PROCESSING

"New" means a collection being processed and described for the first time. An "updated" collection is having more material added to it, sometimes few items, sometimes many cubic feet of files or other items.

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

SUSAN (SCHULTZ) BARTEL. Discusses life as a missionary in China during the Sino-Japanese War and the beginning of Communist rule; the permanent separation from her husband Loyal because of his imprisonment by the Communists; her reflects on the Chinese church in the late 1970s.

And I remember one time, my husband wrote, and he mentioned one of the little neighbor girls, who had been, I guess, very close, and he would read stories, Bible stories to her. And so the books were burned, and then my husband said...well, he said, “Now, what are we going to do, we cannot read any...the Bible anymore, what are we going to do now?” Because the...the Bible was burned, the Bibles were burned, too. And she said, “Well,” she said, “Then the Holy Spirit will speak to us and lead us.”

WILLIAM JOHN BARNETT. Describes Barnett’s experiences as a missionary kid in the United States, his service in the U.S. Army in Korea immediately after World War II, the first years of his work as a missionary doctor in Tanzania in the 1950s.

I was assigned to the station hospital in Seoul, military station hospital.... And the chief of surgery there was leaving the next day, to go back to the States, and out of the army. And he made rounds with me, showed me around. I was appointed as chief of surgery to the hospital. I said, “I can’t do that.” I hadn’t had any sort of traumatic experience, in, oh, gunshot wounds and things of that sort.... But, he said, “You’re it.” That’s it, chief of surgery. He took me around, and he shook hands with me as he finished making rounds, he turned to me and said, “I just want to tell you this: that in the entire time this hospital has been here, we have never admitted a Korean to this hospital.” He said it just that way.... He was proud of it. Yes. The whole hospital was that way. That was their attitude. The Koreans were a bunch of gooks, and we have no responsibility to them.... And, I didn’t say anything to him, but I [thought], “Well, I think things are going to be different.” I hadn’t been there more than about a month [when] the regular army colonel, who was a doctor also, he was the commanding officer of the hospital, got shipped out back home.... It turned out...it turned out that I was the ranking officer, as a first lieutenant.... I found suddenly that I was the commanding officer of the hospital.... And I hadn’t been there very long, about a week, I suppose, when the first accident case was brought in, involving a Korean. And he was brought in on a stretcher [clears throat] and a train had run over him.... But at that time I jumped, I said, “We’re going to try and save this man’s life,” to the G.I. staff that was around me, the soldiers. And then, to their credit, it was just wonderful, because they jumped to it, [snaps fingers] like that. We got blood from the man, and got his sample, and these G.I.’s ran to the lab, and started giving their blood for him.... Well, we completed our job of cleaning up the stumps, and getting him sewn up and so on, and but the...the thing that was so remarkable was that the...our American nurses (these are female nurses, now) the one who was the...the operating room supervisor, and the commanding officer of the nurse’s team, both of them, stood in the doorway of the operating room, through the entire procedure, and just looked. Didn’t raise a hand to do anything at all, because he was Korean.... I just asked the Lord, “I don’t know just what to do, something has to be done, because we cannot allow this to continue this way.” So I...I finally called a meeting, of all of the staff.... and we simply talked.... And I just prayed that the Lord would guide me in what to say. And I didn’t say very much. I simply started out by saying, “You know that we’ve just been through a major war, and the United States is being touted around the world.... really, and coming out on top from this...from this...in this war.” And I said, “the United States is being held up as the example of democracy around the world today.... So I don’t know what you people believe in your hearts, your religious beliefs and so on, but we can just lay that aside, whether you have any truths or religious beliefs or not. But,” I said, “I...I know that we’re all Americans, and as Americans, we have certain standards, and,” I said, “what we do right here is going to make all the difference in the world with what happens to a country like Korea, what their attitudes are.... As far as I’m concerned, a Korean is just as important as you and I are. God made us all, and we’re important to him, and these Koreans are important to him too. And the way we act here may well spell the difference which way this country is going to go in its future.” SHUSTER: And how did the staff react? BARNETT: They were dead silent, they listened to every word I said. They left the meeting, I didn’t say anything more than that. From that time on, I never have any problems whatever. We admitted every Korean that had any problem to do with our American army, any connection with them, was admitted to that hospital, was cared for with real concern and love, and we never had a problem. And after that, within a day or two after that, two of the nurses came to me, one was the chief nurse in the X-ray department, the other, I believe was one of our surgical nurses that came to me, and thanked me for what I had said, and said, “You know, we’re Christians too, but we’ve been hiding our lights. But thank you for speaking up for the Lord...”

RUTH MARGARET (HATCHER) THOMAS. Thomas talks about her conversion, recollections of Billy Sunday's campaign in Scranton, PA in 1914, her Wheaton College education, and her work as a Presbyterian missionary nurse in a rehabilitation program of a leper colony in southwestern China along the Burmese border among the Tai-Lu people.

When we went back, after the war, and went to travel into our station, we took a lot of relief supplies with us. Church World Services sent many things, thirty tons of stuff, in fact, we took with us when we left the States.... One thing I wanted to take in was vaccines for smallpox. This is supposedly to be refrigerated, but how can you travel ten days on horseback, and have it refrigerated? So we had taken joints of bamboo, and had bored holes in on the sides, and filled a lot of moss in the bottom, which we kept wet, and put the vaccine in that, then more moss, and then, the man who was carrying it carried it on a bamboo pole. We called it a “hop.” You could carry a load on each end of it, but only a certain number of pounds. And this, waving back and forth on the end of his pole, aerated it and kept it cool, and word would leak out, or get ahead of us, that we’re coming with the vaccine. And we’d stop at night, and before we had the horses unloaded, the loads off the horse and camp made, people came and wanted the injection. And I would give...I would vaccinate up until it was dark, and we had to put our lights on, and then they wanted to go back home. In the morning, before we left the camp, and were ready to start again, they were there, and we would...we would...we vaccinated, all the way those ten days into our station.... But during the war, some...when the army had come through, they had asked for vaccine, and the people still got smallpox, so we don’t know what these other people had given them. But it certainly wasn’t smallpox vaccine, and...but they trusted us. And we just inoculated right and left.

LAURA ISABELLE BARR. Describes her childhood and education; her training as a Bible translator; work in the Congo and Kenya, especially on the translation into the Lugbara language; life in eastern Africa in the 1950s and 60s as nations became independent and the African church started to develop.

Well, I knew that God wanted me to do something, that he would...he had some purpose, and I was willing...I...I was ready to do whatever it was. But...but I hadnt really made it a...my purpose to go to a foreign field, you know. But I can remember in those days, when I wasn’t sure, I used to talk to people. And I went to Isaac Page [associated with China Inland Mission; had a great influence on young people committing themselves to ministry and missionary service] once...when I...when I was thinking about going under AIM. And I didn’t want it to be said...I didn’t want to go because Lila was going there, you see, because she was connected with AIM, being with Jim. And [clears throat] I just asked him what he thought about it. He said, “That might be a very good reason for you to go, that she’s going there.” Well, I was aiming for Kenya. Maybe I can tell you this. I was aiming for Kenya. But they wanted only trained teachers and nurses. By that time I’d had a one-year nursing course in Booth Hospital in New York, but I wasn’t really a trained nurse. So after years of waiting I decided that I was interested in Congo too, and I would write Mr. [Ralph] Davis and tell him, “Let me go to Congo, if I can get into Congo.” So he had written a letter and it crossed mine in the mail, suggesting that I go to Congo. So I was aiming for Congo, and then when I was up in the...in the [AIM] office in New York in Brooklyn once before...I can’t think just what year it was...shortly before I was going I guess...he...he said, “Now you can get into Kenya if you want to. They’re taking...they...we can...you can go to Kenya, where you first wanted to go.” And I had to make up my mind in just a minute or two. My whole life, you know. I said, “I’ll stick with Congo.” So I did. And then...and then God put me right there. Translation needed to be done, and I had been to Wycliffe [Bible Translators] a couple of times, you see, to the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Not that I intended to...to translate especially, but I felt that whatever I was going to do, it would be a help to go to Wycliffe, so I went. I went in 1940, and when...that was quite an early year for Wycliffe. They started in ‘36, I think, and...and then I went in ‘43.... Wonderful how the Lord leads before you know what you’re going to do, really.

ARMIN RICHARD GESSWEIN. His childhood as the son of a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod pastor; education; conversion; work at Concordia Seminary; work with Walter Maier; first experience of revival, involvement in revival in Norway 1937-1938; friendship with Billy Graham, Charles Fuller, and J. Edwin Orr; importance of revival and prayer in the church.

 SHUSTER: When you arrived in Bergen [Norway, in 1937] and went to your first meeting that night, what was it like? What happened during the meeting? GESSWEIN: The street was for...full of people going to a big meeting hall, and.... I met this man that...that I knew from America. He was there.... And he said, “You’ve got to give a greeting tonight.” I said, “No. No. I came here not to give any greeting. I prayed on the way across the North Sea last night the Lord to get me into the revival as far...fast as possible, but more than that, get it into me. Don’t spare me either.” But he prevailed, and I was...had to sit in the platform in the front. Here’s this great crowd, balcony almost hanging over with people, on a weekday night. No advertisement in the papers that I knew about. People were coming back and forth to that Inner Mission Hotel, where I had checked in, to be saved, like ants coming back and forth. Even there, there was something going on, and during the day, and at night, we went on to the meeting.... And I said, “Look, these people.... I thought, at first, a lot of old people. They had these shawls around, and is this an old folks meeting. No, look. They get a lot of young people, all kinds of young people, in and mixed in with the old, and most of them Lutherans, at least in...nominally in background. But there I learned, later, that’s...that was a pattern in Norway in those revivals. The young and the old loved each other. Prayed together. There was no generation gap, whatever, in those days. That’s another story. But then my friend was to speak that night. And he spoke about ten minutes, and all at once, I could sense the...the Holy Spirit was just...sort of just falling on that meeting. That’s the only way I can describe it. More like a gentle Portland, Oregon rain, or something, and the people.... And he quit preaching, and they began to kneel all over the place, and many were weeping and repenting and helping people.... That night...I said, “God, you’ve already answering my prayer last night on...over the North Sea. You’ve got me into the revival right away, and herein, you’re getting into me. Don’t spare it. Go to work. Keep on.” I went on to Oslo the next week.

MARGUERITE ELIZABETH (GOODNER) OWEN. Description of her education at Moody Bible Institute and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in the early 1930s; joining China Inland Mission; first impressions of China in 1933.

We arrived at night and we drove through these crowded streets and all the shouts of the people selling things. And we got to the big mission home and we were given supper and then we were showed up to our room and we had a balcony looking over one of the main streets. And I stood there and “I’m in China.” I could hear the sounds, I could smell the smells, I could see the people going by. Oh, I thought, “I’ve arrived.” I stood there just crying, I was so thrilled to be there and I never lost that thrill the whole time I was there. The only other time I ever cried, very differently, in 1951, when we got to Hong Kong and I knew I would never get back. (Not at least as a missionary. I did get back - praise the Lord - to see, but not to be a missionary.) I stood there at the window bordering outside and just, oh, “I’m gonna leave China and never see it again.” ‘Cause I had told everybody, “I’m not ever going to live in the States, I’m just going to live in China, I love it.” And my husband tried to comfort me, he said, “Honey, it’s alright, we’re going home” and.... But I said, “You know we won’t go back to China” and he said “Yes”. But he didn’t mind, I mean he’d gone to China willingly and enjoyed being there but he didn’t have the same feel for it that I had at all. So that, but that first night in Japan I can remember so well.