For this next installment of my autobiography I've decided to quote directly from the human rights report I wrote up while living in Chicago... contrary to my father's belief, I did write it in English (not Russian). Since I wrote it about 15 years ago, it was much closer to the time these events occurred, so my memory would have been better. Besides, so much has happened since then that also would have contributed to blurring of the memory.
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When I returned to [the city where I was studying], I began my living out of a suitcase experience. I remained strapped financially until the last 3 months when I was able to save a little because I was waitressing [rather than cooking at Pizza Hut] and had to pay minimal rent for a bedroom. I also began to feel estranged from my parents, lacking their moral support and understanding, even after they visited me and saw my difficult situation. ... [T]he then pastor of [our Seattle church] and his wife visited me also while in the area and for years commented even publicly or to my parents about the difficulty of my situation. This annoyed my dad. I got the impression it made him look like he should have done something to help out. (Later they said they hadn't known I was in such difficult straits). Well, they did help out - mom offered to send me $25 a month to have my hair cut. As a budgetary decision, I let my hair grow that year. I was pretty mad at this offer - which she carried out. I was living off $10 a week for food a good part of that year - which isn't much.
... In addition, I was also doubting more and more whether I wanted to work with [Slavic Gospel Association] or not. My doubts centered mostly around the management of the organization. Several times their personnel director, Jay Ter Louw, asked me when I was going to begin working full-time for them. I always hedged in answering him.
What bothered me was that the mission seemed to be run more like a business than a mission. For people (readers) who aren't Christians this might be difficult to understand. There was a kind of spiritual vacuum in the decision-making and management policies & practices.
One significant example of this was when "all of a sudden" 1/3 of the (all salaried) home office staff were let go. Since the mission was a non-profit organization none of these people were eligible to receive unemployment insurance and most were only given 2-3 days notice of dismissal.
I was appalled from the standpoint of financial irresponsibility (why did they just "suddenly" realize they were bad off financially?) They had not long before that acquired a new warehouse and computer system. I was also disturbed that a mission could treat its workers so. It seemed pretty unethical to me.
Not only that, but the mission began to call in workers from their European & South American mission fields who were all on faith support - not salary - from individuals and churches to cover the now vacant office positions. These people had gone into their work believing God had called them to that ministry. How could a mission take so many lives away from that? Several of the missionaries from South America (working with Russians and in short wave radio from HCJB in Quito, Ecuador) and spent many years (10-20) in their work.
Later, as I was forced into studying how secret services work as a matter of my own defense in the face of actions taken against me personally by E. Eur. missions, I realized that it is a common tactic to periodically re-shuffle staff so that the opponent can't make sense of who does what and knows what I what. I saw this also in Vienna.
Unfortunately, it wasn't until several years later that I realized the significance of a statement by SGA's Asst. Dir. in charge of accounting. In passing (alone) in the basement corridor at the head office between his office and the library, where I was working, he told me that SGA received money from the CIA for its radio work. It was kind of a strange thing to tell me and I guess it was a kind of a test. They were pretty sure they had me nabbed for work in the Soviet Union, either with them or with another organization. It probably didn't matter too much to them with whom since most of the big name E. Eur. missions practically have to have contact w/SGA.
This was a difficult year for me ('82-'83), and many would have given up trying to go to school, prepare for East European mission work, but I felt God's call for me and that I had to continue. I struggled with what God was trying to tell me or teach me through the difficulties, but even so I knew I couldn't give up.
In the spring of '83 I began getting more waitressing shifts at Pizza Hut and my living expenses were minimal, so I was able to save some money. That summer I went back to Europe - kind of as a last try to see if I would work with [SGA] long-term. I raised money from churches and individuals for this, which included my flight to and from Europe. With the money I saved I was able to eek out enough to study German two months in Berlin and work five weeks at [a research center specializing in religion in Eastern Europe]. Throughout this time I continued to live on a shoe string.
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That's all I'm going to quote for now, but I do want to add a few comments.
You'll remember that my dad offered to pay off my school loans? My Bible school wasn't registered such that I could get a deferment while studying there, so I was paying on it during this time. I'll see if I still have (or can run down) when it was finally paid off, but it definitely was off my shoulders before I went to Vienna. I know my Grandmother's annual gifting helped me pay for my first Master's studies; it's even possible that that's how I paid off the undergraduate ones too, but I know I was still paying them while in Bible School, but I believe I got a deferment for while I was in Europe in 1983.
The incident where I was told that SGA got CIA money was out of sequence chronologically, and didn't occur until 1984 after my return from Europe, but the thought sequence fit where it is in the text.
Also, I should explain more the laying off of staff in Vienna. The staff that were laid off were all salaried from the organizational budget, but the people they brought in from the field were not paid out of the main budget. Instead their income came from supporters, although the organization took a percentage of that for support services and the like. So you can see how the mission was wrangling this financially for their favor. I got to know some of the people brought in from the field and they were some of the most wonderful people, really. Some of them took the move pretty badly too, being hurt by it, I mean, having to leave their mission like that.
One other thing about SGA. When I very first developed contact with the mission, in 1980 I heard Mr. Deneyka, Sr. speak, the one who founded the mission, and he was a very godly man. He was famous for the saying "much prayer, much power," and he lived it and believed it too. Later on in my contact with the mission he was failing and in a nursing home. I suppose he's passed on by now. My understanding is that the mission changed after he stepped down from the leadership, and I believe he had already stepped down by the time I came along. I didn't know the organization before, so I didn't know exactly how the change came about to where it was when I experienced it.
Regarding SGA's shuffling around of its workers, I'm not positive that that was purposely a ploy/tactic to confound detractors, but if they wanted to do that (confound detractors) what they did would have been one possible approach. What' harder to believe: that they were that financially inept? or that they did this intentionally? Personally, I'm torn between these two options and find either and/or both plausible.
Missions that had contact with me may well be angry that I put these things in my report that was given to the Russian government, who evidently translated it. My answer to them is that this kind of thing (their activities I report here) doesn't belong in Christian missions in the first place. Quit hiding behind the fabricated wall of secrecy and make yourself accountable for your actions. No one else seems to have the guts to say anything. And you're welcome to explain your actions to the world using the comment box at the bottom of the page.
I trust you understand that I wasn't literally "forced" (like at gunpoint, for example) to study these things, like the brainwashing which I've already written about, but I was driven to it to try to make sense of what was happening to me. I mean, if one can't make sense of the world around one it would be very easy to go crazy.
To give you a better idea of how I was living out of a suitcase, I'd like to briefly elaborate on that aspect of my life during the first half of 1983. I lived for one month on the sofa of a gal (I think it was someone else who worked with the Russian emigrants knew her and brought us together). So I slept in her living room, and it made it cramped for her, for sure, but also not the most conducive conditions for studying.
Then I spent about a month apartment sitting for a couple who were trying to adopt in South America and went down there to pick up their adoptee. Since I at least had the apartment to myself it was a little easier to spread out study, but I was still living out of a suitcase, or maybe 2 suitcases. I remember their cat Mozart wanting to sit on my book that was trying to study. He was a very nice cat, but a bit too persistent.
Then the last 3 months I rented a room from an older lady who needed the income. She was a very nice lady, and there were 3 of us together, and we really made a motley crew - I was the youngest coming in at 24, then next was a very strong Roman Catholic Polish lady probably in her 50s or 60s who hardly new any English (she was sort of a live-in nurse aide for the lady I rented from), and the owner who might have been in her 80s and was a very strict orthodox Jew, I think originally from Ukraine. She could communicate with the Polish lady through their Slavic languages, which were similar enough, but she also spoke fluent Yiddish. Sometimes I could make out a bit it when she used it visiting with a guest. One time I got chided (granted in a very gentle way) for listening to music on the Sabbath. I hadn't known about that rule, I guess. She taught me how to make Farfel Pudding... oh, and guess what? Here it is! What do you know... Surprise, surprise...
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Mrs. Apple's Farfel Pudding
3 c. Manischewitz Matzo farfel
1 qt. boiling water
1 1/2 lemons, grated rind & juice
2 eggs
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. salt
3 T. chicken fat or butter (peanut oil)
Pour boiling water over farfel; let soak for 10 min., then drain off excess water. Add lemon juice & grated rind, beaten eggs, sugar, salt and fat. Mix well, put into greased baking dish & bake for 2 hours in moderate oven (325 degrees F). Serve with raisin sauce.
(apples, bananas & prunes are good in it) <- That's how I have it written on my 3x5 card. Mix these in before putting the pudding in the oven.
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If you can't find Matzo farfel, you might have to wait till Passover time next year for it to appear on grocery store shelves. Sorry that my timing is off on that score, but I'm not waiting that long to write my autobiography.
~ Meg
