I'll begin a retelling of this period of my life by using the text from my human rights report, which is very "short and sweet". Then in another post I'll go into more detail, to give you a better idea of this period in my life. Overall, there isn't a lot terribly pertinent to why I'm telling my story, but as a part of my experiences it does sort of lay a groundwork for things to come.
***
I then quit my job (I wasn't happy at it and didn't fit into the office atmosphere anyway - it was a very gossipy office), and began in earnest my deputation work. Deputation involves raising personal and ministry financial and prayer support. In a 'faith' mission we don't receive regular salaries per se but depend on the gifts of individuals and churches.
I also took on temporary office jobs at this time, and continued this until I left for Vienna.
I learned of my acceptance to ECM in Nov. of 1985 and the next spring I spent about 8 weeks on a bus tour of the northwest, mountain, and midwest states. I had spent a lot of time setting up meetings at churches and arranging housing, preparing messages. It was a very draining trip. I had meetings almost every day and sometimes two or three in a day. Even when I didn't have meetings I was being hosted as a guest at meals, etc. and was the center of attention, so to speak.
That summer I prepared for another somewhat shorter trip trip through the same basic areas, but to different churches.
By January of 1987 I thought I had raised the set amount to leave for Vienna, but the mission raised the amount with the stated reasoning that the dollar was falling. Well, the dollar wasn't falling as much as they were increasing my target amount.
***
I'm going to end there, although the narration regarding this time period continues for several paragraphs. I'm doing this because it starts to bring up issues I'd like to hold off on so I can just tell you a little about the deputation. We'll come back to these other things soon though.
I do have other things I need to do today, but the main pressing thing is an errand, and I'm cooking some barley to go with my leftover chicken kabobs... lunch is my main meal. So I might as well continue while that's cooking, which will be for another 30 to 40 minutes.
***
While I don't have the exact itineraries (the sequence, which place I visited on which trip, etc.) of my deputation trips any more, I do remember a lot of the cities and some events along the way. This is not, technically, vital to my story, which is why it wasn't in the human rights report, but more details might help you understand me a little more and give me more of a human face, so to speak. It also might help you understand more what I did during this time, my relationships and my abilities.
Also, on top of the lengthy trips, and doing office temp jobs between them, I also had some local speaking engagements, up to 3 or 4 hour drives from home. So I was also doing deputation work even between trips, as well as all the preparations for each trip and the follow up afterward.
I think it must have been the first deputation trip that I actually got sick, what appeared to be the flu, and I remember having to really struggle to avoid upchucking on the bus going over the mountains. Then practically as soon as I arrived in Denver I had a speaking engagement with a small house church, and under those circumstances it was difficult, but I was thankful that at least it was more informal than a Sunday morning worship service.
One thing I remember that pastor saying was how he advised his children to have a career they could financially support themselves in before they got formal ministry training. Somehow that sort of stuck with me for some reason. He himself was self-supporting too.
I would like to say that I met some very nice people during deputation, and people were very sacrificial in taking me in while traveling as well as supporting me in my ministry.
On one of my trips I stayed at a sort of boarding house. I don't remember how I heard of it, but I knew people in Denver, so one of them could have tipped me off about it. I also spent at least one night with a couple - family friends - who were in counseling ministry there, and on one of my trips spent several days with a friend in Boulder from an earlier short-term ministry. Several of us went on a hike in the Rockies during that visit, which was fun. My photos of that hike are dated May 1986. It must have been during that time that I was in the Boulder Community Hospital emergency room and treated with an inhalant.
One of the churches in Denver (I'm pretty sure it was in Denver) had problems with the equipment I needed (I brought slides as well as literature and a table & poster display set up on these trips) and I had to be quick on my feet and change my talk to fit the situation at the last minute. For seasoned speakers this might be no big deal, but for me it was like facing a tarantula face to face. I did it the best I could, though. Arranging equipment, approximate times I'd have speaking, etc. were all part of the advanced preparations I'd made... but things don't always go as planned, despite the best preparations.
As an aside, in junior high I had an English class once where the grade was based half on spelling and half on speeches. The spelling was a cinch, and I prepared very well for the speeches, but when it came time to actually give them I sort of bombed out you could say. Overall, I ended the course with a B - A for spelling and C for speeches. I think it was the preparation that even got me the C and if it had been only based on the actual giving of the speech, not the preparation included, I'm sure I would have been closer to and F except that I at least did the speeches at all.
I also spent several days in a small town in eastern Colorado (the flat part of the state) where I spoke at church and also participated in their vacation Bible school, so this must have been on the second trip, since it would have been in the summer.
I also spent several days in Evansville, Indiana, where I was involved in a variety of activities, including singing over the loudspeaker as a ministry in a nursing home! I was participating in the church's regular ministry there. I have done a little singing, having had a couple classes in school, but not much by way of ministry of music. I have a nice picture dated April 1986 of a few of the ladies I met during that time in front of some huge blossoming azalea bushes; they took me on a drive to a neighborhood that was known for its azaleas and I was there at peak season.
In Chicago a pastor that I knew there arranged for me to speak at a chapel session of a large Christian school. That was probably the largest audience I spoke to. This, as many of the speaking engagements were largely a ministry in themselves, rather than strictly speaking just raising support.
I also went to several towns in Ohio, made one stop in South Dakota, had one engagement in southern Oregon and another in Wisconsin and still another in southern British Columbia.
The thing with these deputation trips is you're always "on" so to speak as you're getting to know people and they're getting to know you and perhaps measuring you up.
After I turned about 20 or so I began to look younger than I am (the previous 10 years I looked older than I was), which sometimes was frustrating to me. It was hard to convey all the preparations I'd done to get to where I was. When you're meeting with people you tell them about the ministry you're going to be doing, about the mission itself and their broader ministries, and then you also tell about yourself. In the formal speaking engagements the latter seemed to get short shrift, so I think it would be easy for people to not realize, unless they talked to me more one on one about it, how serious I was about this ministry and that it wasn't just a passing fad or something. I don't mean I felt this a lot, but I must have felt it enough that it stuck with me. Even in the one-on-one and more casual encounters it was often at least as important to listen to them and get to know them. It doesn't help that people don't always think of Europe as a mission field, although at least Eastern Europe might seemed more of a mission field, mostly famous for the Bible smuggling ministries though, like Brother Andrew.
***
One of the temp jobs I had was with Egghead, a company that sold discount software. This job lasted well over a month, and involved data entry. This was one of my earliest experiences with using the computer, although it was pretty limited because I was just doing the same sort of thing over and over again. I think I was using Lutus, or if not that software something similar.
However, I did use WordStar some, and one of the advantages of working with a temp agency is they have training opportunities to learn these types of things. So I gained a bit of experience this way at this time. This subject will come up again though as we move along.
Another (very short) temp job that I had during this time was as the secretary for Scott Oki, the then V.P. for international marketing at Microsoft. I was way out of my league as far as secretarial skills was concerned, but for 2 days I knew enough to make myself useful. Besides remembering being surprised that people wore shorts to work there, I remember one of the things I did, perhaps the main one, was the editing of field reports from marketing reps around the world. The memorable thing about this was that in at least a couple of them I'd be reading/scanning along looking for errors when all of a sudden I'd come across "(Is anyone really reading this?)" or something along those lines.
***
Despite my great fear of speaking, I guess it eventually did get easier. One time I remember speaking to a young people's group (I think it was junior high) and to convey a bit of the idea of what it was like to live in the USSR I used a bit of drama by changing suggestive costume-type pieces to convey different perspectives. I can't imagine doing that without having to a large extent overcome my fear of speaking.
I'll end here for now, but we're not exactly done quite yet with this deputation period of my life.
~ Meg
