In addition to wanting to become a missionary, I also wanted to test the idea of teaching in a public school and being “salt and light” in that environment. This desire was rooted in my great admiration for an adjunct at my college who advised our campus newspaper and yes, taught in a public school nearby. I thought she was wonderfully honest and crisp. One example of her pungent speech: “If you’re just quoting the party line, don’t quote it.” It was hard to decide when to do my student teaching, but I settled on fall quarter. I was assigned to a public high school in a nearby town, teaching several classes of English. I was nervous and overprepared, but got along well with the kids. My cooperating teacher seemed to hate me. I suspected she might be jealous; we were having more fun than she was. That reality didn’t make me want to teach in a public school. What if my colleagues didn’t like me for being a Christian? The turning point came one afternoon when my roommate showed up, which was not like her. She came to tell me that a recent graduate who was doing a short-term mission stint had just died. He’d been a popular athlete, newly married, seemingly healthy. Everyone was shocked. The two of us found a space somewhere and prayed for his young widow and that this terrible thing might somehow be turned to good. Later, after she’d gone back to campus and I’d gone back to class, I wondered: if I’d been alone when I’d gotten that news, with whom would I have prayed? Now I can see that there were other Christians teaching there. and that I was perfectly capable of digesting bad news and praying on my own. But the event shook me, and I decided to search for a job in a Christian school.
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While still in Bolivia, I wrote this journal entry near the end of my time in Santa Cruz:
Decided that yesterday’s “blahs” was probably just an old-fashioned case of homesickness. If nothing else, this trip has shown me things I will need for life on the [mission] field—like being able to listen to a foreign language and not miss English. As it turned out, I didn’t go back, didn’t become a missionary. There were practical barriers: I had student loans to pay off, plus the two Baptist mission agencies I knew about didn’t allow single women to “open” a new field. In their minds, the first thing to be done was to start a church, which of course a woman couldn’t do. (Actually, in many cultures in the global South, a woman starting a church would not succeed because of the gender roles rigidly enforced, even more so than in the Baptist churches I knew in the U.S.) Instead, for seven years I taught in a Christian school in Florida that made my college feel liberal. I decided that those students—some of whom were Hispanic—were my mission field. I did the best I could, making all the mistakes of a young teacher and then some. But first, I had a stint of student teaching in Ohio during my final year of college. a contemporary aerial photo of Santa Cruz, Bolivia “There’s twice as much to do and half as much time to get it done,” as Opal said one day. To give an example: Living in a tropical climate meant that the kitchen cupboards had to be emptied and scrubbed weekly to avoid a major bug infestation. I hated doing it. Also, without refrigeration, shopping had to be done daily at the market in town. They splurged for me and bought meat sometimes. I was certainly an extra expense, but I wasn’t really much help. Opal taught English at a local college; I helped grade papers. I bathed the younger children. I helped make papaya jam and a birthday cake. I quilted. I sang in a quickly assembled trio of young people at the church. Five weeks is a long time when you can’t understand much of anything that’s said or done around you. My finest moment came at an evening church meeting in a dimly lit building when I missed the bench and landed in the dirt. The children laughed and the ice was broken. There was neither running water nor electricity—my electric shaver remained packed. Had I not realized I would be reading and writing by kerosene lantern or brushing my teeth in the front yard, spitting in the dust as the orphans did? Or had I blocked all that in my desire to be a missionary? No indoor plumbing meant using the outhouse. Because I was an honored guest, I was given my own roll of toilet paper—the children used old newspapers. The outhouse was positioned on high ground behind the house, which was fine until it rained, making mud all the way up the slight hill. My enthusiasm for missions waned a bit, but my appreciation for amenities such as running water and modern sanitation increased. Turning on a tap back in Akron and getting hot water was newly a miracle. On August 19 the year I was in Bolivia, a revolution broke out in the city. The people were rebelling against the communist governor who had been appointed. Those in Santa Cruz where I was were fighting Communism, believing that the simple folks in the Alta Plana (the high plains, where eighty percent of the population was illiterate) would be gullible enough to believe the promises of the Leftists. We heard rumors that truckloads of wild Indians were trying to arrive to fight for Communism, but they were blocked. Communists threatened to burn the university; some people were killed in the fighting in the plaza. We cancelled church a few times; members of the congregation had been threatened. Schools were closed, and we were under a 10:00 curfew. The only planes flying belonged to the army. Fighting had extended to the capital, La Paz, and both the president and the vice-president had fled the country. Externally, all was fine at the orphanage, far enough outside town that we were removed from the fighting. We had to live on rice for a bit, because the trucks carrying produce couldn’t get through. Prices were skyrocketing as a result—bananas went from 25 cents a stem to $1.00. Kerosene was also in short supply; I imagined that I would soon be quilting by candlelight. The biggest problem I had was that the phone lines were cut, and there was no way to assure my parents that I was safe. Perhaps the most important gain I had in that month was the realization that God would have to take care of my parents. My prayer time was devoted to begging God to give my mother (the more nervous one of the pair) some peace. Later, I would learn that she was calling New York Times and the Bolivian embassy daily. As soon as the phone lines were restored, I went into town (we had no phone service that far out of town) and called her. When we decided it was safe to go into town, I saw snipers on the rooftops. That was about the extent of the excitement for me. Mr. S. was fairly blasé about the whole thing, telling me that revolution was the Bolivian national pastime. My college didn’t have a study abroad program; we did missions abroad. The new campus pastor began Missionary Internship Service (MIS), with teams going along with faculty or staff members to foreign missions. Soccer or basketball teams, musical teams, puppet teams all dispersed for a short-term summer mission experience. I felt called to missions, and I wanted very much to work with John and Opal, a couple working in Bolivia whom I'd met through my church and with whom I’d begun a correspondence. So I began trying to raise funds, as any missionary would, to get to Santa Cruz during the summer between my junior and senior years. Here is a salient fact about my parents: they hated to say no to anything my brother or I wanted, even if they didn’t want us to do them or to have them. When I fell short of the money I needed for five weeks in Bolivia with missionaries my church supported, my mother held a garage sale, with all the proceeds going toward my plane ticket. John and Opal, not young by then, had made a life for themselves in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. They had an orphanage just outside of the city, and Opal taught English at a local college to help make ends meet. They worked with another free agent couple, a woman who had married a Bolivian and lived in the city. I flew—my first-ever airplane ride—with another student who was headed to Cochabamba to do her student teaching. We went from Cleveland to Miami, where we met up with another student teacher. After a long layover that included a trip to downtown Miami, we flew to La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia. I was dazzled, completely prepared to dismiss the airline’s loudspeaker warning of thin air and going slowly to adjust to the high altitude. Then I saw the stewardesses sitting in the back of the plane with oxygen masks on, and reconsidered. This was not Vermont and I was not Julie Andrews singing across the tarmack. We were at 11,975 feet above sea level, in the world capital that had the highest altitude, more than twice the height of mountains in Vermont, and about eleven times higher than Akron, Ohio, the city named for height. The day after, I got onto a tiny plane headed to Santa Cruz. I'd sent Opal a letter detailing when I would arrive, but I had made the mistake of thinking the post office functioned as it did in my country. She later told me that the post office workers put what mail they could in the proper mailboxes. However, whatever mail was left at the end of the day would be buried by the next day’s avalanche of mail. She had never received my letter. I had two years of high school Spanish, not enough to make sense of the mess I was in. Finally someone called the German consulate—I have no idea not the U.S. one, unless there wasn’t one there in the early 1970s. I had only a few words of German, so that didn’t seem promising, but they knew the couple that John and Opal worked with and took me to their house. They got hold of my missionary couple; Opal pulled up in a Jeep-like affair with Lucas, her adopted Bolivian son, riding shotgun. “Good morning,” he said to me in English, and they were the sweetest words I’d heard in a long time. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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