of town. We can arrange for you to see it.”

“Today?”

He went to see it and rented it. #2.

The German missionaries had suggested that the easiest visa would be a student visa, so his last stop was the Foreign Students’ Service Office at Karl Franzen University. He was heartily greeted in English by an Austrian official with a pronounced Texas drawl. Turns out, he had married a woman from Texas. He helped Floyd enroll in the university – thereby getting him a student visa. Language courses for foreign students would begin in the spring semester, in six weeks! #3! As Floyd’s wife, I did not need to enroll, but would be allowed to take the same courses to learn German. This would be the answer to the question, “Why did you come to Austria?” My answer would be: “My husband is a student at the university.

Floyd called me, told me about his day, and asked what I thought. What could I say? We had prayed and God had provided.  Floyd returned to Prien – elated and encouraged – to finish the German course in Prien. Then we packed up our belongings and moved to Graz on Easter weekend.

Now that I think of it: How did we move everything in our tiny car? I don’t remember.

Beggars Can’t be Choosers

Not that we were beggars, but we didn’t get to choose our house. It sat on the side of a very steep hill. The front door was 32 steps down from the narrow street. Neighbors across the street were 32 steps above the street. The view was spectacular! Across the valley on the very top of the opposite hill perched the ruins of an old castle. At the bottom of the valley was a creek, and on our property was the possibility of a guesthouse, which we never used. On the ground floor of the house were a kitchen, another room that could be the dining room, a coal room, and a bathroom. We heated the bathroom by the fire we would light in the oil hot water heater when we wanted a bath. Upstairs were three bedrooms, one of which we eventually turned into our living room.

The house was heated with hot water heat; that is: the water was heated by a wood or coal fire and then flowed into the radiators. The stove was downstairs in the kitchen, and every morning we would build a fire in the stove and then keep it going all day long. We tried to learn how to properly stoke the fire at night with “Koks,” a very hard coal, but we never got the hang of it. To heat the house properly, the radiators should have been mounted under the windows, but to save money, someone long, long ago had mounted them on the center walls in each room, directly above the stove. So the house was always cold except right next to the heaters. When it was very cold, we had to keep an eye on the thermometer attached to the water pipe. Occasionally, it registered boiling temperature, and it’s probably a miracle that we did not blow something up.

The house was a lot of work. To feed the fire, Floyd ordered a load of coal, which was dumped in our parking space. Then Floyd had to shovel it into bags and transport it down the 32 steps to the coal room. The neighbors came to help, telling us cheerfully that we should have ordered the coal in bags. We knew that, but the load of loose coal was cheaper. Later, Floyd helped them shovel their coal too.

In the summer, the grass grew, and by June, Floyd knew it had to be mowed. It was too steep for any kind of mower, so Floyd used the scythe that was provided by the landlady. She would come by periodically to tell us how beautiful the yard used to be when she and her husband had lived there! We had forgotten that Floyd is very allergic to grass pollen. He gets serious asthma, which, when untreated, can result in bronchitis or pneumonia. We lived in the house through two summers, and both years, Floyd ended up in the emergency room, treated with cortisone shots.

Bonding with People in Your Host Country

Floyd owns a little booklet by E. Thomas Brewster and his wife – out of print, unfortunately – called Bonding and the Missionary Task [1] In it, the authors maintain that people who go to live in a foreign country will bond with the people they spend the first few months with. Often what happens, unfortunately, is that a missionary is picked up at the airport by a seasoned missionary family and taken home with them. That missionary shows the new missionary around town, introduces him to language school, and teaches him how to shop, ride the bus, and where all the MacDonald’s restaurants are. Eventually, the fledgling missionary is thrust out into the world, but he already feels more at home in the home of his mentor.

In Bonding, the authors suggest that it is much more effective to surround oneself with the nationals right away.  The missionary may be lonely for a while, but soon his best friends will be the nationals. He will get over homesickness quicker, and will sooner feel at home in his adopted country. In addition, the ministry begins right away instead of waiting until that indefinable moment when the new missionary is “ready.”

We had not discovered this book yet, but somehow we knew that we would never learn German well if we spent our time with English-speakers. The only time we saw English-speakers was in our German classes. Otherwise, we really made an effort to spend time with Austrians. One lady from the church, Cecilia, who became a good friend, offered to babysit Michael on days when both Floyd and I had to be in class at the same time. She and her husband, Walter, hosted a weekly Bible study in their apartment. The leader was one of the kindest, most intelligent men we have ever met – Reinhard Fabian. Actually: Herr Doktor Reinhard Fabian. He and Walter were both believers and shared a love for the Greek language, so their Bible study took on a very academic flavor. Floyd was asked to come because he had learned biblical Greek in seminary.

Through Reinhard, and his wife Barbara (are you confused yet?), we met Harry and Camilla and their two young children. This young family loved the out-of-doors, and we went on many hikes and picnics with them, exploring castles and parks, trails through the woods and ancient villages. Their commitment to teaching us German laid a great foundation for our future fluency.

A Brief Political History of Austria and Other Pertinent Areas

If you read this, you will know more about Austria than I knew when I moved there. People who didn’t want us to live in Austria used to tell us, “You don’t understand what has gone on here.” They were right, but we wanted to learn.

The German name for Austria is Österreich, which means “East Kingdom.” In 700 A.D. part of the area that is now Austria came under the rule of Charlemagne. Later, it was ruled by the Holy Roman Empire, which was called that because the pope of the Roman Catholic Church would crown the emperors. Austria was first mentioned in a manuscript around 1000 A.D. It consisted of a loose federation of princes, each of whom owned a castle on a hill, some land in an adjoining valley, some people to work the land, and a few fighting men. Finally, in 1273 (There will be a quiz!), these princes elected Rudolf I, a member of the Swiss Habsburg family, to be the new Holy Roman Emperor.

As you can imagine, there was lots of intrigue, and many crowns were gained and lost in the next 200 years. However, with another election in 1438 and then some serious marrying into all the other royal families all over Europe, Austria soon became a great power. The crown was always passed on to an heir, and when Charles VI died, leaving only female heirs, his daughter, Maria Theresa became empress. You probably know one of her daughters best: Marie Antoinette, who had been married to Louis the XIV to strengthen the French-Austrian alliance. She lost her head over the whole thing . . ..

To make a long story really short, eventually, Austria formed an alliance with Hungary, which spoke a language more akin to Japanese than to German. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire ruled until the end of World War 1, when Austria was forced to become a republic. (World War One actually started because Serbian activists assassinated the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne.)

The treaty that was to keep Germany and Austria from ever trying to take over the world again after World War One was so restricting that their economy suffered greatly. It actually set up the political and economic situation that made it easy for a crazy little Austrian with a tiny mustache to be welcomed by Germany as a dictator. Shortly thereafter, Germans killed the chancellor of Austria and then annexed the country, figuring that the common language united them.

One of the things I noticed when we moved to Europe was how many older men were missing limbs. Practically every older man in Europe served in the army, and those who survived had wounds. I felt as if the war was barely over, and in some ways, that was true.

When World War Two ended, the allies - France, England, the United States, and Russia (which was rapidly becoming the Soviet Union) – decided to put together a different kind of treaty – one that wouldn’t cause another war, they thought. Instead, they divided up Germany, Austria, and both of their capital cities into four sectors. The Soviet Union wanted their sectors to be communist, which didn’t set too well with the other three. Before it was over, Germany and Berlin had been divided into East (communist) and West (free), and a wall was built in 1961 around West Berlin to keep East Germans out. An American general convinced the other allies that Austria had been a victim not a perpetrator in the war, and therefore should not be treated like Germany. The allies found enough money to free the Russian sectors of Austria and Vienna from the Soviet Union. A treaty between all four allies decreed that Austria should be, from 1955 forward, politically neutral.

Their neutrality was tested the following year in 1956, when Hungary tried to extricate itself from its communist connections. The Soviet Union crushed that revolution with armies and tanks. Two hundred thousand Hungarians fled across the border into Vienna. And the Austrians took them in. They are hospitable and generous.

Over the years, Austria’s neutrality made it possible for political and religious refugees and exiles to find a temporary home while they looked for a permanent one in other countries. The neutrality also created an atmosphere where political intrigues between east and west were played out. People trying to get western ideas into the communist countries would live in Vienna and smuggle things into Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union did the same, as it tried to infiltrate the west – although that was not nearly as difficult. During that time, many spy novels were written about this process.

It was during this period that Floyd and I moved to Germany and then to Austria a few months later. We would still be there when President Ronald Reagan would visit the Berlin wall and would challenge the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” On November 9, 1989, the people of East and West Berlin tore it down together.

Food, Glorious Food

There was a little grocery store about a ten-minute walk away at the bus stop. In the first week, I walked there to buy Kaiser rolls for our breakfast. I am an introvert, and it was scary to walk into the little shop, crowded with locals, also buying their breakfast breads. I knew from my German class, however, how to ask for the rolls, so when my turn came, I knew I would get it right.

“Six Brötchen, please?” Brötchen means little breads.

The man behind the counter looked at me blankly and asked again if he could help me. At least that’s what I assumed he said, but his dialect was so thick that it didn’t sound like any German I had ever heard. I asked for the rolls again, and he waved his hand in the air as if I were the stupidest woman he had ever seen.

I knew I had the sentence correct, so there was nothing to do but leave the store. As I turned around, another man came in and a quick conversation took place between him and the proprietor. The man asked me in English what I wanted. I sighed and told him. He said something to the proprietor that I did not understand, and I paid for my six Kaiser rolls.

Embarrassed, I left the store and hurried home.

“How did it go?” Floyd asked. “I see you got the rolls.”

I told him what happened and then said, “I don’t know what they are called, but they are not called ‘Brötchen.’” I learned a few days later that they are called ‘Semmel’ in Austria, so it was no wonder; I wasn’t even close.

Our early friendship with Harry and Camilla taught us a lot about the Austrian diet. With no peanut butter to be found anywhere at any price, I was stumped as to what to feed my toddler for lunch. I discovered that children eat a lot of fruit yogurts, with which I was (at that time) completely unfamiliar.

Breakfast: Generally, Austrians eat bread and jam for breakfast. Some have muesli – a raw oatmeal mixed with plain yogurt and fruit-in-season that’s left in the fridge overnight until it’s nice and mushy. There is a “farmer’s breakfast”, consisting of eggs and sausage and potatoes, but it’s for men who work hard. One of the things Floyd and I enjoyed most of all was going out for breakfast at a nice café and ordering a “Viennese Breakfast:” a soft egg, wonderful breads, sliced ham, cheese, butter, and jams.

Which reminds me: the breads! Bread in Austria is healthy and delicious and varies from area to area. It has a very short shelf life (as does milk) because it isn’t full of chemicals and preservatives. We loved the huge round farmer’s bread, the whole grain bread, and many kinds of rolls – Kaiser rolls, brioche, and thick, soft breadsticks. We never saw pumpernickel.

Lunch: Generally, the shops were closed between noon and 2pm for lunch. Many people would go home for a substantial meal. This was the large meal of the day, but often it was scrambled eggs, bread, and a salad. On Sunday and if guests were invited, the hostess would prepare meat, a starch, salad and dessert. During the week, mothers would keep lunch warm, as each child returned after school was ended for the day. The children usually took a snack to school to tide them over.

Supper: This was again a small meal: bread, cold cuts, cheese, and a salad. Or a bowl of muesli again. One rarely saw anyone who was obese, and I really think that their meal schedule contributed to their good health. It also contributed to ours.

A Bad Week

The week leading up to my birthday (in June) was simply awful (as compared to what one would call a “good week”). The days were warm and one day when I went to pick up Erich from kindergarten, all the little girls were running around in panties or nothing. Erich had definitely noticed! He said they played a game, and whoever lost had to take off a piece of clothing. He was really proud that he usually won, and he’d only taken off his shoes and socks. We praised him highly. However, a couple days later the teachers told the kids they were going wading in the pool in the school yard, but had to strip to underwear. Erich said “no;” the teacher said, “If you don’t, you can’t swim.” That was too much and Erich stripped. The next day we asked the teacher what was going on, and all she could say was, “Well, he said, ‘no’ and that was rebellion. He didn’t say ‘my parents said no.’” Eventually, we had Erich wear his swim shorts under his jeans. This didn’t solve everything, however, as we discovered that many Austrians think you will get sick if you stay in a wet swimsuit. They still made him change into dry clothes.

Floyd’s hay fever became bad asthma, and he had to cut our grass and became worse. He had trouble sleeping because he was having trouble breathing. Finally, he went to an emergency doctor on Sunday for a shot of cortisone. By Wednesday (my birthday), however, it was clear that there was something more wrong. We went to the doctor who said Floyd’s lower lungs were inflamed – also his heart sounded funny: too slow. So, he ran an EKG and sent Floyd to the hospital for more tests.

I had Michael with me, but had to pick up Erich from school, so Michael and I hopped on the trolley and headed home. It was pouring rain, and the three of us were fortunate to get a ride from a neighbor lady from the bus end-station. Otherwise, we would have had a 20-minute walk in the rain.

I opened the front door and stepped into a half inch of water in most of the downstairs. I sent the boys upstairs to play and had some of the water mopped up by the time Floyd got home. I met him outside and made him tell me what was wrong with his heart before he knew of our mini-flood. It turned out his heart was fine. Together we finished the cleanup, and then my guys took me out to supper and bought my presents. Erich had guessed that I was twelve and nearly collapsed at the thought that anyone could be “that old.” We came home and had strawberry shortcake with 28 matches – because I couldn’t find the candles. Those matches really put out the heat!

From Politics to the Weather

Our lives were simple and confined, limited by our inability to understand the subjunctive case, which is what the newscasters on television used all the time. We watched the Iranian government finally release the American hostages after Ronald Reagan became president. We first learned about Mount St. Helens blowing up that year, the day before our wedding anniversary. We sometimes felt isolated from the rest of the world, but when Tito, the president of Yugoslavia, died, we were suddenly very aware of how small Europe is.

Before World War Two, the mountainous peninsula that now includes Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro was inhabited by tribal communities. Some were Roman Catholic, some Greek Orthodox, some Russian Orthodox, some Communist, and some were Muslim. None of them liked the other very much. During World War 2, some were Nazi supporters, while others – most of them – supported the Partisans, a group of independent fighters who fought the Nazis any way they could. The Nazis might have called them terrorists and mercenaries. Their leader was a man named Tito. After the war, to keep the country from being divided up into factions, Tito found a way to unite them all into one government. Everyone knew that when Tito died, civil war would break out.

Graz is about 50 miles north of then-Yugoslavia. The Austrian man who had helped Floyd get into the university was in charge of a plan to manage the expected influx of refugees that would flow into this area when the wars began after Tito’s death. Floyd came home and told me all about it, and we planned our escape route, in case the war spilled into Austria.

We did not realize how much we were thinking about the scenario until one night a huge “Boom” echoed across our valley. I jumped from bed and dashed to the window, expecting to see fires. The valley was dark and peaceful. Then lightning flashed across the sky, and another huge boom, like the sound of a cannon, made the windows rattle. We had a whopping thunderstorm that night. This part of Austria experienced magnificent thunderstorms, and sometimes the farmers even fired cannons into the clouds to break up the hail.

Another Bad Week; September 4, 1980

Dear Sue,

Some men came to our house with the landlady and said they were going to start waterproofing the house. Because the hill is so steep, most of the first floor is underground. We had been sloshing around a bit in the bathroom, but just thought the tiny one-gallon hot water heater had sprung a leak. However, then the living room walls, hallway and closet got wet around the edges. So the two men set reluctantly to work, prodded along by the landlady’s sixteen-year-old grandson. On the third day, the slowest one called in to say he’d broken his foot. They’d already dug a ditch the whole length of the house about four feet deep.

Well, we had to go to Vienna for the weekend. The International Crusades team (now called International Teams, Inc., a short-term mission board) had asked Floyd to present a series of three messages to the teams. Floyd was delighted because he loves to give out the Word of God and it was fun sharing with missionaries. However, the second day, I came down with a flu-like malady – stomach cramps, nausea, stiff neck – so on the third day we decided to go home early rather than infecting their whole team. We drove home Sunday. The four-hour trip was horrible; I was no longer very nauseated, and the stiff neck was nothing compared to the cramps.

Monday morning, I felt a little better, but Floyd piled us into the car and took me to the doctor in our area. He was on vacation. We needed an official pink paper with a stamp on it to give a doctor anyway, so since there was a clinic at the place-that-gives-out-pink-papers, we decided to go there. They would not see me even though our doctor was on vacation, and we didn’t need the pink paper after all. Drove back to our doctor’s office and found a little dog-eared paper with the names of two substitute doctors on it. We drove to the first one and his nurse said our doctor was back from vacation. Drove back to the first doctor’s office, and took down the address of the second sub, but we could not find the street on the map. (This was, of course, loooonnngg before Google Maps.)

As you can imagine, Floyd was quite to the end of his limb by now. I said, “Let’s go home; I’ll be fine.” We drove back to the first doctor and his nurse looked at the records and said, “Oh, yes, your doctor doesn’t get back from vacation until the 14th.” The doctor took one look at me and took me into the examining room ahead of the 20 people in the waiting room. Appendicitis. So we drove clear across town again to the hospital. While I was being admitted, the boys, who had not had any breakfast were coddled by the nurses and given bread and jam and “children’s coffee.” It was good that I had not eaten since Vienna; I was able to have surgery right away, and here I am in the hospital! With a whole week to write letters and read and rest – whoopee!

But that’s not all!

The Same Bad Week, Part 2

Monday, also, after I was safely stashed in the hospital, two more men came to dig the ditch, which I have heard is now about nine feet deep behind the house. On Tuesday they hit the main water pipe. They have taken all the furniture out of the living room, counters from the kitchen, tub, toilet, and sink are all outside, hallway and closet emptied. Poor Floyd: just having no wife for a week would be bad enough. They can’t take baths, wash clothes or dishes. Our neighbors have been nice, keeping the kids, feeding my guys. And one of the husbands has wandered around our property swearing at everyone because Floyd doesn’t. Those who know of our predicaments are amazed that Floyd is still in a friendly mood. When they ask why, he just looks mysterious. We are going to get their curiosity up (Austrians – at least most of the ones we have met – seem to have an incredible lack of curiosity. We have been brainstorming for ways to get them curious and I guess God had done it for us.)

Sue, I probably won’t write this whole mess to anyone else. I guess you can just pick out what needs to be told to people and scrap the rest that’s me crying on someone’s shoulders. I did cry a bit, but I can’t communicate to the sympathetic nurse, and they think I am in pain (which I’m not). I feel so guilty for crying – like the very fact of my breaking down denies my dependence on or trust in God. And I remember others who are much worse off than I, including your daughter [who had an incurable lung infection], but I still feel sad and a bit picked upon.

As for me, I’m feeling fine. I was a little upset for the first four days when all they’d feed me was four cups of peppermint tea per day. I couldn’t understand why, and I was starving! Now I’m on puree, no medication and I feel great although I’m not really all that hungry and I have the pain in my side.

Hospitals in the civilized world are pretty much the same I guess – clean, orderly, bordering on friendliness, with one nurse whose job it is to ask if everyone has gone to the bathroom. I was in the hospital twice in high school, and then when my boys were born. That was a joyful time, sharing with other mothers, eating lots of fairly decent food. Surgical wards are places of suffering. It’s a much more depressing place to be. One can’t even chat during a meal because one person is having roast beef, another puree, and another has been on peppermint tea for three days. I’ve been really blessed; the others here have been stuck and stabbed and bedridden for days. It seems especially hard on the elderly.

Floyd can’t come to visit me very often because we live so far away and he is overwhelmed with the kids and the house mess. One neighbor lady came to visit and brought flowers. And one of the young men from the church is a nurse here, but not on my floor. I wish I could fly you here to visit me, but then I don’t know where you’d stay; our house is a mess.

More About Our Bad (Getting Better) Week, Part 3

Oh! Some very good news, but it only added to the confusion. Also, on Monday, our two crates and barrel arrived. Floyd had to go to customs to accept them. We had made very detailed lists of everything in every box (three pairs of white socks, ten children’s books, one frying pan with lid, etc.), so when the customs official opened the first box, everything was neatly listed, so he didn’t open any more boxes. He was a little surprised (and offended) that the boxes were surrounded by rolls of toilet paper. “Didn’t you know we have toilet paper?” Floyd assured him that Uncle Dick [the friend who packed and shipped the crates] was just being efficient. Floyd said that everything looks in good shape. The crates are in the front yard until some future date when we can move back into our house again. With me in this condition and the house in that condition, it’ll be Christmas before we’re back to normal!

Erich begins school this coming Monday. It seems so unfair: I won’t be able to see him off because I won’t be released until Monday afternoon. I’ll probably go home in a taxi because the insurance on our car expires today and to renew the kind we have is outrageously expensive. We bought the car in the Netherlands and to avoid a huge customs tax, we had to own it for 6 months before moving to Austria. We only had it five months. Customs, without “a certain little paper” is $4000 for a $6000 car. Until we can figure it out, wading through miles of red tape, we will allow our neighbors to help us. For them it’s unthinkable that an American can’t have anything he wants. They seem to enjoy helping. And we always watch for that line of imposing too much. So we’ll walk, use a taxi, ask them to take us – all dependent upon the importance, distance, urgency, frequency, etc.

All Bad Weeks Must Come to an End, Part 4

I feel perkier today than I did yesterday. And on re-reading, it doesn’t sound as blue as I felt. I guess maybe you can just let people know: I’m still very human. Even though our name is in a missionary address book, I still get acute appendicitis, have kids that go to school, and have goofed up plumbing. More than that, though, I cry when there’s no one to visit me in the hospital, our house is a combination disaster area and health hazard, and I can’t kiss my little boy goodbye on his first day of school. Please pray for us. Without your sincere prayers, we can’t do all that has to be done. Pray that our personal problems will not only make us stronger, but that others will see in our responses a glaring difference between our faith and theirs.

One neat thing: One of the neighbor little girls is Petra. She had a birthday and we gave her a Christian children’s story for her age entitled “Petra.” She loved it. While in Portland, we had bought a set of German Bible storybooks (about ten volumes), hoping kids here would want to read them. Well, they came in the crate and weren’t even all unpacked before Petra asked Floyd if she could take the first volume home and read it. Of course he said yes. Exciting!

Be encouraged that we are growing (inch by painful inch) and that things are happening. God is using us!!! And you are a part of us. We love you and miss you a lot.

Much love, Christine

When I was released from hospital, Floyd decided we would take the trolley and bus home and walk the 20 minutes up the hill to our house. It was not easy for me, but I tried not to complain. When the neighbors found out, they were quite upset with Floyd, but he felt he had imposed on the neighbors enough.

The toilet was installed, but filthy, and we found out later that if the hospital had known that, they would not have released me with my healing incision.

We finally got the crates unpacked. It was like Christmas, going through the boys’ toys, my household goods, and Floyd’s precious books.

Floyd only had to visit 15 government and insurance offices before he could get the car registered and licensed and insured. (More on that later.)

Erich was in school, although there were many bumps to come.

The workmen dumped rocks into the nine-foot-deep ditch behind our house and covered it up. They fixed the pipes, reinstalled the bathroom and kitchen, and put all our furniture back. We never had water in the downstairs again.

We still call it Black September.

A Husband’s Perspective, Tues., Sept. 9,1980

Dear Sue,                                                                                      

I know you will share Christine’s’ letter with Dave, so I thought I would fill out some details of what she said.

Before Chris and I came to Portland, we had no close ties to any believers, especially in any one local church. You people [at Eastgate Bible Chapel] have become special to us in a way that would be hard to explain, because we have nothing to compare it to. The first year at Eastgate for us wasn’t bad, because we expected people to be a little wary of us [because we had come from a Bible college], and we knew it would take time to be accepted. But now, having experienced the relationships we have had with you, it’s hard, especially for Chris, to start all over again – like the first year in Portland – allowing the believers here time to get to know us and accept us – and especially with the language barrier.

We have received more acceptance from the unsaved because the believers seem to expect us to know German well now because we are “missionaries.” To the unsaved, we are just common folk, trying to make it through school and live as a family. We are a little weird – going to church each week, having lots of different people over to dinner: Austrians, Germans, Iranians (!), Americans, etc. And they know we believe differently than they do about God. But still, we haven’t been rejected because we are supposed to be someone important. If they knew about my Master’s degrees, we wouldn’t get our foot even in the yard! When asked, “Why do you push your beliefs so much? I answer: Because I believe them.”(Not: because I’m a missionary and you heathens need to be saved!)

So – Chris is suffering from the transition of leaving Eastgate and close friends and coming here to no relationships. And then a week in the hospital, mostly alone, didn’t help matters any. BUT – I am seeing her grow spiritually because of it.

There really is tons more to write, but I have to ride our bicycle to the post office (because the car still isn’t registered), and that takes time.

I, personally, thank you – Sue – for all you have meant and do mean to Chris. I know life is not a bed of roses for you either, but the Lord is greatly using you in Christine’s life – and that’s the most important thing in the world to me: Christine.

Say hi to your hubby.

Love,

Floyd

Red Tape

A friend who worked in city government in Minneapolis once told us that all governments must set priorities to find their balance between efficiency and unemployment. The more efficiently the government does things, the fewer jobs are available. If a city or country wants to have a very low unemployment rate, then things must be done inefficiently, producing a demand for more (often unnecessary) jobs.

When we were in Austria there was a very low unemployment rate. One third of the workforce was on the government payroll, so they had to create jobs for all those people. Therefore, anything that needed the stamp of approval in Austria really got two stamps – literally – in two separate offices. The first stamp looked like a postage stamp (the old kind that you lick); the second stamp was a rubber stamp that was stamped over the first stamp. Everything required a stamp, and then a rubber stamp over it to make it official. From two different offices. Usually in two different buildings. And both stamps cost money.

When Floyd needed to register and license our car, he began visiting various government offices to get the necessary permission and pay the required fees. His problem was that he was an American who had bought a Dutch car and brought it into Austria one month too early. Had we stayed in Germany one more month, we were told, it would have been cheaper and easier. There were customs taxes to pay, fees for importing a car from the Netherlands to Austria, regular automobile insurance fees, a couple of charges to get the license plates, and fees and complications to getting a driver’s license. In each office he visited, the officials expected him to have already taken care of something else in the previous office.

At one point, he handed one of the officials his stack of papers. The man shuffled through them and said, “You don’t have enough papers here.”

“What paper do I need?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but you don’t have enough.”

I’m not making this up.

Another time, Floyd went to one office, and they wanted a stamp from a different office. When he went to that office, they wanted a stamp from the first office.

By this time, Floyd was pretty fed up with it all and said, “They told me I needed a stamp from you first.”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

Floyd had an idea. “Well, could you call that office, please, and tell them?”

The man looked at the phone. He leafed through all the papers and looked at the various stamps. He looked at the phone again and then picked up his rubber stamp and stamped the papers. At that point, Floyd realized that the officials did not like to get tangled up in their own red tape.

When he finally got to the insurance office and triumphantly handed all the completed papers to the insurance man, the man asked, astounded, “Did you do this all by yourself?”

“Yes.”

The man looked at him with sympathy and then grinned. “Next time, I can get it all done for you in one day. It’ll cost you fifty Schillings.” That was five dollars. It turned out that the insurance man would take all the papers for the day’s customers and, with a bottle of wine for the officials, get everything stamped and returned to the customers that same day.

And a Visa

Any foreigner needs permission to live in the host country. We were allowed to stay in Austria for three months as tourists, but we had to register with police to let them know where we were staying. Once we had a residence permit and a visa, we had to re-register every year, and any time we moved, we had to change the residence permit at the police station.

Getting a visa (and I don’t mean credit card) was something that simply had to be put on the calendar every year. The first year was the most interesting, although things eventually got easier because Floyd often made friends in the offices. Sometimes he made them laugh, but not that first year.

He had bought all the necessary stamps for all our passports, and he took them to the immigration office. He filled out papers, but there were still things he didn’t understand, so some of the lines were blank.

One of them was the word for ‘faith.’

“I don’t know this word,” Floyd said.

“What religion are you?”

Well, Floyd is from the United States, and usually that question is not permitted on an official government document, so he said, “I’m a Christian.”

“We’re all Christians!” the official stated impatiently. “What kind of a Christian are you?”

By now, he had attracted the attention of the other officials and several people waiting in line with him. Floyd asked, “What kind of choices do I have?”

The official numbered them off on four fingers: “Catholic, Lutheran, atheist, cult!”

Floyd was enjoying himself by this time and thought it over. “Well, I’m not a Catholic; nor am I a Lutheran. I’m not an atheist because I read the Bible and believe in God. What’s a cult?”

The official waved his arms in frustration, as if to unite the rest of the room against Floyd. “A cult? A cult? Everyone knows what the cults are! Mormons, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Methodists! You know: the cults!”

Floyd didn’t want any labels on an official document, so he hesitated, and while he hesitated, the official angrily stamped all the papers and shoved them back at Floyd. “Next?”

So, we had learned a pretty important lesson: that anyone who was not in the main religions would be viewed with skepticism, and we needed to figure out what we would like to be called officially. But we had our visas for the first year.

What Are We Having for Dinner?

We were still excited and although our language acquisition seemed so slow, we wanted to learn as much as we could, and demonstrate our desire to accept the Austrian way of doing things.

We had invited our neighbors-down-the-hill and their four children to come for supper. I planned to make meatloaf, baked potatoes, a big salad and probably apple pie. Although they were very simple people, I thought that everything I was making was familiar, yet they would be able to say they had eaten American food.

I sent Floyd to the store to buy the ground beef, and I had carefully written down the word so he would get it right. (He knew car vocabulary; I knew cooking vocabulary – I thought!)

At the store, Floyd asked the butcher for two pounds (one kilogram) of the word I had told him. The butcher asked in surprise “Are you sure that’s what you want?” Floyd showed him my word, and the butcher said it would take a little time, so Floyd could do the rest of the shopping and come back.

When Floyd got home, he handed me a large, flat package, about 12 by 24 inches. “It was very expensive,” he said, “And I don’t think it’s what you wanted.”

I already could tell that, but I opened it up, and it was two pounds of cold cuts – ham and cheese, bologna and liverwurst, sliced pork loin, summer sausage and other sausages. It was beautifully arranged, as if for a party. I transferred it to a large tray, sent Floyd back out for bread, made a salad, and that is what we served them. They ate every last bit and loved it.

Later when I asked a friend the word for ground beef, she informed me that I had served them a king’s meal, and that they probably would only have picked at the meatloaf and potatoes because they had already eaten their large meal at noon.

Even a Bath is a Learning Opportunity

As I mentioned before, the bathroom had no heater. The only heat for the room came from the water heater, which was fueled by oil. We gradually learned how to turn on the oil and light the fire in the rusty pan. At that point, we would have to wait several hours until the water was warm enough for several baths. The side benefit was that the damp, clammy, cold bathroom was now also warm. It was easy to understand why some people didn’t always smell as clean as we would have liked: they probably only bathed once a week.

One afternoon, Floyd decided to heat water for our baths that evening. The boys were napping upstairs, and I was puttering in the kitchen.

Suddenly, I heard Floyd shout and I went to the bathroom door to see what happened. The rusty pan had tipped onto the floor, and oil and fire were spreading across the tile. Floyd grabbed a shovel (always handy because of the coal) and ran outside. He grabbed a shovel-full of dirt, brought it back in and dumped it on the fire. Instead of smothering it, the momentum from the dirt landing on the floor added extra oxygen, and the flames leapt up to engulf the water heater.

It’s amazing how calmly one can react. I said quietly, “I’m going up to get the boys out of the house.” And I did. Carrying Michael, I ran with Erich up the thirty-two steps to the street. Fortunately, the neighbor was on his balcony.

“We have a fire in the bathroom!” I called in German. “Could you call the fire department?” (Remember, this was in the days when telephones were attached to the wall!)

He ran into the house and emerged a moment later with a large fire extinguisher. (Now why we hadn’t thought to buy one, I will never understand!) He ran down his thirty-two steps, down our thirty-two steps, and put the fire out. Then he ran back up all sixty-four steps to have his wife call the fire department back and tell them we didn’t need them after all. If they had come anyway, we would have paid a fine.

The bathroom was sooty and gray. We cleaned it up the best we could and called a repairman. According to him, the hot water heater was a complete loss – and probably had been before we began using it. The oil tray was rusty and full of holes. The landlady insisted that we buy a new one, but we were so hesitant about oil now, that we bought a brand new one that burned wood.

Maybe We Do Need an English-speaking Friend

I wrote to my mother:

As homesick as we are at times, we have decided we will be here for a while. It will probably take us two years to really grasp the language. To leave too soon would be a waste. We have asked for our second crate to be shipped. It’s mostly books, my knickknacks and pictures. It’ll probably arrive in the fall.

We had made a great effort to avoid English-speakers who did not like Austria. They were there for a variety of reasons. Some were married to Austrians, some were working for a company, some had thought it would be wonderful to study in a foreign country and now had changed their minds. Their bad attitudes would not have helped us to fall in love with Austrians.

One afternoon, Floyd came trudging up the hill, bringing with him Joel, a man he had met in German class. “Joel smiled too much,” Floyd explained. “I knew he had to be a believer. I brought him home for lunch.” He and his wife Sarah were from Minnesota, and they had worked and saved for two years so they could experience Austria for a year. I don’t think we ever met two Americans more determined to enjoy a year than they were. They rented a tiny apartment, and attended German classes. Sarah, who had studied ballet, found outlets for her dancing. They met with students wherever students met. They played soccer and went skiing, and they attended operas, plays, concerts and balls – all “standing-room only” because it was the least expensive. Sometimes they would tell us of a party they attended with Austrians that had lasted into the wee hours of the morning.

Sarah was so cheerful and optimistic, and was a great encouragement to me. She also offered to babysit Michael so I could attend more German classes. She adored Michael, and the feeling was mutual. While in Austria, something happened to them that often happened to newly-married couples who came to Austria: they discovered they were expecting a baby. Sarah went right out and bought Austrian costumes for a boy and a girl. They decided to cut their time in Austria short and spent their last night in Austria at our home.

We didn’t spend an extraordinary amount of time with Joel and Sarah, but their presence was such a gift from God. Just knowing they were there helped to keep us going when we would get discouraged. They returned to Minnesota and gave birth to a boy named Christian, which is a popular Austrian name.

[1] Elizabeth S. and E. Thomas Brewster, Bonding and the Missionary Task, (Lingua House, 1982).

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

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