She looked at me as though wondering whether to confide in me. “You see,” she said softly, “I’m a Christian. That’s why I came to work here.”
I gaped in astonishment at my fellow missionary. And all at once I remembered where I had seen this face before. The veterans’ hospital! This was the girl who had invited us to the tent meeting! And that was the place where . . .
I stumbled over my words in my eagerness to tell her all that had happened, and how I had come here to Ringers’ on the same mission as her own. Her name, she told me, was Corry van Dam. And from that day on, Corry and I were a team. My job of collecting the finished boxes took me up and down the rows of packagers, where I could keep a lookout for anyone with problems. I would pass the word to Corry, who could speak to the girl in private when she came to the window for her next work order.
In this way we eventually found a small nucleus of people interested in the same things we were. The British evangelist Sidney Wilson was holding “youth weekends” in Holland then, and we started attending these.
One of the first people to come with us was a blind and badly crippled girl, who worked on the same belt with Greetje. Amy read Braille and showed me how she punched out letters to the other blind people with a little hand Braille-writer. I bought one too, and a copy of the Braille alphabet, and would leave Braille notes on the moving belt of chocolates for Amy’s quick fingers to find.
Of course, this was too much for Greetje to leave alone.
“Amy!” she would bellow down the row of working girls. “How much is he offering this time?”
For a long time Amy took the jibes in good humor. But one day I came back from the shipping room to see her blinking her milky eyes as though to keep back tears.
“I can see,” Greetje was booming, “how you might not be sure.”
She caught sight of me and grinned maliciously. “All men are alike in the dark, eh, Amy?” she shouted.
I stopped still in the doorway. I had prayed that morning, as I always did while biking to work, that God would tell me what to say to people. The order I seemed to be getting now was so unexpected I could hardly believe it, and yet so clear that I obeyed without thinking.
“Greetje,” I called across the room, “shut up. And shut up for good!”
Greetje was so startled, her jaw literally dropped open. I was startled myself. But I had to follow up or lose the initiative.
“Greetje,” I called, still shouting across the great hall, “the bus leaves for the conference center at nine Saturday morning. I want you to be on board.”
“All right.”
Her answer came just that quickly. I waited to see if a joke was coming, but I noticed that now it was Greetje who was blinking her eyes. As I went back to loading boxes, I noticed that the entire room was strangely silent. Everyone was a little awed at what was happening.
And on Saturday, Greetje was aboard the bus. That surprised me most of all. She was her old self, though, and let us know that she was coming only to find out what really went on after the lights went off.
At the conference grounds Greetje stayed very much to herself. During the meetings she kept up a steady stream of sotto voce comments as people told how God was making a difference in their lives. In between meetings Greetje read a romance magazine.
Sunday afternoon the bus brought us back to Alkmaar, where I had left my bicycle at the depot. Greetje lived in the next town to Witte. I wondered what my chances were of persuading her to ride along with me on the back of my bike. It would be a wonderful opportunity to have her uninterrupted attention.
“Can I give you a lift home, Greetje? Save you the bus fare?”
Greetje pursed her lips, and I could tell she was weighing the disadvantage of having to ride with me against the price of the bus ticket. Finally, she shrugged and climbed onto the little jump seat at the rear of my bike. I gave Corry a wink and pushed off.
As soon as we were out in the country, I intended to face Greetje with her need for God. But to my astonishment, the clear command that came this time was: “Not one word about religion. Just admire the scenery.”
Again I could scarcely believe I was hearing correctly. But I obeyed. During the entire trip I did not say a word to my captive about religion. Instead, I talked about the tulip fields we were passing and discovered that she too had eaten tulip bulbs during the war. When we got to her street, I actually got a smile from her.
Next day at the factory Corry met me with shining eyes. “What on earth did you say to Greetje? Something terrific must have happened!”
“How do you mean? I didn’t say a word.”
But sure enough, all morning long Greetje didn’t crack a dirty joke. Once Amy dropped a box of chocolates. It was Greetje who knelt down and retrieved the pieces. At lunchtime she plunked her tray down beside mine.
“Can I sit with you?”
“Of course,” I said.
“You know what I thought?” Greetje began. “I thought you would high-pressure me into ‘making a decision for Christ,’ like they said at those meetings. I wasn’t going to listen. Then you didn’t say a word. Now . . . don’t laugh, will you?”
“Of course not.”
“I began to wonder, ‘Does Andrew think I’ve gone so far there’s no turning back? Is that why he doesn’t bother talking to me?’ And then I began to wonder if maybe I had gone too far. Would God still listen if I said I was sorry? Would He let me too start all over again, like those kids claimed? Anyhow, I asked Him to. It was a pretty funny prayer, but I meant it. And, Andy, I began to cry. I cried almost all night, but this morning I feel great.”
It was the first conversion I had ever watched. Overnight Greetje was a changed person. Or rather she was the same person with a tremendous addition. She was still a leader, she still talked all the time—but what a difference. When Greetje stopped telling smutty stories, many of the other girls stopped too. A prayer cell was started in the factory, with Greetje in charge of attendance. If someone’s child was sick, if a husband was out of work, Greetje found out about it, and woe to the worker who didn’t put some money in the hat. The change in this girl was complete and it was permanent. Night after night in my loft bed back in Witte, I went to sleep thanking God for letting me have a part in this transformation. That factory was a different place. And it all came about through obedience.
———
One day when I pedaled through the main gate, I had a surprise waiting for me.
“Mr. Ringers wants to see you,” Corry said.
“Mr. Ringers!” I must be in real trouble—maybe he’d found out I was pushing religion on company time. A secretary held open the door to the president’s private office. Mr. Ringers was sitting in an enormous leather armchair and waved me into another. I sat down on the edge of the cushion.
“Andrew,” said Mr. Ringers, “do you remember the psychological tests we finished about two weeks ago?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The tests show that you have a rather exceptional I.Q.”
I had no idea what an “I.Q.” was, but since he was smiling, I smiled too.
“We have decided,” he went on, “to put you into our management training course. I want you to take two weeks off. Walk through the factory and examine every job you see. When you find one you like, let me know—we’ll train you for it.”
When at last I found my voice, I said, “I already know the job I’d like. I’d like to be that man who talked to me after I finished the tests.”
“A job analyst,” said Mr. Ringers. His keen eyes bored into mine. “And I suppose,” he said, “that while discussing jobs, you wouldn’t object if the subject of religion came up?”
I felt my face turning scarlet.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “We know about the proselytizing you’ve been doing upstairs. And I might add that I consider your kind of work considerably more important than manufacturing chocolates.”
He smiled at the relief on my face. “I don’t
know any reason, Andrew, why you can’t do both. If you can help me to run a better factory while getting recruits for God’s kingdom, why I’ll be satisfied.”
———
Thile was ecstatic at my new job. She hoped I would find it so interesting that I would forget the missionary idea. But I couldn’t. Although I loved the new work, I felt more and more persuaded that I was being called to something else. In return for my analyst’s training I agreed to stay on at Ringers’ two years. When that time was up, I knew I would have to leave.
Seeing that my mind was made up, Thile stopped arguing and pitched in to help me. Her own church was the Dutch Reformed, which had many overseas missions. She wrote to each of them, asking what the qualifications were for serving. From them, all the same answer came back: Ordination was the first step to being a missionary.
But when I wrote to the Dutch Reformed seminary, I discovered that making up the schooling I had missed during the war and then studying theology would take twelve years. Twelve years! My heart sank at the news. Nevertheless, I enrolled at once in some correspondence courses.
Books were the greatest problem. I had no savings of any kind. And now, with Greetje in charge of good works at the factory, any guilders that Geltje did not need for the household were swiftly put to good use.
I was pondering the problem over a cigarette one evening when it occurred to me that I was holding the answer in my hand. I looked at the slender white tube with the smoke curling pleasantly from its tip. How much did I spend for these things every week? I figured it up and was enlightened. Enough for a book, every week of the year. Enough to own the volumes I was reading now a few pages at a time in the rear of a bookstore.
It wasn’t easy, stopping. I guess I liked to smoke as much as any Dutchman, which is a great deal indeed. But I did stop, and gradually, on the little table between Cornelius’ bed and mine, a library began to grow. A German grammar, an English grammar, a volume of church history, a Bible commentary. They were the first books, besides the Bible and the hymnbook, that anyone in our family had ever owned. For two years I spent every spare moment reading.
When Miss Meekle learned what I was doing, she offered to coach me in English, and I gratefully accepted. She was a wonderful teacher: kind when I was discouraged, enthusiastic when my own resolve weakened. If her pronunciation seemed a bit different from the English I heard occasionally on Mama’s wireless, I put it down to faulty electronics and carefully imitated Miss Meekle.
But though Miss Meekle was pleased that I was completing my education, she was less sure about seminary. “Do you really think you need to be ordained in order to help people?” she would say. “You’re twenty-four years old. At this rate you’ll be in your mid-thirties before you even begin. Surely there’s useful work for laymen in the missions? I’m not telling you, Andrew. I’m just asking the question.”
And of course it was the question I asked myself almost every day. One weekend I was discussing it with Sidney Wilson. Enough of us now attended his weekends from Ringers’ that we would reserve the whole conference center for ourselves. As I grumbled about the delays and formalities of education, he began to laugh.
“You talk like the people at WEC,” he said.
“WEC?”
“Worldwide Evangelization Crusade,” he said. “It’s an English group that trains missionaries to go out to parts of the world where the churches don’t have programs. They feel like you about waiting.”
Church missions, he explained, were run on budgets. A mission board waited until it had the money, or at least knew where it was coming from, before they sent a man out. Not WEC. If they thought God wanted a man in a certain place, they sent him there and trusted God to worry about the details.
“Same with the men they send,” Mr. Wilson went on. “If they think a man has a genuine call and a deep enough commitment, they don’t care if he hasn’t a degree to his name. They train him at their own school for two years and then send him out.”
That part appealed to me, but I wasn’t so sure about the lack of financing. I had known several people who “trusted God” for their needs, but most of them were really beggars. They didn’t come right out and ask for money; they hinted at it. They were known around Witte as “the hint missionaries,” and it was said of them that they didn’t live by Faith, but by Feelers. No, what I had seen of them was grubby and undignified. If Christ were a King and these were His Ambassadors, it surely did not speak well of the state of His exchequer.
Surprisingly, it was Kees—who had been studying for ordination for so many years—who was the most interested when I told him what Mr. Wilson had said. “Carry neither purse, nor script, nor shoes,” Kees quoted. “Theologically that’s very sound. I’d like to know more about the WEC.”
And a few months later we had a chance to. Sidney Wilson phoned me one day at Ringers’ to say that a man from WEC headquarters was visiting in Haarlem.
“His name is Johnson, Andy. Why don’t you go see him—while he’s here?”
So the next weekend I biked down to Haarlem. It was just as I thought. Mr. Johnson was thin and gaunt, and his clothes shrieked of missionary barrels.
But when he talked about the work the mission was doing all over the world, his sallow face came alive. It was obvious that he gave the credit for all accomplishments to the WEC training school up in Glasgow, Scotland, and to its teachers, most of whom served without pay. They included doctors of theology and Biblical exegesis and other academic subjects, but on the faculty were also master bricklayers and plumbers and electricians, for these students were being trained to start missions where none existed. And even this, he said, was not the real emphasis. The true aim of the school was a simple one: to turn out the best Christians these students were capable of being.
I went to see Kees as soon as I got back to Witte. Together we took a bike ride across the polders. Kees’s questions were sharp and practical, the kind he would be asking if he planned to drop everything and enroll tomorrow. How much were the fees? When did the next session begin? What were the language requirements? I had not been interested enough to ask. So I gave Kees the address of the WEC headquarters in London and waited for the news I knew I would be hearing. Sure enough, a few days later Kees told me he had made application for admission to the Glasgow school.
Because of his qualifications, Kees was accepted almost at once. I would get home from Ringers’ to find long, glowing letters from Glasgow, describing his life there, the courses he was taking, the discoveries in Christian living he was making. I had already been at the factory longer than the two years I had promised Mr. Ringers when he trained me for the new job. Surely this WEC school was the right place for me too.
And still I hung back. I seemed to have so many points against me. I didn’t have Kees’s learning. And hide it though I might from others, I had a crippled ankle. How could I be a missionary if I couldn’t even walk a city block without pain!
Did I really intend to be a missionary—or was it only a romantic dream with which I indulged myself? I had often heard Sidney Wilson speak of “praying through.” He meant by this, sticking with a prayer until he got an answer. Well, I was going to try it. One Sunday afternoon in September 1952 I went out on to the polders where I could pray aloud without being embarrassed. I sat on the edge of a canal and began talking to God casually, as I might have talked with Thile. I prayed right through coffee-and-cigar hour, right through Sunday afternoon, and on into the evening. And still I had not reached a point where I knew I had found God’s plan for my life.
“What is it, Lord?” What am I holding back? What am I using as an excuse for not serving You in whatever You want me to do?”
And then, there by the canal, I finally had my answer. My “yes” to God had always been a “yes, but.” Yes, but I’m not educated. Yes, but I’m lame.
With the next breath, I did say “Yes.” I said it in a brand-new way, without qualification. “I’ll go, Lord,” I said, “no matter
whether it’s through the route of ordination, or through the WEC program, or through working on at Ringers’. Whenever, wherever, however You want me, I’ll go. And I’ll begin this very minute. Lord, as I stand up from this place, and as I take my first step forward, will You consider that this is a step toward complete obedience to You? I’ll call it the Step of Yes.”
I stood up. I took a stride forward. And in that moment there was a sharp wrench in the lame leg. I thought with horror that I had turned my crippled ankle. Gingerly I put the foot on the ground. I could stand on it all right. What on earth had happened? Slowly and very cautiously I began walking home, and as I walked, one verse of Scripture kept popping into my mind: “Going, they were healed.”
I couldn’t remember at first where it came from. Then I recalled the story of the ten lepers, and how on their way to see the priest as Christ had commanded, the miracle happened. “Going, they were healed.”
Could it be? Could it possibly be that I too had been healed?
I was due at a Sunday evening service in a village six kilometers away. Normally, I would have ridden my bicycle, but tonight was different. Tonight I was going to walk all the way to the meeting.
I did too. When it came time to go home, a friend offered me a ride on his motorbike.
“Not tonight, thank you. I think I’ll walk.”
He couldn’t believe it. Nor, later, could my family believe that I had actually been to the service; they had seen my bicycle leaning against the wall and assumed that I had changed my mind.
The next day at the chocolate factory I walked each employee back to his post at the end of our interview instead of sitting rooted to my chair as I had done in the past. Halfway through the morning my ankle began to itch, and as I was rubbing the old scar, two stitches came through the skin. By the end of the week the incision, which had never healed properly, at last closed.
The following week I made formal application for admission to the WEC Missionary Training College in Glasgow. A month later the reply came. Dependent on space opening up in the men’s dormitory, I could start my studies in May 1953.
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