Pax, Peace Corp, An Okie and a Cup of TEE – Our Story continued, #23

Almost six months after God called Mary Helen home, I continue to call up the memories of our life together. Back, back to the turbulent years from 1971 to 1973. A time of fascinating visitors and the kick-off of the TEE program.

With Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence behind us, we looked forward to settling down to a period of normalcy. Foolish thought. The only constant in missionary life is unpredictability—really, in life period.

 Good things were happening. The unity of the Rahim church, the pastor’s enthusiasm for evangelism, the growth in sales of Christian literature and the increase in solid converts from the Marwari tribe offered great encouragement into 1972.

During every spare minute, I had been working on the first extension course. It dealt with the inspiration of Scripture and the nature of God. Since historically, Presbyterians and Anglicans had been the dominant influence among Christians in Pakistan, I arranged for the translation of the Westminster Confession into Urdu and the use of the 39 Articles of the Anglican church.

With the kick-off of The Extension School of Theology, TEST, approaching on March 1st, our house began to resemble a madhouse. In the garage, we installed a Gestetner mimeograph to duplicate the lessons. Akhtar and Sharifa, two of the teachers at the Allied Model School helped in translating the materials into Urdu. We hired a calligrapher to scribe the lessons onto stencils. The lessons then had to be run off, collated, and stapled together.

Since the kids were home, we organized picnics along the canal or out on the sand dunes. They loved the flat roof of our new house in Rahim where they watched camel trains arriving from the desert or cooked potatoes on a little stove. Aussie missionary, Joy Nutt had joined us by then and was living in one segment of this Satellite Town house. I remember her participating enthusiastically in a water-balloon fight. She was such a good sport.

But too quickly it came time for Stephen and Debbie to head back to boarding via the train party. We packed their trucks and sent them on a donkey cart to the station where we waved them off on the storied Khyber Mail. Other parents met them and guided them to their compartments on the train. Although these train parties were great fun for the kids, the long hours could lead to boredom. Once when we were chaperones on the school train party, a pillow fight broke out. One boy threw his sleeping bag at another. Instead of hitting him it sailed through an open window into the Jhelum River!

Unfortunately, in 1972 they arrived in Murree to over a foot of drifted snow. The road to the school was impassable by vehicles so they had to walk four miles through the drifts. What a cold start to boarding.

Back on the plains, Mary Helen focused on teaching John grade one, since he was too young for boarding. We began TEST on March first with 48 students in three centres. During the next three months, life for me was a blur. The course booklets for the coming week were run off on the duplicator, collated and stapled. During those days, there seemed to be paper and lesson booklets everywhere. Often there was with just enough time to grab a bus or cycle to one of the three centres. At each centre I held a two-hour seminar to quiz students on what they had learned that week, discuss the tough questions, listen to testimonies, and introduce the lesson booklet for the coming week. Once back at home, I’d dive back into editing and running off the next lesson.

\Half-way through the semester, on April 14th we invited students from all the centres to convene in Rahim for a day-long seminar. I held a more extensive quiz and made presentations on some of the more challenging subjects. For example, why is the apocrypha not in our Bibles? What about the Muslim claim that the Bible has been corrupted? Is the Bible complete? In what sense is God sovereign? Then after a communal meal, we adjourned to the bazaar for some informal evangelism.

An Urdu lesson on inspiration

Students were in high spirits and quite positive about the lessons. One student testified that the course had inspired him to begin family Bible study. He had also acquired a new confidence and ability to explain his faith to the majority community. Another student described his joy in witnessing. Still another told of how he had been far from God but brought back into fellowship with the Lord. One student used the course to explain to a Muslim the meaning of revelation. The Muslim exclaimed, “I’ve never heard that before!” It was extremely gratifying to see TEST not only communicating content but affecting lives and enlivening witness.  

By this time intense heat had settled over the plains sapping our energy. And so with considerable relief, we rejoined Stephen and Deborah in Murree for the summer term of Murree Christian School.  

That summer might be titled, the summer of the unexpected. Mary Helen was asked to lead the PTA. The car’s fan-belt broke and we learned the efficacy of carrying an old pair of panty hose in the trunk to use as a temporary fan-belt. I prepared for the annual ICF conference in July. Terrible inflation and political insecurity gripped the country. Mary Helen caught the flu. Someone stole the roof rack off the car. One of our missionary neighbours was attacked by two thieves.

In August Johnny fell off the monkey bars at school and broke his wrist quite badly. That necessitated a 50-mile trip down the hill to a missionary hospital. Watching a doctor try to set the bones in John’s wrist, Mary Helen was in almost as much agony as John. It took four X-rays, and the remoulding of the cast three times before the bones were set. Poor John! That trip, going and coming from the 7000-foot elevation in Murree to the plains caused Mary Helen’s ears to pop, probably introducing the hearing problems that plagued her ever since.

Johnny with his cast.

The busy summer had delayed my preparation of the second theology course. Fortunately, during the next year we were able to borrow courses on Ephesians and Jeremiah from TEE programs in other countries. In September we convened a new semester of TEST with about 29 students. Then in April of 1973, we had 24. Although students valiantly completed these courses, it became clear that university level courses, needed to be mixed with simpler courses.

Around this time, both the Conservative Baptists and TEAM showed considerable interest in developing their own TEE programs. Russ Irwin, a gifted communicator with TEAM, joined the TEE committee and became an invaluable resource country-wide. As I soon learned, he was also a deadly ping pong and basketball player. To spread information about TEE, I published an occasional bulletin called A Cup of TEE.

In the Rahim area, we were greatly encouraged to see how the program contributed to leadership training. At the fall church convention, four pastors were ordained.

With missionaries leaving for furlough, the mission became very short-staffed. Mary Helen and I had to give more time to hospitality, supervising the Allied Model School, and supporting our Pakistan brethren. In a sense, this period proved to be a good thing as our national brothers began to come more and more to the fore. During an all-centre retreat attendees split into four teams to distribute literature and witness in the Rahim bazaar. It was a glorious time. Three students who had never been involved before felt the courage of a Jeremiah or Paul enlivening them to witness. About 300 Gospel portions were sold.

A missionary returning from furlough encouraged us with his observations that TEST had been contributing to the spiritual growth and developing maturity of our Pakistani pastors. Even closer to the situation, Pastor Umar shared his conviction that the recent restoration of fellowship among Christians in the area and a renewed burden for evangelism could be traced to students studying TEST courses.

Two of the extension courses.

Mary Helen kept very busy teaching John at home, organizing hospitality, and visiting Muslim women. We never knew who might drop in.

One year, we can’t remember when, we had visiting PAX workers. They were American Mennonites, conscientious objectors, who instead of military service, agreed to fulfill their service by doing development work. They enjoyed a home-cooked meal at our house once in awhile. Then there were a couple of US Peace Corp workers who endeavoured to set up a chicken farm outside of town. Another time we had a Polish woman staying with us for a short while. That was the age of hippy travel to the fabled orient. She had been attacked and lost her passport. We eventually bought her a ticket to Karachi.

Mary Helen

One of the most unique visitors was an entrepreneurial Okie who had run a series of gas stations in Oklahoma. She fell under the charms of a handsome Pakistani, married him, and returned with him to his home in Rahim. There she discovered that he came from a family of wealthy landlords. He acted quite different among his extended family, expecting her to fit into his Pakistani lifestyle. She found herself under the domination of his mother, a typical arrangement, since mothers-in-law ruled the roost in most Pakistani homes. Even though she had sold her gas stations, brought the money over and bought a cotton gin in Rahim her husband still expected her to act like a dutiful Pakistani wife. Then she found out that her husband had another wife!

Naturally, she became disillusioned, miserable and wildly unhappy. She often come to us in a state of great agitation. Mary Helen tried to help her adjust by teaching her how to make cookies and by explaining the culture. She was not domestically inclined, nor was she used to being told what to do.

One night she banged on the door in a worst state than usual. She had lost her temper, a common occurrence. She would often explain her actions by saying, “I couldn’t help it, Mary Helen. It was me Okie comin’ out!” But this time she had gone too far by taking off her shoe and hitting her husband with it. In that culture, to hit someone with a shoe or even brandish it in their direction was an act of outrageous humiliation. Mary Helen and Joy Nutt, who was staying with us at that time, had to go and try and mediate with the family.

Eventually, Maxine left for the north. We’re not sure if she availed herself of the underground railroad that operated during those years or not. Some Pakistani and Afghan men come across to many western women as handsome in the extreme. Romance flourishes and these Omar Khayyam types sweep them off their feet, propose marriage, and bring them back home. Once in Pakistan or Afghanistan, these brides soon discovered their husbands had a darker side. They became captives to a culture they didn’t understand. To rescue them and whisk them out of the country, a mysterious underground existed and probably still functions.

Encouraged by comments from missionary colleagues and Pakistani students, I set to work on the development of Theology, Part Two, and exploring options for a simpler course. We needed a course that would capture the interest of the students and plunge them into the joys of Christian living. I settled on developing a course based on the Christian armour passage in Ephesians six.

Bill Milton volunteered to help with TEST. Sadly, in mid-August—too late to do anything—I got word that my father had died. Then the annual monsoon hit with a vengeance and the terrible flood of 1973 occupied all our attention.

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