It was a beautiful
late Spring weekend in 1956. On Friday night a small group of members of Zion
Lutheran Church, Glendale, CA invited Jane and me to a member home for
wonderful steak dinner. As the evening drew to a close they wheeled out as
beautiful new television set. It was a gift to us, our very first TV. Surprise!
On Saturday I was on
the roof of our house with a ladder next to the chimney and was installing the antennae,
which was needed to get reception in those days. When the mailman came I
noticed he had a big fat brown envelope. I glanced at it, and saw it was from the
national office of The Lutheran Church. I assumed it was just another mass mailing of church literature, completed
the installation of the TV antenna and then joyfully sat down and enjoyed our
very own TV. After dinner I decided to open the mail. Turned out the mailing
was to me personally. More surprisingly it actually contained a call to service
(a job opportunity in everyday lay language) And it was not an ordinary call.
It was a call to serve as an educational missionary in Hong Kong. Surprise!
Hong Kong. I didn’t
even know where it was. I had never expressed any interest in overseas work. I
had not been interviewed. I knew no Chinese. Yet here it was-and the accompanying
material made a big point . This is urgent. Please come and come quickly. We
have already opened a few schools; another big one has been approved and most
of the construction money promised. We need you to coordinate this whole
program.
We dug out a National Geographic magazine, which had a
feature on Hong Kong. It located Hong Kong for us and identified it as a
British Crown Colony. It was being inundated as a refugee haven for the
hundreds of thousands who were fleeing Mao Tse Tung who was making China a
terrible Communist state. And discovered that we actually knew three
missionaries already in Hong Kong.
The details for the call were pretty straightforward. The
call was to me (Mel) but Jane was expected to also carry on “missionary duties”
but was not to be compensated for them. The salary was $3,000.00 per year plus
adequate housing. The deal was that the Mission Board paid for our passage
there-and we were expected to serve a full five years before we were to be
granted our first furlough back to the States. We were expected to learn the
local language which was Cantonese. Ordinarily newcomers were allowed to spend
most of their early time in language study-but in our case the demands of the
job were such that I was to both study language and carry on the usual duties
of my assignment.
This was, of course, a major life changing decision for us
to make. It had appeared that my future lay in teaching at the college level(I
had done that the previous two summers).I was in the very early stages of
exploring getting my PhD D at UCLA. Of course it meant leaving behind our
family and Jane was the only daughter of her parents. David was a much-loved
grandson. Also, David was suffering from severe asthma. Jane had been
experiencing some undiagnosed ailments and the level of medical service in Hong
Kong at that time was just developing. We had been in Glendale serving Zion for
only two years.
In retrospect Jane claims that she knew within 48 hours that
I was going to accept that call. She may have been right because in any event I
soon announced to the congregation that I was leaving my position as principal
and teacher at Zion. We had decided. We felt this was where God wanted us.
There were challenges ahead. We were going. And so we started getting rid of most
of our earthly possessions. We got our medical shots. We planned a
trans-Pacific voyage on a passenger ship and were headed for a new life. It was
scary. It was exciting. And it was all (we believed) a God imposed surprise!
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