Blog Post: After Evacuations

Chapter One

God Wasn’t Finished with us

The first time we evacuated from Rethy, because of the Kabila rebellion in Zaire, we went directly to our old farmhouse in New York. Before a year had passed God allowed us to return to Rethy in what had become the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We had the opportunity to continue to serve Him there until tribal conflict erupted again and we were forced to evacuate a second and final time. But God wasn’t finished with us. He had more for us to do in Africa.

Africa Inland Mission (A.I.M.) again activated the crisis committee and they scheduled debriefing counseling. I recall that a special meeting was arranged in Nairobi for the Lewises and us who missed the initial meetings at Kijabe. When those leading expressed sympathy over the second loss of all our stuff at Rethy, Ellen reacted by saying; “Actually, we didn’t lose much of anything, since we replaced all we lost the first time, with stuff from yard sales.” 

It was true. It was also true that we had just been asked to join the RVA staff and would be living in a fully furnished dorm that even included dishes belonging to someone else! We were to assist the school in its programs as we could. God was continuing to provide everything we needed.

Our assignment was initially to care for the dorm kids for one three-month term until the Hendrix returned. We would be caring for missionary children at a boarding school—the very thing what we had done for thirty years at Rethy.

We grew to love those little boys. There were only seven of them and most were Korean. I especially remember Joseph Kim, who knew absolutely no English. One evening he suddenly left our devotions to go to his room, clearly distressed. I followed him and took Joo Young Park with me to interpret. Joseph was silently looking at something in beautiful, perfectly written Korean characters. I understood it to be something he was writing to his parents. Joseph was old enough to be in sixth grade, but it was decided he would be placed in fourth grade so he could learn English first before facing more difficult academic material.

Joo Young already knew English well and was earnestly interacting with Joseph for us. I tried to help Joseph know that he was loved, and that we wanted to do all we could to care for him. From the rest of the kids we cared for, I remember Nur (whose dad was a Kenyan), Manraj (who had Indian parents), and several other Korean kids. The child of an American missionary was expected to arrive later. 

Ellen arranged to have our boys eat with us once a week and the rest of the time they ate in the RVA cafeteria. She cooked rice for us and learned quickly what our Korean kids loved to eat. She got the special ingredients from Nakumat, the supermarket in Nairobi.

Ellen had been the cateress at Rethy for so many years that she was soon invited to give Mrs. Wilson, the RVA cateress, a break by supervising the evening meals. Mr. Wilson who taught art, pottery, and math was pleased to have his wife home in the evenings. 

Ellen was also soon helping in the laundry services by sorting and checking the pockets of about three hundred pairs of pants. The boarding student’s pockets needed to be checked before being washed. Every item found in the pants pockets was placed in an envelope to be given to the student whose name was sewn on the pants label. The child was probably more grateful to see his forgotten money than his Bic pen, although it was the pen that threatened to make more of a mess in the machines! The machines were custom made by Doc Propst to handle the dorm’s huge loads of laundry. When clean and dry, the clothes were sorted into boxes labeled with each child’s name. Ellen learned lots of names including middle names. 

How do you sort and pair socks with so many children? You don’t. Each student had what was called a “Jag-Bag”, made of heavy netting. The Jag-Bags were never opened by the laundry service and kept each child’s socks and underthings together.

I wasn’t assigned any building projects or given responsibilities at the Kijabe printing press. The press was already functioning well with competent Kenyan management and missionary men working in harmony. My initially assignment was to RVA maintenance, so I went to see Chip Mann. I was soon in the mechanic’s shop learning from Willy and the other Kenyan mechanics who worked there. I was given a Toyota Surf whose engine was in for a complete overhaul. My mechanics tools had been left in Zaire when we evacuated, but here I was working in a shop where I was far better equipped than I could have imagined! My days were full and I enjoyed the work. Reassembled, the engine of the Toyota Surf worked fine on test drives but overheated on trips longer than an hour and a half. None of us could determine the cause.

I was also given the responsibility of supervising the night guards who made their rounds all night long. The guard path circled the RVA campus along the wire fence that deterred any unwanted entries. In the evenings we met for devotions before the guards took the German Shephard dogs out with them on patrol. At first, during devotions, my Congo Swahili (Kingwana) must have sounded strange. I read from the Daily Light and shared some thoughts. I enjoyed interacting with the men. 

During the two years we were at RVA, gates were built at every entrance, and each worker and vendor was required to present an ID card for entry. I designed, printed, and laminated each of the colored ID cards. The system stopped a lot of systemic theft in which even long-term workers were found to be guilty. Some kitchen workers had been caught taking out boxes filled with meat which had just been purchased for the RVA cafeteria food service. I was expected to deal with such situations and prayed to God for the wisdom required. 

There was also a wood shop at RVA equipped with tools to teach wood working skills at the high-school level. I got permission to use the equipment and soon made a table for the dining nook of our new dorm home. 

God had blessed us indeed, allowing us to serve Him in Kenya. He had continued to care for all our needs through the crisis of evacuation. We even got to enjoy Greg Stough’s swimming pool in Kampala! The AIM Crisis Committee clearly saw the evacuation experience as one that required immediate debriefing. They may have thought we were in denial when we swam in the Stough’s pool, but by that point there had been plenty of opportunities for us to accept the fact we had been required to evacuate again, this time by the C.E.C.A. leadership. There were certainly many ideas people had about what we should do next, but God told us not to worry and to just ask Him for help. Isn’t it important to come to God, as a child especially in crisis? We had no doubt in His ability to help, and He certainly proved true. God has good works planned for us to serve and glorify Him to the end.

Chapter Two

Sharing my Rethy Experienes as an MK in Chapel

At RVA each staff member was given the privilege of sharing in the daily chapel time. We were expected to participate to have a spiritual influence on the students in addition to the influence we had through subjects like math and woodworking. I recall my dad saying that we were raising missionaries at Rethy and RVA. As missionary teaching staff, we were an example to the body of about four hundred students even if we didn’t consider ourselves a preacher or a public speaker.

When it was my turn, I told stories from my own childhood as a boarding school student at Rethy and concluded each time with a lesson from the Bible. These have been made into a little book, Grandpa Still Remembers.

I shared my experiences leaving home for boarding school at the age of five. I shared that my dream, when I was little, was to be a Titchie at Rethy Academy the boarding school for missionary kids in the Belgian Congo. My mom later told me that I was so eager to go that I even packed my cardboard suitcase stating proudly that I was all ready for school. She said, “I don’t think so. You are just five years old and too small to go away from home.” 

My time growing up was spent hunting for birds with my bow and arrow. My arrow was tipped with sticky grey sap from the big rubber tree behind the hospital my parents worked at. My friend told me it was the best arrow for hunting birds. It would stick to the bird, prevent it from flying away, and I would be able to keep it as a pet. 

I don’t think I ever hit a bird, but I did lots of sneaking around, half crouched, with my arrow knocked ready to fire. Black and white birds, called Wagtails, would run just ahead of me. They would fly a little way, land, and bob their tails up and down. My mom said, “They are such friendly birds. Don’t bother them.” Because they were the easiest ones to sneak up on, I spent hours trying to shoot one. My arrow lost all its stickiness from hitting the dirt so often, but I didn’t lose it for a long time. I never hit a Wagtail.

I shared with the students at RVA how I thought I was big enough to go to boarding school, but I still had to grow up. You need to be grown up to do lots of things, but I remembered the story my mom read that night from the Bible. Mom read in the story where Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child, he shall not enter into it.” She said, “Little children are never too small to come to Jesus. They can come because He loves them. Jesus likes people to be like little children when they come to Him because they believe everything He says, and they know He can take care of anything.” I was glad I wasn’t too small to come to Jesus. 

Now I was at RVA after evacuating Congo. I was still His child, and I asked daily for wisdom and His help. I didn’t belong to myself. I was not my own to decide what to do next.

Chapter Three

Cateress and Head of Services

We had started at RVA as temporary replacements for the dorm parents in Simba Dorm. The Hendricks were scheduled to return at the half term break, but they were further delayed and we were asked to serve in their position for the rest of the year. It wasn’t long before the Wilsons were due for furlough and the full responsibility for the cafeteria passed to Ellen. Mrs. Wilson also turned over her Bible study correspondence ministry to Ellen who received and graded the student workbooks for a couple hundred students many of whom worked for her in the dorm kitchen.

Being the head of the food services, Ellen became responsible for 23 food service employees and for purchasing all the needed food supplies. The dorm received a weekly truckload of flour, sugar, Blue Band, Kimbo, and other supplies from the big stores in Nairobi. Venders came to her asking to supply sacks of potatoes, beans, corn and other staples for the daily menu. Butchers came to get her order for meat so they could deliver their product. I still marvel that Ellen just knew the prices and quantities required for so many transactions. The budget to feed the kids was in the tens of thousands of dollars. Individuals who had established themselves as regular suppliers came to me to receive their ID cards to enter at the gates. With the controlled access to RVA, she managed to save the school over ten thousand dollars in the food service budget. 

The missionaries scheduled to care for the dorm where we lived arrived, so we moved out. Having come to RVA with nothing, we were pleased to move into another missionary dwelling when the Littles returned to the States. They wanted to sell everything in their house. The list of prices was reasonable, so we bought all we needed. Jeff, Ellen and I now had our own home. We even adopted a little dog we called Koda who aggressively chased the baboons when they climbed over the security fence to raid garbage barrels.

When Bob Christian had completed his term of service, my assignment was changed to assume his responsibilities as the Head of Services. I was to oversee the 110 workmen at RVA, their wages, their retirement plans, and all the monthly reporting to the government. A senior missionary, Don Steeves, was retiring. He had developed, with a program called FoxPro, the RVA wage system then in use. I knew nothing about that program. My only experience was in GW Basic where I had made programs for the printing press at Rethy. I discovered that a spreadsheet program called “Microsoft Works” used the same logic as FoxPro. 

KMC, the Kijabe Medical Center, was a big hospital with a large staff of Kenyan workers. Ted Whitmore used Microsoft Works spreadsheets to calculate the wages at the hospital. He helped me by letting me copy and modify what he had developed and soon I had duplicated the RVA wage pay sheets from old FoxPro program. Ted had updated all the hospital wages with the current rates for any deductions and taxes, and with the addition of those numbers RVA was ready to use the new Works spreadsheets. It wasn’t long before the new RVA treasurer joined our new system through an access program. 

I found my new responsibilities as Head of Services included following up on any reports of theft or discipline with the workmen. These needed to be reported to the Kenya work inspectors who monitored the hiring and dismissal of workers to ensure that all regulations were followed. Some individuals discouraged me from acting against school workers who were relatives of certain powerful local families, but I thought it would be best to strictly follow what seemed like fair labor laws. The Lord gave us good harmony with the workmen even during changes and adjustments. 

God continued to supply tasks in which we could serve him. John Barnett, my good friend from my days at Wheaton, was to go on furlough soon, so he taught me his responsibilities. I ended up traveling to various government offices in Nairobi to keep each RVA boarding student’s documents in order. The woodshop teacher at RVA also left. For a while teaching woodworking became my responsibility until another more qualified teacher, Chuck Baker, came. There were many opportunities to serve in the programs offered by the boarding school. Jeff had, by now, adjusted to life at RVA. Some of his friends even came to join us for meals on occasions.

To provide spiritual input for the students we accepted responsibility as needed for care groups, for Sunday school classes, for Bible studies, and as prayer partners. I continued to share in the daily chapel service rotation according to the staff schedule. We had continuous reminders, as we worked to fulfil our daily responsibilities, that it was God working in us and we were not our own. Our commitment to God and each other was more than short term.