This is a complete and accurate transcript of the second oral history interview of Bonnie Jo (Adelsman) Adolph (CN 282 T2) in the archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words which were recorded are omitted. In a very few cases, the transcribers could not understand what was said, in which case "[unclear]' was inserted. Also, grunts, verbal hesitations such as "ah" or "um" were usually omitted. Readers of this transcript should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and even rule than written English.
... Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence of the speaker.
.... Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
() Word in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber.
This transcript was made by Robert Shuster and Kerry Cox and completed in January, 1993.
Collection 282, Tape T2, Interview with Bonnie Jo Adelsman Adolph by Britta Koch, October 30, 1984.
KOCH: Here we go. [laughs] Well, what I'd like to get into now is the different religious groups there [in Soddo, Ethiopia] and the type of ministry you had to each one. So, how about if we start with the Muslims and describe a little bit about what type of ministry you used to them [sic] or, you know, how you...that would differ.
ADOLPH: There were a few Muslims in the area where we lived, but the primary thrust of the SIM [Sudan Interior Mission] in that area were with the non-Muslims. So there was little acknowledged ministry directly directed at Muslims.
KOCH: So it must have been you really came in contact with members of a church or were they...?
ADOLPH: I would say they would fall into basically the four categories: the...the few Muslims who were there (the Arab shopkeepers), the...the Orthodox...the Ethiopian Orthodox priests, and higher-up ruling class which were primarily of that church; then there were the evangelical people; there were a certain portion of Catholics, not many, but some, and then the unbelievers, the animists.
KOCH: Where did the Cop...Coptic Church fall into that? Was...or didn't you have much contact with them?
ADOLPH: Oh, yeah. There was a Coptic church in town, and they were certainly...many of them were at the hospital so we did...we did see...see them. You know, they came into contact with the Gospel at the...at the hospital and most of them were among the...the...as I said, those that were in the ruling positions.
KOCH: Did the mission go into...give you preparation how to deal with each of the different types of religious groups?
ADOLPH: No. Not particularly.
KOCH: Do you think that's something that might have helped you or would it have made much difference?
ADOLPH: I think...I think having a...a more widely read background of the religious groups in a given country...
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: ...certainly would help a missionary going in. And I don't feel like we were anywheres prepared along that line. I don't fault the mission for that.
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: It's just that it was never really brought to our attention and...and I'm sure they probably put more emphasis on it today.
KOCH: Perhaps...was that maybe because you were going as medical missionaries?
ADOLPH: I think...that could very well be. People who were involved in church planting and evangelism and that kind of thing would have to be thoroughly familiar with that, where our ministry was more support ministry, the magnet which drew the people in. And then the hospital staff...the national church took over as far as the witnessing went.
KOCH: Which group do you think was least responsive to the Gospel?
ADOLPH: I would say the...the Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox, because they felt they were...you know, they had their religion and they didn't need it. Well, and the Muslim. Yeah, those two. The Muslims would be the number one nonresponsive group [Koch laughs] and the Ethiopian Orthodox would be next. Because actually the...the greatest proportion of the Ethiopian Protestant church are from the non-Orthodox tribal people, the former animists.
KOCH: And who would you say was the most responsive?
ADOLPH: Well, it would be the...the former animists.
KOCH: Oh yeah.
ADOLPH: So there was a very thriving church there where we were working. And it sent out its own missionaries and had annual Bible conferences and anything else, so we were in a very fortunate position where the church was growing and active.
KOCH: Why was it so important for you to teach your children at home?
ADOLPH: You would have to look into both Harold's background and my background, because Harold's mother lost her father when she was only about five, and she was sent off to a boarding school, and so she herself came up in a boarding school. And when she...when they got to China, of course the policy of the China Inland Mission was definitely to send the children away to boarding school, and because of her own experience at having lived through it, it just about killed her when Harold was sent off, having to take him to boarding school at the age of five. (Or six, I think it was. I've forgotten what it was, but the first grade.) And so he had had that experience and he did not want our children to have to go through it. Because of my having grown up in a family that was very family-orientated and where the mother was a mother and not a career woman, my orientation was that a mother was at home, and then that...that would be the primary emphasis for leading us to...to keep our children and then there were some...there were some other circumstances that...that made us feel that this was what we should do. In fact, when we were dating, this is one thing we talked about before we were ever married, and we both made a commitment then to each other that if we were on the mission field and the Lord gave us children, we would keep them and teach them ourselves. So that made it that our experience was not half as traumatic as other missionaries who tried to pick it up and keep their children at home after they went out there, you know, and that guilt, I think, that was building up in them that they weren't doing for their kids what they should be doing. There are two sides to this story. There are children who say that they...their best friends are from the boarding school kids, and they had a very positive experience. But in the next breath they'll say they really don't know their parents. And we have felt that if God gave us those children, then He alone...we alone are going to be held responsible at the judgement seat [of God] as to what happened to those kids. And we were just a hundred percent committed to keeping our children and one reason why we wanted to have two, also, because we felt we would rather have fewer and keep them and do the very best by two than to have six and ship them off to boarding school. It just didn't add up to us. And this was part of my struggle, also, in going to the mission field was what to do with the children and...and combine that with mission work.
KOCH: Didn't any problems arise when...from teaching your children at home...like with them, you know, not being...not liking mother being a teacher all the time or anything?
ADOLPH: Oh, I'm sure there were times when...well, I know there were times when we had conflicts. It's inevitable. [both laugh] But I can still remember when we were at language school, David was in second grade, and when we got there, we spoke to the language school teacher and requested that I have an hour off in the morning to spend with David. Instead of being with an informant studying language, I was to have one hour off that I could spend with him and teach second grade material. Fortunately, he was a very sharp child, and I could give him his assignments, and we sort of had a reward system there that when tea time came around, he had to have so much finished [Koch laughs] or he couldn't go in and have the goodies at tea time. It worked quite well.
KOCH: Good.
ADOLPH: But when we first got to Ethiopia, before we got up to the...the boarding...not the boarding school, the language school, (we were still at the headquarters), someone came up to me from the boarding school and said, "We have a space saved for David out there." [Koch laughs] And I said, "He's not going to be out there. He's going with us up to language school." And when an old...one of the older couples found this out, the lady came to me and said, "Oh, you must...you must not take David up there to language school with you. You've got to get that language. You've got...you won't be effective at all without the language." I agree with her. I mean, I had no argument with her. But that commitment was made and the mission knew it. That was one of the struggles at candidate's school because it was very obviously coming out that I was not in favor of the mission's policy [Koch laughs], that our policy was that I was a wife and a mother, first of all, and not a missionary. [laughs] There was a little bit of conflict and we got some correspondence when we got home and [they] wanted to know how I really stood on that and I wrote back very clearly. [laughs] But they accepted us on that basis, that we could keep our children with us if we wanted to. So we had that from day one, that permission to keep our children. But when we got down to our mission station, then, the field counsel man came and talked to us and said the field counsel had asked him to please come and ask us if we would not send our children to...to boarding school because they were getting too many requests from other parents to keep their children. So, my husband said, "So-and-so and so-and-so" (who were the top two men [chuckles] at candidate's school) "told us that we had their blessing to keep our children and teach them ourselves" and that was the end of it. They didn't argue with us anymore. We got flack now and then from some of the other missionaries. I mean, we could feel it more than hear it. And we could sense that some mothers would try to defend themselves, and I think it was just because of the guilt they felt inside for having done it. But it...it never bothered us, because that commitment was made years before, and all the flack we got just went off our backs like water off a duck's back.
KOCH: How did your children react to Africa? They pretty....
ADOLPH: Well, they basically grew up there.
KOCH: Uh-huh. So they didn't know any different, really.
ADOLPH: Well, they remembered Wheaton because that's where...you know, they remembered being at their grandparents' house before we came out here. So they remembered it and we had pictures of it, and this kind of thing, so.... They had been in so many different situations. I remember on our way to Taiwan...I mean, on our way to Ethiopia after we left Taiwan, we stopped in Bangladesh, (what was then Pakistan) to visit my husband's brother and his family, who were missionaries there. And we were going to the beach to spend a couple weeks. And while we were there (we were with them for a month) well, they didn't have room in their jeep to put their family and all the food and everybody they would need, so they...and us, so they put our family, the four of us, on the bus with the two houseworkers: the cook and the cleaner, the two men that worked for them. They couldn't speak any English. We couldn't speak any Bengali. They put us on the bus to the beach, which was about a two-hour, three-hour bus ride, and then we had to come back the same way. Well, it was interesting, on one of those trips (I don't know which one) a young Bengali boy got on the...a teenager got on (oh, I would guess he was fourteen, fifteen or something like that) got on the bus in his birthday suit, not a stitch on, and our kids didn't even bat an eye, didn't even look the other way. [both laugh]
KOCH: That's great. [Pauses] Well, I'd like to find out a little bit about what the hospital was like and what your job was like as a bookkeeper.
ADOLPH: Well, the hospital needed a lot of upgrading and my husband spent a lot of his time that first term making plans for building a new hospital, ordering the equipment, trying to raise funds for it, and...and direct the...direct the operation because the doctor who was there when we got there six weeks later moved off to another hospital, and another doctor came in and so...you know, it was just very, very busy. There's no question about that. We had some good missionary nurses which helped carry the load, very definitely. I was asked if I would teach in a local boarding...local mission school for the nationals. And I...and both Harold and I said no because I was teaching our own children, and I said, "I just can't cope emotionally with both jobs." So then the...after the other doctor left, whose wife had been taking care of the books, the mission head...our station head came to me and asked me if I would be willing to take over the hospital books. Well, here again, I'd never done anything like that. And it was really a very, very trying experience, but Harold highly encouraged me to do that, and he said, "You know, you are really helping me by doing it." And I guess that's what made me hang in there, though by about the end of the seventh year, I was going up the wall with it, and he said, you know, he'd have to get somebody else to do it and I said, no, I'd do it. "Oh [moans]," you know. [Koch laughs]. But that's another whole story. [both laugh].
KOCH: What kind of conflicts would arise in the hospital, say between doctors and nurses or between other missionaries?
ADOLPH: That is one of Satan's most active areas on the mission field, interpersonal conflicts between missionaries, and our...our experience was not unique at all. [Pauses] That's...that's about all I care to say.
KOCH: Yeah, okay, I understand.
ADOLPH: It was there, very definitely.
KOCH: How were these types of things resolved? Were they...or were they usually resolved in some manner?
ADOLPH: In most cases, not in every case, but in most cases, there was a readjustment of assignments which helped.
KOCH: How did the situation with Harold, you know, being busy in the hospital and you being busy with the books and teaching the kids, was it...how did that affect your marriage at all?
ADOLPH: I would say that I could sense a very detrimental effect on our marriage. Now, part of this was long standing because when...when Harold proposed to me, he made it very clear that because he was going to be a doctor, responsibilities were going to fall on me that don't have to fall on normal...normal, quote unquote, wives, because of his busyness in the medical practice. And I'm the type of a personality that has been able to...if it had to be done, I did it. You know, I took care of all the finances, I took...I made the decisions at home. The kids came to me if they had any questions. And our daughter's [Carolyn Joy] personality was such that it...it really kind of clashed with Harold's, and I was sort of the buffer between the two. Now they're the best of friends, thanks to the Lord's intervening, but, at that time...
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: I was the buffer, and toward the end of our last year there, [1974] there were a lot of political pressures on us as well, emotional pressures, a lot of stress, (that's when the government changed hands), and he was sick a lot of the time up until the last two years we were there. About every six weeks he'd be down with a sinus infection for a week or so, and that drained his....sapped his energy and his responsibilities. And we were just kind of ex...co-existing in the same house, I in my area and he in his area, and we just, you know, were...were doing that. And I was very grateful that when we came home, the Lord just kind of gave me a shove through some other doctor's wife to attend the "Enriched Living" seminar put on by Vernon Berke [?] which was just in town recently at the First Baptist Church, and it was really a turning point in our marriage because I realized that I was...by the end of that term I was really...
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: ...coming to the end of myself.
KOCH: Yeah.
ADOLPH: And we didn't often, you know, come to real verbal blows, but toward the end of that term, both of us...the stress level had gotten to the point where it was very definitely...
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: ...affecting our relationship.
KOCH: Do you think there's anything you could have done to alleviate that at the time?
ADOLPH: Well, at that point, Harold felt that I needed to get out of the bookkeeping.
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: He felt if I didn't have that, that it would help my stress level. I had developed hypoglycemia from the stress. I didn't really realize that, that that was the cause of it...
KOCH: Yeah.
ADOLPH: ...until we got home and the years have dropped that stress level down, and likewise the hypoglycemia has dropped back and it...and it's not as severe. But, let's see, we came home in May of '75. It was in January of '74 that we received a book in the mail from a person I had...we had never heard of. A lady had sent it to us. It was called Prison to...it was the dual...it was two books on the one cover by the same author, Prison to Praise and Power and Praise by Merlin Carothers. Now, I don't go along with everything that's in the book, but God used that book. In fact, He literally...His spirit just literally drove me to read those books when they came. And it's the idea that...that God wants us to praise Him regardless of the situation that we are...find ourselves in, and this bookkeeping was just, you know, I was just literally crawling up the wall with it. And it was after reading that book, I thought, "I can't even write back and tell the lady we...you know, thank her for it unless I say I've read it," you know. So the...the Holy Spirit used those things to drive me to read the books. And it was what the Lord knew that I needed to have.... And I was just getting so fed up with myself, I couldn't stand to live with myself. And I finally came to a point one day in early May...I was sitting in the living room and I said, "Lord, I cannot go on like this any longer. I hate myself the way I am and the way I'm acting to my family." And I said, "Holy Spirit, You've got to come in and You have got to take control. And when all of these negative feelings come charging up, You have got to take control. There's just no other way around it." There was absolutely no emotion involved. It was again, a transaction of the will, and I literally had to use that will dozens and dozens of times every day. "I don't want to be like that, Holy Spirit. You have got to change me." And it was...I think that was the beginning of the change also in our relationship (Harold's and my relationships) that the Lord knew I needed that to carry me through that last, stressful year, and then to get me to go to that seminar shortly after we got home.
KOCH: Yeah.
ADOLPH: I think it was in September and we had gotten home at the end of June. And...and from there things began to work out because I saw that I had to change. And when I changed and I took my right place in the marriage as being the helpmate and Harold as the leader instead of my leading. He had more or less abdicated because of his busyness in his medical practice and the stress there, and naturally, anything I could relieve him of makes him...
KOCH: Yeah.
ADOLPH: ...freer to do what the Lord has given him to do. So there's that conflict there. I wanting to relieve him, and yet, then pulling out from underneath his leadership. And it was then that...that I acknowledged to him that I hadn't let him be the leader that he should have been. And it was...it was very interesting to see the change that began to develop in him. And that was a very traumatic year for him, also, that furlough year when we came home, as he was struggling with all the things that he had been through and then to realize that he could not go back. I'm sure because I had gotten squared away with the Lord and squared away with him in my relationship, that the Lord was able to finally pick him back up again and set him on his feet, and it really wasn't until...he really didn't turn a corner until along around February of '75, after we attended...February and March of '75 when we attended the Narramore Christian Foundation ministers and missionaries seminar for three weeks and we had a chance to get some professional help, both for himself and in his relation...and both of us in our relationship with our daughter. And after that point, things really began to turn around and I would say that we have a much better marriage today than we ever had. Not that it's been a bad marriage...
KOCH: Yeah.
ADOLPH: ...[sighs] but it's a delight now.
KOCH: That's nice.
ADOLPH: And...and it's not that...that I have changed all that much. I have changed, but I mean, let's put it this way: I am more sensitive to when I go off the...the right track [Koch laughs] and I come back much quicker because I can't live with the conflict that's in me.
KOCH: So, did you leave Ethiopia before the government changed [unclear]?
ADOLPH: We left the...we left about nine months afterwards. They had already had the first executions. That was in November when we were off on vacation when the news came through that they had executed sixty government officials. And yet the Lord gave us a real assurance that He was going to keep us there until the end of our term which was in May, the end of April, first of May [1974] we would be scheduled to leave. And so we went back and...even though there were a lot of conflicts going on and student demonstrations and everything else, we were really...at least, I know I was very much at peace in spite of all the havoc that was going on, turmoil that was going on, I knew we were going to stay there, we were going to leave in peace. And we did. But then after being home for a year, we realized the situation was such that we were not going to be able to go back.
KOCH: Did the government's attitude towards missionaries change quite a bit?
ADOLPH: Oh, definitely. I mean, we were fortunate. Some of the missionaries were really, really mistreated. You know, all their goods were confiscated and they were given just twenty-four hours to get out and, you know, a lot of things like this. So, we were very fortunate.
KOCH: Think maybe some of that has to do with being more of a medical thing, that this may be helping people?
ADOLPH: Yes, they did not want us to go. In fact when it...when they knew that it was time for us to go, the townspeople gathered together a petition with five hundred signatures and presented it to the minister of health, who had come down to dedicate the new hospital which had just been finished, requesting him to deny us an exit visa so we couldn't leave the country.
KOCH: Was that hard for you to leave, knowing that you....
ADOLPH: We had a feeling we would not come back, even when we left, because we took everything that we wanted to take with us, and we shipped it out with us on our exit visa. We just had that feeling. Yes, it was very difficult for my husband to leave. I think my being...my position being of the wife and the follower rather than the leader, I don't have that.... Now, some missionary wives do, but I don't. Maybe it's because I got there through him, that I have always followed him, basically...
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: ...that I didn't find it the trauma to leave. In fact we just...heaved a sigh of relief when we were airborne out of Ethiopia. We were just...we were emotionally drained, both of us, totally. And so we spent...we spent two weeks...(was it two weeks in Europe?). Anyway, we took almost two months coming home [pauses] because we...we knew that we just couldn't go...go directly home and meet supporters and...and have to report on what all had gone on. It was bad enough in Europe we had to meet sup...some supporters there because they had been supporting the hospital, but anyway.
KOCH: Well, I'd like to get one more quick thing in. Were there any problems in...in the culture because you were a woman and like...were there any things that you weren't able to do or...?
ADOLPH: That is more true in the Muslim countries...
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: ...very definitely, than in Ethiopia. I didn't sense...I didn't sense that in Ethiopia.
KOCH: That wasn't really a problem.
ADOLPH: That was not a problem there. Now, when we went to Bangladesh on a short term mission trip a couple of years ago, (no, summer of '81)...
KOCH: Uh-huh.
ADOLPH: ...I felt it there. Definitely.
KOCH: Now I know you would...you would...when you went to Bangladesh, you wanted to stay like seven or eight weeks with...did that...were you able to stay...what were...?
ADOLPH: You mean in '81?
KOCH: Yeah. I...I remember it was a...something that the Wheaton Bible Church I got....
ADOLPH: Yeah, paid...paid for our trip out there. Yeah, we were there for six weeks. But the...the...the oppression that is in a...a Muslim country is...is something that neither one of us, neither Harold nor I, could feel comfortable with. That's why I think people who work with Muslims have to have a very definite gift and call from the Lord and a love for those people because we felt it very oppressive, and there a women's position is definitely down. When we came down from the capital on the bus, no one knew we were coming when we came. You know, we had to fend for ourselves. Well, I'm glad it happened to us rather than someone who'd never been in the Third World before and we had been to Bangladesh before so it wasn't like we were in a totally strange place and the Lord went ahead of us and, you know, took care of us and got us there. But they sent us down on a bus rather than having one of the new missionaries drive us down to the hospital after we got into the...the local district capital. I was one of two women on the bus. The other woman was totally covered. All you could see were her eyeholes. She was totally covered and riding with her husband. Of course, here I was, white, blonde hair, no mask, no veil. [Koch laughs] I did have...I had a...a sleeveless dress on, but it was full-length. It was a floor length, you know, clear to my...my ankles, so, you know, at least I was covered that way which fit into their culture. I knew that and so I came prepared with...with long dresses. But the man that was sitting next to us, [laughs] I guess knew one word of English. He was sitting next to Harold. I was next to the window. And he was chewing away on his chop, and he...[both laugh lightly] he pointed to me and said to Harold, "Wife?" [Koch laughs] Harold said...grinned, " Uh-huh." [Both laughs heartily]
KOCH: Oh, gosh!
ADOLPH: Farther on down the trip, three tribal girls got on who were not Muslim. And they were just in their regular tribal dress and did not have...they were not hooded and covered. They were wide open, open to the public. But, again, we were getting farther down country in more...where more tribal people intermingled with the Bengalis.
KOCH: In what way are you still interested in missions now that you've returned?
ADOLPH: I guess I would say I'm still interested because of Harold's interest. I'm just not sure where the Lord would lead me, you know, if He would take Harold out of my life. But...our hope is to still go back to the mission field full-time when he comes to an early retirement age. And, of course, we're going on short-term mission trips every year...
KOCH: Oh.
ADOLPH: ...since about 1980. Up until that time, Harold couldn't face going back to the Third World. I really couldn't either. Neither one of us could. But finally we went in 1980 because he was asked to speak at a...a medical meeting for missionary doctors in Kenya. And he went two weeks on ahead and went out to the Central African Republic to help a...a doctor we had known in Ethiopia who was working out there. And then I flew on out and met him, taking with me Vernon Berke's [?] "Enriched Living" seminar that I gave to the missionary wives in the...in Nairobi while he was teaching missionary physicians twenty miles away. And it was a...a good experience but...but then he got this yen again to go back to the mission field, and it was very, very difficult to come back then and settle down again. But ever since then, we've gone every year, and sometimes twice a year, (in fact, we're leaving Sunday, as I said, for five and a half weeks to Central African Republic), and we are probably more useful in this type of a short-term position than physicians are who have never been overseas.
KOCH: Right.
ADOLPH: Because when we went to Bangladesh, it ended up that the head doctor was with us for only a week and then he went back to the capital. He's primarily in...in administration and...and translation work, and so that the only help that Harold had was a graduate medical student who had just graduated from medical school, hadn't taken his internship even. Well, it wa...it was very interesting. A few days later one of the nurses came to me and she said, "You can certainly tell that your husband has been on the mission field before. He just walked in and took over." [both laugh]
KOCH: So, if you do go back on the mission field, are you interested in a Third World country again then?
ADOLPH: Probably. We...you know, where will the Lord lead?
KOCH: Right.
ADOLPH: What will the political situations be? But Harold's feeling has always been, "I am willing to go and I am trained to go. Why shouldn't I go?" You know, "Why should I stay here?" That was sort of his logic and his...he felt that the Lord had called him to a full-time ministry for a lifetime of medical mission work. So it was very, very difficult for him to be willing to stay behind here, but...after, oh, six years or so...six, seven years, he actually said one day, "I am glad that the Lord kept us here." Well, the Lord literally had to keep us here. I mean, he wouldn't have stayed voluntarily. [both laugh] But I think because of my role as being a...a wife and mother, that role doesn't change no matter where I am. So as long as he's happy....
KOCH: Yeah.
ADOLPH: You know, I...I've gotten used to the Third World now so that it does make it easier for us to fit into a short-term situation than others who've never been there, because the missionary wives don't have to worry about me, and Harold doesn't have to worry about how I'm going to react. The only problem is in the travel, in getting there...
KOCH: Yes.
ADOLPH: ...because I have never enjoyed flying, and it is a real struggle with me every time I get in a plane. There again the Lord met me one time, face to face, when I was getting on a plane. I said, "Lord, You don't...You know I don't like to fly." And He said, "Do you know why?" He said, "Because you have to be in control of things and when you're in an airplane, you can't." [Koch laughs] I said, "I think You're right." It hasn't made it all that much easier to fly but I am...I.... When we went out last year to the Central African Republic, it was the first time I had ever ridden in a small plane. And...David figured...(that's our son, who's out there doing his doctoral research work), he figured that I would never come, never come because of that small plane. Well, Harold and I talked it over and Harold...Harold was going to go anyway, [Koch laughs] whether I went or not, but.... Well, no, he really didn't want to go. He had been there once before. He knew it was kind of the end of the world and he knew that he got sick when he went there 'cause he worked so hard, but then as we talked it over we said, you know, somewhere down the line our son is going to say, "You know, they could go everywhere else, but they couldn't come and see me." And also last year, in...in April of '83, I had to go in for a breast biopsy because of a change on my mammogram from the previous two years, and it proved to be malignant, and I had to have a mastectomy right then, right that day. And that was a whol...another whole new experience that I had to work through. I told one of Harold's colleagues that came in to see how I was doing, I said, "Well," I said, "I know that everything I know intellectually is going to have to be worked out experientially." And it did and it took about two and a half months of real struggle and real arguing with the Lord. But here again, the Lord came through in a very real, personal way and answered all my questions. Not in the sense that He answered the "Why did it happen?". But He.... Maybe I shouldn't say answered my questions. He...He...satisfied me with Himself. [Very emotional] And I realize that every day now is a gift from Him.
KOCH: Well, I guess I better let you go. Don't want to make...[tape cuts off sentence]
END OF TAPE