Once again I'm going to quote from the human rights report I wrote about 15 years ago. However, I'm not to provide some details (e.g., some people's names, many of whom are consequential anyway as far as the gist of my story goes). Some of this text
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After a week of orientation at the [mission] headquarters... we left for Europe in the beginning of June. There were about 20 of us. We flew to Luxembourg and drove from there to [Vienna] which would be our base for the summer.
I was on one of the two refugee camp teams working in [name of town], Austria. The two teams alternated weeks there. Other than that I worked one week at an evangelical summer camp in Poland... I also traveled in Czechoslovakia setting up meetings... Finally, I made 1 trip to Budapest bringing in Christian literature.
We stuck to ourselves, per instructions by our leaders and didn't mix with the Austrians or other Americans. We even had our own church service[s], as, we were told, everyone would know what we were there for.
It was that summer I also had my first contact with [the mission I worked 2 years with in Vienna]. I was sent to their office in one of the missionary vans to pick up a "light table" (for drafting). I didn't really remember anything of that trip - the people or what we discussed - but I later realized that they sent me there on purpose as they wanted me to work there. When I returned to the States one of [the mission's] workers made a point of showing me [the Vienna mission's] brochures and describing their work to me.
Then from there I went to Hamburg, Germany, where I spent a week with a dear elderly couple working with [a different mission to Eastern Europe]... George [the husband] was a Russian Baptist pastor and [his wife], of Czech descent, was the sister of a lady in my church [where I went to Bible school]... They worked among emigrants from various countries and shippers and truckers from E. Eur. and the Soviet Union. They also travelled into the Soviet Union, although less and less as they got older.
I would say that this trip to Europe was a trial for me - I was trying to find out how I could best fit into E. Eur. ministry, what the needs were, what my spiritual gifts and interests were. But my German studies were also a training time - acquiring another useful skill.
I decided to study German because it seemed that few worked solely in the Soviet Union - access was too difficult - and people in the satellite countries didn't like to use Russian. I wanted to study in E. Germany to experience what it's like living in a Communist country so that I could relate to the people I was working with more. But I was still pretty much a beginner, having only studied the language half a year, and to study German in E. Germany you had to be at the graduate level. So I settled for West Berlin with trips to E. Germany.
I studied at the Goethe Institut in Berlin from the beginning of Sept. to the end of Oct. We had classes every morning for four hours. I also attended the Evangelische Freikirche Gemeinde Schoneberg district. I enjoyed this church and met once with Pastor Brandt. I also volunteered three afternoons a week at the Diakonewerke Bethel, an evangelical residence for the mentally handicapped. I cleaned and set up for dinner in the dining room for the workers, for their evening meal.
I had come to Berlin knowing that there was a seminary in E. Berlin, which I soon found at Georgenkirchestrasse, 70. I visited there often and several of us became friends. Once I visited a Baptist retreat in E. Berlin... Later, when I was living in Vienna, I was prohibited from the mission from going to visit Sabine and Thomas Guenzel, friends from the seminary...
From Berlin I went to England. I lived with the Research Director's family actually on the grounds of the [research center], who provided me with room and board, for which I paid a weekly fee. My work at the college was [as a] volunteer. I monitored Soviet newspapers for articles related to religion in the country. Then I updated (re-wrote) the second half of [a report on religion in the Soviet Union using their files]. My last assignment was to translate some letters from believers in the Soviet Union into English[, one of which was later published in a mission's newsletter].
I [volunteered there] thinking that I might be interested in that kind of work. But I saw that [they] were really an ecumenical organization, and not at all what I would call evangelical, and I wanted to be involved more in evangelical mission work... I also was continuing my search for how I could best be involved in E. Eur. missions. When I had time I read through [their] collection of newsletters from missions and myself collected quite a list of missions which I was to use later in my continued search [for how to be involved in E. Eur. missions].
I returned to [where I did my Bible school studies] in the beginning of December, making my stay in Europe 6 months. Then I left for Seattle to spend Christmas with my family. I was there for about a month.
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End of citation.
I'd like to end this quote with a discussion of some of the details in it.
1. At this point it seems (from this vantage point) that qualms were on my end rather then on than from a mission. I was still coming at this, decisions about the specifics of my career, pretty straight on. I don't mean that I was transparent regarding my questions, but that I was just approaching this from trying to find a good fit between my values and what I thought were my strengths and trying to find a mission and specific ministry to link up with.
In turn, however, I also think that problems I saw with the missions were things that were inherent in themselves and as such had nothing to do with how they treated me specifically, because I was being treated pretty well personally. So you can't say, at least up to this point in the game, that I was just lashing out as a disgruntled worker, because I had no reason to be disgruntled and did not think of myself as being mistreated either. Rather, my complaints were about the mission(s) apart from how they treated me, but how they operated in general. And I stand by those same complaints to this day. In some ways I haven't change in all these years, be that fortunate or unfortunate.
2) Also, I'm not sure at this point why I once and for all decided not to go with SGA after these 6 months. If I find something in my notes and documentation about that, I'll let you know. It can't have been how I personally was treated though, so it must have been something else; maybe it's just that my earlier qualms weren't assuaged and that was enough in and of itself.
3) I did enjoy the work in London, doing the kinds of things I was doing there. Some of the work they did was a support for evangelical missions, but their work involved all kinds of religions, so in the end I didn't feel like it was evangelical enough for me.
4) As an aside, later as and English as a Second Language instructor, although I could relate to students coming from abroad to America based on my experience, especially in Berlin, I couldn't always related. The Goethe Institut (German spelling), as is common with language schools pretty much globally, offered social opportunities and excursions. But I only remember going on one of their excursions, and my life otherwise was very full during those 2 months with non school-related activities, although I did a bit of socializing with at least 3 of the other students that I can remember. So based on my experience I wasn't too sympathetic of students I taught who, outside of formal opportunities the school offered, had virtually no other exposure to Americans. It was hard for me to imagine being so afraid to step out of their comfort zone, since I was all over the place (literally and figuratively) outside of my comfort zone. How on earth did they even have the guts to come study in America anyway if all they were going to do was stay in the confines of the school and its official activities the whole time? And how much added benefit was there for their language learning, compared to, say, learning English in Japan or Bogota? It was sort of incomprehensible to me. And it wasn't like I was fluent in German when I was in Berlin. I remember having some difficulty understanding the instructions for what I was supposed to do in my volunteer work, for example. They were very patient with me, I guess.
That's sort of on another subject though... and doesn't really have anything to do with anything important as far as my autobiography goes...
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I've got to run as I have some things I need to try to do before 3:00.
~ Meg
