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billy graham center archives
2004 annual report

"BGEA" means a collection of records of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

[Tape T1. Describing her aunt's ministry among working women] She related very well to professional people.... But I think that .... the shop girl perhaps.... meant the most to her, the factory girl, where she felt that she could be of such good help. But also bringing these different types together in the council work as it was established, the shop girl got to know the professional. And this...this was really so very beneficial and gave these girls such a much wider experience. And what we call now discipling in these days was in contact as they came to these council meetings. They met every week and had a Bible study. This was the real purpose of these meetings was to have Bible studies, so that these who...girls who had come to know the Lord had a chance to also get to know the Bible and then to be discipled by the ones who were already Christian women. And when they met in...in their national meetings, it was at Winona Lake.... They had a conference perhaps for a week with Bible studies and different people speaking in meetings. The closing meeting was always held down at Kosciusko [?] at the lake. And my aunt stood in a boat and gave the Bible study, the message for the evening. Her theme song you might say was "The Light of the World is Jesus." And at the close of this meeting she would sing that song with the girls joining in. The boat would then be propelled away across the water some distance, and the voice would be coming "The Light of the World is Jesus" across the water. It was very effective. This was part of her personality, I guess, her make-up of...of having things that were beautiful and effective that would show the Lord to these girls.

[Tape T1. Describing his experiences as a teenager film projectionist in the 1920s] I remember learning how to run that projector, and being so interested in watching the machinery go around. I can remember when I helped install the first sound equipment that theater had, and there was sound on disc, the old Vitaphone system. And that would have been about 1929. And the large turn table, sixteen inch disks, was geared directly to the projector and they were both driven by a common motor. Now, in order to set up a reel for projection you first had to set the disk in position and put the needle in a little lead in groove with an arrowhead that went through the spot where you set down the needle. And you went over the projector and threaded the film until you came to a "start frame" marked "start" and it had to be right in the gate, otherwise everything wouldn't be synchronized. And if anybody had broken the film and spliced it without putting an equivalent frames of black film, you were in trouble because it threw off the synchronization. If during the playing of the record the needle jumped a groove, you were in trouble. And sometimes some very comical things happened, like a dialogue between a man and a woman who jumped a groove, and the man's lips moving a woman's voice and a woman's lips moving a man's voice, very comical in a very serious scene. Sometimes we had to stop, rewind and start all over again.

[Tape T1. Describing her and her husband's first trip to Sakeji in 1932] And then we sailed to Africa going in from the west coast of Africa, we landed in Angola in Lobito Bay, and traveled by rail (the rail had just been put in) and so we went to within forty miles of our station by rail. Many people before who had gone out to work in that area had gone by rail from Cape Town. And then they had to tre... had to trek, you know. They had to have native carriers and all their loads were carried by Africans and they either hammocked [were carried] or cycled.... I had always cycled, so we cycled, had bicycles and cycled along the little narrow paths. It wasn't always easy, but at least when you're young you don't mind that. So that's what we did.... And we had a forty mile trek.... We had somebody came and got us, his friend of ours that we corresponded with. She came and met us and then she could talk the language and could speak the native vernacular and she helped us along the way. And we'd go so many miles and then we would stop and make a camp and have the night there and the push along. And so that's how we came to Sakeji.

[Tape T1. Description by Steiner of the developing ties between Indian Christians in the 1950s and 60s] Well, the Evangelical Fellowship of India, (which was formed I believe in the '50s), has established All-India Conferences, which are attended by...by Christians from all over India. And...and they have often had leading speakers at these conferences from England or from the United States, such as Billy Graham. And...and these conferences have been well attended and have...and have really been a great help to the...to the people because in many cases some of them have been quite isolated, especially Christian leaders and pastors have been very isolated in their ministry. And sometimes they have felt that...that they're alone and nobody else is...there are no other Christians. And when they can get together with...with hundreds or even thousands of...of Christians at a large gathering and hear what's happening in other parts of the country, it...it is a great encouragement to them. And then the Evangelical Fellowship of India has also had a radio program. They've had a program of translating theological works in the Indian languages, program of...of having pastoral helps, sermon helps, of having Sunday School material. In fact, my brother-in-law, Charles Warren, was involved in...in the preparation of Sunday School material for India. He...he prepared it in English for the Indians and...or adapting it to the Indians. And then this...this was translated into a number of the different languages out there. And...and then there are other...other activities like this. I think that Evangelical Fellowship has involved...has been involved in...in having a missionary program, or at least encouraging it. And as a result of this, there have been missionaries that have been sent out by...by churches in India and supported by churches in India into...going into areas that...that are unevangelized, going into...into a cultural situation that's completely different than...than themselves. And the...the country is so complex that...that you...that...it's even more complex with differences in religion and language and other cultural differences. It's more different than...than all of Europe is. So that there's a real cross-cultural involvement when...when a person goes into another area of India from one part.

[Tape T4. Description of his work among the mountain people of Taiwan, who were looked down by the Chinese on the island] Well, to me they were a very lovable people. They were appreciative. And Marion and I did quite a few things for them other than sermons. They had their usual run of accidents and illnesses. And we found that if we sent them to the Presbyterian hospital, they could sit in a corner there all day and no one would take care of them cause they were mountain people, no-person people. So Marion and I would go and sit with them and see if they got their attention. And we would listen to what their medicals recommended and saw to it that it was carried out. And this was very...they were very grateful for that help. So we did that. For instance, one time a fellow needed an...an operation, but he had to have his mother's okay, but she was up in the mountains. They wanted to do this operation as soon as possible. So I got a taxi and went up into the mountains to get this thing concluded and phoned ahead and I didn't know where his house was, so his sister was to come and meet the taxi and did. And it was beginning to rain and the glow of day was...was soon gone, but she knew the way like the back of her hand. And it required in the rain slithering down an adobe type of trail and I found that American tennis shoes wouldn't do for this type of thing. And what they would do was have a canvas shoe in which they glue a piece of a tire and those things grip. And that's the type of thing. That's the cheapest shoe you can get. Pretty fine. It was little over a dollar, I guess, to get that type of shoe. So I slivered with her up these steep hills, crossed the river on a bamboo raft. Spent the night up there. Brought the mother back to do the...(what did she do), some mark or something to permit her son to get an operation. So it was that type of thing.

[Tape T3. Describing a trip he took to Brazil to visit missionary pilots] And then we had some interesting long cross-countries. We did (Grady Parrot, who was the president of MAF and was for many years)...Grady and I flew a Cessna 170, which is quite a small airplane, I don't think you'd find anywhere on the mission field anymore. There may be some somewhere. A Cessna 170. We flew from California MAF base all the way down to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and visited several missionary pilots and their programs, all across Central America, Sou...South America, and that was quite a flight cross-country-wise. We right across the mouth of the Amazon, which is two hundred miles. And [chuckles] we...our fuel supply had...where we thought we were going to be able to refuel in a little government airstrip near the north side of the Amazon, it didn't turn out. It wasn't there, and we had...we had five...we had two hundred miles to go and just about two hundred miles worth of gasoline [laughs]. So we...we had to do some might tight conservation, and...and couldn't make any mistakes or have to go around.

[Tape T2. Describing a Christian awakening at in engineering school is China in 1941] Yeah, revival broke out in that engineering college. It took me by surprise. Those guys were really...really meant business, they were really serious. They'd believed that sin was sin. You've got to get rid of it. So in the morning...in this morning prayer meeting, they'd...I'd join them. They'd...they borrowed an empty room in the school and it was dark, you know, and they'd...one guy holding a candle, you know, and reading some Scripture. And then they'd start to pray, you know, one after another prayed, the whole circle around. And no matter how your feet were freezing, you just got...you just stood there. And I know some were converted right in that meeting. I remember one girl saying to me...she said, "I heard about this meeting and I...I...I laughed at it." And then she said, "I'll...I'll go and see what they do." And she said, "You know, I was standing there and the one next to me, they prayed until the one next to me. I knew the next one to pray was me." And she said, "I didn't know what to say." So she said, "I suddenly realized I was a sinner." And she said she prayed that way, "Lord, I...I know I'm a sinner now. Please forgive me and cleanse my sins" and so on and so forth and so on, so on. She got converted right then on that spot. And went on around her own then. That was an amazing, an amazing work of the Spirit of God. Actually, it was really the work of the Spirit of God.

[Tape T2. Describing the foreign missionaries contacts with the local authorities after the Communist takeover in the area] We were not badly treated, but they could...you could become frustrated. Like if...we had two cows, thinking always of milk when the kids would come home from school. And we wanted to sell them. Then you had to get the stamp of every member of the.... (I don't know what, the municipality? I don't know what they called them exactly.) The Chinese had their own thing. The...the city would divided up into sections, four usually. And you had to have the chopped paper [paper certified with an official stamp called a chop] as...of...on the...on the pass their chop to...of each one. If one did not do it then that aborted the others [laughs]. And these things are very frustrating for people who had been free and did all the things, you know. Well, we as foreigners could...could expect come restrictions, but they did shut us in. And then, my husband said one day...Raymond said, "You know, I think our door is being watched." He said, "I...I see a plaincl...a plainclothes policeman at the top of the street." He said, "I've met him before at the...in the headquarters." And so he said, "We'd better advise our friends not to come." Because...and we found out later that, you see, they were interested. They knew how...they knew us and they knew how many of us there were. But they did not know who would visit us and when. So, of course, they...they had their eyes open to see who would come and go. So we thought we'd better warn, Christians especially, and others who had visited us. So that was...these were restrictions that were rather difficult to take, and they added to the stress. Some...some people get really mad at them for that, you know. But why get mad? I mean, that...that's what they were there for. They were there for...to oust us really in the end. They didn't say so but....