God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew

“Friends,” he said, “I’ve had the feeling all night that something very special is going to happen at this meeting. Someone out there in the audience wants to give himself to the mission field.”

“Both from Witte? Excellent! I want you to go back to Witte and hold an open-air meeting in front of the burgomaster’s house. You’ll be following the biblical pattern—Jesus told the disciples to spread the good news ‘beginning at Jerusalem.’ They had to start their preaching in their own backyard. . . .”

It’s hard to tell the girl you hope will marry you that you’ve suddenly decided to be a missionary. What kind of a life was that to offer her? Hard work, little pay, maybe disagreeable living conditions in some far-off place.

“One place I agree with Mr. Donker, though,” she said. “The place to start any ministry is at home. Why don’t you get a job right around Witte and consider that your mission field at first? You’ll discover quickly enough whether or not you’re meant to be a missionary.”

To my astonishment, a chorus of whistles greeted this introduction. Then, shouted suggestions. “Hey, Ruthie, how would you like him?” “Can’t tell by looking.” Then followed perversion and bathroom talk. Even my years in the army had not prepared me for the language I heard that morning.

I stood there, staring at her. In a room where the rest of the women wore enough powder and rouge to make up a circus, here was a girl without a trace of makeup. Only her own fresh young coloring set off those eyes that were never the same shade twice.

“Why, Grampa!” she said. “What old-fashioned ideas you have! Actually”—she leaned close to the little window—“they’re not a bad crowd. Most of them just need friends, and they don’t know any other way to get them.”

“I’m a Christian. That’s why I came to work here.”

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.

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.

Again I could scarcely believe I was hearing correctly. But I obeyed.

“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.

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.

The change in this girl was complete and it was permanent.

“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.”

Although I loved the new work, I felt more and more persuaded that I was being called to something else.

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.

For two years I spent every spare moment reading.

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.

exchequer.

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.

Did I really intend to be a missionary—or was it only a romantic dream with which I indulged myself?

“praying through.”

sticking with a prayer until he g...

I sat on the edge of a canal and began talking to God casually, as I might have talked with Thile.

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 w...

By the end of the week the incision, which had never healed properly, at last closed.

Every reasonable sign seemed to point away from the school in Glasgow. And yet, unmistakable inside me, sublimely indifferent to every human and logical objection, was a little voice that seemed to say “Go.” It was the voice that had called to me in the wind, the voice that had told me to speak out in the factory, the voice that never made sense at a logical level.

past on the wrong sides of the street.

The man smiled again and told me to wait a moment. When he returned, he had the news I was hoping for. It would be all right for me to stay here at headquarters for a short while, provided I was willing to work.

What made the two months difficult was learning English.

Morning Quiet Time—they got up long before breakfast to read their Bibles and pray before the business of the day began or any words were spoken.

“And don’t be surprised should you find a stray in your bed some night. It has happened. If by chance it happens again, there’s blankets and pillows in the living room, and you can make a bedroll by the fire.”

“When he wakes up, we’ll find him some food and some clothes,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “I don’t know where they’ll come from, but God will supply.”

From the profits of Mr. Hopkins’ construction business they kept just enough to supply their own modest needs.

I was used to doing these things at home; anyone in my family, male or female, would have done the same. But the Hopkinses, when they discovered what I had done, were thunderstruck. Either they were not used to the practical Dutch, or they were not used to having their own needs noticed, but at any rate they acted as though I had done something remarkable and asked me then and there to stay on as one of the family.

Indeed, in many ways Mrs. Hopkins reminded me of my own mother, both in her uncomplaining acceptance of pain and ill health, and in the door “never on the latch” to the needy.

As for Uncle Hoppy, knowing him was an education all by itself. He was a man utterly without self-consciousness. Sometimes when I drove with him in his truck to various construction sites around the city, I would beg him—since he was president of the company—at least to put on a tie and buy himself a coat with elbows in it.

“Before we get home we will meet the man who was supposed to be in that chair. And when we do, his heart will be prepared. Time and place are our own limitations, Andy; we mustn’t impose them upon God.”

“Have Faith In God.” This I knew was the main purpose of the two-year course at Glasgow: to help the student learn all he could about the nature of faith. To learn from books. To learn from others. To learn from his own encounters.

“The real purpose of this training,” Mr. Dinnen told me, “is to teach our students that they can trust God to do what He has said He would do. We don’t go from here into the traditional missionary fields, but into new territory. Our graduates are on their own. They cannot be effective if they are afraid or if they doubt that God really means what He says in His Word. So here we teach not so much ideas as trusting. I hope that this is what you are looking for in a school, Andrew.”

That was it! It wasn’t that I needed the security of a certain amount of money, it was that I needed the security of a relationship.

If I were going to give my life as a servant of the King, I had to know that King.

Suppose on the other hand that I were to discover God to be a Person, in the sense that He communicated and cared and loved and led. That was something quite different. That was the kind of King I would follow into any battle.

“Lord,” I said, “I need to know if I can trust You in practical things. I thank You for letting me earn the fees for the first semester. I ask You now to supply the rest of them. If I have to be so much as a day late in paying, I shall know that I am supposed to go back to the chocolate factory.”

It was a childish prayer, petulant and demanding. But then I was still a child in the Christian life. The remarkable thing is that God honored my prayer. But not without first testing me in some rather amusing ways.

In the afternoon we worked at practical skills: bricklaying, plumbing, carpentry, first aid, tropical hygiene, motor repair.