Missions Textbook 8
Disciple and Train

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

Adjusting to Austria Again

Dear Sue,

It was at first difficult to be back in Graz after our wonderful summer. I think I felt the culture shock more than I ever have.

The first week we were back, I found Floyd weeping for the death of his grandmother. She had been very special to him, especially since his mother had died of heart failure about twelve years earlier. I was glad to find that Floyd was human after all!

And then my mother called to say that the day after we left my grandmother, she had fallen, broken her hip, had surgery, and had died of a stroke a week later. How thankful we were that we had taken the time to spend with her! I wish I had taken pictures.

Then Erich had a hard time adjusting to his new school, and that was another cultural difference. We all lost some German ability – Floyd in pronunciation, I in vocabulary, and the boys in grammar. We’re looking for help, but since we’re “fluent,” valuable help is hard to find at any price.

We were now speaking more German in a day than English. We were fluent enough that we no longer got tired after a day of speaking German. People sometimes say that you are fluent when you dream in your second language. I often dreamed in German, and because I plan conversations ahead of time, I also planned them in German.

We knew we needed to continue to learn the language because we had seen what happened to missionaries who stopped learning. They could muddle through, but there would come a time when the nationals would realize that the missionaries did not care enough to master their host country’s language. At that point, the ministry would begin to suffer.

Floyd has always been a self-motivated student, so he set up his own way of improving his language ability. This included reading German classics and discussing them with people he met. Both of us were to the point that when we heard or needed a new word, it was fairly easy to remember it. (At the beginning, we would have to hear a word used in context many times before that word would stick.)

Reinhard’s wife, Barbara, had been an English teacher until she took over her husband’s family’s country home. She loved the German language, and when I asked her to help me with mine, it seemed as if she determined that my language ability would surpass every other foreigner’s. I don’t think she succeeded completely, but I worked hard, and she corrected and scolded and prompted and praised me until the day we left Austria. She never left a mistake uncorrected, and I often repeated the corrected sentence, trying to drill the principles into my head. I am so grateful to her for her love and determination. Someone asked me not long ago what souvenir I had from Austria. I don’t have many, but I realized that the most valuable one I have is my German ability.

While a missionary’s number one priority should be to make sure that people come in contact with the Gospel, the most important and most difficult job the missionary has is to learn the language of the people he or she wants to reach. We heard of missionaries in other countries who were humiliated by a national asking, “So you think English is more important than our language and can’t be bothered to learn ours? Go back to your own country.” Only by mastering their language can you begin to earn their respect and discover the heart of their culture. That is what will make it possible to give them the Gospel in their context.

When anyone came to work with us – whether for two weeks or two years – we always insisted that they dedicate a little of that time to learning as much German as they could. Even being able to say ‘please,’ ‘thank-you,’ ‘nice to meet you,’ and ‘very tasty’ means a lot. You can even do that as a tourist.

Numbers Aren’t Everything . . .

. . . But they sure are fun. The year 1985-86 was a turning point in our work in Graz. We had been gone for the summer, and the little church in the upstairs apartment on Brandhof Street had sailed through the summer just fine. Then the landlady told Reinhard she couldn’t renew the contract for our meeting place.

January – She kept telling us that things would be fine, though, so nothing more was done. Then suddenly, the last of November, Reinhard found out that someone had died, and the landlady had no more say in who rented the place. (She had inherited another building, but not the one we were in.) The new landlord had already rented our rooms out to someone who was due to move in the first of January.

Well, right after Christmas, we moved all of the chairs out to a house near us for storage. The Austria Student Mission was kind enough to allow us to use their rooms through February. Through a source that Reinhard was not allowed to divulge, he heard of an apartment that turned out to be perfect for what we need. The new address is right next door to the old place! So the Brandhof Street Church is still the Brandhof Street Church. It has the added advantage of being on the ground floor, which means we will not be disturbing anyone on Sunday mornings. People were praying.

We have had between 30-40 people (14 and older) for the past few weeks. It is exciting to sit in a corner and watch the group function – the fellowship and teaching are so great. You’ve GOT to come visit someday!!!

On Easter Sunday, we held the first communion and worship service in Mureck.

April – One of the men, who seemed to be holding back, made a public confession of his faith in a prayer a few weeks ago, and we feel they are ready to become a “real church.”

We were surprised that nineteen people came, including four teenagers, relatives visiting for Easter, and a curious neighbor who told me over and over that she was completely against having communion in a living room. She called herself a Doubting Thomas, and seemed very proud of that label. Next time we meet, we will be covering John 20. It will be interesting to see how honest she is, when she realizes that Doubting Thomas doubted no more when he was faced with the facts!

We brought songbooks from the church in Graz, and Jim, a single fellow [who came from California to work with us for two years] played his guitar for songs that were easy to sing. One of the men asked to borrow a songbook to look through because he’d never seen anything like it before! Floyd taught them about communion, and Reinhard (who had introduced us to the people in Mureck on that fateful Pentecost-Dog-Bite day) pointed out the differences between communion and the Catholic Mass. Floyd put a little pressure on them, and said that Jesus said, whenever you come together, to remember Him in this manner. The people agreed they would like to break bread whenever we meet.

In addition, the second team had left in March. They had accomplished more than the first team had, and now Floyd had to take up the slack. He had to fit two more Bible studies into his schedule. Unfortunately, there were other friends of theirs whom we had to let drop because they weren’t in Bible studies, and we didn’t have any more time. As it was, Floyd had three discipleship studies and five evangelistic Bible studies every week. Three nights a week, he had Bible studies in which he didn’t get home until around midnight.

May – There are times when I feel like I’m doing nothing, when I see how busy he is and how messy my house gets. But I really do know that the most important thing I can do is to support him and make sure that he’s always glad to come home. Besides, the men he’s leading to the Lord make a stronger foundation for a church than if I were out leading women to the Lord whose husbands had no interest.

We also baptized six more people at the reservoir near Reinhard and Barbara’s mountain cabin. She coordinated a nice lunch for us, and the crummy weather finally stopped and the sun came out for the celebration.

Numbers: Lots to praise God for!

Adding to the List

Remember the checklist from page one?

  • Fly to Europe
  • Drive to southern Germany for language school.
  • Learn German J
  • Move to Austria
  • Evangelize and learn from missionary experts
  • Plant churches

Well, there were a few things we had left off that list.

  • Disciple the new believers
  • Train them to run their own church
  • Turn the church over to them
  • Leave

Floyd had finished the Translator’s Institute, and now he was at the Technical University, studying math and science in German. The reason for this was that there were a lot of young men, and Floyd continued to beg, bully, or bribe friendly students to read the Bible with him. Some of them did. They also were so intrigued that they brought friends.

When a few of them made a profession of faith, he moved them slowly into our church. He invited them to the meetings of the Austrian Student Mission and to conferences sponsored by them. There they met other students and some of them began dating.

Floyd and John Lennox were regular speakers at the “School’s Out” early summer conference for the university students. It was held at the castle in Mittersill in the central mountains of Austria, and sometimes the boys and I came along. One year we got to sleep in the King’s Suite.

John and Floyd often took turns speaking, but one year, John brought a half dozen students from England, who didn’t speak German. The conference center was equipped with a sound booth for simultaneous interpreting with headphones, so Floyd suggested that John preach, and Floyd would interpret.

They had a lot of fun with that because they knew each other so well, and they knew the passages in the Bible so well. In German, which John would speak, the main verb often comes at the end of the sentence. This can be difficult for a simultaneous interpreter. Floyd, though, usually knew where John was going and sometimes could finish the sentence before John was finished. When Floyd began finishing John’s jokes – and eliciting laughs prematurely from the British students – he told John that he was telling better jokes.

I even took a turn at interpreting one evening. It was hard work.

In Graz and Mureck, we were both doing a lot of what was called discipling. We met with new believers to take them further in their faith, but we continued to also meet in evangelistic Bible studies with them and their friends. Some of them were giving devotionals from scripture at the communion service, and eventually some of them began teaching their own Bible studies and preaching occasionally on Sunday morning.

I particularly remember a time when one of the men in Mureck had prepared his communion devotional from Daniel 14.

I glanced at Floyd in surprise because Daniel 14 is only in the Catholic Bible. Floyd shook his head slightly and smiled.

Everyone in the group leafed through their Bibles, looking for the passage. In a bit, one of them dared to say, “I don’t have Daniel 14.”

“Don’t be silly,” another said, “Here, let me help you.” He searched and then said, “I don’t understand.”

Gradually, they all stopped paging through their Bibles and looked at Floyd. Up until this point, there had been no reason to tell them why the Catholic Bible had more chapters and books – called the Apocrypha – than the Protestant Bible; he was always reading John or Ephesians or Romans with them. Now was the opportunity to explain some church history to them and to teach them that the Catholic Church found the apocryphal books useful to try to refute Martin Luther’s teachings in the 16th century. It was a very different communion devotional, but it taught them a lot. The next week they had all bought new Bibles and had left their Catholic Bibles at home.

More and more, we were realizing that the inspiration of the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit, the resulting inerrancy of the manuscripts, and the recognition, by the first Church fathers before AD 300, of the books that are in our Bible – these three were the foundation of everything we taught. In 2 Timothy 3:16, we read, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” Without the foundation of inspiration, inerrancy, and final canonicity, anyone’s word is just as good as anyone else’s, and there is no Truth. We were seeing God’s word change lives, as they came to the Truth.

In Graz, I had taught Sunday School for the whole fourteen months we had met in our apartment because we wanted all the new believers to hear every Sunday morning message as Floyd, Reinhard, and Bernd Flock taught through the book of Ephesians. When the leaders found a permanent meeting place, some of the ladies came to me and asked to help teach the children. I taught them how, by using them as helpers at first.

Prompted by Karin Flock, I also began a ladies’ Bible study, and we continued until they could lead their own. I asked Sue to send me books on women’s ministry. We had little overnight retreats, which were so important in developing fellowship and that family-feel that churches should have.

There were weddings (I need to write you a whole section on weddings!) and baptisms and baby dedications that took the place of baby baptisms.

Floyd, meanwhile, was training for leadership. He taught the men how to teach and preach, and he met with them before they spoke to help them figure out what to say and how to say it. Afterwards, he would meet with them to help them evaluate and improve for next time. He led regular leadership meetings that were open to anyone who wanted to come, with the understanding that not everyone would be a leader.

Dangers Aren’t Always What You’d Expect

On April 26, 1986, while Ukrainian technicians tested a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, one of the reactors melted down into the cooling water supply and blew up. The radiation cloud from that fire and explosion spread westward across Europe, only discovered by radiation detectors in other countries. In the Ukraine, especially around Chernobyl, birth defects and miscarriages and cancers would skyrocket over the next decades. For many other countries, the consequences were economically devastating. The radiation levels made some fruit and vegetable crops inedible. In Romania, a country that was starving its own people by exporting everything to pay off national debt, the people were told that this year they could eat their own harvest. The East Germans were told that the radiation hopped over East Germany and landed on West Germany!

Closer to home, in Austria, children were not allowed to play in the sandboxes until the sand had been changed. In fact, children didn’t play outside much. We were all encouraged to stay indoors and to drink mineral water with iodine, so that our thyroids would not absorb the radioactive iodine in the air. And we paid close attention to where our fruits and vegetables came from.

I wrote to Sue: The iodine-similar radioactive substances are gone now. They break down in a month. The other two, though will be a problem for quite a while. The one takes 40 years to break down and the other one 400 years. (Don’t quote me: my figures are near, but not exact.) What can one do? I’m sitting in front of a computer screen right now, and I’m absorbing minute quantities of radiation. I think it’s hopeless. Karl (husband-to-be of Lisi) worked for the summer at an office that measured radioactivity in food. He said that this year mushrooms are dangerously high, and that all of the fruit and nuts that were in bloom this spring are somewhat contaminated, but he still eats the fruit.

Our Gracious Landlord

There is a law in Austria – a “squatter’s law” – that states that if you rent a place longer than five years, then the landlord is no longer legally allowed to ask you to move out. I’m sure I am simplifying the legality, but it affected us. Well, our five years were up, but we really wanted to remain in Graz for a few more years, and we wanted the boys to be able to stay in their school. We loved our apartment and didn’t want to move. The problem was getting the landlord to believe that we would not stay longer and then make it impossible for him to get rid of us.

Floyd had quite a few conversations with the landlord, probably including the brother-in-law who had become a believer. He finally agreed, with certain conditions.

We had to paint the whole apartment.

We had to move everything – and I mean, everything – into the back bedroom, so that we really and truly weren’t living there. This would terminate the lease.

We would not live in the apartment for six weeks. Then in September we would sign a new lease for three years.

He was going to have to trust us that we would indeed move out in three years and not suddenly decide to invoke the squatter’s law. When I think about it now, he really was gracious.

Summer 1986

So, what were we going to do for the six weeks we weren’t living in our apartment?

Floyd set up an amazing itinerary, which began with us painting the walls of our apartment. The landlord preferred that we hire someone to do it, but we convinced him that we would do a satisfactory job. We had to scrub off the old whitewash and then paint everything. It was a lot of work but also saved us a lot of money. I actually did much of the painting because Floyd was in Mittersill at a conference for the Austria Student Mission. John Lennox was the speaker.

When he got back, we had to move everything into the smallest back bedroom. There were a few pieces that didn’t fit, but when we were finished, the place was empty and echo-y. We packed our car with everything we would need for six weeks and drove to our first stop – Hungary.

Hungary

We had been invited to a summer camp north of Budapest for sixteen young men between the ages of 16-24. In a week of teaching, Floyd took them through every aspect of sanctification you could think of. The comparison between a North American camp and this group was like night and day. The food was simple, monotonous, and good. They had to work on the grounds, wash their own dishes, and take a shower every evening before supper. The meetings were held in German, and there were two translators. One translator wears out after about an hour.

There were counseling sessions – all with a translator. The ladies were not allowed in any of the sessions because they wanted to be able to be completely open about every aspect of their lives. I spent that week working on a Christmas present for my first niece because none of the ladies who were cooking spoke German or English. We just smiled at one another or shrugged in frustration. They wouldn’t let me help with the meals because they were so grateful that we came, that the thought of us helping was not to be considered.

The young men were so nice to our boys – took them swimming, hiking, played ping pong and volleyball with them. They even taught them a lot of Hungarian, including how to count to 100! Erich learned enough Hungarian that when they all went shopping, he was able to buy a watermelon all by himself and count out the money! It was a great time, and we really felt that we were influencing the future Christian leaders in Hungary.

The camp is situated above a bend in the Danube River and is in such a lovely spot. A Hungarian friend gave us a guided tour of Budapest one afternoon, and another afternoon, we and the two Hungarian couples leading the conference toured an old castle also built above the Danube.

For the first supper, we had boiled chicken. The first course was the broth with noodles, and Floyd and I each received the chicken feet in our bowls. I really didn’t know what to do with mine, so I put it in the bone dish. One of the young men grabbed it and proceded to find the tiny bits of meat that were between the toes!

Floyd looked at his chicken foot and then looked beseechingly around the table. “I’m sorry,” he said, fighting nausea “I can’t eat it.” Everyone laughed nervously and then one of the men pulled the foot from Floyd’s bowl and gave it to one of the older students. Definitely a faux pas on our part. We were being honored.

When working with a translator, Floyd had to keep in mind that a thirty-minute talk would take one hour, total time. And he had to keep his train of thought while the translator was speaking Hungarian. It was an intense week, but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

After we left Hungary, we drove to West Germany, where we stayed with some acquaintances of Floyd’s for three day. We also saw John Lennox and his family there, and Floyd had a youth meeting and preached in a church on Sunday.

East Germany

While Hungary was probably one of the least repressive communist countries, East Germany (DDR) was definitely one of the most repressive. I don’t know all the hoops people had to jump through for us to receive an invitation to come. We drove across the border with all the proper papers. Officially we were tourists in Zwickau, a small town in southern DDR. It probably had been cute once upon a time, but 25 years of totalitarianism had neglected it.

Our hosts were a family with a daughter, Mary, who was a bit younger than Erich. The father, Dieter, was a preacher in their church, and he sometimes was allowed to travel into Western Europe for conferences. This permission was not granted to his family, but was a gesture by the government to demonstrate how free this communist state was.

The family conference was to be in Brandenburg, outside of East Berlin. Dieter told us that officially we would never be in Brandenburg; therefore, we needed to see everything there was to see in Zwickau and the region so that if we were questioned by border guards on exiting the country, we would know lots about Zwickau.

Dieter asked us what souvenirs we would like to buy. I knew that the region was particularly famous for their woodcarvings, and told him I would love to have a Christmas pyramid. A pyramid was a very fancy carved table decoration to celebrate lighting a candle on each of the four Advent Sundays before Christmas. The heat from the candles would turn a wheel that made the whole scene move in a circle.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Those are carved here, but not sold here. They are all exported to the West. But I will take you to the wood carving museum.”

A group of school children were touring the museum that day. The carvings were, indeed, glorious. On one side of the museum was a huge carved panorama with little figures depicting the entire Life of Christ. This was surprising to us, because communism had tried to stamp out all Christianity, and many believers were persecuted. My sister and future brother-in-law were, at that time, serving on the team in Vienna that smuggled Bibles into East Germany and other communist countries.

Many of the little wooden figures moved, propelled by tiny streams of water. Dieter and Floyd looked at one another and walked to the beginning of the story. They pointed to a donkey sliding down a path with a pretty woman in blue riding her.

“Look,” said Floyd, “there’s Mary, Jesus’ mother. They had to go to Bethlehem because prophets had foretold that the Messiah, God’s Son, would be born in Bethlehem.”

A few children gathered around, and Dieter continued the story, as they walked slowly past the table.

At one point, a little boy said to his friend, “See, I told you it was about Jesus!”

While appearing to talk to just each other, the two men were able to “preach” the whole Gospel to anyone who wanted to listen!

Since Dieter could travel to Western Europe, he had seen the Mediterranean Sea and the Alps. In fact, the day Dieter had arrived at the border between Austria and West Germany, he confessed to the border guard that he had no visa for Austria.

The guard shrugged. “You’re German. Germans don’t need visas. Please come see our beautiful country.”

If Dieter had any regrets, it was that Mary would never see the Alps.

After three days with them, we hopped into our cars and drove to Brandenburg. We arrived at the conference center and drove our (to the East Germans) fancy, new Nissan into a garage. We never saw it the rest of the week. It would have attracted too much attention.

Some of the families who came to the conference were a bit scared to have American Christians in their building. If officials had known we were there, we would have been asked to leave, but the people would have been in trouble. Floyd had planned his messages, but changed when he realized that many were not yet believers.

Erich came down with a bug of some sort and spent a couple days in bed. He was cared for – in a friendly rivalry – by Dieter’s daughter, Mary, and by another girl a couple years older than Erich. Once he felt better, he spent time with the older girl – his first real girlfriend.

We really wanted to eat our meals with the families so we could have more time to chat informally, but we were always seated at a separate table in the dining room. About halfway through the week we figured out that it was because we were getting the best and most food. At that point, Floyd and I began to look for unobtrusive ways to increase the quality of the meals. One time, Floyd simply took the platter of meat back to the kitchen and told the cooks that we didn’t need so much and to please give it to the children.

One day we went with the group on a bus to a disgustingly dirty swimming pool. I gulped and let our boys swim, trusting God to protect us. On the way back, about three blocks from the church, we saw a lone woman on the street corner, selling a big bowl of tomatoes. When we got back to the church, Floyd dashed into the kitchen, handed the cook some money, and sent her off to buy the whole bowl of tomatoes. That evening, everyone had a whole tomato to eat. (Never mind that they probably had been contaminated by radiation from Chernobyl!)

So that everyone could sleep peacefully, it was arranged that we not sleep at the church. One of the ladies had a small garden plot with a little garden house on the outskirts of the city. After dark each night, we were driven to that house and let into the cellar. With a flashlight (there was no electricity), we climbed a ladder into the house, trying not to notice all the spider webs and big spiders living in that cellar. That week was exceptionally hot, and we wanted to sleep with the windows open, but there were no screens and the mosquitoes were vicious.

On top of all this, part of the Russian army was in town for joint maneuvers with the East German army. They were practicing very near to where we were staying, and at night we could see the flashes and hear shooting, and large tanks rumbled by and helicopters roared overhead. It did cross our minds that if they accidentally bombed our location, no one would ever know what happened to us!

One night, Floyd woke me up, beating on his pillow. I calmed him down and asked what was wrong. “A spider! A helicopter! I dreamed I was shooting them down with a can of bug spray and a frying pan.” I looked at his pillow to see if there was a spider, but it was too dark to see. We were exhausted. We went back to sleep.

I wrote to Sue: Thank you so much for the lily-of-the-valley powder. I never told you, though what happened to it. While at the family conference in East German, (which, of course, we weren’t really at!), there was a dear old lady who allowed us to stay in her tiny summer house, so that we wouldn’t be making problems for the believers. We weren’t even registered in the city, so the lady could have gotten into trouble, but although she was a bit gruff, she was also very kind. At the end of the week, I realized that because we hadn’t known we would be staying there, I hadn’t a thing to give her as thanks. The city was large, but all of the money in the world is useless, if there is nothing nice to buy. So I took inventory, and I realized that she’d probably never had anything as nice as that fragrant lily-of-the-valley powder, so I gave it to her. I knew you wouldn’t mind, and she was very happy. So somewhere in East Germany, a little old lady is probably using – very sparingly – the powder you gave me. Thank you.

The Bible sessions were a huge success, and Floyd and Dieter had many good conversations about the Christian life with the people. It was sobering to see the price that believers would pay to stay true to their faith. Believing parents knew that their children would never be allowed to attend the university. Believing older children knew that their faith could destroy their parents’ business. Floyd reminded them often that the New Testament was written during a time of intense persecution of believers. God did understand.

On the final evening, they had a grill party. The cooks went into the city for ice cream and came back disappointed. The weather had been so hot that there was not an ice cream cone nor bottle of soda to be had in that whole city of 100,000 people! The party was still fun, and the Europeans are really good at grilling.

After the last meeting, they gave us thank-you gifts. Floyd’s was a can of bug spray and a frying pan! When I opened mine, it was a carved wooden pyramid. I looked at Dieter in surprise.

He shrugged good-naturedly. “It’s our daughter, Mary’s. We’ll find another one for her.”

Even now, my eyes fill with tears as I bask in their love and sacrifice. I enjoy its beauty every Christmas and tell the story whenever I can.

West Berlin

We drove out of East Germany into West Berlin, prepared to tell of our wonderful vacation in Zwickau. No one asked. No guards checked our car. They just looked at our passports and waved us through.

“Rats!” exclaimed Erich. “We could have smuggled my girlfriend out!”

Life in the DDR was pretty grim. I wrote to Sue: Floyd and I were totally surprised by some feelings that seemed traitorous to the facts around us. Instead of foolishly swearing ourselves to a life of poverty, sending every extra penny to believers less fortunate than we, we found ourselves longing for riches – trying to figure out how to have more and more. It was weird.

The cure to these feelings also came from an unusual place – West Berlin. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah.  In 1970, Floyd had been to West Berlin on a short-term missions trip – in fact, that trip to Germany had changed the course of his life – and he had told us how wonderful the city was. After a week in the DDR, however, I found West Berlin too much. Floyd had booked us into a reasonable hotel for two nights. We visited a huge department store with a fantastic delicatessen on the top floor. The prices were cheaper than we had seen anywhere in Europe, and the quality was tops. Floyd asked one of the men standing in line at the counter for an explanation.

“Oh, that’s easy. This is where all the western European diplomats and spies bring their visiting eastern European diplomats and spies to prove to them that capitalism and democracy are better than communism.”

There were also sex and massage parlors everywhere and provocative signs to lure people. My men needed blinders!

I think I mentioned earlier that Berlin, situated in East Germany, had been divided into four parts after World War 2, and Russia had built a wall around the western three parts to make sure that no one in East Germany or East Berlin could escape to the west. I was ten when the wall was built – almost overnight – and my mother had me watch the news about people from East Berlin and East Germany risking everything to escape. They dug tunnels, built primitive hang gliders, and shot ropes or cables over the wall like a zip line. Many were shot. Some escaped. One of the stories we heard was that the taxi drivers had heard that the street maps were going to change on a certain date. They understood at once, and almost every taxi driver in Berlin moved his family and his taxi to West Berlin the day before the wall went up.

We took the boys to Checkpoint Charlie, which was the American gate between East and West Berlin. There was an observation deck, and we watched the East German and Russian soldiers who guarded that gate. I explained to the boys the significance of the wall with its horrors, and got rather choked up. Erich understood at once because he really wanted to see his girlfriend again.  Michael turned sorrowful eyes on me and said, “Mom, I really have to go to the bathroom.”

So much for the history lesson.

Traveling with the Boys

Floyd loves to take road trips, and I enjoy being with him. We realized, however, that to small boys, hours in the car could seem like days. Much of their luggage was comprised of toys and games to pass the time. We sang songs, or rather, I sang to them – silly songs of my own childhood. Every time Floyd was in the States, he would splurge on Christian music and children’s tapes. (What we wouldn’t have given for iTunes!) We listened to those tapes until we all had every song memorized.

In the summer, every three years, the whole world (except the United States) goes crazy for the world championship soccer match. It’s called the World Cup, and little boys – and probably some girls – spend all their allowances on packets of stickers to complete their commemorative sticker books. They trade stickers with their friends and especially try to find their heroes. If this was the summer of the World Cup, we would buy the boys stickers as we traveled, and they would work on completing their books. Then we would arrive home, and they would sit in front of the TV and cheer for their favorite team and collect grudges against any team that beat theirs.

Floyd also loved to tell stories, and often they had to do with the countryside through which we were driving. I remember particularly in late summer, when the farmers had draped the hay over triangular, wooden racks to dry. And sometimes they pounded nails in the wooden fences and hung the hay on the nails. The fields would be filled with triangular, shaggy monsters and their long, shaggy steeds. Floyd told the boys stories about the aliens who were marching down the valley to conquer the world, encouraging them to shoot the monsters before they claimed victory.

England

We still had three and a half weeks before we could return to our apartment in Graz. The next stop was to visit some American friends in England for a few days. We had known Phil and Melody since seminary days in Portland. They, like we, moved a lot, and we had visited each other in our many locations around the world.

We drove to Belgium and took a ferry across the English Channel. While with Phil and Melody near London, we visited Windsor Castle – where the Queen sometimes lives, The Tower – where the country’s Crown Jewels are kept, and they took us to see Les Miserables, a musical. London was very crowded and hectic, but we found some old bookstores, which was something on Floyd’s bucket list.

Then we drove to Southampton for a five-day sailing course. This would be our official vacation. We arrived at the quay and were shown to our sailboat, which was a huge disappointment. It was long and narrow, beat up, and smelled strongly of mildew. It didn’t even look clean. We set our duffle bags on the deck and waited for our instructor to arrive. I don’t even remember if we talked about what we would say.

The instructor strode up with his duffle and we introduced ourselves. He looked at the boys and then at me, turned around and strode off down the dock. A few minutes later he returned and motioned for us to follow him. We did – to a sparkling, beautiful, wide sailboat docked a few berths down.

“When we got your request, we thought you were four adults from Austria who really wanted a strenuous week of sailing and racing. I think you will be happier with this boat.”

It was a bit of a letdown for him; now he had to teach two beginner adults and keep track of two small boys. He was a bit impatient with the boys at times, but overall the time was very valuable. We learned how to read charts, estimate tides, how to rescue other boats, how to sail in stormy weather, and how to dock in harbors where space was tight.

We saw some of the most beautiful sailing places in the world – all from the sea. On our last sail back to Southampton, we had the wind, waves and tide at our stern, and were making 16 knots. The boys were cabled to the boat, sitting on the bow that was rising out of the water and then crashing down into the waves. When we finally sailed back to our “home” dock, we were not allowed to dock because someone in the harbor had found an unexploded World War Two mine that had to be detonated!

Friedrichshafen, West Germany

After another week with Phil and Melody near London, we headed back to Germany for the Missionary Conference on Lake Constance. When we arrived, we learned that the director of the conference had written to us the beginning of August to ask us to run the conference because he couldn’t. Since we had left Graz the middle of July, we had never received the letter. (Remember there were no email nor cell phones back then!) Fortunately, most everything was planned, and Floyd just had to organize a few things. The hardest thing he had to do was to give out travel money that had been donated by the organization, Worker’s Together, back in the States. Missionaries are not perfectly selfless, and some of the missionaries whom we knew didn’t really need travel money demanded it, while those we knew needed it would get less. It was sticky, but I don’t think there were any long-term hard feelings.

Dr. David Gooding was the speaker again, and we thoroughly enjoyed the time, in spite of the extra work. Bernd and Karin came, and one day the four of us were just laughing and having a good time after lunch. One of the missionary women came up and stood silently by our table for a while. When we noticed her, she burst into tears. “You can’t know how fortunate you are – to have co-workers you really like and get along with.” We definitely appreciated our situation, having lived through that time with the German missionaries in Graz.  Bernd and Floyd slipped away quietly and left her to talk with Karin and me. It turned out that she and her husband were stuck in a situation with co-workers they did not get along with at all.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

After six weeks of living out of suitcases, the first thing we had to do when we returned from our six-week exile was to “move back in” to our apartment. There was something cleansing about doing this. We had gotten rid of a lot of things we didn’t need, and now we could rearrange our living space in new and interesting ways.

At that point, we decided to buy a used piano. A friend of John Lennox (named Michael) gave us money for a piano for our Michael, so we put an ad in the newspaper: “Eight-year-old boy, looking for piano.” Three people called – all of them with baby grands. Apparently, no one had space for them. As we had no more plans to invite whole missionary teams to live with us, we had plenty of space for a used baby grand in one end of the living room. So, Michael got his piano lessons, and I enjoyed playing the pieces I knew.

September 1986 – With Hank & Sharon to Budapest

The boys were just back in school, and life had just barely become normal again. Hank and Sharon, our dear friends from Portland, came to visit their son and daughter-in-law and new granddaughter in Germany. Since they were already in Europe, they popped down to see us. Floyd was very excited because their visit coincided with meetings in Budapest that he had set up early in the summer. He decided to take Hank and Sharon with him.

Whenever we went into a communist country, we tried to take something the people needed. Usually it was something necessary like toilet paper or laundry detergent. This time, Floyd also took money, and he hid it in his shoe.

Hank and Sharon stayed in one location, and Floyd stayed in another. The apartments in Budapest were very small, and the hosts gave up their bedroom for our friends. The kitchen was about the size of a closet. Floyd was pretty sure that they sacrificed their month’s ration of food to feed the visitors. That was why Floyd took extra money.

There was a large church in a great white building, but it was the official, government-sanctioned church, and the gospel was not allowed in that church. The real church met in small apartments and homes throughout the city. On Sunday morning, Floyd preached in German, and someone translated into Hungarian. Hank brought greetings from America. At Floyd’s suggestion – based on things Floyd knew about the believers in Hungary – Hank also gave a short talk on the importance of older leaders turning over church leadership to younger, mature leaders. A different translator interpreted for him.

On the way home, their car got stuck in a caravan of military vehicles, and Sharon started snapping pictures! Floyd was sure they would all be arrested and the cameras confiscated, but the soldiers in the trucks just waved and laughed at the harmless tourists. Little did they know.

Are You a Pioneer or a Lone Wolf?

Although we generally avoided English-speakers, there were times that they sought us out.  Austria, when we arrived, was famous for being “The Graveyard of Missionaries.” The average time a missionary stayed in Austria was seven years, and they left without having made any significant contacts. We didn’t know why. Occasionally missionaries from the area – all from various mission organizations – would get together for breakfast or for a Saturday or even for a whole weekend retreat. Floyd, naïve and idealistic, attended the first two retreats, thinking he would learn a lot about how to reach Austrians with the Gospel.

He ran into his first problem when everyone around the table told which mission organization he or she was with.

“Well,” he said, “We were sent out from our home church in Portland, Oregon.”

Shock registered on almost every face.

“You’re not with a mission board?”

“Not really. The people at Christian Missions in Many Lands, Inc. handle our finances and any legal papers, but they are not involved in our ministry in any way.”

“Next.”

Informally, conversations usually revolved around the premise that it was not a good idea for a missionary to be on the field without being accountable to anyone.

“To whom are you accountable? Don’t you have anyone who is in authority over you to guide you and keep you in line?”

The idea of someone having to keep a missionary in line amused Floyd, but he didn’t want to laugh. Instead, he suggested rather tentatively, “Perhaps the Holy Spirit is a good person to be accountable to. He’s pretty strong.”

Another time, he was sitting with four frustrated missionaries, who really thought it was wrong for him to be a lone wolf, crashing around Austria, doing damage.

“Could be,” said Floyd, “But I’m under the same mission board as Paul the Apostle. He was with a team, but the church in Antioch was not pulling his strings.”

Few seemed to like his answer, but when some of the missionaries got him alone, they were singing a different tune:

“I’m so tired of the ‘higher-ups’ in my mission agency telling us what we can or can’t do. I’m an adult.”

“My mission group is even telling us how many children we can have.”

“They sent us to work with this couple, and we don’t get along at all. We are thinking of going back to the States.”

“You can’t imagine how blessed you are to be able to do what you think God wants you to do without clearing it with someone in North America who doesn’t have a clue what’s going on here in Europe.”

Moral of the story: Even though this took place thirty years ago, you still need to research your mission organization thoroughly.

One missionary who was working in Graz received a small team of young people for a few weeks one summer. He asked Floyd to come and talk to the members of his team about the best way to use their last few weeks. So far, things had been very discouraging.

Floyd said, “Since you only have two weeks left, how many of you speak German?”

None of them knew much.

“Okay. Then I suggest that you ride all the bus and streetcar lines to the end and along the way ask people to help you. Another thing you could do is to eat lunch in the university cafeteria and sit with students, introduce yourself, and let them practice their English. Go to the park and strike up conversations. Invite them to coffee. Don’t – don’t – tell them you are a missionary. They will think you are with a cult.

“Anyway,” he continued, “You might even find out what they are doing on a weekend and try to get invited to join them – hiking or swimming or a concert. Your goal is to meet people and interest them in meeting your missionary here. Then he can invite them to read the Bible. You won’t do much evangelizing, but you will be bringing contacts to those who do speak German.”

One of the young people snapped his Bible shut and rolled his eyes.

Floyd recognized frustration. “So, what’s up? I know I’m not boring.”

“This all sounds really nice, but we weren’t sent here to go on outings with Austrian students.”

“Okay. What were you sent here to do?”

They all looked at the missionary. He did not like giving the answer: “Our mission board has sent us 8000 gospel tracts, and we have to knock on doors and go to parks and hand them all out. Otherwise it would be a waste of money.”

Floyd tried to salvage their last two weeks. “Okay. Are you going door-to-door in pairs?”

“Yes.”

“Any results?”

“They sic their dogs on us, and slam the door.”

Floyd explained, “They think you are Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. You are doing the same thing the cults do – telling them that you are missionaries and then giving them literature that tells them what to believe. The Austrians aren’t stupid; they are quite capable of reading their Bible and discovering for themselves what God wants to tell them from His word.”

The missionary looked uncomfortable. “I have to send a report back, saying that we handed out all the tracts.”

“I’m sorry.”

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

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