The Overseas Trip Where Language Didn't Matter

Our missions trip was scheduled for September 2001. We’d been preparing all summer. But 9-11 intervened, and the trip was postponed.  

We were an unusual missions team. The mission we’d be visiting had specifically asked for it – a small team devoted to communications to help the mission tell its story, produce a short film for a building fundraiser, and interview missionaries who could use videos and stories to send reports to financial supporters and home churches. We were a team of three: team lead/logistics guy/organizer/general factotum; the videographer, aka the guy with the camera; and me, the writer, the guy with the laptop who would be typing away in airports, planes, homes, offices, and in the car. 

 

We’d be in central Europe for a week, with a schedule so packed I thought we’d need slotted times for breathing. Four countries, five languages, cultural shocks, and no time to detox from jet lag.

 

I could probably write pages about that trip, story after story, detail after detail. But what sticks with me were a few examples of how communication didn’t depend upon language.

Photograph of Dresden by Lukas D via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Thursday Readings

 

Poet Laure: Going Fishing with Dad – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“Casey at the Bat,” poem by Ernest Thayer – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“In School-Days,” poems by John Greenleaf Whittier – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

 

A Community of Four – For a Week

The church had never quite had a short-term mission team like this one.

A chemist. A retired engineer. And a PR guy / writer.

Our assignment: An eight-day trip to Eastern Europe, with a whirlwind itinerary: Budapest, Prague, Dresden, Brno, and back to Budapest. We were to interview missionaries, to help with their support-raising efforts; film the world of the mission underway across cities in Eastern Europe; do a short film to help with fundraising to buy a permanent building for the mission in Budapest. And prepare a series of reports that could be used by the mission agency back in the United States.

None of us had been to Eastern Europe before.

The retired engineer – Jack – manned the video camera. I was the writer and interviewer. The chemist – Steve – was the gaffer, trip manager, equipment manager, and general factotum.

We trained for months – studied, planned, discussed, and met. We practiced interviewing missionaries. We pored over maps and some of the history and background of the places we would be visiting and the people we would be meeting. We also spent time getting to know each other. And somewhere in that time the team became a small community.

Once we landed in Budapest, we would have a fourth member of the team – Gary, one of the permanent missionaries. He would be our guide, chauffeur, teacher, answerer of questions, hotel finder, translator, and church and mission office locator (a sort of human MapQuest).

The mission in Budapest was enthusiastic, we were enthusiastic, and our home church coordinator was enthusiastic. The national mission agency and our own church missions committee were less enthusiastic. We were different. They had never heard of such a team before. Was this more of a vacation than a “real mission trip?” A communications team? Really?

Still, we flew to Budapest. We were waiting for our baggage at the Budapest airport when we learned our overscheduled itinerary had just been thrown out the window. Erfurt in Germany had been added as an itinerary stop, about three to four hours from Dresden (and we drove like Americans, not Germans).

Gary, our driver, slipped right into our little community as if he’d been there all along. He explained what we might see along the roadsides and near border crossings in the two countries with legalized prostitution (he was right). He got us through back streets in the dark of night to find our hotels. As we approached one border crossing, he told us to remove our jackets and throw them across the camera equipment, to discourage confiscation by the border guards.

Four countries, eight days. On our way to Dresden, we stopped for dinner at a restaurant in the Sudeten Mountains, where no one spoke English and all conversation stopped when we walked in. (The menu was, fortunately, in Czech and German; my college German was sufficient to figure out what we could eat.)

We were in cities and suburbs, large towns and small. We filmed interviews with almost 20 missionaries. We filmed the building in Budapest the mission hoped to buy. I wrote story and after story. We ate tomatoes together for breakfast, and had a lunch at the McDonalds in Chemnitz, Germany. We walked down Wenceslas Square together in Prague, and across the Charles Bridge.

Our little community worked. We carried each other’s bags and equipment. We became something of a cohesive news crew, especially when we found ourselves right in the middle of the biggest news story in Europe – the murder of 16 people at a high school in Erfurt. It was at that school and the small church nearby whose pastor was ministering to the bereaved families where we met the Holy Spirit.

Most of the writing and film editing work happened after we were home. Did our community succeed at its task?

Missionaries were helped with support, and their video reports sent to their home churches and supporters. The video for the hoped-for mission building in Budapest succeeded in helping raise the needed funds. The people working in the mission were encouraged.

And we, our little band of three plus one, were changed. Forever.

Over at The High Calling, a community linkup has been posted for the theme of the power of community. If you have a story about community, or even just want to read what others have to say, please visit The High Calling.

Photograph of Budapest traffic by Mick Lissone via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Making plans

She told us to make plans

but always be prepared

to change them, because

no one likes disrupting

a good plan

more than God

so we did, make plans,

that is, and the plans,

after preparation and study,

after intense focus and work,

and much prayer,

were implemented

they lasted slightly less

than a day, when we faced

the choice of change. We

remembered her words

and we adapted, not truly

understanding why

until the new thing

happened, sweeping us

into someone else’s

tragedy, sweeping us

into the arms

of the spirit

nothing was the same

ever

Photograph: Gutenberg School, Erfurt Germany, April 29, 2002. On April 26, a 19-year-old former student shot at killed 16 people at the school. Our short-term mission team was asked to go to alter our Eastern European trip and travel to Erfurt. It wrecked our carefully planned schedule, and it did change everything for us.

Brennan Manning: Unimaginable Love

I’ve talked before about a short-term mission trip I participated in that unexpectedly led our small team to Erfurt, Germany. Erfurt, where Martin Luther attended seminary, had been part of East Germany from 1945 to 1989. The church we visited there had previously been a Communist Party social hall.

Thirteen people had been killed by a gunman at a local high school. Without anyone really understanding why, our team was diverted from its packed schedule to meet with the young pastor at the church.

What happened while we interviewed him, sitting in a pew in the church sanctuary, still mystifies me. But the three of us – the pastor, me the interviewer, and the cameraman – experienced something overwhelming.

With the school tragedy just a few blocks away, we had been interviewing the pastor about his ministering to the parents, teachers and children when something surrounded us, silenced us, and led the three of us to individually and simultaneously begin to weep.

Emotion was being expressed, but it wasn’t emotion that surrounded us. It was a presence. It wasn’t warm and loving; at first it was terrifying. And then humbling. And then calming and secure, producing in us an exhausted resolve.

Silence followed. The logical question was, “What was that?” But we knew, and the knowledge itself was a thing of wonder.

Brennan Manning, in The Furious Longing of God, actually describes what happened to us in that small church in Erfurt.

“Contemplation of the furious longing of God is elevated to a dramatic level in those rare and unforgettable moments when our faith, hope, and love are raised to an unprecedented level by the Holy Spirit’s active intervention, much like being in (a) boat when a storm hits. We are plunged into mystery… Self-consciousness and self-awareness disappear. We are in the presence of the ineffable Mystery above all creatures and beyond all telling.

“These are moments of truth. You are alone with The Alone. God’s tender feelings for you are no longer dry knowledge.”

That describes what happened. I’ve never had the desire to repeat the experience.

Once was more than sufficient.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing The Furious Longing of God. To see more posts on this chapter, “Unimaginable Love,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Coming Home: An Epiphany

It began in laughter and ended in weeping, but I think I met the Holy Spirit in a former Communist Party social hall in eastern Germany.

In April, 2002, I was part of a three-man communication team sent by our church for eight days to central Europe – Budapest in Hungary, Prague and Brno in the Czech Republic, and Dresden in Germany. We had a cameraman, a team leader/organizer/gaffer/go-fer, and me, the writer. Our purpose was to film and write stories for our denomination’s Central European mission. There had never been a short-term mission team like ours before, and both the church and denominational headquarters were nervous and not a little skeptical. But we went.

We trained for months. We plotted our schedule. We determined which missionaries to interview and film, and how the written and video stories could be used for both promoting the mission and for missionary reports to home churches and supporters. The church leader who organized our team kept reminding us of always being open to God changing our plans. We nodded and made more plans.

As we waited in the St. Louis airport for our flight to Chicago/Frankfurt, we saw a TV news report about a gunman killing 13 students and teachers in Erfurt, Germany. We were shocked like everyone else but didn’t consider how it might affect our trip.

When we landed in Budapest, the first words we heard were, “They want to send you to Erfurt.” There wasn’t a good explanation. As we were driven to our home base, we were told there had been a flurry of transatlantic emails and calls while we were en route and the denomination wanted us to go. But the decision was ours. Our packed schedule offered no time for a change. Our team leader shook his head. “This would wreck everything,” he said.

We sat is silence for a time, and then. Remembering the leader’s words in St. Louis, I said, “Maybe this is what it means when God changes your plans.”

The next day, we went to church and then left for Dresden, stopping long enough to sleep and film two interviews. Then we drove to Erfurt.

We had a contact name in Erfurt – the young pastor of a small church. He would meet us as we exited the autobahn and drive us to his church, and then to the school. But we really didn’t know what we were supposed to do.

He was waiting as planned. I rode with him to talk about the interview while the others followed in our vehicle. The pastor and I looked at one another – and started laughing for no discernible reason. The car filled with our laughter, and something else as well – the sense that we had known each other for a very long time.

He had spent the previous three days ministering to families – families who had lost spouses, children, friends. He had had a total of four hours of sleep. He was unshaven and had dark circles under his eyes. He was spent physically, spiritually and emotionally. Yet we were laughing.

The church building was a former social hall for the local Communist Party, transformed into a beautifully simple worship space. While our team leader went exploring, the cameraman and I sat with the pastor, and we began to talk as the camera rolled.

About five minutes into the conversation, I asked the pastor how he was personally dealing with all he had had to face over the previous three days. He lowered his head and said nothing. It was when I began to weep that I realized he was as well, as was the cameraman.

He was exhausted; we were still jetlagged. Perhaps that explains it. But we suddenly seemed surrounded simultaneously by both sadness and joy, anguish and relief, as if God was weeping with us as he held the three of us tightly together. Our hearts were simultaneously broken and healed.

Days later, I tried to explain to the head of the Central Mission in Budapest what had happened in Erfurt.

All I could tell him was that I knew I had come home.

Christianity Today’s Books and Culture is asking for stories of epiphanies. Links are being posted on their Facebook page.

From Cicadas in the Wilderness to Erfurt, Germany

I’ve been reading The Wisdom of the Wilderness by Gerald May, as part of an online book group discussion over at the High Calling Blogs led by Laura Boggess. This past week, we read chapter 4 – Cicada Song.

May spends time in the wilderness as a kind of healing therapy, including experiencing some extreme conditions like below freezing cold, isolation, a bear in front of the tent, and hearing voices. In this chapter, he's a bit more conventional and talks about listening to the cicadas, including a mating pair. (Listening to the mating calls of insects in the wilderness – not my dream vacation but it’s his story so I let him tell it.)

At one point in the narrative, he says this: “I am lost now, lost into the firelight’s flickering on the tree leaves, warmth mingling with cool night star sparkles, all into the cicada song; I have been shown the way into the joining, I have been guided in a harmony path, to a oneness within which I am, once again, freshly and absolutely alive.”

Those words could easily be structured into a poem; they sound poetic. But what really struck me about the passage, especially that last line about “a oneness within which I am, once again, freshly and absolutely alive.” Something like that happened to me, but it wasn’t in wilderness. Or maybe it was in a kind of wilderness.

In 2002, I was part of a three-man communication team sent by our church to Eastern Europe. We had Jack, the video guy; Steve, the guy who did all the logistics and planning; and me, the writer. Our charge was to meet with missionaries in Hungary, Czech Republic and Dresden in eastern Germany, interview them, and then use the resulting videos and stories in a variety of communication media – newsletters, videotapes and as “live reports” the missionaries could send back to their home churches and supporters. Our church had never had a short-term mission team quite like us, and for a while we were quite perplexing. The missions program coordinator who’d championed our team told us one thing that stuck in my mind: have your detailed plans and itineraries, she said, but be prepared to go where the spirit moves.

As we waited in St. Louis for our flight to Chicago (and then Frankfurt and Budapest), we saw on CNN that a shooting had occurred in Erfurt in eastern Germany – a shooting in a high school that sounded like a German version of Columbine. Several people had been killed. We saw the story but it didn’t register with us as a game-changing event for our trip. We’d no plans to be anywhere near Erfurt.

When we landed in Budapest Saturday, we were greeted by our missionary host with this: “They want to send you to Erfurt.” While we had been crossing the Atlantic, phones calls between our church in St. Louis, our denomination’s headquarters in Minneapolis and the Eastern Europe mission headquarters in Budapest had been occurring, with the discussion about the communication team switching gears and heading for Erfurt, to record what was happening and to help a young pastor. All we really knew was that this pastor had been counseling the families of victims – both the dead and the wounded – almost non-stop. What we didn’t understand was how we could help.

Jetlagged though we were, we talked about it for hours. It would clearly wreck the carefully planned (and packed) schedule. We weren’t sure what we were supposed to do, and no one could really tell us. And then we remembered what the missions coordinator had told us weeks before – be ready to go where the spirit moves. So we did. Driven by Gary, one of the mission staff in Budapest, we traveled to Dresden, arriving late Sunday night. The next morning, we met with a local pastor and a missionary couple as we had planned, and then left for Erfurt.

Erfurt was where Martin Luther had attended seminary. It’s close to what had been the border of West Germany, but all those years under communism had left a spiritual wilderness. We drove down the autobahn; the pastor of the church was waiting for us just off the highway.

His name was Mattias, and he and his wife were originally from Hamburg. He was pastoring a small church in Erfurt constructed from a former communist social hall (there’s something delightfully ironic in that – a communist social hall converted into a church). As we'd planned with all of our other meetings, I rode with Mattias and the rest of our party followed. This allowed some time for me, the writer and interviewer, to introduce myself and talk a little bit about our team and what we were doing.

As soon as I sat in the passenger seat of Mattias’ car, a strange thing happened. We looked at one another and began to laugh for no discernible reason. We just started laughing together. It was as if we had known each other for a long time, and then found ourselves in an odd situation. As he drove and we talked, this strange feeling kept reinforcing itself. We didn’t openly talk about it, but it was there.

We drove to the church. From the outside, it didn’t look like a church. But the inside was definitely a church, including the smell. The design was contemporary – light-colored wood, royal blue carpeting. We toured the building and met two other church members.

We set up the interview in the sanctuary. Our logistics guy and driver wandered off to explore. Jack started filming, and Mattias and I started talking. And in the course of that 40 minutes, something profound happened.

Mattias was close to physical and emotional exhaustion. The shooting had happened on Friday; for three days he had been meeting with and counseling and praying with family and friends of the victims. He had been going on virtually no sleep, and hadn’t seen his wife and children in all that time. There weren’t a lot of pastors around to help; Mattias had been pretty much on his own. I asked questions, and he talked. And then we talked together. And in those few brief moments, the three of us became as one. I can’t explain it. But never have I felt as “freshly and absolutely alive,” as Gerald May described his cicada moment. The interview ended with all three of us in tears. Jack and I knew what Mattias had been experiencing because we were now going through it with him, as one with him.

Steve and Gary reappeared and could see something had happened. But not one of us could adequately explain it. I could only offer Steve what Mattias had said during the talk: “God is in this place.”

The four of us then went to the school, where thousands of people had gathered. Thousands of people – and almost total silence. I think we were the only Americans there – and we were recognized as Americans, as “people who know what this is like,” a reference to Columbine.

The last thing we did before we left Erfurt that evening was to lay our hands on Mattias and pray for him. We did this on a street corner. And then we left, driving back to spend the night in Dresden. I said very little during the drive.

A few days later, when we arrived back in Budapest, we were having dinner. I tried to explain to Gary what had happened in Erfurt, but I could only come up with a rather lame description.

Finally, I said this: “I don’t know what happened. But I came from America and unexpectedly went to Erfurt, and found I’d come home.”