COMPUTER CONSULTANT TO OMF
On my way back to Singapore at the end of that
June, I had a nice visit with Mary Francis and her new family. For
the second time her mother instincts surfaced and she felt compelled
to take charge of the three children of Paul Aguilar, just as she had
the four of Bill Spears some ten years earlier. Paul was an associate
of hers in the social service department of the State of Colorado in
Denver, and his marriage had failed several years earlier. Paul’s
father had emigrated from Mexico as a young man, and Paul was a
native of the Denver area. Mary Francis seemed quite happy in her new
environment and had joined Paul’s Roman Catholic church, where
she had already become active. Mary Charlotte
refused to accept Paul and his children into the family, for the
triple reasons that he was Mexican-American, Roman Catholic, and had
lived with her for two years before they married.
Visit to Singapore
It was a new experience to be part of a mission
organization overseas. The OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship —
successor organization to Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission)
compound at 2 Cluny Road was well located, just off one of the main
streets (Orchard Road), and across Cluny Road from Singapore's
Botanical Gardens — a huge park attracting thousands of
visitors daily. The old manor house of the original property was
still being used for dining and living quarters, the library, and
several offices. Two new buildings had been added over the 30 years
of occupancy, and still another has been built since I left there in
1985. I had a dormitory room, the same one Mary Charlotte and I had
stayed in a few months earlier, and ate at the dining hall. My first
year there I put four inches on my waist line from the rice twice a
day!
Jim Nesbitt was in the process of acquiring two North
Star computers, one with a hard disk. I urged him to hold off until
we had analyzed the true needs for the headquarters, but he went
ahead and took delivery of the two machines. They turned out to be
lemons, and the Fellowship spent over $10,000 needlessly. I saw this
pattern repeated in the USA and UK offices as well, illustrating a
principle that seems to be ingrained in human nature. When we are
faced with a situation in which we feel inadequate, we try to show we
know what we are doing by plunging ahead. It is even more a tendency
among Christians in management positions, because they can persuade
themselves that they have God’s blessing, and that He will make
everything come out right. Sometimes they are correct, and He does
make it come out right, but more often, in my limited experience, He
had not been the directing force, but rather the ego of the person
concerned, and a disaster results.
At Work in Singapore
Jim wanted me to start with the personnel records,
since these were maintained separately in the headquarters and in the
main offices of the 18 countries of the Fellowship. This resulted in
duplication of effort and conflicting entries. He had made a fairly
in-depth study of the work there in the HQ personnel office, but he
had not examined any of the field or home country offices (except
Japan, of course). The type of program he suggested seemed hopelessly
inadequate to me, but I knew too little of the details to fault him.
I did study a number of records, and called attention to the large
amount of missing data which he said was kept in the field and home
offices. While Jim was responsible for finance and administration,
another man headed the personnel department, and his needs for
information were quite different from what Jim was proposing. I tried
to point out to Jim that with computers you cannot take things
piece-meal but have to integrate the whole area, and his office did
not have the whole picture. It ended up that I was to make a round of
the larger offices among the mission fields and home countries, and
collect up-to-date personnel data on the members of the Fellowship.
Several airlines were offering around-the-world tickets for $2000 and
allowed six months for completion. I chose the Northwest and Cathay
Pacific combination, as that would enable me to visit Thailand, the
Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, the US and England — all
the larger offices.
Around the World to Gather Data
I left in early November, spending 5 to 10 days in each office,
depending on its size. While in Bangkok, I had a bad case of the flu,
and ran a fever for four days. One of the missionaries that I thought
was a medical doctor (he was a theology doctor) provided me with an
antibiotic and a thermometer, and told me to take the pills until my
temperature went down. On the fourth day I began to feel much better,
but the temperature stayed the same. On the fifth day I felt very
good, but still the temperature was 101 or so. Then I realized hat I
had to shake the thermometer before using it! Of course by now my
temperature was normal. I was there when President Reagan sent our
forces into the island of Grenada in the Caribbean, but the Thai
papers had little to say about it. My room was beside the bathroom,
which I had to use during the night. Once I locked myself out of my
room, and had to sleep on a couch in the parlor below until people
got up in the morning. I had bought one of the early laptop
computers, printing the information and recording on small
stenographic type cassettes. Even though I had the flu I kept
working, because my schedule gave no leeway. I managed to get the job
finished in Bangkok and moved on to Manila, and then to Taiwan. I was
to leave the OMF guest house in Taiwan on the US Thanksgiving Day.
When I came to breakfast I found a small US flag at my plate and a
freshly made pumpkin pie! And I was the only American there. Since
northern Japan (Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaiddo) was my
destination and it was approaching winter-time, I needed warm
pajamas, sweaters and a coat. I bought all of these items at
unbelievably low prices in a market in Taipei that specializes in
mill overruns — $2 to $5 for sweater, $25 for a heavy coat. I
really used them in Hokkaiddo, as they had snow on the ground before
I left. Once again I stayed with the Williams’ in Sapporo, and
it was good to see a familiar face again.
I went to Toronto on
the way to Miami (such is the magic of the around-the-world ticket)
and had the chance to attend the Living Christmas Tree presentation
at the People’s Church there. The OMF personnel in Toronto
included an Australian, a New Zealander, an American, an Englishman,
and a South African — only one native Canadian in the whole
office management staff. The treasurer/office manager was from
Britain, and he had gotten himself a computer and programmed his
personnel work on it. He was very proud of it, but it was horribly
inefficient and required his constant attention, but it did get the
job done. He gave me quite an earful of the fiasco I could expect
when I got to the US office. He had been called in for advice —
after they got into trouble, and they had ignored him. His picture
was not too far from the truth, as I found out in January when I got
to Robesonia (PA). I had planned to be home for Christmas, and it was
a real joy. I had only lived in our new house for nine days in June,
and it was like somebody else’s at first.
We
had a real fun Christmas party at the home of Fritz and Anne Kalmey,
(see left) which was to become an annual event. Up to this
point in my service to OMF I had seen more of the Fellowship than
most of its members, and had gotten to know people from almost all
the nine home countries. They are wonderful people, really dedicated
to their calling. Everyone from the General Director to the newest
member receives exactly the same personal allowance. However, the
allowances for food, shelter, utilities, and transportation vary
widely from family to family and country to country. They are
forbidden to ask for money or even to tell of needs unless asked,
because of Hudson Taylor’s principle of depending wholly on the
Lord for support. One of his maxims is “The Lord’s work,
done in the Lord’s way, will receive the Lord’s support.”
It does, too, as they have proved for 125 years.
The Problem at Robesonia
The US main office of OMF had long been in Philadelphia, but had moved to this
small town of Robesonia in eastern Pennsylvania because a supporter
had donated ground. Sale of the Philadelphia property provided the
funds to build the office building, but homes had to be rented within
Robesonia or nearby towns. The guest house where I lived was eight
miles away, and was operated by Bob and Fran Brunner, a retired
couple from Clearwater (FL). The computer situation was just as had
as Mike had painted it to me in his Toronto office the month before.
It seems that Dan Bacon, the Home Director, had been all charged up
to computerize by attending a convention of mission organizations,
and had urged his Canadian-born treasurer to “get going.”
This dear man, utterly ignorant of computer usage, encountered a man
in his church who operated a computer service bureau, using a new IBM
computer called System 34. He contracted for two of these systems,
and for the service bureau to program their first operation,
marketing the books sponsored by the Fellowship. The total investment
was in excess of $50,000, as I remember it. They were having much
difficulty getting this first program to work that they were not even
trying to prepare the other applications, and their expensive
equipment was largely idle. Dan told me that he "would do
anything to get out it this mess."
I Begin the Implementation of FREDA
The thought struck me that I could be of far greater benefit to the
Fellowship by working here than if I continued with the largely
undefined applications at Singapore, so I called my new boss (Jim
Nesbitt had wound up his term at the end of 1983 and Rob Davis, an
Australian, had succeeded him as Director of Finance and
Administration in Singapore) and got permission to stay three months
in Robesonia to work out a plan for that office. IBM had recently
started marketing their Personal Computer, known as the PC (for
Personal Computer), and already programs and auxiliary equipment were
available for it. One of the serious weaknesses of IBM’s System
34 was that it was completely incompatible with even the other IBM
systems, and there was no software available for it. Not so with the
PC — it was the most compatible desktop system available, then
and for many years, as it became the industry standard. I urged Dan
to sell one of his Systems 34 and use the money to buy two PCs, one
with a “hard” disk, a storage device that held hundreds
of times the amount of data the “floppy” disks could
hold. For the program language we would use COBOL, the language used
by 80% of the world's data processing installations, and which had
become available for the IBM PC. Dan approved the plan and Alan
Baxter (the office accountant) and I ordered our equipment and
started planning the applications. I had already worked out a
comprehensive plan in outline for an integrated family of programs to
handle all the data processing needs of the entire Fellowship at all
its offices, and intended to initiate that plan here with the
specific applications for the US office: mailing, donation
receipting, and magazine subscription handling, with OMF books to be
added last. Each of these jobs was presently handled by semi-manual
means by a different person on the staff, each with a separate name
and address file of mostly the same people. One of the economies of
the new system was to consolidate these files into one, which could
be maintained (updating with new people and changing addresses) with
far less human effort. Three months proved to be too little time to
get the mailing application working smoothly, but it did work and
Alan thought he could keep it going after I had to leave, which was
the end of March.
My next stop was England, where the OMF main
office was in a town called Seven Oaks, about 40 miles southeast of
London. They occupied a building that looked like it had been built
by King Arthur, and their office procedures were only a little more
modern. They had, of course, the same applications that the US office
had, but there were many differences in detail. British postal
regulations and set-up are quite different from those in the US, and
even donation receipting had major variations from the US model. A
new treasurer, Tim Bigden, had just joined the Fellowship, and he was
gung-ho to computerize. His ideas were miles apart from mine, and he
showed no interest in changing. I did my best to convince him of the
merit of my approach, but must confess utter failure, and Tim turned
out to be my Nemesis in OMF. He, too, had been taken in by a man who
operated a programming service and marketed hardware, and Tim had me
visit both the sales office and a “satisfied” customer of
this firm. I wasn‘t at all convinced that OMF should go that
way, and Tim himself changed course a few months later, but not to my
proposed Fellowship-wide system.
My around-the-world trip
culminated in a non-stop Cathay Pacific flight from London to Hong
Kong, over old China, a 13-hour journey, followed by an 8-hour wait
in Hong Kong for a "connecting" flight to Singapore. For
the first time in my life, I was the first person to receive baggage,
and walked through customs to find Rob Davis there to meet me. I had
met him in Toronto and had dinner with him and his new wife, Colleen,
with their seven children from the two families. Colleen’s
former husband had been murdered in his missionary home in Thailand,
and Marge, Rob’s Canadian wife, had recently died of cancer.
The three months at the Singapore HQ were devoted to procuring a new
computer, programming two small applications for the director of
personnel and one for the mailing of directories of the Fellowship.
Even before we had these programs fully checked out, Robesonia called
for help with the mailing program I had left with Alan to finish up.
So, on July 11th, I left Singapore for the third time, this time
directly to Robesonia. After resolving the crisis there, I spent the
next several months going back and forth between Homestead and
Robesonia, as new problems came up that required my presence to
resolve. The donation receipting program turned out to be one of the
most complex programs I had undertaken since the mid-fifties, and it
kept me going 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. I managed to find time
in August with Mary Charlotte to join the Redlands Community Church
(PCA) where many of our best friends (the Polks, the Londons, the
Schmidts, the Kalmeys) had joined, leaving the Homestead FPC so we
felt we belonged there. The church had been started only two years
earlier as a new church of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
This denomination, founded in 1973, was composed of the more
conservative and Bible-believing churches which had broken away from
the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) because of its
impending merger with the PCUSA.
Marion,
Mary Jo, Margaret and Clyde visited us that summer, and I took this
picture of them plus Mary Charlotte.
Into Production at Last
We started using the donation receipting program
on line in late October, and I went home with the promise to return
when trouble developed. That did not take long, and I was back and
forth several times in November and early December. I had to return
to Robesonia right after Christmas to complete the year-end programs,
as these had been put aside until they would be needed. We managed to
get all the necessary outputs, but the programs were far from cleaned
up. A lot of the trouble was caused by defective records in the data
bank put in by programs with bugs. Even after the bugs were cleaned
up, the records were still there, and could be identified only when
they caused trouble, as many of them did in the year-end
processing.
In April 1985 I went back to Singapore for the
last time (although I did not know it then), and spent the time
training the accountant and his wife in the use of the computer and
existing programs. We worked on two additional ones, but only one got
implemented — a program for the quarterly allocation of funds
to all the budget accounts of the Fellowship world-wide. This last
application, previously done manually and requiring two weeks or
more, would be done in a day or so with the computer’s help. My
two years were up July 1st, and Rob Davis thought my future service
to the Fellowship should be concentrated on the home offices,
particularly US and South Africa, which had expressed a desire to use
FREDA and had purchased a good computer for the application. A call
for help had come from Robesonia and although we had just finished
the second application, I had to go. So I left on a China Airlines
flight on the 11th of July that deposited me in New York exactly 24
hours later, having stopped in Hong Kong, Taipei (for a change of
plane), and Anchorage, Alaska. Bob and Fran Brunner met me at the
Kennedy Airport and took me to Robesonia. I got back to Homestead a
week later.
The Second Family Reunion
Timing was perfect for Mary Charlotte and me to take part in the
second reunion of the Mitchell clan, held in Frederick MD over the
week-end of August 17-18, l985.I had completed my work in Singapore
and it was not yet time to go to South Africa to program FREDA for
the OMF office there. Whereas Marion had organized the first one on
Mother’s 88th birthday, July 9th, 1968, Margaret was the genius
who put this one together, with Marion’s help. Fifty-four of
Mother’s progeny and spouses were there, nine more than at the
earlier gathering. Twelve from the earlier group were missing, by
death, by divorce, and by circumstance. These were more than offset
by the attendance of one former and four new spouses, two then-living
and nine newly born great-grandchildren, four newly born
great-greats, and five ‘honorary” greats (adopted or
in-laws). I will indicate these newcomers by putting their first
names in italics. Margaret had arranged for most of the younger
families to stay in the dormitories of the local college, whereas us
oldsters put up at hotels. Marion’s family included Morgan,
Evelyn, Gregory and Lisa, with Lisa’s husband Glenn Eason and
their two daughters Rachel and Emily; and Margery and Tom Henney with
eight of their nine: Margery, Barbara and her husband Dana Wright and
their son Michael, Mike, Billy, Chuck, Genie, Mary Garner and her son
Yancey III, and Patti. Margaret’s son Bobby’s first wife
Christine and son Robbie and wife Donna and Bobby’s second wife
Nan’s son Scott were newcomers to the reunion; Blake’s
widow Adele and their two adopted children Susanna and Bruce
attended; Lynne was there with her three children: Jimmy, Greg and
Kerry; and Caroline attended with her two boys Timothy and Michael.
Our family was complete with Will, Judy, and our grandchildren Mark
and Emily on hand to meet their many, many cousins, as were Mary
Francis and her new husband Paul Aguilar and his three children,
Indie (Paul), Nikki and her son Sebastian, and Alicia. Mary Jo, Clyde and son Steve and wife
Lynn with their boys Graham, Colby and Ryan were the only
representatives of the Balch clan present. Also present were Ralph
and Ray Rohrer, parents of Christine Caruthers, and Carl Seeber and
his wife and two children. Missing from those in the first reunion
because of death were Mother, Walter, Bob, Bobby and Blake; because
of divorce Jim Shaw, Speedy Fee, and Howard Doran; and because of
circumstance Kelly Huff Johnson, her husband Richard and children,
Cathy Henney Hummel and son Isaac, Mary Garner’s husband Yancey
Jr., Chuck and Carol Balch and their four children: Glenn, Alan,
Laura and Mark; and Randy and his new wife Cyn Balch.
Margaret
identified the people as follows (left to right, front to back)):
Mrs. Seeber, Mike Fee, Tim Fee, Greg Huff, Paul Aguilar, Lynne Shaw,
John Seeber, Paul (Indie) Aguilar, Jim Shaw, Mary Aguilar, Caroline
Fee, Chris Doub, David Seeber, Scott Caruthers, Mike Henney, Alicia
Aguilar, Nicki Aguilar, Margaret Caruthers, Adele Caruthers, Mary
Charlotte Mitchell, Susanne Caruthers, Herb Mitchell (me), Emily
Eason, Emily Mitchell, Margery Henney, Marion Miller, Tom Henney,
Lynne Balch, Rachel Eason, Mary Jo Balch, Clyde Balch, Judy Mitchell,
Steve Balch, Graham Balch, Will Mitchell, Barbara Wright, Carl
Seeber, Mike Wright, Patricia Stewart, Morgan Huff, Evelyn Huff,
Jeanie Henney, Lisa Eason, Chuck Henney, Ryan Balch, Colby
Balch, Mark Mitchell, Patty Henney, Margie Henney, and Glenn
Eason.
It was a fun time. The reunion was a success, and I am
glad I went; it made me feel uncomfortable not to know the names of
some of my own grand- nieces and -nephews, not to mention several of
the new spouses. After a big banquet at which us oldsters presided
(see photo below) in the dining hall of the college, we got
together in groups to get better acquainted with one another. It was
good to renew acquaintances with many whom we seldom saw, and
particularly to see how many have made computers a major part of
their lives, as I have. I remember particularly talking computers
with Morgan, Lynne and Will.
The "elders" of the family all sat at the head
table (see left, left to right, seated): Margaret, Marion, me, Mary Jo;
(standing) Clyde and Mary Charlotte. I didn't suspect then
while sitting beside Marion at the dinner Saturday night and again at
the brunch Sunday morning,that those would be my last opportunities
to visit with her in this life. One sadness was the obvious coolness
of Mary Charlotte toward Paul and his children.
Mary Charlotte
and I had a nice visit with Margaret after the group broke up Sunday
afternoon, while Will and Mary Francis went with their families to
sightsee in Baltimore. We talked about the relatively few times we
had visited one another. One of these occasions was at the end of
March 1979, at the time of the Three Mile Island disaster. Mary
Charlotte and I had been on our way to visit Margaret in Newton (NJ)
for the first time since returning from South Africa, and also for
the first time since Bob’s death on December 3, 1978. We passed
within ten miles of the Three Mile Island atomic energy power station
right after its near melt-down occurred, while on our way to visit
friends in Mohr (PA), just 50 miles away. Then on April 2nd we had
lunch with John and Kay Mauchly in their home in Ambler PA. John was
so glad to see us that he kept us all afternoon after our lunch
together, showing me his computer set-up and telling me what had
happened to all the old-timers at Eckert-Mauchly since I had left. It
was a delightful occasion, and the last time I saw John before his
death not long after. We finally got to Margaret’s home well
after dinnertime, but we had a good visit nevertheless. We also
talked about the recent annual gatherings of the six of us left in
our generation — Marion, Margaret, Mary Jo and Clyde, and Mary
Charlotte and me. I remember particularly remarking that I felt I
would not see Marion again in this life, to Margaret’s
astonishment, but I certainly didn’t know how right my
prediction was. The next day Mary Charlotte left with Will to spend
the week with his family while I went to Robesonia for one of my last
sessions with FREDA.
After
a week-end with Will and family in Evansville, Mary Charlotte and I
accepted Morgan and Evelyn’s (see right) invitation to
stop by for lunch on our way back to Florida from Evansville. We had
a very nice leisurely visit, at which Morgan said he had talked with
Marion, who had entered the hospital two days before, but was now
feeling much better. We left for Homestead about 3 pm and didn’t
know until we arrived home Wednesday evening that Marion had died
just four hours after we had left Morgan’s house. Margaret and
Margery were visiting her, and left for a delayed supper after she
had apparently gone to sleep, but when they returned the nurse told
them she had died, apparently from fluid on the lung. It was not
possible for us to attend the funeral, which was held Thursday
morning, so all we could do was to ask Margaret to get flowers for
us, and to explain the reason for our absence. Marion was buried
beside her husband Walter and her mother in the Mount Olivet Cemetery
in Baltimore.
Back to South Africa Once Again
Mary
Charlotte decided to accompany me this time, and we made our plans
for a 6-week stay, with two weeks in England with the Emery’s.
In the picture at the left are (left to Right): Pam's mother, Mary
Charlotte, me, Dot Emery, Pam and Tony Emery. It had been only a
little over two years since we had left, but it was good to get back.
John de Kock was the OMF office manager for South Africa and he was
keen to make the new system as productive as possible. He increased
the number of variables in the statistics produced on donors, and
also asked for automatic generation of individualized thank-you
letters for donors — in either of two languages, English or
Afrikaans. These changes proved more difficult than I had expected,
though we got them incorporated, but they were not fully checked out
when my time was up. John had been so busy with one crisis after
another, that he had little time to learn about the system. We
arranged a means of consultation by telephone between my home and his
office, and I maintained an up-to-date copy of his programs and data
base, so that I could check out his problems, when he sent me the
printouts by mail. He got into production soon after I left and
managed to keep going thereafter (still was, five years later!). Mary
Charlotte had a ball with her friends, but since we had no car (we
borrowed a mission car from time to time), she either had to walk or
get a ride from a friend. We lived in a flat over the OMF office,
which meant walk-up for her, in addition to the fact that the office
itself was on a gentle slope up from the main road and town of
Claremont, where she did her shopping. I mention this, because I am
sure that the unusual exertion she had to make to get around
triggered her bout with heart trouble soon after we returned to
Homestead.
I didn’t get home soon enough for Robesonia,
which had been shut down by a problem several days before I could get
there. The problem was not hard to solve, and I chided Alan Baxter
for not fixing it himself. Without dwelling in the subject, I had
been disappointed at the general unwillingness of the the staff (Alan
excluded) to learn what they needed to know about computer data
processing in general and FREDA in particular. None of them had
bothered to study the manuals I had written for them, and they
invariably threw up their hands whenever a computer stoppage
occurred. It was painfully evident that the computerization was
something only Dan Bacon really wanted, and he didn’t want it
badly enough to find out how to make it work. He was the source of
real difficulty, when he sided with the women who hated the computer,
and refused to back up the office manager when he wanted to change
procedures to make things run more smoothly. Of all the Christian
managers I had encountered at St. James and in OMF, there were only
two or three that had the slightest interest in learning how to cope
with computers and computer programs. As long as I was the only one
involved in the development of the project, they were very
enthusiastic about it. But when it came time for them to participate,
they invariably tried to run the other way. I suppose this is
inevitable. Until the new generation that grew up with computers
reaches management levels in Christian organizations, computerization
will be more of a catch-word than a fact. In late October I asked for
a meeting of the staff, where I told them that I had done all I
could, the rest was up to them. I chided them on being so unwilling
to learn, and told them that ignorance was a sin — it put Jesus
Christ on the cross! I bade them farewell and promised to be
available by telephone whenever they needed me, but no more visits to
Robesonia.
My globe-trotting days for OMF were over, and I
could settle down to a peaceful (?) life in Homestead. Phone calls
from South Africa were almost weekly, and twice I had to rebuild
their data base when they fouled it up. But no month went by without
full performance of both the US and South African systems, even
though problems were still occurring in both.
Mary Charlotte’s Illness
In February 1986, Mary Charlotte called me at 6am when I was in the bathroom
saying she was having a heart attack! When I reached her she was
unconscious, so I immediately called 911 for paramedics, and then
called her doctor, Bob Hess. The paramedics had her at the
hospital in 15 minutes, and I found Dr. Bob waiting for us there. She
had recovered consciousness, and seemed to be no worse for the
experience, but Dr. Bob had her tested nevertheless. Her most deviant
sign was very low potassium, but there seemed no sign of a heart
problem. After a few days of observation in the hospital he sent her
home, but she continued to deteriorate, and her legs started to
swell. Soon she could hardly walk, and felt weak and debilitated. Dr.
Bob called in a heart specialist, who persuaded her to have a cardiac
catheterization This disclosed a serious condition that had
apparently existed all her life — the blood pressure in the
heart-lung system was four times normal. This meant that the heart
was working all the time at near capacity just for normal breathing,
so when she needed more oxygen there was no way the heart could
respond. Accordingly, the oxygen content of the blood would drop, and
she would faint. This condition, furthermore, could not be treated —
only the side effects could. One of the side effects was the swelling
of the legs due to accumulated fluid in the circulatory system. The
treatment was diuretic pills, which cause the need for frequent
urination to prevent the build-up of such fluid. Slowly the diuretic
pills got rid of the fluid, and she began to feel better.
I Become Involved in Church Work
Mary Charlotte had been attending a newly-formed Presbyterian church
(Redlands Community Church) ever since we had returned from our
second domicile in South Africa, and I went there with her whenever I
was home. We joined in August 1984, both because we liked the pastor
Andy Silman and because many of our friends from the First
Presbyterian Church were already members there. I was invited to
teach in the adult Sunday School, and greatly enjoyed preparing and
presenting several of the great books of the Bible (Romans,
Revelation, and Daniel), finding to be true the allegation that the
teacher always learns more than the pupil. When we had first come to
Homestead, I had joined with other men in a Bible study breakfast at
the Howard Johnson restaurant every Tuesday morning. This had fallen
away by now, but another such group of men met every Wednesday
morning at the home of Eric Schmitt, a farmer friend in the Redlands
Church. This second group provided me with some of the most enjoyable
male fellowship I have ever in my life known, and I can recommend the
practice to any man who feels lonely to find a suitable group of this
kind. Most of my closest friends in Homestead were regulars there,
and many of us took turns teaching one or another of the books of the Bible.
When
my globe-trotting days diminished sufficiently, two of my friends
from the First Presbyterian Church, Dr. Bob Douglas (see left) and
Jack McClure joined with me in reviving the Tuesday morning meeting,
emphasizing prayer for the sick rather than Bible study. We soon got
tired of Ho-Jo’s, however, and had our meetings alternately in
Bob’s home and my home. My culinary skills were stretched to
the limit to provide oatmeal, coffee, toast and orange juice, but Bob
was a gourmet chef and often regaled us with pancakes, waffles,
bacon, scrambled eggs and other breakfast goodies.
At one of
the Tuesday mornings in Bob’s house we had a guest from the
First Presbyterian Church who had been involved in prison ministry at
the nearby state prison, an activity I had wanted to undertake for
several years. He gave me the name of the prison chaplain and
suggested I call this man about participation. I did so the following
day, and learned there was an urgent need for another teacher at the
Friday night Bible study in the prison chapel — would I be
interested in taking it, starting immediately? Upon my enthusiastic
acceptance, the chaplain invited me to come to the prison the
following day for an interview — he took no one sight unseen! —
which I did, initiating an opportunity for me to nurture a group of
inmate Christians for the next several years, until we left
Homestead. Bob Douglas then took over my group, after having
substituted for me on my several periods of absence.
Here is
another example of God’s working. I had wanted to become
involved in prison ministry, but didn’t know how to go about
it. Just this one time, this guest at our prayer breakfast appears to
give me the needed contact at the exact time the chaplain needed a
Bible teacher!
On May 1, 1986, the church had a picnic, and I
had a chance to talk with the pastor, Andy Silman. I told him that I
would like to have something more to do in the church, and listed a
number of things I thought I could handle, including visiting the
sick and shut-in. I think that last was all he heard, because three
days later I was officially appointed church visitor, complete with
calling cards that said so. I was given five people to call on
regularly, four terminally ill and one incapacitated. The first
terminally ill was Bill Steele, who had throat cancer. I visited him
every week or so, as he desired, until he died in June. I visited
Mabel O’Brien at her home in June, and twice in the hospital,
where she died of abdominal cancer in August. Frank Tye, who had
Parkinson’s disease and was nearly blind from glaucoma, was a
very dear chap, whose twice weekly visits brought me greater
blessings than it could have brought him. By November, he had
deteriorated to the point his wife could no longer care for him, and
the church helped her to pay for a nursing home for him. One week
later he fell out of his wheel chair and broke his hip. After having
the hip repaired, he was sent to a skilled nursing center, where he
died three months later. Norman Brenner was a Christian Jew, ordained
to a Christian church, who had bone cancer and a mild case of
Parkinson’s, and was being treated at the Veterans’
Hospital in Miami. I drove him there many times for treatment. He
died in September 1987. The fifth person was a woman, Ruth Simpson,
who was crippled with muscular distrophy. It was arrested, but she
had difficulty in getting about. She is still going strong, but the
other four are only memories. Each one of them was a firm believer
that their death would usher them into God’s presence in
Heaven. Their passing was a blessing, since it was a release from the
terrible suffering that accompanies cancer and Parkinson’s. I
hope I never complain about my aches and pains as old age creeps up
on me, after seeing the brave way all four of these saints faced
suffering and death.
Our Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary
June
20, 1986, was our fiftieth wedding anniversary, and heart problem or
no, Mary Charlotte wanted a proper celebration. She planned the whole
thing herself, and she did a beautiful job of it. From the mailing of
the invitations to the entertainment at the banquet, it was a
magnificent affair. She had invited over 110, including some people
who were little more than acquaintances and some of these failed to
show spoiling her enjoyment of the affair just a little. We were
given some beautiful gifts, all utilizing gold in one way or another,
and the whole thing will live in our memories for the rest of our
lives. We deliberately did not notify our children or sisters, as we
didn’t want them to feel obligated to come from such far
distances as Indiana, Michigan and Maryland. It so happened that Judy
and Emily were to be in Orlando (Disney World) with a church group,
so they rented a car and drove down from Orlando to represent the
family.
In August, John de Kock arrived for four weeks of
study in my home so that he could qualify himself in FREDA, something
he was unable to do the preceding year when I was implementing it in
his office in South Africa. I had asked Mary Charlotte to restrict
herself to one meal a day for the three of us, and to allow me to
look after John for breakfast and lunch. She allowed me to do the
breakfast but insisted on an elaborate lunch and dinner every day.
Early in the second week she announced that she was exhausted and
couldn’t go on much longer. John and I did a hurried
consultation, coming up with the plan that I would drive him to
Robesonia (which he originally planned to visit after leaving me) and
return, taking eight days starting Sunday. This would give Mary
Charlotte a rest, and she could cope with the remaining two weeks. I
had to rent a car for her, as I took our Fairmont. We stopped on the
way north at Disney World and Epcot (which I had not seen), and at
the Kennedy Space Center on the way back, coming through Washington
so John could see our stately government buildings. John went back to
South Africa a very tired man, but he was able to cope with his
system until we finally got all the bugs out. It was still running in
1990.
Although my appointment as associate member (computer
consultant) in OMF didn’t expire until June 30, 1987. my work
was essentially done with the training of John de Kock. When Alan
Baxter left Robesonia in mid-1986, the work was taken over by John
Cherry. I invited John to spend a week with me in Homestead in
January 1987, so that he could make changes himself in the FREDA
programs, should that be necessary. In the fall of 1986 John had
attended a meeting of the computer people in OMF called by Tim Bigden
in London, and there the Fellowship dropped FREDA, and planned a
do-it-yourself approach for each country, rather than the Fellowship-wide
system I had proposed. This confirmed the growing feeling among
the OMF managers that it would be better for the amateurs in each OMF
country to learn what they could about computer usage and use that
knowledge themselves, rather than use the professional approach that
I had proposed, that would require professionally trained people to
maintain it. Robesonia has since abandoned FREDA and uses a
home-grown system, but I don’t know how it compares with FREDA.
South Africa was still using FREDA in 1990.
These four years
had their share of success and failure, hope fulfilled and
disappointment. I would like to think that the net effect was
beneficial for OMF and its people, but I’m afraid that judgment
can only be made by our Lord Himself. I’m glad I undertook the
assignment, and know that Robesonia got four years of usage of FREDA,
the last two of which were error-free, to say nothing of South
Africa. I’m satisfied to wait until I get to Heaven to receive
any reward I may be entitled to.
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