Missionary Families Find a Sense of Place and Identity : Two Generations on Two Continents 9781498504867, 9781498504850

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Missionary Families Find a Sense of Place and Identity

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Missionary Families Find a Sense of Place and Identity Two Generations on Two Continents

John S. Benson

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

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Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2015 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Benson, John S. Missionary families find a sense of place and identity : two generations on two continents / John S. Benson. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4985-0485-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4985-0486-7 (electronic) 1. Missions—Tanzania. 2. Lutheran Church—Missions—Tanzania—History—20th century. 3. Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church—Missions—Tanzania—History. 4. Lutheran Church in America—Missions—Tanzania—History. 5. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—Missions—Tanzania—History. 6. Identification (Religion) 7. Identity (Psychology)—Religious aspects—Christianity. 8. Religion and geography. 9. Missionaries—Family relationships. I. Title. BV3625.T4B46 2015 266'.410922—dc23 [B] 2015017499

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction

1

Chapter 1

History of a Mission

15

Chapter 2

Place and Religion in the Childhoods of the Missionary Generation

45

Place and Religion in the Childhoods of the Second Generation

59

Chapter 4

The College Experience for Both Generations

87

Chapter 5

“The Call” for Two Generations

117

Chapter 6

Making Sense of an Alien Place: Tanzania

147

Chapter 7

The Adult Lives of the Second Generation: Finding a Partner

177

The Occupational Choices of Adult Children of Missionaries

185

The Second Generation Forming Connections to Places as Adults

203

Chapter 10

Faith of Our Fathers: Living Still?

217

Chapter 11

Placing Our Lives

243

Chapter 3

Chapter 8 Chapter 9

v

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Contents

Conclusion

259

Appendix

265

Bibliography

269

Index

275

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Acknowledgments

This book is many years in the making. First of all I would like to thank those of the missionary community in which I grew up who agreed to take part in this study. Their names are listed in the index and appendix. I appreciated their hospitality and willingness to answer all my questions. There are some who believed in the project and gave me encouragement who are no longer with us including my father, Stan Benson; Hal, Louise, and Ann Faust; Dan Friberg; Al Gottneid; Elder Jackson; Mel and Dottie Lofgren; Howard Olson and his son, Howie; Evelyn Palm; Les and Ruth Peterson; and Dave Simonson. I am sorry they did not live to see the completion of this project. Various archives were very helpful in my research. These include foremost, the ELCA Archives in Elk Grove Village, IL; the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL; the Gustavus Adolphus Archives and Folke Bernadotte Library at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN; the Region IX Archives at Luther-Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul, MN; the archives at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago and the archives at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL; the archives for Luther College-Wahoo at Midland University in Fremont, NE; the archives and library at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN; and the library and archives at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. The librarians at my own university, Minnesota State University Moorhead, helped me with getting inter-library loans. All were very helpful additions to help me understand the lives of these two generations.

vii

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Acknowledgments

While working on this project, I have presented aspects of this research at numerous conferences of the Association of American Geographers and am grateful for the support of the Geography of Religion and Beliefs Systems (GORABS) specialty group who provided a forum for me to share my ideas. In addition, I was blessed to present research to the East African Missionary Reunion in 2003 and to the Missions and Mental Health Conference in 2010. These venues helped me clarify my thinking on the topics included in the book. Many people have helped me during the writing process by reading chapters in progress and helping me edit my work. Particularly helpful was my good friend and writer, Lin Enger, who helped me with my first preliminary paper when I planned the project in 1997 through the final drafts this past year. My high school roommate, Craig Hincks, a writer and editor, helped me edit different chapters. Tony Waters, a prolific writer and scholar, read through earlier versions of chapters. Beth Anderson, one of my colleagues at Minnesota State University Moorhead, gave me feedback on earlier chapters. Finally, Todd Benson, my brother, helped me keep the integrity of what I wanted to say in a much more succinct way in the final edit for this book. I am grateful for the editorial help at Lexington Books this past year as they worked on bringing a massive tome down to a clearer document. Finally, I want to thank many friends both from my Africa days and from my time here in the States who have asked about the project and encouraged me that this was a project worth doing. My family, who have not yet read the full manuscript, have played a big part in this project. My children, Claire and Sam, now both in colleges, felt the loss of their father most Junes when they were still young so that he could travel the country doing interviews. In addition, my wife, Cindy, who stayed home and watched them and has endured the alarm clock going off before 5 a.m. for many years as I worked on writing up this book deserves a great deal of thanks. Thank you all!

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Introduction

Let me tell you two quick stories to begin with; one from before I began my research, the other from an interview during my research. Years ago, I went to a local workshop with an African-American colleague, Doris WalkerDalhouse. Educators from throughout the Red River Valley of the North area, which runs along the Minnesota-North Dakota border, were attending. Another African-American woman noticed Doris and immediately reached out to her as one of only two black educators in a sea of white faces, asking her how she had ended up in this area. In doing this, she was finding someone else from a non-dominant culture living within the larger dominant white Red River Valley sub-culture, deriving joy in meeting another person from her culture within this setting. A few weeks later, Jane Kurtz, a children’s book author, was invited to give a talk where I teach at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Jane’s books often are about the country where she grew up as the child of missionaries, Ethiopia. As I am a child of American Lutheran missionaries from Tanzania and having met Jane once before, we took about ten minutes to chat about what adult children of missionaries often talk about when we get together, our travels and thoughts on living in the larger American culture. Mirroring Doris’s experience at the workshop, in Jane I felt that I too had someone from my own culture to talk with within the dominant Red River Valley culture. At this time, long before I could be in daily contact through social media with others who were from my “missionary kid” culture, I felt

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Introduction

renewed by our short conversation because often I felt like a minority of one in my community, knowing no others who shared my background. While others could easily have recognized that Doris and her new acquaintance were members of a different sub-culture, few would have seen Jane and me in the same way. As individuals who ostensibly are part of the dominant culture where we live in the United States, but who grew up overseas, Jane and I are “hidden immigrants” in American society (Bell 1997). Pollock and Van Reken call us “Third Culture Kids,” individuals who often look like others in the dominant culture, but who had the experience of growing up elsewhere, particularly in the context of a foreign mission field and, in consequence, think quite differently from those among whom they live in America (2001). We are part of a hidden culture within America. One of my goals for this book is to help others understand what this culture was like for those of us who grew up within it by telling its history—the story of our parents, the missionaries, and the story of our generation, their children, as we made sense of our lives as children in Africa and as we entered into adulthood in America. Second, I want to record the history of this community of missionaries and their children for those of us who grew up within it so that we can have a better understanding of ourselves. The audience for my story then is both an external one and an internal one. My aim is to tell an honest story so that both outsiders and we ourselves can understand our community better. “It’s like I have lived two lives.” I was talking to Steve Faust about the huge differences between his adult life as a banker in Iron Mountain, Michigan, and his childhood in Balangida, Tanzania, the remote mission station where he grew up. As a pre-schooler with his parents busy and his siblings usually off at boarding school, Steve ran around with his African playmates and, apart from going to sleep in a concrete house each night, his life was very similar to his friends. When he started boarding school at the American Lutheran mission school at Kiomboi, with its strong American emphasis, he experienced culture shock for the first time. He knew so little of American life. His high school years at Rift Valley Academy at Kijabe, Kenya, were even more of a shock. He rebelled against the strictness of the high school, eventually finishing his secondary education in the United States. His first years in college were not that successful, but eventually he settled down in the town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where his father then had a church. As I talked to him in 2000, he had been married for many years, his children were almost grown, and he had a respectable job at the bank and could be described as one of the pillars of the community. He continued to stay in touch with people from his boyhood through contacts with some of

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those childhood friends back in Balangida. Though he had not been back to Tanzania since the late 1970s, he still felt as if it was part of his life, as was his day-to-day life in Iron Mountain. While Steve’s life has had its own unique details, those of us who were raised in the American Lutheran missionary community in Tanzania all know what Steve means in saying that it is like he has lived two lives. However, most of the stories written by missionaries or by the children of missionaries (“missionary kids” or MK) almost always concentrate on that life overseas, their first life. Steve’s parents, Hal and Louise Faust, were prolific writers, producing many articles for Lutheran church publications and later writing memoirs of their lives. But, the lives they described in their writing were only those of their Africa years—the more than twenty years they lived in Iron Mountain, Michigan, are given no attention. Other American Lutheran missionaries also wrote memoirs about their years in Tanzania, with little attention to their later years in the United States. While none of the American Lutheran missionary kids from Tanzania have written memoirs, those written by MKs who grew up in other missionary communities generally end with their arrival in the United States. In setting out to write this book, in contrast, I felt that the lives of these two generations—the missionaries and their children—were incomplete if the story only concentrated on their lives lived outside of the United States. The “two lives” need to be examined to give a fuller picture of what it meant to be a missionary and to be a missionary kid.

Nature of Two in Our Lives Those who lived in the American Lutheran missionary community in Tanzania were and continue to be one single tight-knit community. But, within it we differ in many ways, particularly across the two generations of the missionaries and their children. While we are united with a shared experience of having lived many years of our lives in another continent, the two generations experienced both North America and Africa differently. Place and religion are the two dimensions that strongly defined the lives of the missionaries and their children. If we describe ourselves as “missionaries” or as “missionary kids,” there is an automatic assumption on the part of the listener that ties us to both a religious institution and to another place in the world, even if we no longer are adherents of the religion or even if we have lived in the same place for decades. These two issues, the connection to place and the religious development of these two generations of the American Lutheran missionary community in Tanzania, provide the framework within which I will examine the life histories of the members of this community.

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The missionaries went from the United States to Africa to help spread Christianity in Africa. They felt called to the “mission field” and the land in which they worked always had this ideological feel to it for them. In contrast, we, the children of those missionaries, who were raised in Africa, did not see it in the same way. For us, it was home; while the United States was the place where we went on furloughs every four years. While the ideas of home and place can be ideological in their own way, the differing views of Tanzania were readily apparent at reunions of the Tanzanian missionary community. At these reunions you would often see the former missionaries taking part in the programs centered on religious themes, while the missionary kids would often be outside in discussion remembering their experiences of place. Many of us missionary children have spent our adult lives learning to understand this American place where our parents spent their childhoods. Thus there are two views of these different lands. The American childhood of the missionaries, many within the evangelical setting of the Augustana Lutheran Church, was one that promoted missions. These young people were urged toward a career in missions by earlier Augustana missionaries when they were on furlough from Africa. The Augustana colleges they attended did the same, as the Augustana Lutheran Church was in need of missionaries. Everything supported and confirmed the pursuit of their religious ideals of going into missions. The missionary children, however, attended church in another language, went off to a mission boarding school at a young age, attended a high school that espoused a set of Christian principles that in some ways differed significantly from what many had experienced at home, and were confronted with a different type of Lutheranism when they went to the same colleges their parents had attended. Thus, the children experienced quite a different type of religious development from that of their missionary parents.

Various Scales of Project As a geographer by training, I was taught the importance of understanding the issue of scale. What may be true at one scale may not be true at another. Almost all of the research I have done in my life has started at the personal level. This project is my most personal to date. I had questions that I had mulled over for years but did not have the answers for and wanted to see if the questions I was pondering were the same for others who had grown up in my community. So I reached to the broader scales of family and community to try and find answers. I began the project by interviewing members of seventeen missionary families (later expanded to nineteen) to try and find some

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answers and to see if they had similar experiences to mine as a missionary kid from Tanzania living in the United States. Most of the issues I grappled with in this research emerged from my own personal questions. Because public personal testimonies of faith are not as large a part of Lutheran theology as in other evangelical traditions, I had little knowledge of what it was that led my parents and their colleagues into becoming missionaries. Few talked about that key decision in their lives. Similarly, I had little insight into all of the struggles associated with spiritual growth that individual members of the missionary community encountered. As believers in infant baptism, the emphasis was on a lifelong relationship with Christ and the church. I have had this lifelong relationship, but I have often been at odds with the church, as well. The missionaries did not seem to have these spiritual struggles, but I wondered if my fellow MKs had as many as I had had. This study, then, is a mixture of an academic research project combined with a personal inquiry where I was both a researcher and a member of the community I was studying. As such, the first person will be used throughout the book to add my personal questions and to augment my personal experiences with those related by the people I interviewed.

Frameworks The two major frameworks for my research center, first, on understanding the notion of place and, secondly, on how people develop religiously. I approached each interview without set questions, but with a general framework of understanding on these two issues in mind. I would ask my interviewees to tell me about their memories of the places they lived and of their religious involvement in each of these places. We would then go through the story of their lives in this manner to build an understanding of what both of these concepts meant for each of them.

Notions of Place Place was an important concept in my academic training in geography. However, this term reaches far beyond geography with writers across many disciplines exploring what it means. While geographers traditionally look at place as the human and physical characteristics that make up a particular location, environmentalists and social scientists have looked beyond this traditional definition to ascertain how certain places have stronger influences on our lives than others.

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People like Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry write from a primarily rural perspective about the loss of a sense of place in America. In a book on community and place that Jackson co-edited (Vitek and Jackson 1996), many of the authors talk about making peace with the location they live in and making it a place “to dwell” (Tall 1996). This has been an issue for both missionaries and their children. Integral to their notion of settling into a place is community. The missionary community of American Lutherans in Tanzania in which I grew up was a very tight community. Part of the loss I feel in living in America is searching for a community of which to be a part that is as strong as that one. Vinz and Tammaro, in the introduction to their collection of essays by Midwestern authors about the influence this region had on their lives, state: The question of a particular locale’s influence on an individual is indeed a complex one, for . . . place is far more than a matter of geographical landscape. Rather, it is an emotional complex of associations, both generative and restrictive; it is the human communities that inhabit landscapes—their attitudes and values, their particular (and sometimes peculiar) ways of arranging and expressing themselves and relating both to each other and ‘the outside.’ Place, too, has something to do with history itself, and the ways the past can or cannot be accessed by memory; with ancestry, and the dynamics created by the confluence of the personal and collective; with spirituality, in all its formal and informal guises; and always, with inevitable change, both inner and outer. (1995, vii)

Similarly, Cresswell asserts that: Places are neither totally material nor completely mental; they are combinations of the material and mental and cannot be reduced to either. A church, for instance, is a place. It is neither just a particular material artifact, nor just a set of religious ideas; it is always both. (1996, 13)

Both of these quotes discuss religion and spirituality as being a possible part of how we define a place. While we missionary children shared so much with our parents, religion and its role in defining a place certainly is one way in which we saw places differently. Part of the differences between the generations of missionaries and their children is how important ideology was in defining the place for them. For the missionary, Tanzania was part of the wider “mission field” that many had spent a great part of their youth preparing to go to; while for the missionary child, Tanzania was “home,” and the United States meant little more than a place from where they had a passport

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and where they had to go to college. Hopefully, many missionary children thought, we would not have to live there longer than the college years. However, for most, they were unable to return to Africa. We have had to come to terms with making sense of our place in America. However, we have never seen either place quite as ideologically as did our parents. Finally, the work of philosopher, Edward S. Casey, speaks to a definition of place that fits the importance of it within the bi-continental lives of the missionary community. In an essay on the role of body, self, and landscape, he begins by rejecting the idea that place could be the human and physical characteristics of a certain locale alone. Place, he said, is “. . . the immediate ambience of my lived body and its history, including the whole sedimented history of cultural and social influences and personal interests that compose my life history” (2001, 404). While I currently live in Moorhead, MN, there is no way that I can look at this town the same way that someone who has lived here his entire life. In looking at place, Casey looks at three defining characteristics: self (somewhat akin to our soul, with all our personal history), body (the links between the landscape and ourselves), and landscape (our environs). In exploring these three characteristics, his discussion on the role of the body in all this explains how we who have lived these lives of missionaries and MKs now live where we live but live our lives influenced very much by where we have been. Casey sees the body as influencing us both in an Outgoing way in that our body “goes out to meet the place-world” in which we now live, as well as in an Incoming way where our body “bears the traces of the places it has known. These traces are continually laid down in the body, being sedimented there” (2001, 414). Digging deeper into this Incoming nature of place, he talks of both its tenacity and its subjection inside our bodies: Of its tenacious hold, he says: Places come into us lastingly; once having been in a particular place for any considerable time—or even briefly, if our experience there has been intense— we are forever marked by that place, which lingers in us indefinitely and in a thousand ways, many too attenuated to specify. . . . There is an impressionism of place by which the presence of a given place remains lodged long after we have left it; this presence is held within the body in a virtual state, ready to regain explicit awareness when the appropriate impression or sensation arises. (2001, 414–415)

Subjection in many ways is similar to tenacity, but it is in us all the time, in contrast to tenacity that arises at different times:

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We are not masters of place, but prey to it; we are subjects of place or, more exactly, subject to place. . . . In every case, we are still, even many years later, in the places to which we are subject because . . . they are in us. They are in us— indeed, are us—thanks to the in-corporation into us by a process . . . whose logic is yet to be discerned. (2001, 415)

Place is where all the action takes place, influencing us and molding our self-identity for life.

Notions of Religious Development I teach a course on child development in which I ask my students to find theories that they feel best help them explain their own personal development. I have done the same. Three theorists on social development, Urie Bronfenbrenner, Erik Erikson, and James Marcia, have helped me think about the contrasting religious development of missionaries and their children. Bronfenbrenner developed the bioecological systems approach to child development (1979). He speaks of all of us growing up within microsystems which include the family, school, and church. Their connections with each other—the mesosystem—can promote or hinder our development depending on how connected the different microsystems are with each other. Outside forces beyond their control, which he labeled the exosystem, can impact negatively on children’s social development. Finally, the values of a society, the macrosystem, have an impact on a child’s development. As I looked at the missionaries’ religious development, I saw a group that had been blessed with all the systems supportive of their religious development and desire to become missionaries. In contrast, among the missionary children, there were many kinks between these different systems that caused their religious developments to be much less smooth. Erikson (1950) highlights identity as the crux of human development. In his work, he says that people go through eight crises in life that range from birth to life after retirement, but the crux of development, he felt, took place during the teenage years when adolescents are coming to terms with their identity. Coming to terms with your own spirituality is part of a teenager’s self-development. His perspectives have helped me to see how important an understanding of one’s own religious ideology is for each generation. With the titles given us of “missionaries” and “children of missionaries,” we were identified by our religious affiliation. For the missionary generation, they chose to take on this identity, while for the next generation, we were born into this designation. For this generation, there was a need to understand

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what our religious identity would become and I talk about this throughout the book, but especially in chapter 11. Marcia (1996) built on this notion of identity with his concept of identity attainment, the idea that through struggle we come to a commitment where we stand on different parts of our own identity, and which I will highlight more fully in chapter 11. This helped me focus on the key factors in people’s lives that led them to say what they really believed in. As part of the recitation of The Apostle’s Creed, said in many Lutheran churches each Sunday, we state that “I believe in one holy catholic church . . .” and for many this is very confusing, but “catholic” in this case means universal. In the same way, I will be using the term “evangelical” many times. It is used in the name of the two main church Lutheran bodies in Tanzania and the United State: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania and The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Missionaries of all stripes are seen as quite evangelical in that they are spreading the Gospel. It also refers to a branch of Protestantism that emphasizes the “born-again” experience, which has never been part of mainstream Lutheran theology; an emphasis on the Bible being the true Word of God; a concentration on Jesus Christ’s primacy within the Trinity, and a strong evangelical nature that leads people to make a personal decision to accept Christianity (“Evangelicalism”). Within the Lutheran mission, some missionaries had a much more evangelical bent to their work, but they were not part of an Evangelical mission, something many of us missionary kids experienced when we went to Rift Valley Academy and met children from many of these types of missions. I will use the lower case “evangelical” to discuss the evangelical leanings of people within the Lutheran mission, and the upper case “Evangelical” to discuss those in churches or missions that tended to meet the four criteria listed above. It is very easy to see that religious development is a key to understanding the lives of missionaries, but I found that it was also extremely important in understanding the lives of their children. These developmental theorists gave me a framework for understanding how both generations came to understand their own religious identities.

Research Methods This research has been a long, interesting, and rewarding process to try and find answers to questions about what it means to be a missionary and a missionary kid, and how each generation came to see the impact of place in their lives and how our lives were tied up with coming to a sense of how we saw things spiritually. For the missionary generation, their spirituality came early

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Introduction

on, but a connection to place was harder to understand and the opposite was true for the next generation. An impetus for my thinking began when I took a class called the “Meanings of Place” as part of my graduate program in Geography at the University of Minnesota. Our first assignment was to write about a favorite childhood place. I began writing about the shamba, the large garden for our boarding school at Kiomboi. I had not realized until then how important that place was to me. This exercise led me to begin exploring the importance of place to me as a missionary kid more generally. Later, the West Lakes Conference of the Association of American Geographers was held at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As a centrally located Lutheran college, I had gone with my family to Carthage College for missionary conferences at the end of our furlough years; so I felt a special connection to that place. At those missionary conferences, it felt freeing to once again be with the missionary community after the year in America. I gave a paper at that geography conference at Carthage College that served as an initial framework for this study. In 2000, I decided to get started in earnest with this research. The archives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) contain a list of all people who served as missionaries for the different Lutheran churches that became part of ELCA. I wanted to interview members of missionary families who had lived in Tanzania at least twenty years and, from the list, picked out seventeen families to interview (later expanded to nineteen families). I wrote a letter to each person in these families to tell them about my project and ask for their participation. I spent much of the summers from 2000 to 2004 interviewing missionary family members. The framework I had set up for the interviews seemed to work well. By the fall of 2004, I had completed interviews with 92 people from 19 different families—29 from the missionary generation and 63 from the next generation. I usually interviewed the missionaries as a couple and the MKs singly. Each interview lasted at least forty-five minutes, with most lasting about two hours. Three spouses of missionary kids joined for all or part of the interviews, and their comments are included in some of my discussions. I am a member of the community I was studying. Consequently, the insights I gained clearly were not wholly derived in an objective manner. This is both a weakness and strength for the study—a strength in that I felt that my familiarity with the community added depth to the interviews. I was able to ask questions that an outsider might have missed. I was also seen as someone that respondents could trust, as most of them had known me all their lives. In my original letter to the missionary family members describing the research, I stated that there was no obligation to participate in this study

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Table I.1. Members of Lutheran Missionary Families Who Were Interviewed for This Study, by Generation and Gender Missionaries Families Benson Bolstad Cunningham Faust Friberg Gottneid Hafermann Hagberg Jackson Jacobson Lofgren Moris Nyblade Olson Palm D. Petersons L. Petersons Simonson Ward TOTAL GENERATIONAL TOTALS

Husband

Their Children Wife

Sons

Daughters

3* 1 1 3 3 1

1 2 2 1

1

1

1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1

1

1

1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1

3 2 3 2 2 3 1 3 2

14

15

37

29

1 3

2 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 4 2 2 27 64

*The author is part of this family and has included himself on the statistical tables used in the study, though he was not interviewed.

if they did not want to participate. Eighty-nine percent of the missionaries contacted were interviewed, while, among the missionary children, I successfully interviewed 86 percent of those contacted. After I had completed all my interviews, I sent each participant a recording of their interview and an index of the discussion. After I finished my first draft of this book, I sent the quotes I planned to use in the book to those quoted in order to obtain their approval. Several interviewees asked to not have their quotes used in the book, but allowed the information they supplied to be included in statistical calculations. I asked everyone how they wished for me to attribute their quotes. I have followed their wishes throughout the book.1 After I had completed these interviews, I felt that they would constitute the bulk of the book. However, as I presented preliminary findings in 2004 at an Augustana Lutheran Church heritage event, a woman who had grown up in Tanganyika (as Tanzania was called prior to its union with Zanzibar in 1963) as the child of missionaries in the 1940s pointed out that my research missed out on the experience of her generation of missionary kids.

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Introduction

I used archival research to fill this gap in my research. I had already done some archival research at the ELCA Archives in Chicago in 2000 and again in 2004. In addition, I had visited the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL, to look for information about Lutheran missionary kids at Rift Valley Academy within the archives of the African Inland Mission there. But with her question, I decided to look through periodicals dating from the Augustana Lutheran Church years to see what had been written about the American Lutheran mission in Tanzania. The Lutheran Companion was the main Augustana church journal. Visiting the Gustavus Adolphus College Library in St. Peter, MN, I found that it was a weekly journal in which hundreds of articles had appeared about the Tanzania mission from the 1920s through the early 1960s. I copied these articles. I also researched all the articles on the Lutheran mission in Tanzania subsequent to the incorporation of the Augustana Lutheran Church into the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) in 1962, then into the ELCA in 1987 in The Lutheran and World Encounter church magazines. In addition, I also examined the Mission Tidings journal of the Women’s Missionary League of the Augustana Lutheran Church. This sometimes had two or three articles about the Tanzania mission in each monthly issue. Finally, I read widely in the memoirs of many missionaries and of their children. The missionary memoirs seemed quite triumphant in their style, and very self-assured. In contrast, children’s memoirs always struck me as more ambivalent. Life for the missionary kids was not as black and white as the missionaries made it, but filled with more gray areas. This book is written in this same missionary kid style, rather than with the black-and-white surety of the previous generation. At the same time, I hope that the triumph for both generations comes through in the text here.

Structure of the Book After an overview chapter on the American Lutheran mission in Tanzania, the book will follow a rough chronology of the lives of the missionaries and their children. The second and third chapters examine the role of place and religion in the childhoods of the missionary and the MK generations. Chapter 4 compares the impact of the colleges that each generation attended in the United States, which were often the same colleges for both generations in a missionary family and the very different impact these colleges had on each generation. Chapter 5 examines the idea of what it meant to be called as a missionary for the missionary generation and if it was possible for the next generation to receive a similar call. Chapter 6

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looks at the lives of the missionary generation while in Tanzania. Chapters 7 through 9 study the adult lives of the missionary children as they chose spouses, occupations, and made sense of the places where they ended up living as adults. Chapter 10 considers the religious development of both generations, but primarily that of the second generation as they struggled with their own religious convictions long into adulthood. Finally, in chapter 11, I discuss where the missionaries chose to retire and what went into that decision, before examining how Tanzania remains in the internal lives of the MK generation. Chapter 12 concludes.

Note 1. Publisher’s Note: The interviews used as supplemental research in this text were all conducted with the participants’ knowledge and agreement that these interviews would be used in a later publication.

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CHAPTER ONE

History of a Mission

In the Bible, Jesus tells his followers just prior to his ascension that they should: . . . go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28: 19–20 New International Version)

These are the words of “The Great Commission.” This chapter examines how the Augustana Synod and its successor churches, the LCA and the ELCA, carried out this mandate in Tanzania. In addition, it looks at the impact of this missionary enterprise on the lives of the families of those involved in this work. Earlier in Matthew’s gospel, familial struggles are alluded to in the context of the Great Commission when Jesus sent out the disciples to do much more localized missionary work in Galilee. After he instructed them on what they should take with them and what they should do, Jesus cautioned them: Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10: 37–38 NIV)

15

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Consequently, this chapter will also discuss how the American Lutheran mission enterprise impacted the sons and daughters of the missionaries who followed the Great Commission to work in Tanzania. This history can be divided into three parts: the pioneering work from 1922 through the end of World War II; the apex of the missionary work in Tanzania from the end of World War II through to the mid-1970s; and the mission’s decline from the 1970s to now when the mission’s personnel numbers have declined to a handful. It roughly follows the three-stage timeline David Vikner used in describing the changing role of missions in American Lutheran churches (1982). The first he labeled the Missionary Stage, which lasted for about one hundred years through to the end of World War II. This was a time of American and European missionary societies establishing new mission fields. The second era, the Younger Church Stage, went from 1943 to 1968 and roughly paralleled the apex of mission work in Tanzania. This was when mission organizations turned over their fields to new local church organizations. The third stage is the Independent or Interdependent Stage, which in Tanzania parallels the decline of the American Lutheran mission there. Much mission work now is in communication, education, health, and social ministry, rather than evangelism directly. Moreover, now it is not just Americans and Europeans going to Africa, but African missionaries going to the former sending countries or serving in other countries needing missionaries.

Precursors to the Tanzanian Mission Field The Augustana Lutheran Church, from its very beginning in 1860, felt that foreign missions were integral to its very being. The church had very little money, but within a year of its establishment, funds were set aside to support missionaries going overseas from Swedish and German mission societies. The church struggled to figure out how to develop its own mission activities, considering working with freed slaves, Native American groups, Swedes who had become Mormons, or finding someplace overseas to serve (Swanson 1960; Hall 1984). The first missionary from the Augustana Lutheran Church, August Carlson, was sent to serve in India, under the General Council, a general Lutheran body, in 1878. Carlson died there four years later. In 1905, the Minnesota Conference of the Augustana Church commissioned A. W. Edwins as its first missionary to China, followed by C. P. Friberg three years later. Missionaries under the Augustana Church served in China until 1951 (Swanson 1960).

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The Church continued to search for a mission field for the whole church. In 1917, Ralph D. Hult was commissioned to develop a field in the Sudanian zone of Africa, the swath of land south of the Sahel running across central Africa that was located in both English- and French-controlled Africa. Ten years earlier, as a student at Luther College in Wahoo, NE, Hult heard about the need for missions in Sudan and vowed to go there. Because of World War I, Hult was unable to leave the United States until 1919. He left for West Africa and spent the next two and a half years exploring areas around Lake Chad and Cameroon to find an appropriate mission for Augustana. Finally, while visiting the Sara people in French Equatorial Africa, he felt that this was the place. Hult cabled the church headquarters in Minneapolis saying: “Sara people waiting.” He awaited the decision of Augustana Church leader of how he should proceed. Dr. Brandelle from the Augustana Mission Board was not keen to work in French-speaking Africa and asked Hult to look in British-controlled Africa. While seeking a place to set up a mission in Nigeria, Hult heard from Dr. Brandelle that the church had decided to help the German Lutheran missions in Tanganyika. Following its loss in World War I, Germany gave up its colonies, which included Tanganyika. The German missionaries were interned by the British government in 1920. There was a need to maintain these Lutheran fields and the Augustana Lutheran Church was asked by the Leipzig Mission to help in this endeavor. In 1922, Hult was told to go to Tanganyika, and he did with some reluctance. Not being able to work in the Sudan was one of the disappointments of his life. Both place and religion were important in Hult’s life, but the place that seemingly meant the most to him was a place where he felt he was called to work but could not (Swanson 1945; Swanson 1960). Thus began work on Augustana’s main mission field in Tanzania. Later, after World War II, work began in Japan. India, China, Tanzania, and Japan constituted the main mission fields of the Augustana Lutheran Church (Swanson 1960).

The Early Years (1920s through World War II) In the beginning, Augustana missionaries worked closely with the few Leipzig Mission missionaries based around Mount Kilimanjaro and the Pare Mountains in northern Tanzania. Augustana sent out nine missionaries and budgeted $25,000 for their work (Brandelle 1923), which was later increased to $30,000 (Mattson 1923). In describing the purpose of this new mission, Augustana’s President, G. A. Brandelle, saw the work as primarily evangelical. However, Peter Peterson listed three main objectives for this new field:

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Chapter One

first, to help retain the Lutheran church that had been built up over thirty years of work; second, to evangelize to other groups; and third, to strengthen the missionary spirit of the Augustana church (1923). Vikner (1982) described this time period in Christian missions as the Missionary Stage, during which Protestant missionaries were sent from mission societies throughout Europe and America to designated mission fields in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and engaged in a holistic mission of evangelism, medical, and educational work. Vikner also notes that most of these missionary societies were fairly uniform in their theology. Lutheran missionaries in Tanzania at the time generally fit this mold; yet the uniformity of theology was not always apparent between Lutheran mission societies or even among the Augustana Lutheran missionaries themselves. By the time the Augustana missionaries arrived in Tanzania, the people living on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and the Pare Mountains were already Christianized. The work that the missionaries did there was more pastoral than evangelical. While Hult liked living in Machame on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, one senses that he questioned why Augustana had moved to Tanzania when the needs seemed so much greater in the Sudan. In a letter describing his first month living in Machame, he wrote of his frustrations of living in a comfortable home and working in a heavily Christianized environment, while his desire was to be living in a much more primitive setting and presenting the Gospel to people for the first time, like he had hoped to do in the Sudan (1923, 292). But at Mbaga in the Pare Mountains, John Steimer found that there were still huge needs that this small missionary force had no hopes of denting. He listed the needs as medical and educational, but primarily evangelical (1923, 83). While new Augustana missionaries continued to come, most letters from Tanganyika until the end of World War II always mentioned the need for more. In one of these first groups of missionaries was Elveda Bonander, my grandmother’s sister. In 1925, Augustana began to work independently of the Leipzig Mission, as the German mission societies now were able to resume their work fully in Tanzania (Melander 1925). Smedjabacka (1973) felt that differences in theology between the two mission groups caused some of this split, with Augustana missionaries emphasizing the need for converts to develop a personal belief system and to live lives of Christian piety, whereas the Leipzig missionaries stressed working within existing tribal structures and setting up a Lutheran church within this framework. In early 1926, the missionaries received word from Augustana headquarters in the United States that Augustana would renew the work that the

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Leipzig Mission had begun years earlier with the Iramba in central Tanganyika (Bonander 1926; Anderson 1926). The Augustana missionaries and the Augustana Synod were excited to have a mission field of their own. Throughout this time period, the “mission field” and the “missionary stations” were extremely important concepts, and it was within this framework that the missionaries defined their work. Augustana missionaries Herbert Magney, George Anderson and Lud Melander visited Iramba to get a feel for this new field. In the Lutheran Companion, Magney described the three-week reconnaissance trip taken to explore this new mission field (1926). The Leipzig Mission had worked in the area before World War I, but had to abandon their work there because the German colonial government had removed their missionary due to his suffering from a nervous breakdown (Swanson 1960). They had built a mission station at Ruruma, a sparsely populated area but with a good water supply. The last German missionary had baptized 12,000 people, but had not given the people any instruction. Here the missionaries felt they could truly begin evangelical work on a mission field of their own. The missionaries found the mission house at Ruruma to still be in fairly good condition, but the church was not in use anymore. This was a remote field with none of the amenities that missionaries had had in the northern area, but they were excited about the move. Later in 1926, the three men went back to Ruruma for several months to prepare for the move of the mission to Iramba (Anderson 1927a). Anderson described the new mission field for members of the Augustana Church (1927b). It was an area with no other mission societies working in it, with a population of about 150,000, and situated far from rail lines or good roads. He talked about the possibilities of expanding into the Singida area, where the Turu lived. In addition to Ruruma, they hoped to build two more stations on the Iramba Plateau and five or six stations in Mkalama District, to the east below the Iramba Plateau. “Iyambe” (later spelled Iambi) was chosen as the site for the second station. The Anderson family settled in Ruruma. Magney and his family came and built the second mission station at Iambi. The isolation of Iambi and the hardships that would accompany these new missionaries were very apparent. Magney described the situation their family was experiencing in the three weeks since they had arrived at Iambi (1927, 1198): This evening as I write this letter our little baby boy is lying with a fever of 106 degrees, a fever which he has had now for eight days with only an occasional let-up. We have no idea what causes it nor is the doctor at hand to assist us, she being over at the Ruruma station. We call upon the Lord to spare his life if

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Chapter One

it be His will. We are hoping that the doctor will arrive here tomorrow if she is not hindered by other duties.

At the same time in Ruruma, many of the other missionaries were sick, including George and Annette Anderson and their two boys, Marcus and Roy. Marcus Anderson died and was buried in Ruruma (Melander 1927). He was the second child of the Augustana missionaries to die, as the Hults had lost an infant daughter in Machame (Magney 1923). Louise Anderson Olson, Marcus’ sister, told of the impact this death had on their family, “I think that created a sorrow and a loss that sort of branded our family for the rest of our years, the loss of Marcus (interview).” After these early setbacks, mission stations were set up in Ushora, Kiomboi, Isanzu, Kinampanda, and Wembere (figure 1.1). All but Kiomboi, with its medical hospital, and Kinampanda, with its teacher training school, were begun by missionary pastors (Danielson 1996). The mission stations usually were seen as a central service point for several out-stations. At each mission, a house was built, a church, a school, and a clinic. The pastors carried out the training of evangelists and visited the out-stations in their area. Single missionaries often helped run schools. All of this work was intertwined. Edna Miller described how the missionaries saw the need for each of these areas— evangelistic work was seen as the most important, but the medical work was a way to make contact with the people, and the educational work would allow them to be able to read the Bible (Miller 1929, 651). Danielson (1929–1930, 77) described the education work in Iramba as one of persuading the youth to attend schools where there were no books in their own language, no qualified local teachers, and no literature within their culture. “We are at the beginning of the beginnings, and the type of educated natives that will be produced will be entirely the fruit of the principles which we follow.” He felt that the medical work was easier to implement than education, because the results were more immediate (1929–1930, 140). But, the evangelistic work of the mission was the main focus: “Our whole work is evangelistic, and we are here in whatever we do to bring the people into a living fellowship with Jesus Christ, but the building of the Church of Christ is more directly evangelistic than the medical and educational fields”1 (1929–1930, 140). After ten years, Danielson (1937) evaluated the work in the Iramba field in terms of how much had been accomplished and how much more there was to do. He wrote about the growth in evangelism with “four organized congregations totaling 1,528 baptized adults and 996 baptized children.” In education, they had 2,724 students enrolled in 23 village schools, 95 boys attending four boys’ boarding schools and 48 girls in the girls’ boarding school

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History of a Mission

Figure 1.1.

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21

Augustana Mission Stations in Iramba and Turu

Source: Swanson (1960)

at Ruruma. Sixty African teachers worked in both education and evangelism. African staff was also being trained in medical work which took place at four mission stations, one out-station, and at a leprosy colony. More than 11,000 patients were treated at these clinics during 1936. Still Danielson saw many challenges lying ahead with 98 percent of the population unevangelized, only 27 schools running in an area the size of Connecticut, only 2,000 children in the schools, and, while people were being cured, the overall health situation of the people continued to be very poor.

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Chapter One

Almost every article about Tanganyika in the Lutheran Companion stressed the dire need for new missionaries. Hult had returned to the United States and Augustana contemplated setting up a new mission in Sudan. Missionaries, such as Anderson (1929) and Magney (1928), weighed in against setting up a new mission when they felt Augustana was not meeting its obligations to the Iramba. As an example of these unmet needs, Magney (1929, 875) used the Lutheran Companion to plead for an industrial missionary to handle all the practical elements of building. Besides the chronic shortage of missionaries, funds were tight during the Depression. Missionaries shared cars and tried to limit expenses. Anderson in talking to the annual Augustana Church Convention, admonished the delegates for only allocating $35,000 for their mission, $5,000 less than the previous budget. The mission had asked for two cars because one that they called “Martin Luther” seemed to constantly emulate Luther’s famous statement: “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise!” and it had just finally died in a swamp. He stated: Well, we can trudge along on foot under tropical African sun, or follow our lowly Master in riding a lowly “punda” (donkey), but as you whiz along on your paved highways at seventy miles an hour, may the good Lord save you from tire trouble, but may He give you a double dose of conscience trouble. And we believe He will! (1936, 998)

During these years, the missionaries began to form a tight community. The annual mission conferences allowed the missionaries to build each other up. Melander described one such gathering in 1933 (1933, 342), highlighting how the missionaries worshiped and sang together, while their children played in the huge outcroppings outside of the Ushola mission station. But the joy of life for children on the mission field was also tempered by some of the sacrifices the children had to endure so that their parents could do this work. V. Eugene Johnson wrote about this as their family, or most of it, headed back to Africa in 1934: We feel the pain of separation especially in regard to our eleven-year-old daughter, Doris, whom we are leaving in America because of the lack of educational facilities for our missionaries’ children on the mission field; also on account of the severity of the climate and the degradation of the heathen environment. . . . God has most wonderfully answered our prayers. . . . He has provided a home for our daughter Doris, where she may receive both the physical and spiritual care she needs. She is to be the “adopted” daughter of Pastor and Mrs. J. Henry Bergren of St. Cloud, Minnesota. . . . Another marvelous

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answer to prayer is that God has made our daughter willing, for Christ’s sake and for the sake of the souls in Africa for whom He died, to be separated from her parents and brothers during the long years that we shall be laboring in Africa. (1934, 1194)

In his book, Pioneering for Christ in East Africa, Johnson (1948, 106–7) elaborated on how they found the Bergren family only two weeks before leaving for Tanganyika and the struggles they had in considering the possibility of Doris remaining in the United States. Schooling for their children was a major concern for all the missionaries. In 1940, the Board of Foreign Missions approved the funding of a school for missionary children. Esther Olson and Velura Kinnan were chosen to be teachers at the school (Swanson 1940, 1941). Along with Lillian Danielson and her children, the Johnson family, and the Norbergs, these two teachers sailed for Africa on the Zamzam. During the trip to Africa, the two teachers held daily classes with their students. Unfortunately, the Zamzam was hit by a German raider in the South Atlantic. All the passengers survived and were eventually returned to the United States or placed in internment camps. However, all the supplies that were going to Tanganyika for the new school went down with the Zamzam (Swanson and the Augustana Synod Passengers 1941; Anderson 2000). The dream of a missionary school for the Augustana children did not come to fruition for another twelve years. World War II had an enduring impact on the work of the American missionaries in Tanganyika. Early in the war, the British colonial leaders interned all German Lutheran missionaries, some of whom they suspected to be Nazi sympathizers. The two neutral countries at this point in the War with Lutheran missionaries in Tanganyika were the United States and Sweden. The Augustana Synod agreed to help maintain the work in the German mission fields. Consequently, some Augustana missionaries moved out from the “Augustana Field” in central Tanganyika and into these “Orphaned Fields” back in northern Tanganyika (Magney 1940a, 1940b; Anderson 1941a). The Augustana missionary staff was already stretched. For those missionaries who had been with their families earlier and now had to work alone, the loneliness proved to be the hardest aspect of their work (Johnson 1948; Danielson 1996). Danielson described the loneliness as the greatest cross he ever bore: But no matter how busy I was, the loneliness of separation from Lillian and the children never left me. I had often wondered what a cross was like. I would say that the only cross I have known, that I would dare put in the

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category of a cross, was this family separation where the gnawing ache never disappears. (1996, 56)

War time restrictions and rationing was common. Martin Bystrom (1951, 29), as a new missionary in 1942, described how the dominant mode of transportation for the missionaries began to be bicycles as gas was only allocated by the district commissioner after a very detailed plan for travel was turned into him. In certain cases, some German missionaries were allowed to continue their work, while being under a type of house arrest. Danielson in his work with the “Orphaned Missions” and whose family had almost all died on the Zamzam, described the irony of visiting and working with the Hosbachs, interned missionaries in the Haya Synod: “This fellowship in Christ between an American, whose family had almost been destroyed by a Nazi raider, and these two German missionaries, practically prisoners of war, whose only purpose was to serve the Prince of Peace, made the War look ludicrous” (1996, 76). While children had died in the early years of the Mission, now death seemed to hit the missionaries often. Elinor Olson died in 1941 in the Singida area (Anderson 1941b). Two missionaries who were working in Dar-esSalaam to supervise the work in that area died: Ralph Hult in 1943 (Editor 1943) and Martin Bystrom in 1945 (Danielson and Olson 1945). These two missionaries are buried side by side in a cemetery in Dar-es-Salaam. The positive impact of the war on the work in Tanganyika was that, because of the lack of missionary personnel in many areas of the country, the African leadership began to take over. In February 1942, the first Mission established in Tanganyika became a Church when the Lutheran Church of Northern Tanganyika was formed (Danielson 1996). Dr. Richard Reusch, a missionary, headed the church, but his vice-president was a Tanganyikan. The Leipzig Mission had worked in this area for almost fifty years, so it was ready. However, it would be some time before the Iramba and Turu mission areas would move over into African control. Nonetheless, this was being developed. It would mean, however, that those missionaries coming to work in the Orphaned Fields, like my father, Stan Benson, in 1953, would work more for an African church than for their mission. The early years of the American Lutheran mission in Tanzania fit very well into Vikner’s Missionary Stage. The mission field and mission station were paramount. The missionaries had come into fields which were not new (as on Kilimanjaro) or which were abandoned (as in Iramba), but still began work at a pioneering level. The sacrifices had been many. The mission work

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was done with a small contingent of workers and all felt overburdened. They dealt with illness and the death of family members. Their stories, through articles to the Lutheran Companion and Mission Tidings, was told almost exclusively in their own voice and the members of their sending church, the Augustana Lutheran Church, remained interested and engaged in the work of their Africa mission. People in Augustana congregations in the United States felt that they knew Ruruma, Iambi, Isanzu, and Ushola as important places in Tanganyika. The joy of missionary kid life is clearly present. But so are their hardships, as seen in the example of eleven-year-old Doris Johnson remaining in the United States so that her parents could continue their mission in Tanganyika. This sacrifice by the children for their parents’ mission often changed the way the children looked at Christianity. By the end of World War II, the American Lutheran Mission in Tanganyika was moving into Vikner’s New Church Era. The missionaries serving the Orphaned Missions in northern Tanganyika experienced these changes first, but eventually they made their way into the Augustana Field in central Tanganyika.

The Apex Years (1946–1976) A chart of the number of American Lutheran missionary serving each year in Tanzania between 1922 and the present peaks in 1962, when 123 missionary families or single workers served. All of the missionaries that I interviewed arrived during the apex years of the mission between 1946 and 1976. Most of the missionary children interviewed spent their childhoods in Tanzania during this time. In 1946, most missionaries worked and lived on the Augustana Field in central Tanzania but by 1976 this had shifted to northern Tanzania. While most missionaries were located in Central Tanganyika from the 1920s through the mid-1960s, this changed in the 1960s when the Northern Area became the area where most missionaries were located (table 1.1). Over this period, Tanganyika moved politically from being a British Trust Territory to an independent nation. It joined with Zanzibar to form the renamed country of Tanzania in 1964. President Julius Nyerere led the country through its first twenty-four years of independence and moved it toward a more socialist political orientation. In a similar fashion, the church moved from a mission church to a national church. This occurred much sooner in northern Tanganyika than in central Tanganyika. Nonetheless, a national church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanganyika (later Tanzania), was begun in 1963. In the same year, Augustana joined with three other Lutheran churches in America to form the Lutheran Church in America.

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Table 1.1. Type of Work Done by Missionaries in Tanzania from 1967–1976 as expressed in Occupational Titles, percent Year

Evangelical # “Rev.”

Medical # “MD/RN”

Other # “Mr./Miss”

Total, No.

1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976

31.0 28.6 27.1 21.7 34.9 39.0 33.3 40.0 31.4 33.3

15.5 11.7 18.8 21.7 11.6 19.5 19.4 17.1 17.1 7.4

53.4 59.7 54.1 56.5 53.5 41.5 47.2 42.9 51.4 59.3

58 77 85 69 43 41 36 35 35 27

Source: World Encounter October issues 1967–1976

Vikner (1982) labeled this period in Lutheran missions as the Younger Church Stage, a time during which the relationship between the missionsending churches and the emerging churches overseas were changing. The new churches increasing made their own decisions, but remained dependent on missionaries. This period also saw an extension of missions to other parts of the world and the formation of interchurch groups like the Lutheran World Federation and Lutheran World Relief, which took over some of the service functions of the missions. In earlier years, the church in America decided how many missionaries it could send and to what locations. As the new church bodies formed in Tanzania, their leaders began to decide whether they needed missionaries and whether certain missionaries should be called back. Missionaries led the six different Lutheran churches in northern and central Tanganyika (see figure 1.2.) until 1958 when Stefano Moshi was elected the first African president of a Lutheran Church, that of Northern Tanganyika. Two mission fields not included on this map include the Haya field (not on map) on the western side of Lake Victoria and the Southern Highlands field which were both administered by the Swedish Evangelical Missionary Society; the Usambara Area which H. Daniel Friberg of the Augustana Mission served as Superintendent; the Iramba-Turu Field around Singida; the “Norwegian Mission” centered around Mbulu; the Uzaramo Field which was located around Dar-es-Salaam, and finally, the Northern Field with headquarters in Moshi (Danielson 1996). The mission body in these other Lutheran mission areas was more international than the Iramba-Turu field. The American Lutheran missionaries who increasingly worked in northern Tanzania in the 1960s became more a part of a church than part of a separate

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mission body, as still was the nature of the work in central Tanzania. Missionaries in northern Tanzania worked in newly formed church-wide institutions and in the foreign mission-dominated Maasai mission field. Leading up to Independence in 1961, the African church grew into its own, and missionaries served rather than led the church. The Lutheran church continued to grow in all areas (Danielson 1996; Groop 2006; Smedjebacka 1973). Swanson (1960) described the growth of the American Lutheran mission work in Tanganyika during these years as one of growth in evangelism with new mission stations being opened, particularly among the Turu people near Singida. The medical work grew from the opening of dispensaries and hospitals to working with lepers and the opening of a medical assistants’ program at Bumbuli Hospital in the Usambara Mountains and a nurses’ training program at Kiomboi Hospital. The educational work expanded from an emphasis on bush schools in every mission station and out-station to one which emphasized the development of Sunday Schools; training schools for teachers at Kinampanda; new Bible Schools in Wembere, Ihanja, and Mwika; a new secondary school at Ilboru near Arusha; a new seminary at Makumira; and the opening of the school for missionary children at Kiomboi. More institutions were being established, and many missionaries moved from the parish to more institutional work. Of the missionaries interviewed, at least three spent most of their mission careers working at the parish or mission station level (Benson, Faust, Simonson); two spent it in educational work (Bolstad, Gottneid); seven moved from parish ministry to work at educational institutions (Hafermann, Jackson, Lofgren, Nyblade, Olson, Dean Peterson, Leslie Peterson) or into church administration (Ward); and two moved from work at the church-wide level to work at the parish level (Friberg, Hagberg). As can be seen in table 1.2, most of the work of the missionaries during this period was not strictly evangelical, but more on the educational and service side of mission work. In Central Tanganyika, there were moves to make it much less of a mission church. From 1951 through 1960, missionaries and African leaders shared responsibility for the church. It became self-governing in 1961 and joined with other Lutheran church synods in Tanganyika to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanganyika (soon Tanzania) in 1963 (Yona 1964). During the colonial period, missions supplied about 85 percent of the schooling in the country and up to 95 percent of the medical care in particular areas, but there was always the expectation that government would take over this work (Danielson 1996). In 1967, all primary schools were nationalized and most of the educational work moved to the government. This

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Table 1.2. Location of Missionaries by Original Mission Fields from 1967 through 1976, percent Year

Central

Northern

Usambaras

Coastal

Bukoba

Other

Total No.

1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976

45.6 39.0 40.0 31.3 27.9 34.1 40.0 40.0 38.9 33.3

40.4 41.6 40.0 52.2 55.8 43.9 42.9 45.7 44.4 55.6

10.5 10.4 10.6 11.9 9.3 14.6 11.4 8.6 11.1 3.7

1.8 6.5 7.1 4.5 7.0 7.3 5.7 5.7 2.8 7.4

1.8 1.3 1.2 — — — — — — —

— 1.3 1.2 — — — — — — —

57 77 85 67 43 41 35 35 36 27

Source: World Encounter October issues 1967–1976

resulted in a noticeable decline in the number of missionaries, particularly in the “Other” area of mission work, that included education work (table 1.1). Missionary led medical work also declined. Missionaries continued to work in Lutheran educational institutions and in areas where the church was not as developed, as in Maasailand and around Dar-es-Salaam. New mission projects also began, such as the Moshi studio of Radio Voice of the Gospel, a Lutheran World Federation project.

Figure 1.2. The Central and Northern Mission Fields of the Lutheran Church in Tanganyika in 1955 Source: Johnson (1955), with permission of Augsburg Fortress Press

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The Life and Work of the Missionaries Vikner wrote about how during the Missionary Stage there was uniformity in theology among most of the missionaries (1982). Jon Moris, the oldest of the missionary children interviewed, described the earlier missionaries as “people like my mother who came out of the Hauge Synod, very pietistic, and much more evangelical than the later kind of Lutheran mainstream. . . .” He observed that it was not until later that it was more common to find American Lutheran missionaries in Tanzania who “combined scholarship and faith.” The missionary culture that new missionaries encountered when they arrived in Tanzania both helped them adjust to their new setting and prevented them from closer engagements with the Tanzanians. Orv Nyblade described this strong missionary culture in the 1950s in Central Tanzania as making it difficult “to develop perceptions and understanding of the local culture and life without filtering it through the dominant missionary culture.” While he felt it allowed them to adapt to this new place easier, it also prevented them from looking independently and creatively at the situation around them. The missionaries spoke of both the joys and frustrations they experienced in trying to do work that pulled them in different directions. Bob and Jeanne Ward described their work at Isanzu in the 1950s and 1960s as evangelism out to the Watindiga people, a nomadic Bushman-like group, while still keeping up their traditional duties at Isanzu mission station, as well as numerous out-stations. Les Peterson spoke about how much he loved being a parish pastor in his first years of work, but how he later asked to be moved to teaching at the Ihanja Bible School because he felt it was time for Tanzanian pastors to take over the parishes. Often the work that the missionaries were asked to do went far beyond their areas of expertise. Mel Lofgren never saw himself as a building contractor, but many of his first years in Ruruma were spent supervising building, something he felt ill-equipped to do and in which he was given no direction as to how to do it. For others, their title did not fit the job, because the position entailed much more than it implied. Ray Hagberg experienced this in his work as assistant education secretary for Arumeru and Maasai in northern Tanzania, which he found “was less education and more of a logistical task of keeping the boarding schools going” from Kitumbeine in the north to Nabarera in the south. As he said, “it was not the job I should have had, but I learned a lot.” Elder Jackson, as a Maasai missionary, felt overwhelmed sometimes by the work and limited resources at his disposal. Living in Karatu in the mid-1950s, the area that he was in charge of totaled approximately 20,000 square miles.

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He tried to make it to each parish each month, but as he said, “It was always frustrating, because it was never enough. Never enough time. You had to be pretty superficial. Maybe it was a mistake to take on all this extra work, but I didn’t see another way of doing it.” Along with the hardships were positions that allowed the missionaries to explore new directions and connect with people in very different ways. Howard Olson spoke at length of the joy he experienced as he worked on developing a written Turu (Rimi) language and teaching the language to fellow missionaries. When he was asked to teach at Makumira Seminary, he spoke of the joy he felt as he was asked to teach a new course, a course that combined Biblical theology, African theology, and church history. He loved that he could develop a brand new course like this in this setting. Herb and Kristen Hafermann worked in Dar-es-Salaam during a time of great political changes. They found it exhilarating to work in a parish during those times. Kristen spoke of the joy of living in the neighborhood of their church and walking to women’s meeting bypassing the homes of fellow participants, while Herb spoke of the joy of opening new parishes and being part of new and exciting work at an early time in Tanzania’s independent history. Many of the single women missionaries were involved in different work opportunities that fell under the “Other” heading in table 1.2. While single women missionaries were not interviewed for this study, they were a major part of the mission of the church. In Dar-es-Salaam, Lois Danielson (later Carlson), a daughter of Elmer and Lillian Danielson, worked as a social worker (Pederson 1965). Edythe Kjellin worked as a nurse-midwife and public health worker in central Tanzania from 1937 to 1972 (Faust 1969). Vivian “Bing” Gulleen started a seminar for women that taught many home economics skills in a six-week seminar (Trexler 1970). Marian Halvorson began literacy work in Tanzania, with her work expanding throughout Africa (Nesvig 1968). Life was not the same for most of the married missionary women, as paid employment was not available. The work permits for most missionaries specified that only one person would work. June Nyblade said that in a sense she was very grateful for this as she could set up her own projects. Dottie Lofgren had a similar perspective about the work she became involved in in Ruruma—while her husband Mel was supervising building projects, she led women’s Bible studies, taught middle school music classes, led a women’s sewing class, and started a Sunday School movement in the Central Synod. Similarly, Eunie Simonson, when her family returned to Arusha from the remote location of Loliondo, became involved in many different activities that used her nursing background.

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These were extremely busy years for most of the missionaries, being asked to do more than they thought they could. But as they looked back on their careers in Tanzania, all that I spoke with felt that they had been very worthwhile years.

Schooling for the Children While the missionary children of the early years of the American Lutheran mission in Tanzania either were home schooled or stayed in the United States for their schooling, most of the children in this next era had schooling options in Tanzania or Kenya. Augustana School in Kiomboi, Tanzania, was opened in 1953 and operated till 1970. Missionary children would go to school there until 8th grade and then transfer to Rift Valley Academy, an African Inland Mission board school in Kijabe, Kenya, for our high school years. While Augustana School was located in central Tanzania, by the 1960s more and more American Lutheran missionary families were living in northern Tanzania. With the building of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi and the adjacent International School Moshi (ISM) in the late 1960s, it was decided that ISM would be the school for missionaries to use for the elementary years and beyond and Augustana School would be closed. In describing the school he envisioned for the missionary children in 1940, Danielson wrote the following letter to the Africa School Committee of the Augustana Mission Board: The paramount issue in regards to the school is that what is best for the children should be the sole determining factor in the whole problem. I believe that the children can secure a good education at home, and that the primary question is not that the children need a common school for the sake of acquiring knowledge (the Calvert courses do that admirably), but in order that the children may grow up under environmental conditions as comparable as possible to what the children would have in a public school in the States. It is the social and competitive environment that the children need, and which they cannot get at home. The children must be guided educationally and socially for life in the United States, and to fit into American life normally and happily. If God guides one here and there to return to Africa to serve Him and his fellow-men, we shall be very happy—but we cannot for a moment, either let them drift educationally and socially, or guide them for life in Africa, but we must guide them in their foundations, for life in the States, in all fairness to their future. We do not want children returning to Africa when they have grown up, because they are

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unhappy in the States, or because they are misfits in American life—but because God called them. So I believe school for the children on the field, run on lines as comparable to school-life in the States as possible, is a debt which is owed to the children and their nearly-as-possible normal development and training. I believe the teacher and house-mother and house-daddy should be in constant touch with life as it is being lived in some public schools in the States, in order that as much as possible of that life may be constantly incorporated into the life of the school in Africa, so that when the children do return to the States to continue their schooling, they will not be too taken aback by the contrast in the school-life they have had in Africa, and the school-life they are now to continue in the States. If the school isn’t normal enough along all lines, it can fail just as much as the isolated home in preparing the children for life in America; for I believe the guiding principle of the school should not merely be to give the children an education, but to prepare them for life in the States. (from the ELCA Archives)

Hjalmar Swanson wrote in 1952 about the establishment of Augustana School (Nelson 1981): It is now about ten years since the Board made its first plans for a School for Missionaries’ Children in Africa. Back in 1941 two women were called and sailed on the ill-fated ZAMZAM to become teachers for the school. The war came and changed the whole situation. For some years it has become most difficult for families to go to the field. In recent years with the advent of young families the need of a school has again become apparent. In our missionary families serving Africa we now have 79 children 15 years or less. Most of these children are as yet very young, 50 below 6 years, but as they rapidly approach school age we must make preparations for them. The Board has authorized the establishment of such a school and the Women’s Missionary Society has made a grant of $20,000 for a building. By the time this building gets completed and equipped more will be required and we hope that the women will help us to complete this important project. Since this school will be built by Augustana it is natural that it must be located in Irambaland. Kiomboi has been chosen as the site, since it was felt that the school should be located near a hospital where medical care would be available when necessary. This school will—at least in its beginnings—be limited to grade work, hoping that students in high school age may be admitted to the Rift Valley Academy or some other similar institution in East Africa. (Swanson from Nelson, 12)

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When the school began, Arthur Anderson, the first school principal, houseparent, and director, described the school to readers of the Lutheran Companion (1954, 9) in the poem, “What is the American School?” from which an excerpt is presented here: Our American school in Tanganyika is all these, but much more: it is a place where we learn to know and to love our country, to ride again with Paul Revere, to fight with Sam Houston, to sorrow with Lincoln. It is a place where we learn to know our Saviour better from day to day and try to live in ways that please Him. It is here we learn to work and live democratically with each other, to appreciate the goodness of all races, and to live with love toward all people. It is here we learn to value our freedom and our heritage, to measure the achievements of our nation, to dream of new undertakings and enterprises which will ennoble it, and to pledge ourselves to win victories for our Lord and His Kingdom. This is our American school in Tanganyika2

Anderson’s description of the school echoed Danielson’s vision of the school, one that emphasized God and Country. Anderson, according to many interviewees, was a strict disciplinarian who established rather rigid programs in the first years of the school. Paul Bolstad, one of the first students at Augustana, spoke about what it was like at the beginning of the school. School was delayed in getting started some six months. [When it finally started in] February 1953, we were in an accelerated mode . . . they really compressed things down to make up for lost time. I remember we were under a lot of pressure to cover a lot of ground. It was a long term, which was tough for us who had never been away from home . . . I remember how excited we were to go to boarding school and how it took about three days for that to wear off. . . . The Andersons, they had every waking minute planned for us. I just remember it being a whirlwind of activity compared to the pace of life we had at Vuga, and that was a huge adjustment to make in a way that everything was planned.

Chris Nelson, also a student during those years, put together a book of remembrances called Augustana School: The Anderson Era in 1981. People wrote in about their remembrances of that time and their later lives. For many in this time period, and for many whom I interviewed, what stood out was the formation of a tight community of children who enjoyed their

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time with each other. While the school was built for children from the Augustana mission, people came from many different missions to the school. Antero Ojanto, a Finnish student from the Southern Highlands of Tanganyika attended the school from 1953 through 1957. After writing about how happy he had been during his years at the school, he questioned many aspects of the school, including its isolation from news of the world, little connection with the African world around them, no teaching of the local languages or environment, and an over-emphasis on American culture. He questioned the lack of intellectual challenge in the school, but concluded his reminiscences about the ethos and intellectual life of the school, by saying, “May this not dim the memories of what were still the happiest years in our lives!” (Ojantoin and Nelson, 82–83). Fred and Martha Malloy were the next house parents, and they were seen as much more open than the Andersons had been. An article in World Encounter in 1964 described the school and the Malloys’ work with a multicultural student body. It talked about how two Norwegian first graders, not feeling at home with very little English-speaking background, had headed for their homes hundreds of miles away on foot, but returned soon after and now spoke fluent English (“Special Places,” December 1964, 31). In 1967, Hal Faust and Al Gottneid separately sent letters to Ruben Pederson, the Africa director for the Board of World Missions (BWM) for the LCA, to consider the future of Augustana School as it tied into the changing education policies of Tanzania and the changing missionary landscape of the country. Faust addressed who should be listed in charge of the school and whether the school should move to northern Tanzania: Both of these ideas have to do with the future management of Augustana. The first is that if the BWM actually is willing for the ELCT to consider taking over the school as an international school sponsored by all ELCT-affiliated bodies, it should request the ELCT to begin such as study. . . . The second matter which I would like to share by way of information in order that you can mull it over is the location of the school. As you well know, everyone wants the school in his locale and with more missionaries of the ELCT coming from the northern area, this thought has been raised. The present ratio is 22 Central Synod to 24 Northern Diocese [children at Augustana whose parents worked in the different church geographic areas]; so that is slightly over half. If the school were relocated, perhaps more parents in the north would send their children there rather than to the local schools. At any rate the question will perhaps be raised. The question, as I see it, is pretty much a financial one of the willingness of BWM to invest heavily again in an

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educational program for missionaries which perhaps has an optimum need of fifteen years. (Faust 7/3/1967)

Gottneid addressed the regulations about private schooling in Tanzania and whether Augustana School fit into these new regulations. In it, he brought out the American nature of the school and the detriment of this approach in the new Tanzanian environment: Official policy is that private schools are permitted under the Education Ordinance . . . Mortenson [another Lutheran missionary working on setting up the International School in Moshi], on several occasions, has been informed by the Ministry of Education that private schools on an international basis would be favoured. Purely nationalistic schools are frowned upon. . . . Official and semi-official reaction aside, the very concept of nationalistic enclaves—and that is exactly what these schools are—is incompatible with the spirit and policy of both Church and State in building a multi-racial Church and Society. The opinion expressed by a very few missionaries, that we are already in an international situation by the fact that we are in Tanzania, is a myth as far as our children in these schools are concerned. They live, breathe, read, think, play and work as Americans or Germans or as Swedes. The relationship to Tanzanians working in these schools (and with the odd exception of token acceptance of one or two nationals, their only contact is with workers) is that of a member of a household to household servants. Other nationals, always in a very minority, must be Americanized or Germanized or Swedishized, to adequately adjust. (Gottneid 11/6/1967)

In 1971, Augustana School did close. The school was down to only twenty-three children, including myself. I had finished my seventh grade year. The school no longer was sustainable. Still, like the closing of many elementary schools in rural communities and urban neighborhoods, a part of the community died with the closing of the school. Parents of elementaryaged children now had the choice of enrolling them in the boarding section at the new International School in Moshi (ISM) or to enroll them early in Rift Valley Academy (RVA). As the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) referral hospital was being built in Moshi, the planners realized that if they were to recruit doctors from around the world, a secondary school needed to be built for their children. An English language primary school was already located in Moshi. However, in 1969, this English language school switched completely over to Swahili and expatriates in town needed an English-speaking option for their children. ISM was opened up with sixty-nine students and eight

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grades in temporary quarters. LCA and other groups made funds available to construct the school buildings about a mile from KCMC. The new school facilities opened in October 1970 and the boarding facilities in September 1971 with many of us from the now-closed Augustana School making up the bulk of the new boarders at ISM (Heyse 1980). With LCA money having helped build the school, the church retained membership on the school board. My mother, Marie Benson, served on the board for many years. While the policy of Augustana School was to develop both our American-ness and our Christian faith; ISM emphasized providing “quality education to expatriate children living in Tanzania regardless of their nationality, race or religion” (Heyse 1980, 15). The Augustana School student body split up with the closure of the school at Kiomboi. Some missionary families sent their children on to RVA, while other chose to send their children to ISM. For example, while Mel Lofgren, who was teaching at Mwika Bible School outside of Moshi, was my confirmation teacher when I was going to ISM, his son, Tim, who had been my Augustana School classmate since second grade was not in my confirmation class. He was attending RVA along with classmate, Joe Ward. Another Augustana School classmate, Russ Nyblade and I went to ISM for one year and then transferred up to RVA in ninth grade because that was what the “Lutheran missionary kids had always done” and this was our own choice. However, our youngest siblings for both Russ and me never went to RVA. At ISM they received a much more international education and appear to have turned out to be just as Christian or just as religiously skeptical as those of us who attended the strongly Christian-oriented RVA. RVA was started as a missionary school in 1906, but did not graduate its first high school student until 1949. The first Lutheran missionary child graduated from RVA in 1955. Between 1960 and 1980, there was almost always a Lutheran graduate of the school, with some years almost 20 percent of the graduating class being Lutheran (see table 1.3). The last of the Lutheran missionary children in this study graduated from RVA in 1985. There have been Lutheran missionary children sporadically at RVA since then, but the majority attended ISM. Vikner notes as one of the key components of the early Missionary stage of missions that the theology of most Protestant missionary groups had a high degree of theological uniformity (Vikner 1982). Several articles in the Lutheran Companion highlighted the work of the Africa Inland Mission. At other times, George Anderson reported cordial meetings with African Inland missionaries about both missions looking at beginning work at the western and eastern edges of their respective fields which overlapped (Anderson

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Table 1.3. American Lutheran Graduates of Rift Valley Academy from Tanzania (1955–1976) Year

Lutheran Graduates, %

Graduates, No.

1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976

20.0 0.0 7.1 0.0 0.0 7.7 15.4 6.2 6.7 0.0 5.9 14.3 21.9 17.9 19.4 12.5 14.0 6.0 1.8 9.7 6.0 9.7

5 4 14 13 5 13 13 16 15 18 17 28 32 28 36 64 43 50 54 72 50 62

Source: Dow, 2003; Lutheran background by author.

1929). Later, the more fundamentalist views of Rift Valley Academy conflicted with the religious views of many of the Lutheran missionary families. Herbert Downing, the principal of RVA during most of the years that Lutheran missionary children attended, had a two-fold vision for the school: (1) the school would make sure that missionaries would be able to do their work and not worry about their children, and (2) the school would be a training ground for new missionaries (paraphrased in Dow 2003, 101). In earlier years, the school had a more British-focused curriculum, but this changed to a more American-oriented curriculum after World War II. In looking at the impact of this emphasis on American-ness and on godliness at both Augustana School and Rift Valley Academy, I question how well it fit us the children of the missionaries. It suited the missionary generation, for they were American and strong believers, but we children of missionaries had been influenced by our moves between cultures. While we mourned the closing of Augustana School and that its close family-like atmosphere was gone, nonetheless we were much more international in

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spirit. The curriculum of ISM fit better with who we were. When my own children attended the ISM branch in Arusha in 2005, I was thrilled that the curriculum that they were learning actually addressed the situation in Tanzania, unlike the social studies curriculum that was taught almost forty years earlier in central Tanzania but which addressed none of the realities of the landscape I was seeing daily. Russ Nyblade, Tim Lofgren, Becky Simonson, Jill Jackson, Debbie Jackson, and I all graduated from Rift Valley Academy at the end of the Apex years, 1976. We had been part of the Augustana School tradition. While five of us had attended ISM, we now were finishing as so many other Lutheran missionary kids had before us at RVA. The traditions were in the process of changing. While in some years during the Apex years, Lutherans had been the largest denominations within a graduating class at RVA, these numbers became fewer and fewer and RVA no longer came to be seen as part of the tradition for American Lutheran missionary children in Tanzania. The numbers of missionaries were declining as well. It was a new world.

A Mission Scales Down (1977–Present) The last thirty-five years have seen many changes as the mission shrank and the Tanzanian church grew. At the beginning of this time period, thirty-five missionary units were working in Tanzania; by 2006 only seven missionary units were fully supported by ELCA, the same number of missionaries as had been in Tanganyika in 1924 when the mission was newly formed in the country. Many changes took place within the church bodies of the Lutheran churches in the United States and Tanzania. In 1988, the LCA joined with two other American Lutheran churches to form the ELCA. In Tanzania, while the whole church remained united in the ELCT, the geographic divisions of the church were breaking down into smaller geographic units that were more ethnically homogenous. From the seven synods that first made up the ELCT, there are now twenty different synods and dioceses, some in areas that were not really considered Lutheran parts of the country in earlier times. We were now in the Vikner’s Interdependent/Independent stage of missions, characterized by recognition that churches in mission-receiving countries are self-reliant; that mission-sending and mission-receiving churches were both independent from each other; and that missionaries could come from anywhere, not just the traditional mission-sending countries of Northern Europe and America (Vikner 1982). In consequence, the historical mission-sending churches needed to figure out their new roles, while holding strongly to the belief that there still was a need for missionaries throughout

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the world. As a result, the ELCA Global Mission Unit defined its new mission philosophy as one of Accompaniment, of “[w]alking together in solidarity that practices independence and mutuality. In this walk, gifts, resources, and experiences are shared with mutual advice and admonition to deepen and expand our work within God’s mission” (n.d., 1; also ELCA 1997). Accompaniment involves working toward four objectives: (1) reaching the un-churched, working with people of other faiths, and an emphasis on renewal to those who have left the Christian faith; (2) advocacy and solidarity with people throughout the world in combating poverty, disease, and lack of education and promoting development; (3) helping churches around the world with developing leadership skills, ecumenism, facilitating South-South interactions, and education; and (4) finally, developing and embracing the gifts of members of all churches (ELCA 1997). One of the main areas of development and communication between ELCA and the Lutheran church in Tanzania over the past twenty years is the Companion Synod program. ELCA synods in the United States form partnerships with other synods throughout the Lutheran world, including Tanzania. Nineteen synods in the United States formed partnerships with the nineteen dioceses in Tanzania (table 1.4). Some of these programs are exceptionally strong, such as the synod in St. Paul, Minnesota, with the Table 1.4. Companion Synod Partnerships between Tanzanian and American Lutheran Synods ELCT Diocese

ELCA Synods

Central Diocese Dodoma Diocese Eastern and Coastal Diocese Iringa Diocese Karagwe Diocese Konde Diocese Diocese in Mara Region Mbulu Diocese Meru Diocese Morogoro Diocese North-Central Diocese Northern Diocese North Eastern Diocese Northwest Diocese Pare Diocese Southern Diocese South-Central Diocese Southwestern Diocese Ulanga-Kilombero Diocese

Southeastern Minnesota Synod Northwestern Ohio Synod Northern Great Lakes Synod (MI, WI) St. Paul Area Synod (MN) Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod Lower Susquehanna Synod (PA) Delaware/Maryland Southeast Michigan Synod Greater Milwaukee Synod (WI) Arkansas/Oklahoma Synod Northern Illinois Synod Nebraska Synod Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod Metropolitan New York Synod Southeastern Iowa Synod Western Iowa Synod Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod South Carolina Synod Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod

Source: ELCA Global Mission Unit, Companion Synod 2012

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Table 1.5. Type of Work Done by American Lutheran Missionaries in Tanzania from 1977–1986 as expressed in Occupational Titles, percent Year

Evangelical “Rev.”

Medical “MD/RN”

Other “Mr./Miss”

Total no.

1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986

31.4 50.0 42.9 44.4 33.3 42.9 44.4 47.6 52.6 47.4

17.1 12.5 7.1 — — — — — 5.3 5.3

50.0 43.8 50.0 55.5 66.7 57.1 55.5 52.4 42.1 47.4

20 17 14 18 15 14 18 21 19 19

Source: World Encounter, October issues, 1977–1986

Iringa Diocese and the Southeastern Minnesota Synod working to strengthen institutions of the Central Diocese. As can be seen in table 1.5, the number of missionaries in the 1980s hovered between fifteen and twenty missionary families and single workers. Missionary medical work stopped for a time. Most missionaries were employed in church schools, diocesan offices, or the headquarters of the ELCT. At the same time, the missionaries became increasingly concentrated in northern Tanzania, with the Lutheran Junior Seminary in Morogoro in eastern Tanzania becoming a second concentration of missionaries (table 1.6). The ELCT headquarters, while at the same time the missionary staff, became increasingly concentrated in the Northern Area with the Lutheran Junior Seminary in the Coastal Area becoming a second concentration of missionaries in the early 1980s as can be seen in table 1.6.

Table 1.6. Location of American Lutheran Missionaries by Original Mission Fields from 1977 through 1986, percent Year

Central

Northern

Usambaras

1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986

25.0 23.5 28.6 11.1 18.2 14.3 5.6 14.3 15.8 15.8

60.0 76.5 57.1 72.2 73.3 78.6 72.2 61.9 57.8 52.6

10.0 — 7.1 5.6 — — — — — —

Coastal 1.8 — 7.1 11.1 18.2 7.1 22.2 19.0 21.0 26.3

Bukoba

Other

Total No.

5.0 — — — — — — — — —

— — — — — — — 4.8 5.3 5.3

20 17 14 18 15 14 18 21 19 19

Source: World Encounter, October issues, 1977–1986

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Over this period, fewer missionaries were trained clergy (only 30 percent), with most that were working in lay positions (ELCA, Global Mission 2007). The majority of missionaries in Tanzania had been lay persons for many years. However, the changing nature of the American Lutheran missionary body globally can be seen in ELCA’s 2003 International Personnel Directory (table 1.7). About half of the personnel listed worldwide as missionaries were part of volunteer programs within the wider ELCA Division of Global Missions. This varied regionally from the Middle East where all missionaries were fully salaried to Europe where almost 4/5 of all missionaries served as volunteers. Tanzania was in the middle with almost half of its missionary personnel working as volunteers. No long-term ELCA missionaries in Tanzania in 2003 were involved in evangelism or parish work. Tanzania remained ELCA’s largest mission, as it had been for the Augustana Church and for LCA before it, but one can see how this mission’s decline mirrored that which was occurring throughout the world. In 1962, there were 123 full-time missionary units in Tanganyika during Augustana’s last year. By 2003, there were only eighty-nine long-term missionaries serving globally from a much larger ELCA. At the same time, the missionary work was now spread out throughout most of the world. There was now some type of missionary work in forty-two countries as compared to the four countries during most of Augustana’s years. Within the past thirty years, there have been many changes: the main Lutheran mission-sending body in the United States changed; the African church matured into one that was no longer as tied to the mission church; and outside forces influenced the lives of the missionaries and their children in many different ways. In the previous sections, I wrote about the lives of the parental generation and children’s generation as separate sections because we were often separated for nine months of the year and did lead quite separate lives. With the return following their university education of some of the missionary children to Tanzania in different capacities and with boarding school playing a smaller role in the lives of the children of more recent American Lutheran missionaries in Tanzania, the two generations of the missionary community have become more intertwined. Changes were taking place in the missionary family and its connections to Tanzania. Of the missionaries I interviewed, several left Tanzania before or soon after 1976: The Fausts, Fribergs, Lofgrens, Palms, Les Petersons, Gottneids, Jacksons, Olsons, and Dean Petersons retired in the 1980s. My parents, as well as the Hagbergs and the Nyblades worked into the 1990s. When I began these interviews, only the Simonsons and Hafermanns remained in Tanzania. Since then, Dave has died, while Eunie Simonson lives in Tanzania for part of the year. Hafermanns return periodically to do mission work.

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1.7 63.8 0.0 5.2 12.1 1.7 15.5 0.0 58 32.6

Salaried Positions Regional representatives Long-term missionaries

Voluntary Positions Amity Foundation Global Mission Associates Global Mission Two-Year Seminary interns Volunteers Young Adult Programs

Total number

% of Overall Total

Source: ELCA, Division for Global Mission, 2003

Africa

Type of Assignment

10.7

19

0.0 0.0 10.5 0.0 36.8 0.0

0.0 52.6

Tanzania, as part of Africa

24.7

44

4.5 22.7 15.9 2.3 2.3 4.5

2.3 45.4

Asia

23.0

41

0.0 4.9 12.2 4.9 34.1 21.9

2.4 19.5

Europe

11.2

20

0.0 10.0 20.0 5.0 0. 20.0

5.0 40.0

Latin America

Table 1.7. ELCA Missionary Work by Regional Groupings and Types of Assignment—2003, percent

5.1

9

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

0.0 100.0

Middle East

3.4

6

0.0 16.7 33.3 0.0 0.0 0.0

0.0 50.0

Oceania

100.0

178

1.1 10.1 14.0 2.8 13.5 8.4

2.2 47.7

Total

History of a Mission

•

43

Several of the missionary children returned to Tanzania following university. Dan and Ruth Friberg’s son, Steve, returned to Tanzania with his wife Bethany to do missionary medical work. Three of Dean and Elaine Peterson’s sons returned to Tanzania and formed their own safari company, Dorobo Safaris. Four of the Simonson children have been involved in development and tourism work in Tanzania. Howie Olson, the son of Howard and Louise, worked in tourism. Steve Cunningham, part of the missionary community, returned as a pilot. My brother, Jeff, worked for four years in Arusha as an engineer with MSAADA, an architecture firm. New missionaries arrived from the United States. I remember the first time I met Jolyn and Roger Horton in my parent’s home in Arusha, new missionaries to Tanzania, and being shocked that Jolyn was roughly my age. An article in World Encounter by Meyer (1985) highlighted the dreams and plans of new missionaries who were at a Summer Institute for Mission in Madison, Wisconsin, going overseas for the first time, including Steve and Jaynan Egland, who were heading out to Tanzania. She described them as a group that did “not fit into a stereotype” with few ordained pastors, most bringing practical rather than evangelical skills, and being of all different ages. Jaynan Egland stated in this article, “We’re all turned-inside-out people. Many people don’t seek out needs and ways to serve, but look inside of themselves, instead. Everyone here is inside out. We’ve unified our differences. We’ve been called to different places but by the same Voice” (1985, 12, 15). The new missionaries brought new skills, like Dennis and Meredith Murnyak, who helped develop fish ponds and fish farming at first in northern Tanzania and later throughout the country. Volunteers were becoming a larger part of the missionary group. Mike Peterson, Dean and Elaine’s youngest son, came out to Tanzania to work as an LCA volunteer before joining his older brothers in their safari company. He worked for three years on a tree planting project under the supervision of my father, Stan Benson. He felt it helped him develop a strong appreciation for Tanzanians and he liked how much freedom he was given in this position. Steve Friberg, the son of Dan and Ruth, also returned, at first on a volunteer basis and later as a doctor in a long-term missionary position. In discussing his work as a doctor, he brought out that this represented a continuation of his father’s evangelical work and the connections that had been formed with key people by his parents that he was able to use in his new medical work but within the same church structure. The missionary community continued on into the next generation, but its nature was changing as well. I think members of each of the different Lutheran

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missionary communities of this period in Arusha, Iringa, and Morogoro feel as if they are parts of a close community, but not part of the larger Lutheran missionary community that I experienced as a child. The missionary children may feel less tied to that label than to a sense of being a Third Culture Kid (Pollock and Van Reken 2001), not so different from non-missionary children who grew up across several cultures. The differences that we felt at Kiomboi and RVA toward other expatriate and African children are no longer so pronounced. In addition, electronic communication and jet travel means that when missionary children go away from their parents the absence is not as long or as pronounced as it was for earlier missionary families. There remains a strong community of former Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania and their children. Lutheran missionary reunions have been held every three years beginning in 1986. Missionaries from all the different generations come to these gatherings. An electronic prayer chain has been developed that keeps people updated, mainly about each other’s sicknesses. My mother, Marie Benson, runs this prayer chain and when I was out in Tanzania in 2005, I sometimes would hear about what was happening with others in Arusha from her in St. Peter, MN, because those in Arusha with news had sent an e-mail to her about it, but I hadn’t yet seen them in person. The missionary community remains a major part of the lives of all of us who were raised within it, even though most of us no longer live in Tanzania.

Conclusion Often, when missions are discussed, the image is that of the first generation of missionaries that came to Tanzania in the early 1920s. However, the mission changed as it became one of partnership or more egalitarian in its orientation to the local church. And changes are seen in how the experience of missionary children, from the heartbreaking leaving of children in the United States during the earliest era to the hardships and joys of boarding school in the second time period to how life has become not so different from the lives of other expatriate children within the third time period. I have traced in this chapter the growth and sustaining nature of a community and why it has lasted so long. The community has had many forces that have pulled it apart, but more forces that have held it together, so that it remains the dominant community for many of us who grew up within its embrace.

Notes 1. Reproduced by permission of Augsburg Fortress. 2. Reproduced by permission of Augsburg Fortress.

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CHAPTER TWO

Place and Religion in the Childhoods of the Missionary Generation

The framework for my study focuses on the impact of place and religion on the lives of the two generations of this missionary community. This chapter examines the role of these two factors in the childhoods of the missionary generation, particularly for what in their childhoods influenced them toward missionary work. When I interviewed the children of these missionaries about their home landscapes in Tanzania, I often received rich descriptions, in contrast to the more limited insights that they provided on the impact of Christianity on their lives. For those in the missionary generation who had grown up in the United States, their descriptions of the places of their childhood were often miniscule to nonexistent, but the impact of the church and mission on their personal development were described in depth. What accounts for these differences? In all, I interviewed twenty-nine missionaries: Stan and Marie Benson, Hal and Louise Faust, Dan and Ruth Friberg, Al and Alice Gottneid, Herb and Kristin Hafermann, Ray and Nellie Faye Hagberg, Elder and Renee Jackson, Mel and Dottie Lofgren, Orv and June Nyblade, Howie and Louise Olson, Evelyn Palm, Dean and Elaine Peterson, Les and Ruth Peterson, Dave and Eunie Simonson, and Bob and Jeanne Ward. Most grew up as the children of farmers (Marie Benson, Ray and Nellie Faye Hagberg, Elder Jackson, Orv Nyblade, Evelyn Palm, Dean and Elaine Peterson, and Les and Ruth Peterson). Several were children of pastors, including Stan Benson, Herb Hafermann, Mel Lofgren, Howard Olson, and Dave and Eunie Simonson.

45

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The majority grew up in the rural Midwest. Five of these missionaries grew up in urban settings: Hal and Louise Faust in the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois; Al Gottneid and Bob Ward in Omaha; Renee Jackson in St. Paul; and June Nyblade in Pittsburgh (figure 2.1). Two were the children of small town businessmen: Dottie Lofgren in Wakefield, MI, and Jeanne Ward in Balaton, MN. Four of these missionaries were themselves children of missionaries (Dan and Ruth Friberg, Alice Gottneid, Louise Olson). Finally, Kirsten Hafermann grew up in Denmark; Dan Friberg, the oldest interviewee, was born in 1908; while the youngest, the Hafermanns, were born in 1937, an almost thirty-year age difference. The Augustana Lutheran Church was the church body in which most were raised. Of the others, most grew up in other Lutheran synods. Dave and Eunie Simonson were children of Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) pastors. Herb Hafermann was a child of a pastor of the old American Lutheran Church (old ALC). June Nyblade grew up in the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA). Marie Benson grew up in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and Nellie Faye Hagberg was born into the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (UELC). Louise Faust and Jeanne Ward were originally Presbyterians, but Jeanne’s family became Wisconsin Synod Lutheran at a later date. Most of these missionaries arrived in Tanganyika in the decade following World War II and their lives in Tanzania during these years will be highlighted later in this book. In the interviews with them, none spoke negatively about their early homes, but few spoke expansively about them, either. Most when asked about their early home life began talking about their lives within the church and the early mission influences. I see this generation fitting into what Yi-Fu Tuan called “true cosmopolites,” a group “whose emotional center or home is a mystical religion, or philosophy” (1996, 183). With the staid character of Lutheranism, it is perhaps erroneous to think of it as a mystical religion, but the idea of serving a faith started early for many of the missionaries. Swanson, in trying to understand his own parents’ generation of more evangelical, fundamentalist missionaries, described them as “strangers” in their country of birth, set apart by their religious convictions and their physical removal from that country. They seemed to be out of sync with dominant values in either country, and were strangers in this regard in their early childhoods (1995, 7). Because the group I interviewed was part of mainline Christianity, I do not think they were quite as separate from their original communities as Swanson suggests, but from early on most formed a stronger bond to their religion than to their home place.

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Source: Designed by Todd Benson

Figure 2.1. Childhood Homes in the United States of Selected Missionaries

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I will begin by looking at the descriptions of place from several of the missionaries who spoke more expansively about where they grew up, move on to look at the descriptions of the places where they grew up by the four missionaries who had grown up as children of missionaries, and then finally look at some of the stories told that revealed the nature of their early religious lives, with a generally strong interest in missions.

Midwestern Childhoods Ray Hagberg was born near Spencer, in northeastern Nebraska, a few miles south of the Missouri River. Now he and his wife have retired to that community. In my interview with him, he described a place that was much more populated in his childhood than it is now. He sees farm land that supported ten families in his childhood now supporting only one family. The town of Bristow, where he attended church, once supported many businesses, but now has little more than the church. He has returned to a much depopulated and changed place, but one senses his strong connection to that community. In describing his childhood growing up on a farm near Rosholt, SD, in the 1920s, Elder Jackson told about the 2½ mile walk to their rural school, milking cows on their farm that was at least a mile from the nearest neighbor, and playing with his childhood friends. Work and play combined in the life of this farm boy. Town life was also seen positively by people who grew up in those settings. Jeanne Ward described her childhood in Balaton, MN, where her father worked a blacksmith and where she had a childhood full of sports, acting, and cheerleading, as a happy one. Similarly, my father, Stan Benson, described Aitkin, MN, as a place that he felt very comfortable in, where they knew everybody; he had a paper route and they lived only a day’s drive from relatives where he went every summer. Eunie Simonson, my father’s cousin, described the joy she felt growing up in a huge parsonage near Portland, ND, with its six bedrooms and the excitement she felt at having several rooms to herself to develop as she saw fit. Her lifelong enjoyment of theatre began here as she turned one room into a theatre. She felt that hers was a happy childhood. All of these interviews reflect places that these missionaries were happy to have been raised in, but few dwelt on those places. In talking about their lives, their main interest was the Christian influences that led them to become missionaries.

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Foreign Childhoods Four of the missionaries grew up on the early Augustana mission fields (figure 2.2). I will examine their descriptions of place more fully, because like the next generation of the children of the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania, place figured prominently in their descriptions of their early life. This stands in contrast to the childhood descriptions given by their colleagues raised in America. Dan Friberg and Alice Lindbeck Gottneid spent their early years on the same mission compound in Loyang, China, but were separated by eleven years in age (figures 2.2 and 2.3). Ruth Friberg, Dan’s wife, grew up in India, while Louise Anderson Olson was a child of one of the first Augustana missionary couples to Tanganyika, George and Annette Anderson. Dan Friberg and Alice Gottneid described their mission compound at Loyang in somewhat different ways. Dan began by describing the physical layout of Loyang and the location of the mission compound within the city: It was a square city with a pretty high brick wall, four gates—north, south, east, west—and we were a bit out of the East Gate and north of it. The station lay between the East Gate and the railway station.

Figure 2.2. Childhood Settings for Missionaries in Study who Grew up Outside of the United States Source: Designed by Todd Benson

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Figure 2.3.

Augustana Mission Field in China

Source: Swanson (1960), with permission of Augsburg Fortress Press

He went on to describe the physical layout of the compound, the location of the church and dispensary where his father, Dr. C. P. Friberg worked, and then finished by describing what it was like to go to church in China, the work of his father, and his childhood playmates: In that church, I would sit with my family. I think men were on one side and women on the other. But the men in those days had pigtails. They had long hair, braided, that hung down outside their silk sort of a gown-like coat. And there was an organist, a blind teacher by the name of Fu, I think. He played the organ and was a wonderful Christian that had gotten training up in Peking, which is a long way off.

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Well, the patients came. I think Poppa had about up to 30–40,000 patients a year. . . . Poppa was the only doctor, but he was helped by one or two nurses, missionary nurses. There were trained people that practiced with them. I played with Chinese children and my brother, Immanuel. Then there were other people on the station, the Lindbecks, the Lindells, and the Hansons, and they had some children.

Alice Lindbeck Gottneid’s memories from the same mission compound were less of the physical surroundings but of the emotional responses she had to a China that was going through great social upheavals during her childhood: In Loyang, we lived as normally as we could, but when the Red Army came, we would have shooting all around. . . . The house was hit with bullets. We would be up at school, come home for Christmas vacation and then be attacked on the way home from the railway station to our place. All our things were stolen. Looking back on my early life, it is one of much turmoil, although we have good memories of things, but then we have all these other things that came in. We learned basic Chinese, enough to talk to the help. We were rather isolated, because we lived in compounds. The only others that we played with were missionary kids that were on the station. We did have some of the Chinese, the help; their families were living on the compound.

Their boarding school was up in the mountains and missionaries would retreat to this spot during the heat of the summer, similarly to what was done in India. It was a much more open place, but the war intruded even here. Again, Dan described its physical layout very well, while Alice brought out the varying emotions she felt there. (Dan Friberg) I went to boarding school in Ginjungshan. And that was a mountain of a couple thousand feet in the Honan-Hubeh provinces and a little north of a prominent station. . . . On this mountain, there were by the time we were there, one hundred or more houses occupied by missionaries. It was a rather foreign community with some Chinese shops. But it wasn’t a highly cultivated community. It was a summer resort. . . . In the summer, parents would come up to spend the summer. Not all families, but our family did that. (Alice Lindbeck Gottneid) Loyang, we would not explore. We were in Ginjungshan more, up at the school, and there we had the freedom to roam around on the mountain. Most positive memories from China are from the school. We were not in a compound and had the freedom to roam the mountain. Most of

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the people came up for the summer and there was just a small Chinese village and so we really had the roaming of the mountain . . . Danger? Yes and no. But, still we did have to leave Gijungshan several times, because we were in danger. We had many years of turmoil growing up in China. During a study hour, one of the teachers came in and said, “You are all to go back to your room.” So we did. We were told then, “You go and you put on an extra set of clothes, a loaf of the local bread, a can of milk in your laundry bag with a blanket and some extra clothes and go to your rooms.” We were ready to get up at any minute and leave. But nothing happened and the high school boys were all upset because they had been up on guard and nothing happened. We did have to leave then the next day, but that gave us a chance to pack up. . . . One summer, we were up there and I got up in the morning and I said, “Momma, I’ve got all fresh clothes lying right here by my bed?” She said, “Yes, we thought we had to take a walk during the night.” You were always on the alert.

Both families eventually had to flee China. The Fribergs left without their father, who died of typhoid in Loyang. While Dan returned to China and began his missionary career there, Alice felt somewhat scarred by the turmoil of her youth in China. Her feelings were mixed about returning there because of it. She described her emotions this way: No, I didn’t think I would go back as an adult. I had been running around too much. I didn’t think I would go back. I had a deep attachment to China and liked it and the missionary community was very close. While we had grown up there and we were part of it; I had no thoughts of becoming a missionary later.

India and Tanganyika where Ruth Holmer Friberg and Louise Anderson Olson grew up were not places of war, but there were hardships. Still, both Ruth and Louise wanted nothing more than to return to them as adults. Ruth described her childhood in India (figure 2.4) in this way: My father was a traveling evangelist. He had a car, but he also did a lot of his evangelism on a houseboat. They had canals going out from the Godaveri River, and my dad would travel on the canals and go down and visit the churches that were there . . . He also was in charge of a boys’ boarding school that was on the compound. . . . We lived in a very large former German bungalow, with wide porches on both the back and the front and the doors of the rooms could be opened so that the air could go straight through. . . . It was very hot down in Rajahmundry, except over Christmastime. Christmastime it was cool. . . . We lived (there) for about nine years from 1923 to 1932, no furlough during that time. Their first time had been that way. They had gone out in

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1912 and come home in 1921. They were supposed to be seven-year terms but they stayed longer. My father had two nine-year terms with a year and a half in-between for furlough. He was with the mission board for twenty years. . . . I was very much at home and of course, I took my nurses’ training with the idea of going back to India. From the time I was a little girl I had planned to go back, be a nurse, to take care of the Indian babies.

Like in China, the boarding school to which American Lutheran missionaries in India sent their children, Kodaikanal, which is still operating, was in

Figure 2.4.

Augustana Mission Fields in India

Source: Swanson (1960), with permission of Augsburg Fortress Press

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the mountains. As they did in China, families lived part of the year at the school with their children. In Tanganyika, in the early years of the Augustana mission, there were no boarding schools nearby. Most of the children were educated either at home or they stayed with relatives in the United States. Louise Anderson Olson described the life of the Anderson children in Ruruma (figure 1.2) in the 1930s as one where her mother often worried about where to find things for their family to eat, catching illnesses from African children, and being homeschooled. The seven children—two step-children and five of their own children—formed a club that they called the ANDRIPS—“because we were all Andersons and we were ‘drips.’’ There were harsh elements to growing up in this environment, but Louise yearned to return to Tanganyika. She spoke of her earnestly praying to return to Africa when she left Africa at fourteen: We came back for good when I was fourteen, and that is when it was hardest for me to leave Africa. I can remember, as young as I was, only thirteen at the time, thinking about leaving Africa, telling the Lord when I was in my bed at night, “Lord, you know I want to come back to Africa someday. I am going to leave it up to you to find the way to bring me back, but I don’t want to come back as a single worker, because you know how you’ve made me and I want to be married, but I don’t know how it’s going to happen, so it’s all up to you, Lord.”

In each of these childhood remembrances from these mission fields, there is a strong connection to the places in which they were raised. Such connections are for the most part absent from the remembrances of the missionaries that grew up in the United States.

Religious Childhoods and Missionary Influences What was the nature of the Christian influences in their childhoods that led these missionaries to consider a career in missions? Many talked about their connections to missions from an early age and the impact of key missionaries in their lives. Swanson highlights that missionaries who experienced an early call to the mission field generally were members of mission-minded churches and had parents who stressed the importance of Christian service. In addition, this sense of a call early on was reinforced by their knowing key missionary figures (1995, 90). Not everyone among the missionaries I interviewed felt that they wanted to be missionaries early on, but many talked about all three of these characteristics in their lives. Augustana was a very mission-minded church, as were many of the other Lutheran synods. From its very beginnings in 1860, missions were considered

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55

integral to the church. Hall said that “From its inception the Augustana Synod thought of itself as a missionary church and agency” (1984, 3). Other parts of the church supported the work of missionaries. The Luther League emphasized missions in much of their work. Its Women’s Missionary Society supported many single women missionaries and built buildings throughout the various mission fields. In addition, there was an ethos in most Protestant congregations at that time in the United States that supported the work of missions. In 1949, Latourette described how important missions were for American churches in the first half of the 1900s: The effect of this world-wide missionary enterprise is seldom appreciated. Even those most active in it are infrequently aware of how deeply it has molded the American outlook on the world. The supporting constituency of foreign missions numbers millions. Literally millions contribute financially to the enterprise. Not many of them give a large portion of their income. To most of them foreign missions are a minor interest. Yet to a substantial minority, numbering thousands, they are a major concern. Nearly every Protestant congregation has, under one name or another, its missionary society. (1949, 31–2)

Several missionaries spoke about how the emphasis on missions in their church had influenced their ambitions. Herb Hafermann spoke of how involved the churches were in missions as he grew up in the GermanAmerican community of Flatville, Illinois, where mission festivals would last from early morning to late at night and visiting missionaries would stay with his family. Dave Simonson told of the deep involvement their church had with the missionaries in the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, with missionaries visiting for a week at a time. He spoke of how he had no early plans to be a missionary or a pastor, but “the seeds were being sown, unknown to us” through these encounters. Dottie Lofgren reiterated the importance of her parents hosting visiting missionaries to her Augustana church at their home in Wakefield, MI. The influence of parents who stressed the importance of Christianity was highlighted by many of the interviewees. Dean and Les Peterson describe the influence of their mother’s deep faith in keeping their involvement in the church strong. Elaine Peterson told of how a conversion type experience that happened to her father when she was in elementary school kept her family involved in all activities at her rural church near East Chain, MN. Howie Olson spoke lovingly of how his father’s example as a pastor convinced him and his brother to go into the ministry. A connection with missionaries was an important element in leading these individuals to decide to go into missions. Nellie Faye Hagberg spoke of

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how a visiting missionary from Nigeria influenced her early on to consider missions as a vocation. This was reinforced by counselors at a Bible camp on Lake Okoboji, Iowa, and later by teachers who pushed books on Africa her way. Eunie Simonson talked about the connection she formed as a twelveyear-old with Richard Reusch, an early missionary to Tanganyika. He told her that one day he saw her as someone who would be working “amongst his Maasai,” leaving a strong impression on her. Herb Hafermann told about all the various missionaries that he met growing up—from his father’s cousin serving in Papua, New Guinea, to AC Zelinger, one of the early missionaries to Tanganyika, to Richard Reusch, to the Tanzanian, Naiman Laizer, all of whom influenced his decision to go into missions. Some of the missionaries knew someone from their church who was working in Tanganyika. St. Joseph’s Lutheran Church in rural Rosholt, SD, had been served at one point by V. Eugene Johnson, one of the early missionaries to Tanganyika. His visits back helped influence Elder Jackson, Evelyn Palm, and Dean and Les Peterson, members of St. Joseph’s, to consider going to Africa. Dean’s wife, Elaine, was influenced by the examples of Rube and Twyla Pederson, a missionary couple with ties to her church in East Chain, MN. Life during the childhood of the missionaries centered around the church, and for some, like my mother who attended parochial school, it was a major part of her every weekday with an hour a day spent on religion, five days a week. As they arrived in their early teen years, preparation for confirmation added more Christian emphasis “where the pastor would lecture us and we would take it down word for word. . . . Confirmation was not that much different than religion class, apart from that man lecturing to us.” At home while growing up, both of my parents had daily devotions every day of their young lives, though in different languages and with different emphases. They continued this practice daily until my father’s death in August 2013: (Stan Benson) Devotions were important. Dad came out of the Rosenius Movement of Sweden. That was a big influence on him. It was a conservative, religious, pietistic experience. (Marie Benson) My father, being a German immigrant, we always had devotions with breakfast and it was always in German.

Most of the Augustana churches had a program called Junior Mission Band that was run through the Women’s Missionary Society, and helped interest children in missions. While Women’s Missionary Society was strong in the church Orv Nyblade attended as a child, his mother never participated in it. However, June, his wife, took part in the mission programs in

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her Sunday school and remembered how, with her dark straight hair cut in bangs, she would often be called upon to act as the little girl from different Asian countries. Some of the missionary men felt a call to the ministry and a life in the church at a very early age. Dean Peterson described his religious life as an adolescent in this way: I sensed when I was in the seventh grade a call to be a pastor, but I wasn’t sure about Africa. I was a religious person. We didn’t have family devotions at home. But at that stage in my life, I had my own prayers every day. I remember that even when I walked to school, I prayed. . . . With Confirmation, it was how to pray and so forth. And even before that, I was hooked on a prayer routine. Even when I walked to school or milked the cows, I had my own prayer routine. I would write down a list. My brothers and sisters were serious Christians with the church. But the ones that affected me most with my religious life were Milton, Mick and Evelyn. They talked to me in times of crisis, especially when my mother died.

In their teenage years, Luther League became an important part of many of these people’s lives. Luther League was an organization that “was deeply intertwined with world missions” from sending youth materials “to four hundred different leaders in seventy different countries” to having missionaries speak at Luther League conventions when on furlough (Bergstrand 1999, 261). My father and the others who became missionaries from Rosholt, SD, shared about the important part Luther League played in their lives: (Stan Benson) We had a very strong Luther League program and that’s where we all got bonded together because it was all so vital. The Luther League wasn’t just for youth, it was all the families got together for Luther League, but Luther League had to put on the program. . . . And then . . . all the congregations out there in our whole district, we were very close so we got to know all the kids from Wheaton, from Clinton, from Ortonville, Graceville. . . . We got acquainted with them. It was a good youth program all the way, very influential. (Elder Jackson) The Luther League conventions would have the type of speakers that would try to motivate the kids to try and take their religion seriously. I suppose I was 13 and we were at a Luther League convention, and I remember asking someone about what I would have to do to be a pastor. That was the first time I talked with someone about doing that. (Les Peterson) All of our young pastors have come out of the Luther League from Rev. Holm. For going into the ministry, he was one of the biggest influences. From our church, we had me, Elder, Leland, Darryl Nelson, Dean.

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For most of the people I interviewed in the missionary generation, their lives were fully lived within the church, and the church within its structure promoted missions strongly. As a result, the children thought of church mission as a very real option for their lives.

Conclusion Yi-Fu Tuan (1996) wrote about the differing feelings about the hearth and the cosmos that we all experience in our lives—for most people, there is a strong desire to move beyond the hearth into the cosmos. This was true for most of the missionary generation. While those that grew up in the United States felt they had positive childhoods in the places in which they were raised, most did not form a deep attachment to those places. They were exposed to other places through their church life and through the examples of missionaries that they knew. In contrast, those of the missionary generation who themselves grew up as the children of missionaries grew up in the “cosmos” and there was a fascination with living in this other world. The four missionaries who grew up on the mission field each described in my interviews with them their childhood places in depth. For most of them, there was a deep desire to return to that place, something that was missing from the American-raised missionaries. Bronfenbrenner (1979) used the terms microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem to describe the sources of different social influences on people’s lives. The religious lives of the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania were developed within a set of microsystems and a macrosystem that supported their eventual move into missions. During the missionaries’ childhoods, most of the social systems in which they were involved were aligned in support of their desires to work as missionaries as adults. While one would expect that a similar social system would be in place for the children of these missionaries as they grew up on the mission field, generally such a system ended up being curiously missing in the next generation’s religious development.

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CHAPTER THREE

Place and Religion in the Childhoods of the Second Generation

In discussing their childhoods, both the missionaries and their children highlighted issues of place and of religion, but there was a striking difference between what was emphasized. While the missionary generation often spoke in the interviews with them about their early religious convictions, but very little about the places they had lived as children, most of the next generation chose to stress their connections to the places they had lived and where they had gone to school in their childhoods. Their discussions about religious development during childhood were often ones characterized by confusion. This chapter describes these contrasts between the two generations.

Place in the Development of the Children of Missionaries Not unlike the Maasai, we children of missionaries lived somewhat migratory lives. Our years of childhood were spent migrating between our home mission stations and various boarding schools—Augustana School in Kiomboi, Tanzania; Rift Valley Academy in Kijabe, Kenya; and International School Moshi in Moshi, Tanzania—and then every four years taking a furlough year in the United States. In looking at the role of place in our lives, I will begin with some descriptions some of the missionary children interviewed gave of life on various mission stations. Members of some missionary families gave much fuller descriptions of their home places than others, but I will try to show the changing relationship that the children had to these home places. Their school places, because they were not the home place, influenced this

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generation’s connections to place in very different ways. Finally in relation to place, all of us missionary children were born American citizens, but our relationship to the United States, including some of our continuing views of the country, are based on how we saw this country during our furlough years. For most of us, furlough was a time when we were pulled away from most that was familiar in our lives in Africa, but it was also a time when we were not pulled away from our family to go to boarding school.

The Home Place In some ways it is strange to title this section “The Home Place,” because where we lived our lives as missionary families was often quite temporary. Many missionary families lived in one place for a four-year term, but then, after returning from furlough, moved to another place for the next term. Sometimes the changes could come within a four-year term. My family’s movements are illustrative. When my father returned to Tanganyika with his wife of three years and me as a one-year-old, we moved to the mission station of Loliondo, a station located some two hundred miles from Arusha (figure 3.1). After a furlough spent in St. Peter, MN, we spent a year at Ilboru, one of the Lutheran church’s oldest mission stations, a few miles outside of Arusha. At the end of that year, we moved to Oldonyo Sambu, a rural area about twenty-five miles north of Arusha, where we lived for seven years before moving back to Arusha. For my two remaining years before graduation from RVA, we lived in four different houses either at Ilboru or in Arusha town. My parents’ last thirteen years in Tanzania were spent in a house in Arusha town. In looking at this issue of connection to place, I highlight the connections different members of this second generation felt to seven different stations, show how these mission stations varied, and how their individual experiences in these places may have varied because of gender and place in the family. These seven stations are Ilboru and Makumira near Arusha, Loliondo about 200 miles away from Arusha, Gendabi and Balangida about 100 miles south of Arusha, the Usambaras, and Mwika (see underlined locations in figure 3.1). Both Nate Simonson and Laura Jacobson lived at Ilboru, one of the original German mission stations. Dave and Eunie, Nate’s parents, lived in Ilboru most of their fifty years in Tanzania, and Nate remembered his early life at Ilboru fondly, living in an old red brick mission house, playing with his neighbors, and exploring the area with both African and wazungu (European) children. He continues to live in Ilboru.

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Figure 3.1. Location of Lutheran Mission Stations where American Lutheran Missionaries to Tanzania Served and Selected Boarding Schools Where their Children Attended in East Source: Designed by Todd Benson

Laura Jacobson lived in a cement brick house in Ilboru 300 yards from the red brick house where Nate lived. Her parents still live in the house. This is the only house she ever remembers living in during her childhood in Tanzania. Laura remembers the house as one where she helped her parents as they gardened and planted trees and where she could run across the soccer field and play with neighbors. Both had strong connections to place, but Laura’s memories focus on the house itself, while Nate’s are more focused on the wider neighborhood of Ilboru. Like Ilboru, Makumira was a mission station and a seminary where many European and African families lived in close proximity to one another. Makumira Seminary is located about ten miles to the east of Arusha on the road to Moshi on the wetter side of Mount Meru. Many of the missionary children remember fondly growing up there. The teaching staff was quite international, there were often volleyball and other games, and the lush mountain

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environment allowed for a lot of exploring. Here is a mix of descriptions from six people who grew up in that setting: “At Makumira they had this swimming pool that Pastor Uhlin had put in. We kids hung out there all the time. Makumira, everybody figured that was the best place to live, for good reason.” (Pete Friberg) “We lived in two different houses all my years in Africa, just four houses apart. Just FUN, everything was just pure fun. . . . We had great times exploring and great hunts with pellet guns up on the mountain.” (Tim Olson) “My memories of Makumira are positive. What really made Makumira special was my Uncle Dean and the horses and that whole scene. . . . There were usually things happening. (Gene Palm) “Earliest memories of Makumira are that there was a wonderful group of kids of all nationalities. You could go out the door and always find someone to do something with. My memories there are of learning to ride a bike, getting horses and learning to ride horses, and lots of hikes up the big mountain rivers.” (Becky Peterson) “International connections were very important to us because we had so many people from different countries around us. The Mshanas lived next door to us and I was the same age as their older daughter, Anna, who was a good friend. There were a lot of very close relationships with many races.” (Beatrice Palm) “I remember the proximity to Mount Meru . . . the bedroom up in the attic with the window open and seeing the mountain there . . . the coffee shambas . . . and just the lushness of the area. . . . We were always off on bicycles. I remember the goat farm. We used to go up there and it always smelled so bad. . . . We just did a lot of hiking, biking and lot of reading, and a lot of games. Inside we played lots of games. Whether Hearts or Bridge or Risk.” (Russ Nyblade)

The environmental and social connections for each of these people made Makumira a place where they felt at home. While Makumira had many advantages in terms of connecting with other children and families, many others missionary children remember fondly their years growing up on stations where they were the only foreign family. While I spent my first years at Loliondo, an isolated mission station some 200 miles from Arusha, I have few memories of it. Others went there later in their childhoods, and it stood out as a time when their families became very close. Becky and Nate Simonson and Rochelle Hagberg all described the time that their families lived at Loliondo as a time when their families became closer. Nate remembered that he and his older brother, Steve, began helping their father with many projects, while Becky, his younger sister, remembered the long walks to Wasso, passing giraffe and cattle and, even once, a Cape buffalo. Rochelle Hagberg described it as her favorite place to

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live with its wild animals all around, and where she became closer to African friends. Both Becky and Rochelle spoke of the wild environment of Loliondo and the stronger sense of freedom in their lives that was much less apparent when they each lived at Ilboru at other times in their lives in Tanzania. Diane Cunningham described the impact on her of the wild, yet safe, natural environment at Gendabi, a mission station located 150 miles south of Arusha, where she felt at peace when she heard the soft sound of rain on their corrugated iron roof. The 11,500-foot Mount Hanang dominated the horizon, and she began climbing it as a nine-year-old. By the time she had graduated from high school, she had climbed it ten times. Twenty miles away from Gendabi was Balangida where the Faust family lived at the same time. Balangida influenced the Faust children in different ways. The youngest Faust child, Daudi (David in English), described the security he felt living there. He saw it as a place of safety because of the sense of community he had with all the people living on the station. The local Barabaig people called him Gida Balangida (child of Balangida) because he had been conceived there. All the families treated him as one of their own both praising and disciplining him. As he said, “It almost felt like nothing would ever happen to me there. . . . Not once did I ever feel that I did not belong. Balangida was in a word, “Home” to me.” Steve, the next older brother, described a similar connection to the people at Balangida. Mostly, he remembered running wild. “I would really run all over the place, hunt birds with sticks, throw rocks, and pretty much wandered everywhere. When I went to Kiomboi, it was a real shock.” Mark, the oldest son, arrived at Balangida when it was a brand new station that the Fausts had built themselves. Mark described how, because of all the wildlife in this new location, he really did not feel comfortable outside until he could carry a gun. So in contrast, to his younger brothers, he and his two sisters often spent their days reading. His sisters, when they became older would help their mother in the clinic, while he would explore the surrounding forest with a gun. Far away from Balangida in northeastern Tanzania, Joe Friberg described the walks around the Usambara Mountains that he would take with his ayah (nanny) when he was a little child. His connections to that place are seen in his vivid descriptions of the landscape: We were the only European family at Ngwilu in the Usambara Mountains where we lived for several years, and we children spent a lot of time with our African playmates. Our small house was surrounded by forest and stood on a shallow shelf in the mountainside overlooking a valley. There were paths that

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went everywhere, worn deeply into the soil by generations of foot traffic. We enjoyed taking morning walks with a young woman named Maria who was living with us and assisting our mother to look after us. . . . There was a small village within easy walking distance, but the mountains were not densely populated in our location. On our more extended walks, we sometimes crossed over to the other side of the valley, and this was very exciting for a little kid, four or five years old. We grew up speaking some Swahili, so we were able to talk to our friends and had a lot of fun. The mountains were fertile and crops grew in the valley, so with the help of our ayah Maria we could husk ears of corn and roast them over a fire. The tribal houses were round with thick thatched roofs that rose up in the shape of a cone to the peak—well-designed for rains that could go on for days without a break during the wet season. We watched the local women grind maize by using long wooden pestles that they would lift or throw into the air and then slam down sharply into large mortars hollowed out of logs while they sang and clapped to intricate rhythms (sometimes with a baby slung on their back). With occasional forest fires, locust plagues, thunderstorms, and tribesmen passing our home with weapons and dogs to hunt wild boar, there was much to remember about life in the mountains.

However, these mission stations, while they were where our parents lived and worked, after we began school, they were our homes for only three months a year. Integrating our lives at school with our lives at home was not automatic. Particularly for those children whose parents lived on larger mission stations, there was a continuity between the close-knit community with other missionary children formed at school and the close-knit missionary community at home. These children saw a lot of other missionary families during the term breaks, especially those children living at Makumira. But for some missionary families, the two parts of our lives did not mesh as well. Tim Lofgren described feelings of loneliness and isolation in remembering growing up at Mwika, on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, as the youngest child in his family. He found that the life of boarding school and home never meshed. He said he experiences this sense of disconnect in the various compartments of his life to this day. “I still struggle to some extent because I will leave one environment and close the door and open the door to another one and there is still sometimes a hard time integrating the two worlds together.” The sense of home associated with where their parents lived affected the nature and strength of the connection the missionary kids felt toward Tanzania. Strong connections with family developed in pre-school years would be broken somewhat when boarding school started. The connection to the East African landscape continued to grow through our years at school, but

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it was also somewhat mitigated by the separation from our families through boarding school.

Off to School Augustana School At a Sunday evening Young People’s event at RVA, I remember a skit being presented where the actors seemed to have come to a sort-of paradise. One of the characters in the skit asked, “Is this heaven?” and the reply he received was “No, it’s Kiomboi.” It was a reminder to us Lutheran missionary kids at RVA about how much we bragged about how good Augustana School at Kiomboi was in contrast to RVA. In my interviews, I tried to get past the almost folkloric ways that we saw these two schools and to try find out how people actually felt about these two schools that played for many such an important part in their youth. I will also look at one other school which particularly the younger members of the generation of missionary children attended, ISM. Of the thirty-one men and twenty-three women that I interviewed about Kiomboi, 61 percent of the men and 57 percent of the women had strongly positive memories of the school, 19 percent of the men and 9 percent of the women had strongly negative views, with the rest having mixed memories of their experience there. While almost all alumni of Augustana School spoke positively about the environment and the activities that took place at the school, for some shyness, homesickness, and being away from family as well as a fear of the school authorities, particularly in the early years, made their experience there not as positive as the skit I remember from RVA would have had one believe. The school building itself was located about 100 yards below the dormitory buildings. There were four classrooms with two grades sharing one teacher and a room. The bigger classes ranged from six to eight students, depending on who was away on furlough, while the smaller classes might have only three or four. While teachers only spent a couple of years at Augustana, others, like Lola Erwin and Hal Lindberg were there for eight to ten years. After the school day was over, we boys played with our Dinky Toys (fistsized British toy cars) and Matchbox cars on the little ridge behind our dorm rooms, building elaborate road systems. At other times, we dug tunnels that we could all sit in underground. Every night after supper before dark, most of the students would all get together for games of Red Rover and AnnieAnnie-I-Over or play soccer on the field between the school building and the shamba. As older children, we played in the trees and open areas in the

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large orchard and gardens of the shamba. We had named trees that all of us who were at Kiomboi can still identify and locate in our minds: Big Tree, Police Tree, Jungle Jim, and the matogo tree. In addition, there were huge rock outcroppings in the area. One that stood out as a test of bravery to climb was Snake Rock. In a visit to Kiomboi in 2012, I found Snake Rock again. I had to find it on my own as none of the locals would have known the rock by that name, only those of us who had attended Augustana School. Boarding from relatively young ages had an impact on all of us. Ann Faust before her death several years ago described the impact that she felt boarding had had on her and the rest of us missionary children. There was a lot of freedom, but there were so many rules. I think it’s one reason, honestly, as an adult, that I’ve been extremely successful in whatever I’ve done, because I was “institutionalized.” . . . When you think about a seven year old, like your son, going off to school 150 miles away, you can’t fathom it. But, we all did that. We learned to do it. We were taught to be adaptable in any situation, to be able to get along on our own terms, and to function in a group that was not family. I think that expresses itself. I think there is an extraordinary amount of high success in a missionary kid. . . . Your sense of self is not as strong, I would say. You don’t have to take your stands on your individualism to the point that it’s going to affect your career, because you never did it as a kid. It just wasn’t done.

Homesickness was the first thing to be dealt with when one got to boarding school. For many, this was short-lived and we were over it in a few days. But for others, it was a major ordeal that colored all their years at Kiomboi. For a few, the sense of homesickness often began before they left home to come back to school, putting a sense of gloom over some of their time at home. Joe Friberg described how when he started Augustana School as one of its first students, he found himself almost getting “physically ill from homesickness.” This lasted for around three weeks. But he also recalled how when his parents came to pick him up at the end of the first term, they seemed almost like strangers to him. A similar feeling hit Joe’s younger brother, Pete (David), who, when he started boarding school, would call each night for his two older sisters, Margaret and Mary. They would come down the hall from the girls’ wing and comfort him for a few minutes. Often when he continued to lie awake with homesickness, Pete recalled crawling down to Joe’s bed and sleeping at the end of the bed of his older brother. The homesickness was particularly hard in first grade, but he remembers still feeling it some as a fifth and sixth grader.

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Ruth Lofgren described, in ways similar to Joe Friberg, how she was worried about not being able to recognize her parents at the end of the first term. She remembered as she was coming to the end of her first term at Augustana School not being able to quite remember what her parents looked like, and how Ozzie Mensah and her two older brothers tried to help her remember her mother’s red hair. After that experience, her mother always remembered to pack a family picture to keep with her at school. But, nevertheless, it was a difficult experience: I did not like going to boarding school. I think (overall) I was fine at boarding school but, boarding school is probably the trauma of my childhood. The trauma was because of the separation. The vacations in-between I would be fine for a couple weeks, but as I got closer to a week or two before we were going to leave, I would begin to feel dread. When I was little, I would cry, probably a week or two before the vacation ended. Once there, I was pretty adjusted to it and had pretty good friends. . . . (But) you’re pushed too far into your peers without any parental alternative in that setting. . . . The separation was hard for me.

Becky Simonson Weinreis found that it was not so bad once she arrived at school, but the weeks leading up to heading off to Kiomboi were very hard. She recalls regularly crying during the week before departure. The strong connections that we felt toward this primary boarding school setting of Kiomboi lasted long into adulthood and helped define who we were as missionary kids. Two different aspects helped define Kiomboi as a place for us: (1) Our reactions to the place as a school, particularly in our relationship with the adults who ran the school; and (2) How we responded to the friendships and free time that we had there. The second reason defined the place more for us than the first, but both were important. Our relationship with adults began with the houseparents: the Andersons, Cunninghams, Malloys, Philpots, and Kruegers. The earliest students at Augustana School during the Anderson years often recounted them as fearful years. Paul Bolstad was part of the first group of students at Kiomboi. He remembered it as a shocking time. Homesickness was part of it. But more powerfully, he remembers his shock when Art Anderson lost his temper, grabbed two young boys by the scruff of their necks, and let them knew who was boss. As Paul said, “We were all just stunned into silence. . . . it was like the scales had been peeled from our eyes. This man was something, but we didn’t know what he was. We all treaded very carefully after that.” Several interviewees who experienced both the Andersons and the Malloys as houseparents spoke of the large contrast between the two. In contrast

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to the harshness Paul experienced under the Andersons, Martha Malloy was a solace to Howie Olson as he dealt with homesickness when he started at Kiomboi. He remembered crying at night and Aunt Martha sitting by his bedside till he was asleep. While Rachel Peterson Jones, trying to find her place outside of the shadow of her more boisterous older sister, Luella, remembers how Martha Malloy and Lori Heidel helped her to do so, including once at age eight having her make cookies for the whole school and the sense of pride that brought her. Similarly, Beatrice Palm Bastyr appreciated the fact that early on she was given responsibility by adults at the school—she was assigned the task of handing out chloroquine anti-malarial tablets to all students and also began at age eight playing the piano for devotions and at age ten for the Sunday service. Beatrice continues to be a church organist. Beatrice’s older brother Duane began his life-long mechanical skills while at Kiomboi when he worked with the Eliasafi, the station’s handyman. He recalled how important Eliasafi was to his life, as Duane helped Eliasafi with fixing the electric generators, which started Duane off on a lifetime of mechanical work. Most of the missionary children interviewed did not relate memories of the academic aspects of school. Kiomboi was generally seen as a place where we were able to better ourselves because the school was so small. Dean Jackson, who has spent his career as an elementary school teacher, recalls as he would wait for his piano practice with Mrs. Trued as a fourth grader, he would read books out loud, becoming increasingly confident in his reading abilities. Thad Peterson described how he felt positively challenged to do well in his school work and he responded to this encouragement. But the most important factor in having Kiomboi keep that tenacious hold of previous places described by Edward S. Casey for us was the friendships and the activities after school and during weekends. Pete Friberg described how strong the emotions were for him as he took part in games at Kiomboi when he said, “I don’t think I have regularly experienced a total absorption and a joy in activities like what happened at Kiomboi all the time. And I don’t believe I have ever experienced the total despair of the bad things: feeling like you are left out or the fear of a teacher or embarrassment. Emotions were just rawer.” Many of the remembrances of the time at Kiomboi had to do with the games that were played, exploring the environment and climbing trees. Luella Peterson Weir described hanging upside down from a large matogo tree, the huge rock outcroppings in the area, especially Snake Rock where you

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made your way around the rock and to the top by different finger holds, and the long hikes to places like the Blue Hills. Paul, Luella’s younger brother, remembered the freedom, “I really remember the hikes. . . . I realized that, if ever we were late, they would turn to one of the African helpers and ask, ‘Have you seen two white boys?’ and they would say, ‘Oh yeah, they are ten miles off to the east’ (laughs). We could never really get lost because the whole African community was following us wherever we went.” Many of the remembrances were of the close relationships formed with the other children. Joel Jackson talked about how this sense of being with an extended family made boarding school a much easier experience for him, while Margaret Friberg brought out the love-hate relationship that she had with the boys she had in her class, being the only girl in a class with six boys, but the closeness she still feels toward that group of guys, “I loved those guys, and I despised them. Yet, I owe them a lot, because to this day I am very comfortable in the company of men.” The place of Kiomboi in our lives was significant because it was a small community, filled with children we knew well, and a landscape we could explore easily and one that was safe and not frightening. While many remembered the school with fondness, this is not to deny that many personal hurts were remembered just as vividly. The separation from home affected all of us to different degrees. In all the homes of these missionary children that I visited, there was a strong sense that they want to hold their own children very close to them. Almost all would never want them to attend boarding school, despite how much they may have loved being at Kiomboi. Rift Valley Academy (RVA), Kijabe, Kenya At Kiomboi, the different microsystems of Bronfenbrenner’s systems were quite well aligned with each other. We were attending a small school with friends from families we had known all our lives, the values were similar between home and school, and the environment was quite similar. The only part that did not mesh between home and school was the fact that we were not at home during any time of the day. For many of us starting at RVA after Kiomboi, the school was a shock. While it would seem that that these two microsystems should mesh, as, just as at Augustana School, the students at RVA were almost all children of missionaries, the ethos of the RVA was much more rigid with a strong legalistic structure that we had not experienced at Kiomboi or within our religious heritage at home with our parents.

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RVA is located in a beautiful setting some 7,000 feet up on the edge of the Great Rift Valley and about 40 miles north of Nairobi. One can see dozens of miles up and down the Rift and there were acres of forest and ridges to climb and hike around in. This I loved. However, I interviewed thirty-one men and twenty-three women from the generation of the children of the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania about their experiences at RVA. Among the men, 61 percent viewed RVA negatively, the exact percentage that had seen Kiomboi positively; while among the women, only 26 percent viewed the school negatively. The majority of the women, 43 percent, viewed their time at RVA positively, while the remainder had mixed feelings about their experiences there. Twenty-six percent of the men saw their time at RVA positively. Why was there such a discrepancy between the genders in the experiences that they had at RVA, when the nature of their experiences at Kiomboi were similar and generally quite positive? Most of the men who viewed RVA in a positive light were those who had been there in the early years, such as the Moris brothers, and others who valued the academic and social structure there. For women, there seemed to be positive memories of the structure and rules that governed life at RVA, while most men interviewed saw these aspects of life there more negatively. The greatest factor that made the school different for men and women was the hazing that was prevalent in the boys dormitories and was a part of the history of the place. The Moris brothers both spoke about it happening in the 1940s. It was still going on when I came through in the mid-1970s. In contrast, the girls were much more relational and less confrontational with each other. Several of the men described life in the boys’ dorms as harsh and unkind, but no women described their dorms that way. In looking at the influence of RVA on our identities, I will bring out the different voices of the American Lutheran missionary kids as they described what made school a positive place for them, what they wanted to change, and those elements that made it into a place for many from which they primarily draw negative memories. Don Moris spent most of his school years at RVA from the mid-1940s through mid-1950s and remembers it very positively with its strong educational standards and the lifelong friendships that he formed there. The negative feelings that younger interviewees expressed did not feature in his memories of the place. Similarly, both Marilyn Peterson and Kris Ward felt quite positive about their years at RVA. Kris Ward said that she absolutely loved all aspects of it. Others spoke about the teachers that had made a difference to them while they were at RVA, with Mary Friberg highlighting the encouragement she had received from both Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. My brother, Todd, who was

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strong academically, greatly appreciated some of his teachers and how they helped him achieve his goals, but was disappointed that the ethos of the school did not see academic achievement as something very important. With people coming to RVA from many different Protestant missions, cliques sometimes developed around these groups. The Lutherans formed a strong clique of their own that was present from Dean Jackson’s time, ten years before I was there, and through my years at RVA. This strong sense of a Lutheran identity remains with some of us to this day. Still I generally describe myself as a “Lutheran” before I describe myself as a “Christian” or even as an “American.” Dean described the group of Lutherans at RVA as constituting a clique of its own, proud of their outsider status within a conservative evangelical territory. There were other groups of students at RVA who shared a similar early school experience to ours at Augustana School. The African Inland Mission ran a small boarding school at Rethy in a remote area of what was then known as Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Steve Simonson recalled the connections that the Lutherans in his dorm at RVA formed with the students coming from Rethy. They too were experiencing culture shock coming from a small remote mission school. “They had a similar background to us in that, while they weren’t Lutheran, they were . . . finding it hard to fit in with the Kenya guys and were in the same state of shock that we were in. Rethy sounded very similar to Kiomboi.” The legalistic atmosphere of RVA bothered many of us after the freedom we had experienced at Kiomboi, but there were ways around this legalism. Steve Simonson likened RVA to a POW camp and the small ways that prisoners made their way around the rules. Kim Jackson described the boys’ dorms as often having Lord of the Flies characteristics. “I saw things happen there that should really have never have happened. There should have been a little better supervision. The strictness was almost all by student prefects.” This is an important element in why so many of the men have more negative feelings about RVA than the women do. As someone who had been on the receiving end of bullying, Duane Palm told of how angry he became at the taunting he received in his first few months at Blaikie Dorm as a ninth grader. He became so angry with some of those that were picking on him that he squeezed one so tight with his legs that, if his other classmates had not disentangled them, he worried about the damage he would have done to that boy. He thinks about it to this day, mulling over his anger within this incident. Dave Peterson, even though he has lived most of his adult life just across the border in Tanzania, has never gone back to RVA for a visit. Among the

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negative memories of the school that he listed were the racism toward some of the Kenyan staff he observed; the peculiar religious atmosphere, with its mixture of evangelism and legalism; and a value system that centered on sports and machismo, in general. He said, “My biggest drive at RVA was to rebel and survive.” Similarly, Dan Gottneid highlighted that popularity at RVA required that one have athletic talent, be especially spiritual, or could sing in the choir, adding how he did not have any of those characteristics. In 2014 I visited RVA for the first time in many years and shared some of what my fellow Lutheran missionary children peers had said about the school with Mark Kinzer, my RVA classmate and someone who has worked at RVA for the past twenty-five years. In response, he pointed out that the years that the group of students that I interviewed was at RVA in the 1960s and 1970s could be considered RVA’s worst years in some respects. The institution was at its most fundamentalist in spiritual orientation, and the school was struggling to define itself. Many of my memories and those of the missionary kids that I interviewed likely would be reflected in the experience of RVA students now. In looking at the impact of RVA on how we developed a strong connection to place in Africa, I am not sure it added as much to that connection as did our home mission stations and Kiomboi. But for many of us the RVA experience strengthened further our ties within the Lutheran missionary community. And it linked us to a wider group of missionary kids. For some, the place offered friendship, good teachers, and rules to live within; while for others, it was a place of conflict and confusion and became a place remembered much more negatively. International School Moshi (ISM), Moshi, Tanzania With the closing of Augustana school in 1971, most of its students went to either RVA or to ISM to continue their education. I was one of those that went to ISM in 1971, the first year that ISM accepted boarders, before going to RVA the following year. However, my brother Jeff spent ten years at the school, while my mother spent almost as many years on the board of ISM. For Jeff, it was a very important element in defining his identity and the nature of his bonds to Tanzania. It was an international school that welcomed people from many countries and faiths. Only twelve of my interviewees spoke about their time at ISM there. Two-thirds of both the men and the women interviewed remembered it as a positive place, with the others having mixed feelings about it. No one saw it negatively.

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Much of the discussion I had with interviewees about ISM was about the religious influence of this fairly secular place. As I listened to those who spent many of their school years at ISM, I had the impression that it fit us Lutheran missionary kids better than RVA. ISM’s location in northern Tanzania and the ease with which those of us whose parents lived in that part of the country could get back to our homes added to the positive views of ISM. American Furloughs Our in-Africa life style between home and boarding school switched every four years as we headed to the United States for a year of furlough. Many of our parents looked forward to a year of different responsibilities and being around people with similar backgrounds to their own. For us children, the United States often posed a huge transition, something especially true during the secondary school years. The ethos of American life shocked many of us. There were some who had positive memories of their furlough years, and the kindness of the people in these places left a lasting impression. Paul Peterson spoke of his being acutely aware that he was a stranger from Africa to many children he met while on furlough, while becoming a regular American friend with others. On one furlough, Duane Palm spent two years in the States at two different schools. The first year was a hard year spent in Minneapolis as his dad finished classes at the seminary in the Twin Cities. They moved out to North Branch, a small rural community, for his father’s seminary internship year. There he felt that he knew everyone in the school positively. The contrast between the two schools allowed him to see both the good and the bad in America Each furlough was not the same, and most missionary families spent them in different spots. For many, furloughs when they were young were not so bad. But as the missionary children got older, furloughs became more difficult socially and emotionally. Bobbie Peterson Bainbridge described the changes she saw in each of her furloughs—playing easily with friends in Menomonie, WI, as a preschooler, then being in missionary housing in Minneapolis for third grade year together with her cousin, Becky, and finally, dealing with racial tensions as a junior high student in the late 1960s in inner-city Minneapolis. Rachel Peterson Jones, Bobbie’s older sister, remembered the year in Menomonie as one in which she felt very uncomfortable with the other kids. She still remembers the tree in the yard of the school she attended that year, as she spent most of her recesses reading there, afraid to interact with the other children.

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In contrast, JP Lofgren remembered his fourth grade year in Wakefield, MI, as a fairly benign experience compared to what many others felt about their furlough years. It was a year in which he would bicycle all over town, school was enjoyable, and he knew he would soon return to Africa. Many of us spent furloughs in one of two mission duplexes in South Minneapolis, which were located at 39th and Elliot Avenue and 48th and Chicago Avenue. In the 1960s, these two neighborhoods were in a socioeconomic transition, and many of us experienced racial tensions we had not known in Africa. There were also changing educational norms that we did not understand. Linda Olson described the shock of both issues when she was in fifth grade at Field Elementary, being beaten up by a group of AfricanAmerican children. She was shocked as she said, “ . . . because obviously growing up in Africa; I felt more of an affinity with African-Americans. The girl claimed I called her a nigger and I didn’t. That presented me with the race issues in the States in a way that I hadn’t been aware of before.” These racial tensions were mentioned by some of those who attended Bryant Junior High School when they were living at the 39th and Elliot house. Howie, Linda’s older brother, described some of the same shock his younger sister had experienced while there with racial tensions. He also was surprised when he asked a friend he had made about what church he went to and the friend replied, “We don’t go to church.” From his background, Howie thought everybody went to church. Debbie Jackson remembers the racial tensions at the school and her confusion in trying to understand it. But she has also values the efforts of a math teacher at Bryant who helped her feel confident with her intellectual abilities and better able to understand her dyslexia. Beth, Debbie’s older sister, described how she felt in-between the fighting cultures at Bryant where she “was treated coldly by the white kids, because I was from Africa, and treated coldly by the blacks, because I was white. It really left very few kids that would be friends.” This tension in school made her even more strongly resent missing her final year at Kiomboi. Similarly, Joel Ward brought out how much homesickness for his home at Isanzu influenced how he felt about furloughs during his first grade year. Before his family left for the furlough during his fifth grade year, Joel ran away from home until “I met a man from Isanzu on the path, and he kind of put the fear of God in me. He basically told me that my parents would be in such trouble if I didn’t go back, because I didn’t have a clue about the impact on them. I just knew I didn’t want to go to the States.” Finally, some missionary children were not able to return to Tanzania after the furlough year because that year happened to fall during their senior

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year of high school. For some, like Don Moris, it was a very positive experience, living in Leech Lake, MN, where his father took a job at a tuberculosis center. But for Joel Ward, being pulled out of RVA before he could graduate was very hard. He formed absolutely no attachments at the two different schools in Washington state where he spent his senior year. Furloughs contributed to our sense of connection to Tanzania, because for many of us our time in the States on furlough was a time of estrangement. While our parents had come “home,” few of their children saw it in that way. We put up with it, while eagerly awaiting our departure from the United States to return to Tanzania. In contrast to the missionaries who, when speaking of their childhoods, had little to say about the places in which they had grown up, the missionary kids spoke eloquently and at length about each of the spots they had lived during their childhoods. Each place had an impact on their developing identities. Most formed a strong connection to Tanzania during their time at their family’s mission station. While their parents might have seen these as places to spread the Gospel, the children grew up in these places. Kiomboi reinforced this connection to landscape and Tanzania, but with the added burden of being separated from family. The connection to the larger extended family of the Lutheran mission grew during this time. We loved the beauty of Kijabe when we were at RVA and explored its environs, as we had done at Kiomboi, but we also developed a sense of being different from the other students there. ISM allowed many of the younger Lutheran missionary children to feel connected to members of the wider East African expatriate community in a way that their older siblings may not have experienced. The furlough years renewed in us a strong sense that Africa was our home. We experienced the wider struggles of the world that we had not seen in our isolated boarding school, but most of us experienced during the furlough years a deep ache for Africa that many of us would continue to experience long into our adulthoods.

Religion in the Social Development of the Missionary Kids When I asked each interviewee to discuss the places they had lived, I would have them also add how they experienced religion in each place. They discussed religious life in their homes and at churches at their mission stations and then discussed how they experienced it at Augustana School, RVA, or ISM. Both Augustana and RVA were mission schools so religion was an important part of life at both, while ISM was more secular in focus and nonChristians were a large part of the student body. These schools had different impacts on the religious development of my generation.

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The religious development of the missionary children was different from that of the missionary generation. For most of the missionaries, religious growth took place within the Augustana Lutheran Church, which presented them with a fairly consistent message to guide their spiritual development from baptism through their youth. We, their children, grew up within the relatively close American Lutheran missionary community in Tanzania, but we had many outside forces influencing our religious development. This was especially true during adolescence when many of us encountered at RVA and ISM religious doctrines different from those in which we were raised. These too had a strong influence on our religious development. In addition, while church was an integral part of the dominantly Swedish-American cultural traditions of the Augustana Lutheran missionary generation, churchcentered activities were not a key part of the early religious development for the missionary children. Family devotions within the home were much more integral to our religious development than wider, more public involvement within local churches. Though we grew up on the ideologically defined landscape of the mission field, we did not become as devoted to it as those who grew up within the Augustana Lutheran community in the United States. As in the previous section, I will begin by looking at our religious development at home and then look at how the different schools we attended affected that development. The missionary children did not have uniform experiences in this regard, so I will try to bring in opposing views, where ones were brought out. Religion in the Home Place Since 1998, former members of the Augustana Lutheran Church have held biannual Augustana Heritage Association gatherings to remember the legacy of this church. At the first gathering at Chautauqua, New York, Herbert Chilstrom, a former bishop of the ELCA and former Augustana member defined what it meant to be a member of the Augustana Lutheran Church. Four elements defined the church: “personal piety, dignified worship, social consciousness, and global awareness” (1999, 3). In the area of personal piety, Chilstrom spoke of the importance in most Augustana homes of having a regular time for devotions and grace before meals; dignified worship referred to the church’s formal liturgy; social consciousness showed up in the number of hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, social service agencies, and homes for the severely handicapped established by Augustana; and finally, the church was heavily involved in missions from its earliest years. While these last two have been discussed in the early lives of the missionaries, and the second area was not necessarily transported to

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Africa, the devotional element was present in all the homes of the missionary kids that I interviewed. For many of us, however, it is no longer part of our daily routine. Devotions were done in different ways in different homes, but were part of the daily routine. It was the one place that the family religion could be taught. Few of us attended any type of Sunday school at home, and church was not something to which we paid much attention when we were there. My own family had devotions in the morning, and my parents continued to carry on this tradition throughout their lives. Either parent might read from a devotional. I remember that they particularly liked a devotional book by E. Stanley Jones, a missionary to India, or they would read from one of the devotionals put together by our church, often written by people I had met, including my parents. My father would usually pray a long prayer about issues of the day and for the health and safety of different extended family members and close friends. Finally, we would end with a shared saying of the Lord’s Prayer. In other homes, devotions were done in a number of different ways and impacted members of the generation of missionary children differently. Russ Nyblade spoke of how his family would usually have it before dinner with everyone in the family taking a few Bible verses to read. While he no longer continued the tradition, he was appreciative of how it allowed him to know these Bible stories and develop a stronger vocabulary. The Cunningham devotions were full of song as Ray Cunningham Jr. loved to sing. The Hagbergs usually had devotions in the morning and in the evening with a small devotional and the Lord’s Prayer used in the morning, and a more child-oriented devotion at night ending with the Lutheran Benediction. Finally, the Fausts had devotions every morning as part of breakfast and all were expected to be there. As parents, Steve and his wife, Vicki, continued the same tradition of reading a devotional and praying together that he grew up with in Balangida. Devotions were seen positively by almost all of the missionary children. For some, religious development took place because the Bible was always in the home. If you were the youngest child in a family and none of your older siblings were home, you had time to read it thoroughly. Tim Lofgren said that by the time he finished third grade, he had already read through the whole Bible. Later, when in seminary, he said he never cracked open a Bible, because he had already read it so many times. The church services at the mission station were remembered in different ways. Thad Peterson remembered the tedium of the long services, but also how the rituals and liturgy entered into him and became part of him. Mostly,

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he remembered how the people “really put their heart into singing. It is very moving. I sometimes miss it going to Arusha Community Church” (where he now attends). Naomi Simonson remembered with fondness the services at the church at Ilboru that were given in both Maa and Kiswahili. In Isanzu, Kris Ward Tyler loved to follow the liturgy in Kiswahili and Kinyaramba, a language she would also hear at Kiomboi. She memorized the liturgies in both languages. In addition, she appreciated hearing her father preach when he went to out-stations, often discussing the sermons with him afterwards. In contrast, her brother, Joel, remembered the church services as long and drawn out and something that just had to be endured. Our religious development was primarily home-based, in contrast to our parents who grew up within religious settings both at home and within their wider community. Still, religion permeated all parts of our days at home. But it was at school, where we lived for nine months of the year, where our individual spiritual development accelerated and where we were exposed to alternative beliefs and world views to those that we had experienced in our early years with our parents at home.

Off to School Augustana School In contrast to the non-religious public schools that our parents and many of our children attended, most of our schooling as children of the mission field was in religious institutions. Strong contrasts are seen in the religious development experiences of the missionary children. First, this occurred in our religious development experience at Augustana School compared to our experiences at RVA, and, second, in the religious development of men and of women. I interviewed forty-six people about their religious experiences at Augustana School and forty-eight people about RVA. At RVA, we experienced a religious climate that for many of us was totally different from what we experienced at home and at Kiomboi. In comparing how the different genders viewed their experience of religion at these schools, at Kiomboi, 50 percent of the men felt positively about their religious experience during those years, compared to 82 percent of the women. At RVA, only 7 percent have a positive recollection of their religious experiences there, compared to 44 percent of the women. Seventy percent of the men had strong negative views toward the way religion was presented at RVA, while the proportion of women who have negative memories of their religious experience at RVA was equal to those with positive memories at 44 percent.

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When I think back, I have a hard time separating how I experienced the religious environment at Kiomboi from what I was experiencing at home. Like home, the houseparents at Augustana School led us through daily devotions. Devotions at Kiomboi were very musical with singing various songs from a hymnal called Youth’s Favorite Songs. Beth Jackson recalled vividly the nightly communal ritual of the devotions that were led by Fred Malloy, who would lead them in singing and then tell devotional stories that he would embellish with his own touches. The other houseparents had similar patterns to their devotions. In my early years at Augustana School, we also had regular private devotions with our Older Brother or Sister—my “Older Brothers” were Carl Monson and Dave Sorensen. Martha Jackson described the devotional relationship she had with her “Big Sister,” Anna Overaa. They would sit out on some rocks and read parts of the Bible together and sing, developing a close sibling-like relationship. Part of why we did not start RVA until ninth grade is that we were confirmed in the 8th grade at Kiomboi. This was a huge occasion with missionaries coming from miles around to attend the confirmations. In recalling this aspect of their religious experience at Augustana school, for many the ideas to which they were exposed in training for Confirmation have stayed with them for many years. Luella Peterson Weir described the anxiety that came as she had to tell at the public confirmation event about what she believed and knew about the Lutheran church, with a difficult exam given beforehand, and having to answer questions in front of many people. Margaret Friberg Gibson appreciated all the memorization that went into being confirmed and finds it still stays with her in non-Lutheran settings: “Even though I now worship in a non-liturgical setting, I must say that I still treasure the language of Luther’s catechism and liturgy. I’m so grateful for having to memorize the material, which still emerges after all these years.” Dean Jackson has warm memories of the pastors who led them through Confirmation: Vern Swenson, Doug Augustine, and his father, Elder Jackson. He enjoyed the debates and discussion and developed a strong respect for each. But both Dave and Thad Peterson, while they both appreciated the ritual of Confirmation, separately questioned if it might have been done too early. At that age in eighth grade, could we really have stated our true personal opinions within this strong Lutheran missionary community? In looking through the ELCA Archives about Augustana School, there was much discussion in letters about whether we students should go on a regular basis to the Swahili and Iramba services at the Kiomboi Lutheran Church, just off the school grounds, or whether we should have our own

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weekly English services. In the early years, I recall regular English-speaking services being held, with missionaries, like Pastor Vern Swenson, leading us in a short service. However, we also attended services at the Kiomboi church once a month during my early years and later attended there every Sunday. Dean Jackson recalled the joy, excitement, and singing by the local congregation, while Martha Jackson recalled how the services seemed so sacred for her. We began each school day with singing national anthems for each of the nations that were represented in our school body (the United States and Norway during my years), the Tanzanian national anthem, and the Christian anthem of “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.” I imagine there was a prayer with these opening exercises, but it does not stand out for me. Like the religion practiced in our homes, that these religious elements were part of school too felt natural. But not all of us saw our religious experience at Kiomboi positively. Mark Faust, who later served some years as a Lutheran pastor, saw the start of boarding school as the beginning of a fairly lengthy time in his life when he was angry at God. He noted how when he first came to Kiomboi as a child, he had not been aware that he had to stay there. He became angry at his parents for leaving him at Kiomboi and angry at God for not answering his prayers to take him away from there. He started to realize that this boarding school experience would go on for years, so developed “a kind of anger going at God for as long as I can remember. It mostly had to do with the fact that he had taken Mom and Dad away, and I wasn’t sure how that had worked or how that had happened. I wasn’t at all sure that was a good thing.” People my age in Lutheran communities in Minnesota and North Dakota would find much in common with this our religious experience at Augustana school, with a strong emphasis on daily devotions, both personal and schoolwide, and in the confirmation process. While the language and cultural issues were different when we participated in worship at the local church at Kiomboi, it was something we were experiencing back on our home mission stations, as well. At Augustana School, we lived within a Lutheran cocoon, but that changed when we left Kiomboi. Rift Valley Academy Many of the American Lutheran missionary children in Tanzania went to RVA right after having spent two years working on understanding the Lutheran faith in Confirmation preparation. For most of us, it was all we really knew and we had not been challenged in our religious beliefs in any way. Tanzania is a multi-religious country, but there was no direct confrontation

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to what we believed. This changed at RVA when we were challenged by other students and the teachers there. RVA presented a new way of looking at things that did not fully mesh with how we Lutherans had been raised to look at the world. The differences between the two schools were brought out by Nate Simonson, who said of Kiomboi that it “was a confirmation of what we were doing at home and there were no differences. It was all the same. It was an extension of the same thing. It wasn’t like when you went to RVA and all of a sudden people started questioning you about your own faith and questioning you about where you came from and these types of things, all of which put everybody back on their haunches.” Soon after I arrived as a ninth grader, my new roommate, Craig Hincks, asked me if I had been saved. I had no idea what he was talking about. I soon heard the expression often in the mandatory daily chapel services. On Sunday, we would have Sunday school in the morning and in the mid-afternoon have our mandatory church services. These services, while in English, were very different from the liturgical services we were used to within the Tanzanian and American Lutheran churches, services that were more collective in spirit and less emotional. In addition, the fundamentalist nature of the religious teaching and the legalism of the school turned off many of us from this way of expressing religion. Steve Simonson, a few years my senior, had a similar reaction in his religious experiences at RVA, which has an impact on him to this day. He found it a shock to worship in this different way and to always be questioned about one’s own faith. It provoked many questions when he went home, asking his parents why we Lutherans did things in a different way than was done at RVA. Naomi, Steve’s sister, developed a strong aversion to parts of the Christian religious experience at RVA—where guest speakers would have altar calls or ask people to raise their hand if the spirit was moving within them. She found it all quite hypocritical. Similarly, when legalism was bound together with religion, this affected how we saw Christianity. Mike Peterson was suspended from school for part of a term and was asked by the RVA staff to pray about his sins as part of the suspension process. This led on his part to “a bad religious reaction. From that day, I have despised real narrow conservative born-again religion.” For others, it went even deeper, keeping them away from the church for many years. Linda Olson described being asked to pray for her Dad’s soul because of his “non-literal theology” and spending many Sundays hiding in cupboards or under beds to avoid going to church.

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Beth Jackson Crawford spoke about how her views led to different discussions about religion, sometimes when dealing with teachers, and at other times, in very relational settings with the other girls in her dorm. She confronted her Bible teacher one day to ask if he considered Lutherans as saved. He skirted around it and did not answer her and so she asked him why she should stay in his class if he did not consider her form of Christianity Christian. He told her it was her choice. But at times, when she was open about what she believed in class, some of her fellow girls would tell her how much she inspired them in considering their own faith, so as she said, “I believed in God and I knew I believed in God, but the teachers were saying we weren’t and, yet, the students were saying ‘I think you are.’” These serious dorm discussions that some of the Lutheran missionary girls had with fellow students about religion, did not occur among the boys. This may have led many of us boys to shut down about the conflicts and challenges we were having in our religious experience at RVA. Debbie, Beth’s sister, also grew in her faith during her time at RVA, but in a much different way. She remembered a group of athletes visiting from the United States, the Campus Crusade for Christ Athletes. For several years, she had been taking long walks by herself where she would memorize Bible verses and pray to herself. When this group came to RVA, they talked about how we needed to develop a personal faith. At that point, during their visit, she felt she opened herself up and accepted God and her own personal faith as her very own. This emphasis on finding your own personal relationship with God also impressed Kris Ward Tyler. Her father, Bob, in his memoir, Messengers of Love, wrote about his own personal call to the Gospel. His emphasis on a strong personal decision in choosing Christ is similar to the message given at RVA. Still, Kris did not feel that her parent fully accepted the way to salvation that was promoted at RVA, and which she was willing to embrace. Kris felt very positive about the Christian messages she received at RVA. She remembered seeing a younger brother of a friend of hers become a Christian and being very moved. Like Debbie, she made a personal decision about her own faith at that moment. She wrote to her parents about it, and they responded that she had already done this through her confirmation. But, she responded that this was her own personal decision, something that she had not felt at confirmation. Unlike many of her Lutheran peers, she appreciated the altar calls that were part of the evangelical services at RVA, and felt it was something truly missing from the practices of the Lutheran church. The Lofgrens were another family that generally found more value, strength, and peace with the Christian messages received at RVA than did many of the

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other Lutheran missionary kids. Both Ruth and Tim have been ordained—Ruth as a Baptist minister and Tim as a Lutheran minister. They both recounted that they did not find the Christian message at RVA jarring for them, but more of a continuation of their Christian growth. Ruth saw the emphasis by many of us Lutheran students on our differences in this more Baptist-like environment as a very minor issue. To her, it was a continuation of living in a Christian environment, if somewhat different from the environment one had been in previously. Tim, my classmate, described how involved he was religiously at RVA and how he continues to integrate Baptist perspectives into his work as a Lutheran pastor, because he likes their emphasis on Biblical teachings. Among the Lutheran MK group, I had frequently heard criticisms of the type of Christianity we had experienced at RVA. So I was surprised when I began doing these interviews that some embraced it and found it of great value. In general, however, there was quite a strong resentment against the religious teaching and practices at RVA among the men interviewed, while the views of the women were considerably more nuanced. RVA challenged us in our Christianity but within a Christian framework. The challenges were linked to understanding how to reconcile two Protestant theologies bouncing up against each other. Some of us succeeded in doing so, many still find any reconciliation between the two Christian perspectives elusive. International School Moshi While both Augustana School and RVA were designed for the children of missionaries, ISM was not. The Lutheran mission provided money to build the school and has had representation on its board for most of its history, but only as one of several organizations. At Kiomboi and RVA, religion was so important because that was the focus of the work of all of our parents. Education and religion were core parts of the missions of the two schools. With ISM, education was the central mission, while religion was an extracurricular activity, not unlike what students attending a public school might experience. Students from many different religions came to ISM. The religious experience of the MKs who went to ISM stands in sharp contrast to that of their siblings who attended Augustana School and RVA. During the year that I attended ISM, they were trying to figure out how to provide Christian instruction for us. We attended the English service at the local Anglican church, overwhelming that small congregation. No nightly devotions were held or prayers before meals. Apart from Confirmation instruction that was organized by our parents, religiously, life was totally different from Kiomboi and from my later years at RVA.

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Jeff, my youngest brother, attended ISM for most of his years of schooling in Tanzania. His is a faith that is more evangelical in nature than that of his two older brothers who were primarily educated at Kiomboi and RVA. He says that his faith developed in the multi-religious environment at ISM because the “faith that I got from home really held me in good stead, because all my friends had equally strong faiths. Their religion became a real source of unity for them, in the same way that ours did.” Daudi Faust grew in his Christian faith during his time at ISM through discussions with people of other faiths. He spoke of how discussions in their dorm rooms were ones of religious tolerance and trying to understand each other’s faiths as friends and classmates. For him, it deepened his faith, like it had for Jeff. Similarly, Wes Nyblade felt that ISM helped him to see Christianity within a larger framework, leading him further along his own individual path of spiritual development. He recalls that the different religions to which he was exposed at ISM did not cause him to see his parent’s Christianity as something wrong, as some Lutheran MKs at RVA had experienced. Rather, it was more that this was the time he may have started questioning the Christian world view as the only way. As he said, When your two best friends are a Hindu and a Muslim, and I with my Christian background, I couldn’t see that my way was the only way. I thought of these two as the best people in the world, so I couldn’t come through and say my way is the only way. That’s something you sit down and think about a little bit. . . . All I am saying now is based on where I am now in life; my views toward the universe and God, per se, maybe started back then.

Like Augustana School and RVA, it was within the school setting of ISM that some people formed a stronger realization of their own faith, while others began increasingly to question it. Unlike the other schools, the questioning and growth in faith grew in a multi-religious atmosphere. Paradoxically, the conflicts in religion were much stronger within the Protestant community of RVA than within this multi-religious setting.

Conclusion Edward Casey described place as “the immediate ambience of my lived body and its history, including the whole sedimented history of cultural and social influences and personal interests that compose my life-history” (2001, 401). Later, he borrows Robert Sack’s idea of “thinned-out places” (places which

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have little influence on us) and “thick places” (those which help define who we are by their strong influences on who we are) to describe the influences of place (2001, 408). We children of missionaries lived in “thick” places during our childhoods that influenced us our whole lives and continue to influence the way that we connect with new places. The home places of our childhood allowed us to form connections to people and places and our own families. Boarding school let us become part of a small community, while coming with the pain of separation from our families and sometimes conflicts over the competing values of other students. Furloughs gave us a strong sense of our connection to Africa, but also generated for many of us considerable ambivalence about how we felt about the United States. In contrast to the smooth life path toward a life in missions that the missionaries experienced, this generation’s path of religious development was fairly rocky. While the missionaries had many parts of their microsystems (family, church, youth groups) interact in the same way to reinforce a cohesive belief system, our generation’s microsystems were not as cohesive. Both generations experienced a rich devotional life in their families, although the church congregation was not as central a part of our religious development as it was for our parents. In their youth, the faith of the missionaries was confirmed through youth activities, while for the next generation, what we knew in our faith was challenged and even dismissed as being non-Christian in some contexts. At the end of their teenage years, most of the missionaries had a good sense of what they believed. In contrast, many of their children were still struggling to understand what they believed as they entered into adulthood.

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The College Experience for Both Generations

In the American Lutheran missionary community in Tanzania, everyone was expected to go on for higher education. Most of those serving in Augustana’s mission fields had been educated beyond high school, so for the next generation there was no question that we would not go on for some type of further education. As one of the missionary children said about college, “It was another obligation I had to complete.” These college years were significant transitions for both generations. They helped delineate careers and spiritual callings for the missionary generation. The colleges chosen by the second generation were very similar to those chosen by the first generation because few knew of other colleges. However, unlike the previous generation, we were unsure of our goals and of how to make our way in a new American and a new religious environment. The character of the colleges that the missionaries had attended had changed within a generation. Those changed colleges changed us, the children of those missionaries. Swanson (1960) lists all who had served as Augustana missionaries in all the mission fields and where they obtained their degrees. Of the 284 missionaries listed, 56 had no higher education noted after their name. Table 4.1 compares Swanson’s information to similar information for the two generations that I interviewed. While the importance of the five Augustana-related institutions (Gustavus Adolphus, Augustana—Rock Island, Bethany, Upsala, and Luther— Wahoo) diminished over time, in all three groups examined—those mission-

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Table 4.1. Types of Higher Education Attended by Augustana Missionaries compared with the Missionaries and Their Children Interviewed for this Research, percent

Type of Institution Augustana-Related Institutions Other Lutheran Colleges Other Private Colleges State Universities Teachers’ Colleges Nursing Schools Business/Agriculture Bible/Mission Schools Other Institutions TOTAL, number

Augustana Missionaries, 1960 and Earlier

Missionaries

Missionary Children

52.5 6.7 2.9 10.1 7.6 13.4 0.8 5.9 — 238

46.2 15.4 5.1 12.8 2.6 10.2 — 5.1 5.1 41

32.9 25.3 10.1 20.3 — 1.3 — — 10.1 79

Sources: Swanson 1960; Personal Data

aries from before 1960 who were not included in this study, the interviewed missionaries, and the children of missionaries who were interviewed— roughly 60 percent were educated at these institutions. Gustavus Adolphus College was the dominant institution in all the data sets with 22 percent of all Augustana missionaries having attended the school (Swanson 1960). Out of those I interviewed, both missionaries and their children, 31 percent had attended Gustavus. In this chapter, I will explore the impact of their college experiences on these two generations. For the missionaries, I am interested in looking at how these colleges helped them make the decision to go on to mission work. For their children, I am interested in three questions: How the colleges helped this generation make sense of America; How these colleges contributed in whatever way to their religious development; And how did these institutions help them make career decisions?

The College Experience for the Missionary Generation Many of the members of the missionary generation entered college with the already strongly developed goal of becoming missionaries, or this goal formed for them soon after they started college. The Augustana Lutheran Church was a small church body with a cohesive sense of its evangelical mission, something that was not as true for the next generation who went to schools run by the Lutheran Church in America or the American Lutheran Church. I will first discuss their experiences at the colleges where most attended, the Augustana-

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Figure 4.1. Selected Colleges and Universities Attended by Missionaries and Children of Missionaries in the Midwestern United States Source: Designed by Todd Benson

related colleges, and then move on to look at the experiences of those missionaries who attended other Lutheran colleges or state universities (figure 4.1). The missionaries I interviewed went to four of the five Augustana colleges—only Upsala was not represented among them. Although Augustana College—Rock Island (Al Gottneid, Ruth Holmgren Friberg, Hal Faust, Bob Ward, and Louise Anderson Olson) and Bethany College (Mel Lofgren) provided higher education to several missionaries, here I will focus on the experience of the future missionaries at Luther College—Wahoo and at Gustavus Adolphus College. Luther College—Wahoo, Nebraska As US 77 heads north through Wahoo, Nebraska, on its way from Lincoln to Sioux City, Iowa, it makes a sharp turn eastward in the middle of town. If you keep heading north instead of following the highway, a few blocks away you come to a park-like area surrounded by some vacant but very substantial brick buildings. These buildings constituted the campus of Luther College, the Augustana Lutheran Church’s academy (last two years of high school) and junior college for eighty years. When Augustana merged with two other Lutheran bodies to form the LCA in 1962, Luther College was judged superfluous to the needs of the united church, so was closed soon after the merger. Although quite small with only about 250 students enrolled, Luther College prided itself on the number of missionaries and pastors that the institution developed. Six of the missionaries I interviewed attended Luther.

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The archives for Luther College now are located in Fremont, Nebraska, at Midland Lutheran College. As I looked through the archives, the strong religious emphasis of the school was striking. About a quarter of the articles written in 1947–1948 in its monthly campus newspaper, The Luther Visitor, had to do with religious events. There were many Christian organizations on this small campus. Renee Odeen Jackson recalled how much missions were emphasized at the school. Ralph Hult’s widow lived in town and her children attended the school. A mission festival was held each year in which a different mission field was highlighted. Chapel was held each morning and evening vespers took place each night in the dorms. Renee was a leader in the Luther College Mission Society which included many future missionaries. I found reading the minutes of this group fascinating for the insights they provided into how connected the students felt to the Augustana mission fields. As an example, Renee took a prominent role in the February 27, 1944, meeting: Rene(e) Odeen was chairman for the afternoon and our mission field in India was the topic. After scripture reading and prayer, Eleanor Berg gave a history of our mission work in India presenting some of the pioneer missionaries and the progress made among the people through their efforts and God’s spirit. Rene(e) Odeen then gave a very challenging message on the future of Indian missions. She presented the great need of the people for the gospel of love and said that it was the duty and privilege of us as Christians to love, pray and give our money and even our lives for these people.

Mel Lofgren and Dean Peterson spoke of the impact Luther College had on them becoming missionaries, the influence on them of former missionaries who lived in Wahoo, such as Mrs. Magney and the Hults, and the regular visits of missionaries such as Elmer Danielson. All these strongly built in them a desire to serve on the mission field in Africa. For Al Gottneid, Alice Lindbeck Gottneid, and Ray Hagberg, Luther College pushed them to strongly consider serving as missionaries. Luther was the beginning of Al Gottneid’s search for a calling as he tried to determine how to follow his mother’s direction to consider medical work. He did not make his decision to go to the mission field until later, but during his time at Luther felt very connected to the missionary community. Alice Lindbeck Gottneid, having grown up in the Augustana mission field in China, although part of the Augustana missionary community, did not have plans to go on to be a missionary while she was at Luther. Neither did Ray Hagberg whose college years were very scattered. He delineated his college years for me with

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the following timeline: “One semester Luther; 1-1/2 years home; 1-1/2 years Luther; 1 semester Dana; 2 years Army; 2 years Dana.” He emphasized his lack of career direction at Luther but how much he enjoyed the social life where he made life-long friends. Attending LutherFest 2007 with Ray in Wahoo, he spoke about how important the Luther College community remained to him, a close knit group of people with a shared sense of mission. Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN Gustavus was a hotbed for producing missionaries for the Augustana Lutheran Church. Twenty-two percent of all the missionaries whose higher education was listed by Swanson (1960) had attended Gustavus Adolphus. For missionaries in Tanganyika that figure was 20 percent. No other college came close. Of the twenty-nine missionaries I interviewed, 27 percent had attended Gustavus Adolphus. It was the college with the greatest name recognition in the American Lutheran mission in Tanzania. My father, Stan Benson, did not go to college immediately after high school, but was drafted into the Army and served in the Philippines in the days after World War II had ended. While there, he went out on local mission trips with the chaplain and developed a strong interest in mission. In speaking about why he chose Gustavus, he brought out his family background, as his father was also a Gustavus graduate, the camaraderie of ex-GIs at Gustavus, and that several friends from his high school at West Central School of Agriculture in Morris, Minnesota, had chosen to go to Gustavus. My father who was twenty-three when he graduated had been involved in all sorts of campus activities. The 1951 Gustavian Yearbook when he graduated has this listing for him: “JOHN STANLEY BENSON, Le Sueur, Biology, Chemistry, BA President Nu Upsilon Gamma, President LSA., Chem Club, GEA, Religious Activity Committee.” Stan, along with many of the future missionaries, took part in the Lutheran Student Association (LSA). But he also was part of the fraternity scene as president of the Nu Upsilon Gamma, involved in the Chemistry club, and in the Gustavus Education Association. My father found many spiritual mentors at Gustavus. He remembered the president of the college, Edgar Carlson, as being influential at his weekly chapel talks. His closest mentor was George Hall, a professor in the Religion department and someone very involved in Augustana’s foreign mission work. Hall, along with Richard Reusch, a longtime Leipzig missionary in Tanganyika, who was married to my father’s step-aunt, Elveda Bonander Reusch, and was associated with Gustavus, helped push him to consider work in Africa. So as Stan approached graduation, he and his close friend, Clarence

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Budke, made plans to go as missionaries to Tanganyika. However, at the last minute, they were asked to go to British North Borneo as missionaries for several years before going to Tanganyika. My mother, Marie Schafer Benson, had no plans to be a missionary when she began attending Gustavus. With no family connections to Gustavus, having been raised in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and as the first to go on to college from her family, she was just excited to be out of Lakefield, Minnesota. Although she recalls having to work hard at Gustavus on academics, she took part in the Lutheran Student Association, the Student Senate, and, to help pay for her housing while there, served as a counselor in the dorm. In my father’s senior year, both of my parents served as officers in the Lutheran Students Association. My mother went on to finish college the year after my father. However, she describes her spiritual development at Gustavus as being somewhat different from that of her husband, particularly being involved in local churches in Saint Peter, like First Lutheran Church, which she continues to attend. Marie went on to graduate with an English major. Her Gustavian yearbook description from 1952 reads: “MARIE W. SCHAFER, Lakefield, English, BA, Student Senate, Chairman NSA Committee, LSA Council, House Council, DEO, President AWS.” She went on to teach English and become a librarian in public schools in Minnesota, corresponding with my father during his first five years of missionary service in British North Borneo and Tanganyika. Eventually, he proposed through a letter; she responded in the affirmative, and when he returned for his first furlough they married in 1956. Like my parents, Dean Peterson and Elaine Erickson met through the Lutheran Student Association, but both had their hearts set on missions before they arrived at Gustavus. Elaine told of forming a connection to Dean through the LSA group. Elaine said, “We didn’t know about each other’s special interests in missions or even that both of us were really drawn to Africa until we started dating and, lo and behold, both of us were thinking about doing something like that, so that kind of cinched things.” Dean struggled with questions about his Christian faith during his years at Gustavus. He wondered how it could fit into the ideas he was learning in science. The questions he had were not fully answered until he went on to seminary. Dean described his growth in faith during his years at Gustavus and later in seminary as one of moving away from the more fundamentalist and pietistic view of religion at Luther and Gustavus, to a broader interpretation of religion. His time at Gustavus was one of continuing questioning

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within a Christian framework, while his learning at seminary allowed him to come to accept both the Creation story and his own growing understanding of evolution. Dan Friberg also attended Gustavus, but much earlier than the other missionaries. In the 1930 Gustavian yearbook, Dan is listed as the librarian for the Mission Society. Its activities were described in this way: Every Wednesday evening from seven to eight o’clock one hundred students gather to listen to programs which consist of music and two mission talks. These programs are conducted entirely by students. During the school year approximately one hundred students participate. The Mission Study committee plans all these programs. During the past two years there has been a systematic study of non-Christian religions, of the Iramba field in Africa, of religious conditions in India, of our field in Honan, China, and of home and inner missions.

In many ways, the activities of this group were similar to the Mission Society programs at Luther College. Four of the missionaries interviewed—Howard Olson, Les Peterson, Dottie Hanson Lofgren, and Elder Jackson—attended Gustavus during World War II. Les Peterson, Dean’s older brother, described Gustavus during this time as having only about five hundred students enrolled. While there, he attended meetings of the Missionary Society. Howard Olson, Les’s classmate, described the Christian orientation of Gustavus at the time as one of daily chapel services and committed Christian professors. He also went to the Missionary Society meetings. On weekends, to earn extra money, he would preach in congregations in northern Minnesota. As he said, “I found it very fulfilling to see the response in people. It wasn’t yourself, but it was the power of the Word, even when it was presented poorly from guys like me.” Elder Jackson also served churches while in college and ended up transferring for a year to Dakota Wesleyan in South Dakota to help with some churches near that college. Dottie Hanson Lofgren was very involved within various Lutheran organizations on campus and ended up working for a semester in California with the National Lutheran Council. All of it led to her feeling comfortable in sharing her thoughts on the Christian message. What the interviews and the information in the Gustavus Archives showed is that the college was critical to helping all these missionaries deepen their involvement in the church and clarifying their decision to go into missions. Gustavus was an extension of the Augustana church, a church that emphasized missions.

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Other Colleges Future American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania attended several other colleges and universities. Here are a few sketches of how the college experience of these young people confirmed a calling to the mission field. Dave Simonson and Eunie Nordby Simonson attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. This college was run by the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS), a church with a Norwegian background. The Concordia yearbooks covering the time that Dave and Eunie were students there show, as seen in most of the other Lutheran colleges of the time, that religion played a strong part in the school with at least five or six pages of each yearbook devoted to Christian organizations on campus. Dave who attended Concordia on a football scholarship, was the son of a pastor. However, when he started college, he had no intention of going into the ministry, planning instead a career in physical education or medicine. However, he recalls that his father made a suggestion that led him to begin thinking about being a pastor, an idea that his football coach endorsed. In the end, he changed his career plans and left Concordia a pre-seminarian. In contrast, Eunie experienced less tension about her future during the two years she was at Concordia, but recalls a wonderful period of involvement in theatre and continuing spiritual growth within the college’s LSA program. In any case, this ELC school had a strong religious ethos which propelled the Simonsons along their path to become missionaries. Dana College in Blair, Nebraska, a college of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (UELC), a Danish-background church, is where Ray and Nellie Faye Hagberg met while they were officers in the Lutheran Students Association. The school was small with between 325 and 432 students during the years they were on campus (Petersen 1984). While at Dana, both tried to find majors that would fit their plans to go into missions. Ray chose education, because agriculture, the field which he would liked to have pursued, was not an option for him at Dana. He knew they needed a lot of teachers in East Africa. Nellie Faye came from a family of teachers, so education was a natural fit for her. However, she also majored in Social Services, as this gave her an option to be a mission parish worker. Soon after Nellie Faye’s graduation from Dana in 1958, they left for the mission field in Tanganyika. The University of Michigan had a strong Lutheran Students Association organization while Orv and June Nyblade were attending there; they met while taking part in its activities. Like it did for many other missionaries, the LSA played a big part in their lives. However, unlike many other future missionaries, Orv and June were not set on the mission field as undergraduates.

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However, Orv decided to become a pastor after he switched his studies from Engineering to the Liberal Arts. This decision at university eventually led them to Tanganyika as Lutheran missionaries Of these missionaries that I interviewed, all took part in church activities at their colleges and this allowed them to grow in their faith and, for many, reinforced in them their desire to become missionaries. Many found life partners within Christian organizations on campus. The Lutheran colleges at this time had a strong sense of mission and of the church. Those who were raised in the Augustana church found its teachings reinforced at the church colleges or through organizations such as the LSA. Important elements of the ethos of the time supported these young people responding to the call to serve in the mission field.

College for the Generation of the Children of the Missionaries Overview of College Issues While the missionary generation’s goals were for the most part met by the colleges they attended, things were not as clear for the next generation. In starting college, there was a sense of our being kicked out of our African home to do so. We could no longer stay in Africa once we were eighteen. Our parents had work permits to stay in Tanzania and as we approached adulthood, it was clear that we would need them if we wanted to stay in Tanzania. However, we could not get the work permits without further education. Higher education opportunities in East Africa were limited, and for expatriates, essentially non-existent. In examining the college experience of the missionary children, I want to look at how they made sense for their own lives of their new American setting. How did their religious views change or become reinforced during these years and how did it help them find their careers? Most of us missionary children arrived in America unconfident of how we might live within American culture in this new setting away from our families. Most of us had no career goals and picked the colleges that we had heard about from our parents. Almost half of us, including myself, attended the college where one of our parents had attended. But these colleges had often changed drastically in the years between when our parents graduated and when we attended. For example, Dave Lofgren wondered about this disjuncture between what his mother had experienced at Gustavus and what the missionary kids experienced in the same setting: In many ways, I have been very critical of Gustavus for pretending to be something that it was not. Our parents thought they were sending us someplace

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where we would be getting what they had received and, of course, it wasn’t that way. It was a good education, but its church-affiliation was somewhat of a joke.

Our years at RVA and ISM had led us to begin to question the faith in which we grew up, but most of us saw the Lutheran faith in a very positive light. For many at RVA, in particular, a strong sense of Lutheran identity had formed. But now as we attended Lutheran colleges, we were not sure if that identity really fit us either. Several of the Augustana-affiliated colleges, particularly Gustavus and Augustana, encouraged students to question their faith in the religion classes offered. We, as children of missionaries, responded to this in different ways. Some found this new approach to religion and belief very hard to deal with, but others enjoyed the exploration of these questions on faith and forming a new and different faith that differed from that of our parents and was more our own. Table 4.2 gives an overview of what happened to the children of the missionaries that I interviewed during their college years. I interviewed sixty-three members of this generation (and have included myself in the table). However, in this table, I counted all the colleges attended by each individual so the final total on this chart is eighty-three. I have marked in bold the largest category of students for the different types of institutions. In three of the four categories, “Finishing in Four Years” is the largest category with this strongest for the Augustana-related colleges. In the “Other Lutheran College,” the Drop Out rate is the highest area. The Drop Out rate is still high with almost a quarter not finishing college. Two in that category dropped out for a number of years before finishing at a later time. Not many transferred, but it was greatest among those attending StateAffiliated institutions and it was usually to transfer in. Few transferred in at a later time to church or private institutions. Table 4.2. Types of Colleges Attended by the Children of Missionaries in this Study and the Resulting Experiences, percent AugustanaRelated Colleges

Other Lutheran Colleges

Other Private Colleges

StateAffiliated Institutions

Total

Dropped Out Transferred Out Transferred In Graduated in 4 Years Graduated in 4+ Years

7 22 4 70 0

35 13 9 26 26

33 11 11 56 0

25 4 25 38 33

23 13 12 47 17

TOTAL, number

27

23

9

24

83

Source: Interview Data

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Table 4.3. High School Graduation Decade for Children of Missionaries in Study and Types of Higher Education Chosen, percent Decade

AugustanaRelated

Other Lutheran

1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 2000s

0 77 29 11 0

25 14 39 11 0

Total studentequivalents, number

24.2

17.2

Other Private 50 3 10 11 100

7.0

StateAffiliated

Total Students, Number

25 6 21 67 0

2 17 34 9 1

14.7

63

Source: Interview data [NOTE: Not all Totals add up to whole numbers due to transfers.]

Table 4.3 shows that the types of colleges we attended changed over time. The oldest missionary children, the Moris brothers in the 1950s, attended three different types of colleges. Those that graduated from high school in the 1960s overwhelmingly attended Augustana-related colleges. Most had grown up feeling part of the Augustana tradition. For those of us who completed high school in the 1970s, our choices expanded out to more Lutheran colleges, as we were primarily children of the larger LCA church. Finally, those who graduated in the 1980s and after took a much broader view of colleges that they could attend. For those of us who attended RVA, where church affiliations were central to our identity, most of our classmates only attended religiously affiliated colleges. In my graduating class from RVA in 1976, forty-one out of sixty students stated in the Kiambogo school yearbook their plans for college. Out of those forty-one, 83 percent indicated that they were going to be attending a church-affiliated college, 10 percent would be attending a Bible school, and only 7 percent planned to attend a state-affiliated school. However, for the most part, college was not the fulfilling experience for this generation, setting in motion career paths and resulting in strong spiritual development that it had been for their parents. Many of the missionary children happily attend RVA reunions, but few of us go to our college class reunions. In contrast, many of our parents remained loyal alumni of the colleges that they attended.

Augustana-Related Colleges Gustavus Adolphus College Like the previous generation, the largest group from this generation of missionary children, 30 percent, attended Gustavus Adolphus College. Only two were

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not children of alumni. Gustavus from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s was a very different school from that which our parents had attended. The last to attend Gustavus of the missionaries that I interviewed, my mother, graduated in 1952. Luella Peterson was the first of the missionary children to attend Gustavus, enrolling in 1966. Luella found a totally different campus than the one my mother had left fourteen years earlier. Looking at the college yearbooks for Gustavus over this period, I considered how the Christian emphasis of the school had changed. For the period 1953 to 1967, table 4.4 shows the number of pages in each Gustavus yearbook in which Christian organizations or the Christian nature of the college was highlighted. Table 4.4. Discussion in Gustavus Adolphus College Yearbooks about the College’s Christian Organizations and Lutheran Affiliation from 1953–1967 Years 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958

1959 1960 1961

1962

1963

1964 1965 1966 1967

Number and Type of Commentary about Christian Organizations or Christian Affiliation of College Full page on Lutheran Students Association (LSA) and Spiritual Emphasis Week Full page on LSA Full page on LSA Page on Christian groups on campus—LSA and Co-Leaguers Eight pages highlighting the Christian involvement on campus Eight pages highlighting the Christian emphasis on campus. Highlighted were two spiritual emphases weeks, the work of LSA and Co-Leaguers, and devotions, chapel and church attendance. Two pages on LSA; one on Co-Leaguers Eight pages on Christian emphasis of school. Student Christian Association (SCA) replaced LSA and Co-Leaguers Six pages on religion which include two pages on the Santa Lucia Festival; two on the work of SCA and one on Student Worship and a picture of Christ Chapel. Ten pages highlighted the role of religion at Gustavus. A two page section described the history of religion in Gustavus’ history including the work of The Missionary Society, the Student Volunteer Band, and the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Luther Leagues. Christ Chapel was dedicated. SCA’s work was highlighted and a picture shows Dan Friberg delivering a keynote address in Christ Chapel. End of Augustana Years Beginning of LCA Years Six pages on religious life on campus: three on the work of SCA; one page on Chapel Choir; and the ordination of twenty-seven ministers on campus. One page on work of SCA. One page on religious emphasis on campus. One page on Student Christian Association A page on CINCH—Christ in Collegiate Hearts No mention of chapel or any Christian organizations on campus.

Source: The Gustavians from selected years.

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In the early 1950s, there was little stress in the yearbooks on the Christian orientation of the college. However, this changed during the late 1950s and early 1960s before the merger of Augustana into the LCA in 1962, when successive yearbooks increasingly emphasized the Christian heritage of the college. However, in the yearbook for Luella’s first year (1966/67), no mention was made of any Christian organizations or affiliation. The yearbooks for the next few years similarly made no mention of any Christian organizations. Protests against the War in Vietnam and lowering the drinking age to eighteen around this time led to an increasing emphasis in student life on protest and drinking. By the time I began at Gustavus in 1976, with the end of the War in Vietnam, the protests had died down (while alcohol remaining a significant part of life for many Gustavus students). The protest culture seemed to be replaced with a strong emphasis on academic performance. Politically, social justice issues increasingly gained more prominence, often being justified by a Christian perspective on society. Linda Olson, the last of the missionary kids I interviewed to graduate from Gustavus (in 1985) remembers a college experience with an emphasis on academics. At least based on their mention in the Gustavus yearbooks, the children of the missionaries did not participate in college activities quite so prominently as did their parents in earlier years. For several, only one or two photos of them appear in the yearbooks from the four years they were enrolled at the school. Luella Peterson Weir, the first of the Lutheran missionary kids from Tanzania to attend Gustavus, found it a difficult place to make sense of. She calls that first year at Gustavus “the hardest year of my life.” There was only one person who had a similar missionary background, someone who had attended Augustana School with her many years before, Mike Hall. She did not feel comfortable with the social activities of dancing and drinking and Greek social events, none of which she had experienced in her missionary childhood and at RVA. The contrast between the more conservative religious perspectives of RVA and the more liberal ones at Gustavus left her feeling alone. Each responded to this new place differently. Both Rachel Peterson Jones and Dean Jackson acknowledged that their years at Gustavus were not easy for any of the group of missionary kids. Rachel described her nursing classmates in general as “very conservative do-gooders” who were not politically aware, but instead worked on staying in good standing in the program. At the same time, others from this small community of missionary children took part in the protests against the Vietnam war and got caught up to some extent in the rebellious nature of the times. Both Dean and Rachel brought out how the MK group on campus would often gather together, but also would

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find themselves feeling somewhat uneasy as different individuals in the group took different directions in their thinking and actions, as Dean and Rachel did at the time. For the men, given their undeveloped personal ties to the United States, the thought of going to war in Vietnam with the US military was hard to fathom. Dean, Joel, and Kim Jackson and Dave Peterson were all involved in anti-war activities while at Gustavus. Dean shared how they all worried about the draft lottery. His number was high, so he did not worry about it as much, but his brother, Joel, had a low number. Joel signed up to be a conscientious objector and ended up serving with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia as his alternate service. Dave Peterson spoke about the people who got involved in the anti-war activities and how he saw them as like-minded people to himself. Kim Jackson remembers taking part in anti-war meetings and guerilla theater on campus and joining marches on Washington. With the war, there was a larger purpose to it all. But life at Gustavus for many of the missionary children over this period was one of culture shock, particularly in their first years at the school. Ann Faust Ibrahim, who arrived at Gustavus in 1969, found that the culture shock had several sources: the much greater individual freedom she now had, the biting cold of Minnesota winters, and having a private room on campus after years of sharing dorm rooms. Beth Jackson Crawford, who came at the same time as Ann, felt that her naiveté about what was happening in the larger world is what was at the source of her difficulties in adapting to American culture at Gustavus. She remembers how unprepared she was for understanding the protests against the Vietnam War on campus. Gene Palm who arrived in 1971 found himself taking part in the hippie culture on campus, but feeling very uncomfortable with it. When Ruth Lofgren arrived in 1974, she found herself uncomfortable with the consumerism of American society and the different lifestyles on campus that were often pushed at her. Linda Olson, arriving in 1981, recalled having a hard time dealing with and understanding a roommate who worried unduly about what to wear each day. The unfamiliar cultural and social values the missionary children experienced at Gustavus posed a barrier to their easily adapting to and engaging in life at the school and finding as much to value at it as their parents did. Gustavus was a challenging school academically. For, some their main memories from Gustavus were about concentrating on their studies. JP Lofgren spoke about how, with so many students partying on weekends, he was able to use the two computer terminals available on campus whenever he wanted. He was grateful for a professor who let him develop new experiments instead of making him sit through his second chemistry class. Thad Peterson

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and my brother, Todd, spoke about how academics influenced their times at Gustavus. Todd regretted focusing too much on academics and not enough on the social elements of college during his two years on campus, while Thad saw it as a place where he needed to be serious about his studies, as the price of college was not cheap. Linda Olson also dedicated herself to studying. When I was at Gustavus from 1976 to 1982, we were a large group from Tanzania. Some of my happiest memories of Gustavus are those that Paul Peterson brought up in my interview with him. I would often get together with him and his girlfriend (and now wife), Laurie Medhaug, for chai (sweet milk tea) and to joke around. A vivid memory for Paul from those years was a Thad Peterson-organized sledding party with a chai pot on a fire at the base of the hill. As we reached out beyond this group of missionary kids at Gustavus, we tried to find others that shared our values in some way. Some of my generation, whom I always have thought of as quite extroverted people, describe in their interviews that their years at Gustavus were ones where they had very few friends. I made friends with the people I ran with and with some of the counter-culture people who looked at the world in a different light than did your average Midwestern college student. Others found that they connected with people from their major or with foreign students on campus. Several of us spent semesters back in Tanzania doing independent research projects. This was a rewarding time to be back in the country and to be part of the missionary community and to be in a place where we felt we could breathe again. In my studies, I compared the missionary methods of Muslims and Christians, studied the toys and games of Maasai and Waarusha peoples, and examined Nyerere’s policies of trying to get water within 300 meters of everyone’s homes within Arusha Region. Dave Peterson spoke about his study on demon possession among the Maasai, something he enjoyed after spending several years in empirical studies in the natural sciences. Kim Jackson did studies in ecology and lived, worked, and studied in an Ujamaa village. He felt pretty certain at the end of it that he would soon be back in Tanzania. Becky Peterson examined the history of Christianity in East Africa with her father, learned how to do Iramba basket weaving in central Tanzania, and studied the dearth of mental health treatment centers in Tanzania with my cousin, Kristin Benson, who was also doing independent studies while living with my parents. Finally, Thad Peterson built a methane digester for his parents’ home, did a natural history of Longido Mountain, and looked at Christianity through the eyes of African traditional religion. Thad described this as his hardest study because it involved “justifying our parents’ work, realizing that there were lots of negative stuff, as well as

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positive. But it wasn’t all black and white . . . trying to integrate that into a world view and belief system that one is comfortable with. For the first time, I had questions about the purpose of missions and how do you separate culture from the heart of what Christianity really is.” Thad’s last thoughts show also some of the worries some of us had in returning to Tanzania and wondering if we would be comfortable in our old home place with its mission environment. When I went out to Tanzania after my sophomore year at Gustavus, I had not seen anyone in my immediate family for almost two years. I wondered how I would respond to this missionary environment in light of what I had experienced while away at Gustavus. Dave Peterson, when he returned to do independent research, worried more about how he would fit in again with his family and the missionary community. As he said, “As much as I wanted to come back, I was real nervous about it.” All of us who attended Gustavus had gone to RVA, and while we were there most of us had formed a strong Lutheran identity. But now that we were at a Lutheran school we were often led us to question this identity. Religion professors at Gustavus asked students to think of their own religious sensibilities in a new light. To graduate from Gustavus, one had to take at least two religion classes. We, as children of missionaries, responded in different ways to this new religious environment and how we were called on to question the beliefs that we had brought with us to Gustavus. Dean Jackson noted how he had been influenced both by those professors who represented a break with tradition, like Bill Dean and Chaplain Elvee, but also by Bernhard Erling, who had attended Augustana Seminary about the same time as his father and who considered the foundations for the traditions of the Augustana Church. Dean stated that, after finishing his studies of religion at Gustavus, “I still had my faith, although it was radically changed.” Becky Peterson similarly was stimulated by the professors in the Religion department, and enjoyed the liturgical traditions around the college chapel. While finding that his studies in Religion expanded his thinking, Mike Peterson questioned, however, whether Gustavus would have considered seriously examining any non-mainstream religious thought. I found my own experience to be similar to that of Becky Peterson. I found the religious atmosphere at Gustavus to be compatible with my own sense of Christianity. I attended Gustavus chapel regularly and found the short liturgy and homilies of the half-hour service to be meaningful. In my last two years, I regularly was a crucifix bearer in the high church chapel services that were the norm. Moreover, the Lutheran liturgy is very similar between the

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American and Tanzanian churches, so that I sensed a connection with the African church within an American setting. Both Thad Peterson and my brother, Todd, felt that they grew in their religious sensibilities during their time at Gustavus. Thad grew through an increased understanding of broader Lutheran traditions while Todd grew through a January term experience that led him to see the importance of social justice within the context of the church. However, others among the Lutheran missionary children from Tanzania found Gustavus less supportive of their spiritual development. They saw little in the overall religious philosophy of the college that matched how they felt about their own faith. JP Lofgren, who was at Gustavus from 1968 to 1972, felt that his religion and philosophy professors never understood the realities he experienced on the mission field. He found that he could not argue with them, so he kept quiet. But his feeling that the religious atmosphere of Gustavus did not value or did not view as relevant his perspectives on faith built out of his experiences in Tanzania ate at him all the years he was there. JP’s sister, Ruth, who was on campus for two years from 1974–1976, apart from being on a Lutheran Youth Encounter (LYE) team that engaged in outreach to churches in the area, tended to stay away from chapel and religion classes. She described her time at Gustavus as “spiritually un-nourishing.” Finally, Tim Lofgren who was at Gustavus with me from 1976 to 1980, found it to be a place that did not “nurture faith as much as question it. It took me years to put things back together from that.” But Tim was involved with a local church, Trinity Lutheran, and he felt blessed from his involvement there. The evangelical missionary values in which these MKs had been raised also was challenged in different ways at Gustavus. Luella Peterson maintained her commitment while Dave Peterson began to question it. Luella said of her time at Gustavus, “I never really strayed and I stuck firm to what I believed . . . I stayed firm to what I had always been taught. These teachings went back to my parents, my confirmation class, and my Lutheran heritage.” Dave, however found that his time at Gustavus caused him to question the value of his parents’ career as missionaries. He said, One of the things about Gustavus and academia is that you start to realize and wonder about what your parents’ role was all about. It’s a standard ideology that missions came in and changed people and screwed them up and whatever. The fact is, it’s true. But the other fact is that you have the inevitable integration of the world, it’s historical, and you can’t change that. . . . I have great admiration for our parents and our parent’s generation because of the way they

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went about it. They were a product of their time; they looked at the world differently, understandably, than we do, than I do.

The years at Gustavus caused us to re-think our faith and to try to figure out where we stood. While some of us were settled in our faith, others continued to question it long into adulthood. Beyond spiritual development, many of us when we left Gustavus had not made firm choices in our career paths. We had chosen majors, but did not know what to do with them. For those who chose pre-med or nursing studies, their career paths were more set. Those of us who were liberal arts majors only found our career path later. For those who might once have considered missions as a career, our changed religious perspectives no longer fit those that we felt were needed to become missionaries. Dean Jackson, even though he had a degree in religion and offers to go to seminary, decided not to pursue a career in missions or the church. “(With) the honesty that was needed and the kind of life that I would have to live, I decided that I couldn’t handle it. I needed to be freer than that.” Joel Jackson similarly realized that he was more interested in social issues than in missions. However, in spite of the challenges many of us faced in establishing a direction for our adult working lives, the initial steps we took at Gustavus factored for most of us into what followed over our careers. Gustavus turned out to be a very different place for us, the missionary children who attended there, than it had been for our parents. For most of us, we ended our years at Gustavus with a faith that was different from that of our parents. The academic focus of the college was strong, but many of us found a place that felt very different from the Lutheran environment in which we had grown up. Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois Almost all the missionaries spent some time in Rock Island, Illinois, because that was where Augustana Seminary was located. Mark Faust and three of the Fribergs spent at least a few years at Augustana College after completing high school at RVA. In the 1960s and 1970s Augustana College seemed quite similar to Gustavus in the struggles it was going through to redefine itself. Both Mark Faust and Margaret Friberg described the turmoil of the college during those years. Because he had lived through some momentous events during Tanzania’s early years of Independence, Mark was somewhat dismissive of the protesting culture on campus at that time, while Margaret found that Christian fellowship was missing for her. In her religion classes,

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she was disappointed that the professors seemed to look at the Bible only for its literary elements. “I felt a real disconnect between faith and religion at Augustana. I think I would have done much better spiritually at a secular university where I would have known from the beginning that I had to make my own way.” Margaret transferred after one year, but Joe Friberg was there all four years. He appreciated the education he received there, and he accepted that this church school would not reinforce his faith, but still remains disappointed that this was the case. Mark Faust responded a little differently to the religious environment than did Margaret Friberg. In our interview, Mark said little about the religious sensibilities of the college. He was off every Sunday preaching at local churches, like some men among the missionary generation did when they were in college. He was hired by a local church to preach for $35 each Sunday, and the church organist would set him up with meals for the week. He was an English major and saw sermon writing as akin to essay writing. Looking back, he now feels that there was not much spiritual depth to his sermons. Rather, he saw his church work at the time as similar to that of factory workers at the local John Deere factory: “I would do it almost every Sunday. I needed the money. Being a pastor was doing the ‘John Deere 3-11’ kind of thing. It was a job. It was work.” Like we, who attended Gustavus, those missionary children who attended Augustana College in Rock Island came to the United States when it was in the midst of uncertain changes in society and its dominant values, and to a Lutheran college that was unsure of what to do with its religious heritage. But this was not true of all of the Augustana-related colleges. Bethany College, Lindsborg, KS My uncle, Bud Benson, attended Bethany College and by the time I started college, he was the chair of the Education department there. He often told me that he felt that Bethany would have been a much better choice for many of us children of missionaries than Gustavus, for example, as Bethany was a much smaller school and one that would fit us better. I spent a January term there, and found that I liked its small size and easier winters than we experienced in St. Peter. The missionary kids from Tanzania that attended Bethany generally found their adjustment to the United States much easier than did those of us who went to Gustavus and Augustana. Social and cultural tensions were not as strong and there were connections with people in the community that made it easier for them. Beatrice Palm described that much of the shock she experienced when she first began at Bethany was primarily about her trying to make sense of Ameri-

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can culture—how to order sandwiches at a local restaurant, for example, or the trailer-load of clothes her new roommate brought for her first semester. Both Beatrice and Mary Friberg found that Bethany and the community of Lindsborg gave them a sense of belonging. They re-formed connections with retired missionaries in the town, such as the Danielsons, and found kind students and their families who willingly invited them into their homes. The Gottneid family had ties to the community of Lindsborg. Dave Gottneid, the oldest son, attended the college; Al and Alice stayed in the community on some furloughs, and eventually retired to the community. Sue followed her brother Dave to Bethany. She told of how she took part in letter-writing campaigns to Congress to try and end the Vietnam War, becoming more interested when her fiancé, Darrel, was drafted and sent there for ten months. Dan, her younger brother by nine years, came to Bethany to pursue an Art degree finding artistic mentors there that helped him in developing his own sense of being an artist. While Bethany College had changed from when Mel Lofgren had attended there during World War II, it retained more of this historical character than did Gustavus or Augustana. This helped the missionary kids who attended Bethany have an easier time in coming to understand America and its culture and society, in their spiritual growth, and in making decisions about their future than some of us who went to the other Augustana colleges experienced. Other Lutheran Colleges The three main divisions among Lutherans when most of us attended college were between the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), the American Lutheran Church (ALC), and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). While the majority of American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania were LCA missionaries, some came from the ALC tradition. ALC was somewhat more conservative than LCA, less high church in its liturgical practices, and with a strong Norwegian heritage. Fourteen of the missionary children whom I interviewed attended ALC colleges: Two at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, seven at Concordia, and five at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). Here I consider the experiences of those who attended Concordia and PLU. Concordia College, Moorhead, MN Despite living within a fifteen-minute walk of Concordia for the past twenty years, parts of it still remain a mystery to me. Its sense of Christianity is

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evident in the strategically placed rocks with the mission statement of the college carved into them: “The purpose of Concordia College is to influence the affairs of the world by sending into society thoughtful and informed men and women dedicated to the Christian life.” While the overall Christian philosophy of the school is clear, at the same time I have not seen any more announcements by students about Christian gatherings and other religious activities than I see at the state-sponsored university at which I teach three blocks away. While my experience living near Concordia is that it fosters a strong sense of community, in contrast, most of the missionary kids I interviewed who attended the school found it difficult to feel comfortable there and to form enduring connections to it. This was not because of any new ideas that they encountered, but because it was hard to fit in socially. Steve, the first of the Simonson children to go there, went there because he felt obligated to do so, following his parent’s path. In looking through the Concordia yearbooks, Steve appears in them as part of football, wrestling, and soccer teams. But his main memories are of his lack of social involvement there. He claimed that he did not learn his roommate’s name until second semester. They talked, but he never asked him his name. The most positive element about his time there was that he had an uncle and aunt who lived in Fargo, and he spent weekends with them, working for his uncle’s business. Naomi, his sister, was much more social and took part in many activities, but also was unsure of what to make of Concordia, particularly during her first year. She started out as a pre-med student but then changed to Child Psychology. Unlike Steve, she interacted with many people and felt comfortable doing it, but felt very confused about the direction her life would take. After that year, she returned to Africa. While attending Concordia, Nate Simonson found it hard to talk to people about his experiences growing up in Tanzania and his attachment to the place. They seemed to be very interested in his background for about 15 minutes and then they would find there was nothing they could relate to in his background. They might be interested in talking about animals, but any other aspect of his life in Africa just was not of interest to them. Nate did not know how to reach out socially to them in any effective way. Jill Jackson did not want to go to Gustavus, the school many of her siblings had attended, but was unprepared for the loneliness she experienced during her first year at Concordia. Martha, her older sister who had spent one year at Concordia, had left for Kenya by then, so she was dropped off at school by her older brother, Dean. During her first year, she roomed with

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Chapter Four Table 4.5. Locations of Hometowns of Graduating Seniors from Concordia College, Moorhead, MN—1951 and 1975, percent Location

1951

1975

TOTAL, number MINNESOTA Twin Cities NORTH DAKOTA Red River Valley, MN and ND OTHER MIDWEST OTHER US NON US NO LISTING

176 39.8 0.6 50 45.5 2.8 7.4 0.0 0.0

378 65.1 14.6 13.2 11.1 10.6 9.0 1.3 0.8

Source: The Cobber 1951 and 1975

a sophomore transfer student and they did not get along. With her outsidethe-norm missionary background, she found it very hard to break into student life at Concordia. At the end of her first year, she was ready to switch schools, but her father urged her to try one more year, and eventually she graduated from Concordia. To understand how the student body had changed between when the Simonson parents, Dave and Eunie, had been students at Concordia and when their children attended the school, I looked at Concordia college yearbooks from both eras. In table 4.5, I compare the hometowns of students from when Dave graduated from Concordia in 1951 to the last year when graduating students listed their hometowns in the yearbook, 1975. In 1951, Concordia was a regional school with almost 90 percent of the student body coming from Minnesota and North Dakota and almost half coming from the Red River Valley. Only one student listed his home town from the Twin Cities area. By 1975, Minneapolis and Saint Paul were supplying more students to Concordia than the Red River Valley. While the geographic origins of the students had grown by 1975, the non-US student population still remained small in 1975, with five non-US listings, including Canada. A small group at Concordia was formed for the foreign students— the picture of this group in the Concordia yearbooks was where I was able to find pictures of Naomi and Becky Simonson and Martha and Jill Jackson from their time there. As they continued on during their years at Concordia, the missionary children found different ways to adjust. Steve and Nate together moved into a trailer on their uncle’s land near Glyndon, MN. Naomi, after a difficult first year, found her place at Concordia. Her face is seen in the yearbook pictures of many different groups from the Women’s Chorus to the Badminton

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team to the Psychology Honor Society. In considering why her experience at Concordia was quite different from that of her brothers, she attributed it simply to personality—“Probably because they are not as social as I am.” Becky did not have the hardships at the beginning of her time at Concordia that her siblings had experienced, despite not seeing herself as outgoing as Naomi. She formed strong connections with people on her running team and felt comfortable, not feeling any strong sense of attachment or, conversely, detachment, as her sister and her brothers remember from their experiences in their years there. When I asked about their religious experiences, all said that their involvement was minimal. None spoke of being reinforced or challenged in their faith during their time at Concordia, as others at other colleges mentioned. The college remained fairly conservative and legalistic in its rules for students. There were no coed dorms and the campus has always been dry, not allowing any alcohol. The Concordia yearbooks from the 1970s and early 1980s make very little mention of the Christian nature of the college. In Engelhardt’s history of Concordia (1991), the promotion of a Christian liberal arts education throughout its history is emphasized. For the missionary kids that attended there, however, this did not seem especially apparent. Most attended church, but none were involved in Christian outreach groups or discussed being affected in any way by the content of their religion classes, as many missionary children at other Lutheran colleges reported. Like missionary children going to other schools, most who attended Concordia did not find as much career direction as they might have wished to receive while there. The four Simonson children who attended Concordia all took longer than four years to complete their degrees. Naomi used her year off to decide the area she wanted to go into and began developing her lifelong interest in psychology. Jill Jackson struggled with what she could do as a career before deciding on home economics as her major. She struggled with whether it was the right choice, but felt that having made the choice gave her a certain level of stability during her time at Concordia. Nate Simonson, after a year spent in Africa after his junior year, decided to be a civil engineer and transferred to North Dakota State University, across the river in Fargo. There he found people from a much wider set of backgrounds and enjoyed his studies more than he did at Concordia. Those missionary children who attended Concordia had an experience that was different in some ways than for those MKs who went to other Lutheran colleges. The challenges for them at Concordia primarily concerned figuring out how to fit into this new social environment, rather than trying

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to make sense of new religious ideas. Particularly for the Simonson children, it was a different experience than it had been for their parents, primarily because of their deep attachment to Africa as home. Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA All the Lutheran colleges that I have discussed up to now were located in the Midwest. The missionary parents were almost all children of the Midwest and our furloughs took place there. However, some connections were formed to other regions of the country, including the Pacific Northwest. I interviewed five people who attended Pacific Lutheran University. Only one was very positive about the experiences there. When first talking to me, Kris Ward Tyler mentioned that it had been relatively easy to move from her years of boarding in Africa to what essentially was another boarding school experience in the United States at college. However, later in our conversation she admitted that it never felt easy at PLU. The size of everything was so much bigger than she had experienced at school in Africa, and she moved from being “a small fish in a very small pond and now I felt like a small fish in an enormous ocean.” In contrast, Don Moris, who was at PLU much earlier in 1958 and 1959, has happy memories of his time at PLU. He began in a pre-engineering program at Pacific Lutheran that involved him transferring to University of Washington (UW) for his last three years. Despite the relatively short time he was at PLU, he noted that his closest friends from his years in Washington are from PLU and not UW. For Dan Ward, the transition to life in the United States at PLU in 1972 and 1973 was difficult. He was trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He looked at different options, but none seemed to fit him. He started out as a pre-med major, but then changed his major to being undeclared, as he had no idea what he would do. Dan completed a year at PLU, but then, while working with a friend from RVA at a sawmill the summer after that year, decided to drop out and stayed away from college for many years. Kris Ward Tyler was the only one who provided a sense of the religious atmosphere at PLU, describing it as a “gray zone” and “absolutely apathetic.” She found places to connect spiritually outside of the college, and these helped her. But overall Kris looks back on her time at PLU as one of poor decisions that did not follow from how she felt about her faith or from her excitement about it at RVA and growing up in Tanzania. I visited Pacific Lutheran University to explore what had been going on in the university at the time that these missionary children had attended

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the school that led most to have unhappy memories of their time there. The image one builds from reviewing yearbooks and the college newspaper from this time is of a college that gave little attention to its Christian heritage, was somewhat apathetic to larger societal issues, and was riven by conflict in its faculty and administration. It was a time of both upheaval and apathy during the time that many of these Lutheran missionary children were attending PLU. While none of them pointed out these issues in their interviews, their unease with the school certainly found some basis in the challenges PLU was seeking to overcome at the time. The transitions to American life were hard for most of the Lutheran MKs who attended PLU. Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois While it was very common for many of those who attended RVA to consider Christian colleges after graduation, we Lutherans, and others from more denominational missions, usually stayed within our denominational boundaries. If you were with a non-denominational mission, you generally had a broader set of Christian colleges from which to choose. Among these, Wheaton College in Illinois was a common destination for RVA graduates. It had a reputation as being both strong academically and in its emphasis on Evangelical Christianity. Margaret Friberg found that Augustana College did not fit her well. When she took a year off her college studies to be back in Africa, she spoke with Don Fonseca, a teacher at RVA about her concerns. He suggested that she look at Wheaton, and she decided to transfer there. Two of her brothers, Pete and Steve, followed in the next few years. Margaret found a greater measure of consistency between confession and practice at Wheaton than she had found at Augustana. She had worried about the move, because as she said, “I didn’t know any Lutheran who had sort of jumped out of the Lutheran scene into the Evangelical one.” But she liked the integrity of the environment at Wheaton. As she said, “Wheaton was clear in its identity as an institution and for me; I was exposed to a Christian worldview.” Margaret graduated from Wheaton. But she feels that her experience there did not negate her Lutheran heritage, and actually enhanced it, confirming in her the faith in which she had grown up; whereas Augustana College—an important Lutheran institution—had not supported and strengthened her faith. Pete, her brother, followed several years later. He was troubled that the school and its students had something of a judgmental tradition as they measured each other’s spirituality. This was something he had not sensed within the Lutheran tradition. Still, he found himself supported there as he tried through those years to form a spiritual identity of his own.

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When Pete decided to become a pastor in his junior year, his studies and the general atmosphere at Wheaton helped him in deepening his faith. He liked that the school emphasized that our roles in life were to serve God. Despite criticizing the judgmental nature there, he felt there were “nine positive things to every negative thing about the place.” While Pete had been troubled by judgmental attitudes at Wheaton, his brother, Steve, a few years later was troubled by what he saw there of a prosperity Gospel, where the quality of your spirituality was judged by how successful you were financially. He did not think the two should be melded together. Nonetheless, Steve found his religious growth at Wheaton to be a continuation of all that he had gained from his family, Kiomboi, and RVA. He attended chapel daily, went to a local Lutheran church on weekends, attended a Bible study with other children of missionaries, and liked the religion classes he took which he felt encouraged and reinforced his faith, rather than challenging its foundations. State Affiliated Institutions While at RVA, there were times when people would talk about the colleges they might attend and often you would hear people speak fearfully about going off to a secular school. Could they make it in such a place? Often there was the worry about what it would do to their Christian faith. But for those missionary children who went to state-sponsored schools, their faith remained partly because they sought out the Christian groups and institutions on their own. Here I sketch out the experience of some of these missionary children who attended state schools Two of Les and Ruth Peterson’s daughters, Marilyn and Bobbie, attended University of Wisconsin, Stout. Marilyn described three influences that helped her decide to go to Stout: (1) there were relatives close by; (2) it had a good program for working with young children; and (3)  it was not Gustavus, as she did not want to experience the hardships her older sisters had experienced at Gustavus. She wanted to make her own way at a new school. Bobbie, a year younger than Marilyn, echoed her sister’s interest in certain majors, the connection to family and not being sure if Gustavus was a good choice for her because of its reputation. Like Marilyn, she found that even though these were still the anti-war years, the protests at Stout were not as strong as they were at Gustavus. She appreciated not having to grapple so in-depth with all the issues that her peers at Gustavus were experiencing. She could develop her identity and her career path at a slower pace at Stout. They both found that they liked their programs and found peace in taking part in off-campus Lutheran chapel services. Marilyn enjoyed the

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student worship group and was involved in the choir, while Bobbie found this church and service to be very vibrant and the extra Christian activities fed her own spirituality. Probably because of the closeness of family and the stability that brought, their choices early on of majors to pursue, and the welcoming nature of their Christian experience there, these two sisters found it easier to fit into this statesponsored school, than their older sisters did a few years earlier at Gustavus. Both Don Moris and Dan Ward attended PLU and later went on to the University of Washington. Don had a career goal in mind when he began college. In contrast, Dan had dropped out of PLU, drifted around the United States and East Africa for a number of years, and then started college again. While they had different routes to UW, both emphasized that knowing what they wanted to do when they arrived at UW—engineering for Don and political science for Dan—helped them during their time there. They were able to focus on their studies and to feel relatively confident about where their lives were heading. As I showed earlier, it was more common for missionary children who graduated from high school in the 1980s to consider a state university, as many of them graduated from ISM and did not have the expectations developed at RVA of attending a church college. My youngest brother, Jeff, who graduated from ISM in 1983 attended Montana State University where he studied to become a civil engineer. He had a rough start, arriving in Bozeman alone on Labor Day, and it was snowing. While he experienced culture shock, dealing with winter so suddenly compounded the shock. It took time and a lot of effort for Jeff to make sense of the place. After two generally unhappy years at MSU, he took time off and went back to Tanzania for a long period. He felt real depression and needed to get back to someplace familiar. Upon his return to Bozeman from Tanzania, he started dating Barb Nielsen, a woman he had met through the Lutheran Student Movement on campus. Through his connection with Barb, her family (her father was a professor at MSU), and her home church, Christ the King Lutheran, he began to feel connected to people again. Jeff knew he wanted to be an engineer from the beginning, so he had a goal in mind when he started school at Bozeman. However, that did not lessen the culture shock he experienced in coming from Africa and ISM. He spent several years there feeling that he did not have a place or community of his own. When Jeff found a community through his relationship with Barb, now his wife, he found considerably greater peace there. Finally, not all of missionary children really wanted to go to college. Jon Simonson always was mechanically inclined. Moreover, his years of formal

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schooling through high school had never been very easy. Still, he decided to go to Northwest Tech in Moorhead, MN, about a mile from where his siblings had attended Concordia College, to earn a degree in Diesel Mechanics. He does not remember his time there fondly. For Jon, like his older brother, Steve, going to school after high school seemed to be an obligation he needed to fulfill: I was just doing it for a piece of paper, but I have never used the piece of paper. I would have been fine just staying here (in Tanzania). I suppose I learned a few skills and took the myths out of what I already knew. I already knew how to do many of these things, but now I understood why. I never saw myself going on to college. I saw it happening from first grade. I never could get into school.

Most of the missionary children who attended state schools had a stronger sense of knowing what they wanted to do. This made it easier for them to feel good about what they were doing at college. Many found small Christian groups, either through a church or campus organization that helped them feel comfortable socially. But the culture shock was still a part of many of the MKs lives as they worked to try figure out American life.

Comparison of Generations The two generations had very different college experiences, even though in some cases it was in the same institution. The reason for the differences grew out of different life experiences and changes in the church and in society that influenced these colleges. For the missionary generation, college helped most in their decisions to become missionaries. The colleges they attended and the churches that sponsored these colleges were fairly small. As students, they found groups that allowed them to develop their interest in missions, either through involvement with groups or taking part in preaching opportunities. Some missionaries, like Al Gottneid, were still unsure about what they would do when they finished college. Others knew what they wanted to do but still needed to go on to seminary to fulfill their ambitions. And others, like my father and the Hagbergs, were able to go directly out to the mission field after college. Even those who went to state-sponsored institutions were helped by organizations like the Lutheran Students Association to help them decide on missions. For the next generation of their children, I had wondered how college helped this generation make sense of America; how it helped them develop religiously; and how it helped their career decisions. Many expressed that

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their first few years in America were filled with culture shock as they encountered a much freer world than that which they had experienced in boarding school in Tanzania and Kenya. Many of us arrived at institutions that were very involved in the anti-war movement. It was hard to know how to handle this new situation independently, without parents as guides. Even if there were other missionary kids present, our responses to the challenges of adapting to life in the United States and to college were heterogeneous, and there was no guarantee that we might not go in different directions. The people who found the easiest transition were in places where they found a smaller environment, a supportive community, and a connection to others from Africa. Religious development varied considerably. The hardest transitions were mostly in church-sponsored schools where religion classes were part of the curriculum. These classes often challenged the nature of the faith we had grown up with. We had to think through life through a new religious lens. We had either to balance these new ideas with the elements of our faith that we brought to college out of RVA or ISM, choose to reject the new ideas, or reject much of the content of the faith in which we were raised in Tanzania. Some of us grew through involvement in local churches, chapel services, or involvement in Christian outreach groups. For some, the religious development that took place was a moving away from the “faith of our fathers” with apathy toward Christianity or outright rejection. In more conservative Christian schools, it was easier to feel comfort within the faith that was presented. In state-sponsored schools, different Christian organizations or local churches helped missionary kids to remain connected to their faith. Unlike the earlier generation, where the majority of the missionaries had arrived at college with a strong sense of what they wanted to do in life, most of us started college having no idea what we would do with our lives. For many, we initially considered occupations we knew as missionary kids and, as we began our studies, accepted or rejected those choices for careers. Those who went into nursing seemed to know early on that that was what they would be doing. Those who went to state-sponsored institutions often had gone to those schools because of career goals and this made the time at these institutions easier. For the majority of us at liberal arts institutions, we found ourselves moving to either the humanities or the sciences, while still feeling confused about the direction our career would take when we finished college. For both generations, college was a key point in our lives where decisions were made that influenced the directions of our adult lives. While many in the missionary generation were confident in their choice of career path when they finished their college studies, many in the second generation were confused and uncertain about their future.

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CHAPTER FIVE

“The Call” for Two Generations

“The Call”—no two words are more associated with being a missionary than these. For many, these words conjure up the image of Paul on the Road to Damascus: someone who accepts God’s plan for his or her life and then follows it. The classic notion of the Call comes to us from Evangelical circles with their emphasis on the conversion experience. People in testimonies shared their call experience. When attending school at RVA, fellow students of ours would have heard their parents’ experience of “being called” to missions many times. For Lutherans, with an emphasis on infant baptism and living a “godly life until the Day of Jesus Christ” (Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship, Lutheran Book of Worship Baptismal Service liturgy 1978, 21), the idea of finding a calling becomes a part of life rather than a major single event in one’s life. Consequently, we children of Lutheran missionaries were not usually told our parents’ experience of how they came to be called to devote their lives to missions. Here I investigate the call experience of the missionary generation. This notion of a call also pervaded our lives as the children of missionaries. The idea that “God has a plan for your life” was not a new idea given to us when we attended RVA, but an idea implanted in us early by our parents. As we tried to figure out what we would do with our lives, would we experience a call to missions? And if we did, how did any attachment to our childhood home in Tanzania influence our own ideas of what it meant to be called? Was the notion of a call place-less? In this chapter, I also will explore how the call manifested itself for the next generation; both for those who

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become missionaries and for those who explored going into missions but were unable to respond to the call and go.

Three Children of Missionaries Consider the Idea of a Calling The three people I will use to develop a framework for this chapter are Jeffrey Swanson, John Hersey, and me. All of us have tried to understand the nature of what it meant for our parents’ generations to be called to missions. Jeffrey Swanson is a medical sociologist. He grew up in Ecuador, the son of a doctor who worked for World Radio Missionary Fellowship, an evangelical faith mission. In his book, Echoes of the Call, which is based on interviews of around 120 missionaries from his parents’ home mission, Swanson tried to make sense of what it meant to “be called” and how that played out during their time as missionaries. As he defined what it meant to be called, Swanson moved from the general to the more specific. In a general way, a call was how God dealt with people throughout the Bible, which culminated in the Gospels with salvation through Christ. More specifically, Swanson writes, it could be thought of as “. . . a person’s commitment to fulfill a particular role in the work of the church” or “any particular experience of divine guidance of one’s life along a particular path” (1995, 75). In exploring the historic nature of what a call meant, he noted that most writers felt that a call could be thought of as “. . . the notion of simple obedience to the will of God” (79). As he interviewed missionaries for his study, Swanson explored what the call meant to them and when they had experienced it. Most of the missionaries felt that they had received a distinct call to be a missionary, with this event taking place early in their lives. Two factors were associated with the experiencing of an individual receiving a call: (1) They had gone to a church that had a strong emphasis on missions, and (2) They had parents who felt it was important to find work of Christian service. Contact with returning missionaries at an early age also helped many to consider missions for their life work. Among those he interviewed who said they had received a call, some felt a call in “. . . a general way, gradually, over a period of time, (while o)thers had a dramatic experience at a moment in time” (93). Most of those he interviewed had the second experience, having this “dramatic experience” at a religious meeting of some sort. However, after receiving the call, the process was a long one. His respondents received their call to mission at an average age of 19.5 years, but they did not arrive in Ecuador until nine years later, at an average age of 28.8 years (99). Most said they had no expectations as

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to where they were called to serve, whether to Ecuador or any other place. “Rather, they were called to be (or to become) somebody for God—a missionary like the heroes of their Sunday school periodicals. The focus was not on specific places and tasks, but on being one of those willing to go out to win the world for Christ” (95). However, in responding to a call to mission, he noted special caveats for two groups. Married people needed to meld individual callings into one that fit both partners. This required negotiation and discernment, particularly when the spouses may have somewhat different ideas on what their individual calls entailed. The other group was children of missionaries who returned as missionaries. Swanson found that their call experiences did not fit into the call patterns of first-generation missionaries. (S)econd-generation missionaries tend to report experiences of calling that don’t neatly fall into the more general patterns, but many combine elements of more than just one. Some missionary kids report feeling an early and definite call to do just what their parents are doing. Others reject their parents’ vocation—for a while—then end up doing something very similar anyway. Some flounder on the foreign shores of what was their parents’ country of origin, then see the missionary career as a way of returning home. Others never feel that they have a homeland, because they have grown up feeling set apart and different, both internally and externally. But sometimes they are able to turn a handicap into an advantage, insofar as their rootlessness makes them more autonomous and more adaptable to a third or fourth culture. (Swanson 1995, 101)

Swanson’s data and ideas are useful for examining the American Lutheran missionary community in Tanzania that I studied. Did these Lutheran missionaries feel the same dramatic call experience as this group of evangelical missionaries to Ecuador? How did spouses meld their individual ideas of a call to a common vision? And for those missionary kids who returned as missionaries, did they experience a call, or did they just want to return home? The other child of a missionary I used for guidance in this research was someone two generations older. John Hersey was a well-known writer and journalist who was born in China in 1914 and lived there until 1925 while his parents were missionaries with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), a group known now for their health clubs rather than as a mission-sending agency (Hersey 1982). In his seventies, John Hersey wrote The Call (1985), a novel about a with the YMCA, David Treadup, who arrived in China in 1905 and last saw it in the late 1940s as the Communist government closed the country to foreigners. Treadup, Hersey stated, was a composite character

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of about six missionaries including his father (Hersey 1985, 693). His central question was whether American missionaries made any difference in China. While this long novel explored many of the struggles a missionary experiences in his or her work, the book also closely describes the dramatic experience for Treadup of his call to the mission file, the same experiences that Jeff Swanson described in his book about the missionaries to Ecuador. Treadup’s struggle to find a wife to go with him to China later in the novel parallel what some of the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania faced as they considered going overseas as missionaries. In the book, Hersey’s main character has a conversion experience while attending Syracuse University, and starts participating in different Christian organizations on campus. When Treadup attends a mission conference run by a YMCA-affiliated group, he felt moved to sign a form which read: It is my purpose, if God permits, to become a foreign missionary.” He was soon contacted by the YMCA for consideration for the China mission field. However, the YMCA had one major issue with his candidacy for missions—they were concerned that he was not married. They were reluctant to send single men out to the mission field. Treadup then convinces a woman he had been close to at university to be his wife, so YMCA agreed to let Treadup go to China. This fictional account by Hersey highlights the emotional nature of considering a call to the mission field. Swanson similarly examined the personal and emotional challenges so many of the Ecuadorian missionaries faced as they sought to respond appropriately to their own personal call to missions. In addition, it shows the added problem for male missionaries to find a spouse to share their life in missions to a foreign country. Many of the Lutheran missionaries in choosing their mates struggled to find ones that felt comfortable going overseas. It was sometimes the first thing the missionary candidate would discuss with a potential partner when they first started dating. Similar to Swanson and Hersey, in this book I seek to understand my parents’ generation of missionaries and how they experienced and responded to their own calls to serve as missionaries. But I also am very interested in the second generation of the children of missionaries and whether we could receive such a call. Were we so tied to place that an unreserved call to missions could not happen for us? While my parents did not talk about being called to be missionaries, they, like the whole missionary community, felt that God had a plan for their lives and this idea permeated our lives. I struggled with this for years. As I have returned to East Africa for research over the years, I have felt the strong desire to return there to work, but there always seem to have been impenetrable barriers preventing this from happening. Early in my

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adult life, I did not apply for any positions with the church, as I felt I could not meet the criteria related to the characteristics of my own faith to be acceptable as a missionary. Later on I did apply for positions with the Lutheran church and other Christian organizations, but found my path was blocked. The questions that Swanson and Hersey asked in their books and my own questions that I continue to grapple with about receiving and responding to a call to missions overseas permeate the remainder of this chapter. Missionary Generation: Different Manifestations of the Call In this section, I consider how different Lutheran missionaries decided to become missionaries and how that fit into the call experience discussed by Swanson. How did the lack of emphasis on a conversion experience within the Lutheran church make it a different call experience than that of the evangelical missionaries Swanson interviewed for his study? And how did a married or intended to be married couple merge their interests in missions? Of all the missionaries I interviewed, Bob Ward was possibly the most evangelical in his own views of Christianity. He was firmly grounded in the Lutheran traditions, but just as firmly saw the need to include key parts of evangelical tenets in his life and that of his family. His call experience was similar to that which many of Swanson’s interviewees had experienced. Through the Augustana Lutheran church in Omaha that he attended as a child, Bob had a strong exposure to missions. He joined the Navy after high school. When he returned, he stayed in Portland, Oregon, for several months while deciding what to do with his life. While there, Bob joined a Lutheran youth group and was invited to the Luther League Convention in Los Angeles. At the convention, Bob heard many inspiring speakers, but was unable to hear one speaker, Rev. H. Conrad Hoyer, who gave a talk on vocational guidance and considering the ministry. While Bob felt that his technical educational background would not allow him to consider the ministry, he still wanted to know what Rev. Hoyer thought. So, he sought him out to talk to him personally. Rev. Hoyer asked him where he would like to go to college. He could only remember Augustana College, so said, “Augustana.” Hoyer then asked him to come to his room the next morning. When Bob returned the next day, Hoyer told him: “You have been accepted and pre-registered at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Your classes will begin in a month’s time, the first week in March; you be there!” Bob was uncertain whether he could afford college. Back in his room, he opened his Bible and the first words he read were from Matthew 6:25–34, the passage on how the Lord looks after the flowers and the sparrows, so why should we be anxious about tomorrow. He decided that this was a sign. He

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took up Rev. Hoyer’s offer and went to Augustana College and Seminary. Jeanne, his future wife, was working as a nurse there. They married before Bob went on his internship year at Trinity Lutheran Church of Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis. Trinity was then, and remains, a very mission-minded church. Every fall at Trinity a missions conference is held. Bob and Jeanne talked about their experience at this conference, a conference similar to the one in which Hersey in his novel placed Treadup: Bob: They had a Missions conference at Trinity of Minnehaha Falls every year in the fall. There again, a lot of dynamic speakers and so forth and then at the close of the week, one of the speakers said, “Now how many of you would be willing to commit yourself to full time mission work overseas and feel that the Lord is calling you?” Jeanne: We looked at each other and didn’t say anything and I took his hand and we stood up together and that was it.

Bob and Jeanne’s story fits the classical image of what it meant to be called and likely is similar to the call experiences of the missionaries to Ecuador studied by Swanson. Another missionary, Stan Moris, whom I was unable to interview but who wrote a memoir of his years as a missionary doctor in China and Tanganyika, had a somewhat similar experience to that of Treadup in finding a spouse to join him as he left for China. Stan Moris was born in Minnesota in 1906 and came of age during the years of the Great Depression. During his high school and college years, he was very involved in youth work at Calvary Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis. Unsure of a career direction, he took his sister’s advice and attended the Lutheran Bible Institute (LBI) for a year. While there, he heard a missionary speaker from the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (another Lutheran synod), who emphasized the need for missionary doctors and nurses. Stan felt this was a career that fit him and one in which he could serve the Lord. He checked with others to see what they thought. One of his professors felt that he had the aptitude for this and that it fit him much better than being a pastor. His next worry was financing his medical education, as it was more expensive than the other career options he had been considering. In line with what Swanson said about most missionaries often having parents who encouraged their children to find work of Christian service, when Stan asked his mother, she replied, “If the Lord wants you to be a mission doctor, I am sure we can find the money” (Moris 1997, 14). When he finished his medical education in 1931, he contacted the Augustana Mission Board. He hoped he could go to Tanganyika, but the need

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was greater in China because Dr. C. P. Friberg, the father of Dan Friberg, had just died of typhoid fever. Stan agreed to go to China. Although the Augustana Mission Board was willing to allow him to go to China as a bachelor, he did not want to be there on a six-year term without a bride. Two months after finishing his medical internship, Stan was married to Muriel Newman. Muriel’s family had been afflicted by tuberculosis, and the disease would return while she was in China. By the time they took the boat to China, Muriel was pregnant with their first child. When they arrived in China, she was suffering from anemia due to tuberculosis. Their daughter, Patricia, was born in 1933 in Beijing. Although assigned to work in Loyang, where Dr. Friberg had worked, with Muriel’s continuing health deterioration, they decided it would be best to stay in the city of Hsuchang, as it was on the main railway line to Beijing. Her health continued to deteriorate and by 1934, they were trying to decide whether they would have to leave China for good. In 1935, Muriel died, leaving Stan alone with his not quite two-year-old daughter. After Muriel’s death, they moved to Loyang, where the wife of another missionary looked after Patty when he was working in the hospital. By 1937, the Japanese were invading China and missionaries were being ordered to evacuate. At this time, he felt that he needed a wife to help take care of Patty. He described in spare language, the quickness with which this happened: A letter from (the American Consul in China) urged missions to send home all missionaries near battle zones and also any others who had furloughs due the following year. In compliance, I was to go home after having served only five years. That posed a personal dilemma for me. I had become acquainted with Edith Okerlund, but had not yet indicated my hope of marrying her. She was a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission, a sister mission to that of my own Augustana Lutheran Church. . . . There was no time for normal courtship. I simply asked her right there at Ki Kung Shan if she would marry me and she agreed. We made a quick trip to Hankow to buy rings and clothes and things needed for the reception. . . . Two pastor friends, one from Edith’s mission and one from mine, married us in the beautiful little church on Ki Kung Shan. (Moris 1997 38)

In looking at Stan Moris’ life, we see a calling that fits some of what Swanson felt many of the HCBJ missionaries had experienced early in their lives. In addition, his experience was similar to Hersey’s Treadup, with the strong impetus he felt to find a marriage partner to help in this work, and he was able to find such a partner twice within ten years.

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Most of the missionaries I interviewed seldom used the term “call,” but they spoke about how early the feeling came that they consider becoming a missionary. For many of the missionary wives, there was a definite sense at a young age of wanting to be a missionary. For many of the missionary husbands, in contrast, they considered first becoming a pastor before then considering a career as a missionary overseas. These differing patterns reflect that women could not be ordained as pastors at the time. Nonetheless, while the sense of a call to missions may have been experienced at a young age, it often took more than ten years for it to be fulfilled. Nellie Faye Hagberg grew up in the Danish Lutheran Church, in the branch officially known as the United Evangelical Lutheran Church. She was influenced early on by visiting missionaries. Many of her church community encouraged her interests in missions from the time she felt she was called at age ten. Similarly, Elaine Peterson was very involved in a mission-minded country church near East Chain in southern Minnesota. A young couple in the church, Rube Pedersen and his girlfriend Twyla, were a few years older than Elaine. When they married, they became missionaries to Tanganyika. Twyla died in Africa but Rube remarried and remained in Tanganyika many years as a missionary and later served as the Africa Secretary for LCA. Rube, along with many missionary speakers who came to the church, influenced Elaine’s decision to become a missionary. When she met her future husband, Dean Peterson, at Gustavus Adolphus College, she knew she would be a missionary. Dean Peterson was the youngest in a large family living near Rosholt, SD. His mother pushed the family toward church. By seventh grade, he felt a call to be a pastor. Dean described himself as a religious youth, who had a strong prayer routine from a very young age. V. Eugene Johnson, one of the earliest missionaries to Tanganyika and a former pastor in Rosholt, returned to Rosholt several times to speak of his experience. This led Dean to consider missions, but it was primarily his time at Luther College in Wahoo, NE, that had the greatest influence. Louise Anderson Olson grew up on the Tanganyikan mission field. The family left Tanganyika when she was fourteen, but Louise knew she wanted to return. Many of the missionaries at the time were single women, but she knew being single was not for her. She remembered at thirteen years of age praying to God to be able to return to Africa, and she was thrilled four years later when she became engaged to Howard (Howie) Olson, a Tanganyikan missionary candidate. As she said, “I never dreamed it would happen so fast.”

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Howie, a pastor’s child, would travel with his dad to his four-point parish and sing at the various services where he preached. He felt a desire to become a pastor. Howie was not shy and would talk about missions at church and eventually felt a desire to become a missionary, as well. With three siblings in college, his father bought the children a Model T to share. He used it to preach at various churches while at Gustavus Adolphus College. As he preached, he felt that the ministry was the occupation for him. “I found it very fulfilling. When you see the response in people, you knew, it wasn’t yourself, but it was the power of the Word that could do so much even though it was presented totally by a guy like me.” At the same time, he felt that ministry in a place like Minnesota would not be as fulfilling as it would be on the mission field: First of all as to why I wanted to be a missionary, you know I wanted to be a pastor, but not a missionary. Well in Minnesota I saw all these Lutheran churches, even in the little towns that we were in. I said, “The last place I am needed is here in Minnesota as another Lutheran preacher.” And I just thought, almost numerically, about when the Lord said, “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.” And I asked, “Where are the laborers few?” And I said, “Boy, Africa is one place that has not had a lot of the evangelical development.” So I was very interested in going there, as a place where I may not fit but at least I would be another laborer in the vineyard if they could use me.

As Howie and Lou, and Dean and Elaine, respectively, began dating, this shared vision of becoming missionaries made it very easy for them to consider the other as a spouse. Their individual calls could be fulfilled within their marriages. While none of the four or Nellie Faye Hagberg had a dramatic confirmation of their calling, they received early on a strong sense that they should work within the church and, for the three women at least, a sense of wanting to be missionaries. Their experiences of a call to mission were similar to those experienced by the missionaries to Ecuador whom Swanson studied. For four other missionaries, none of them really talked about their decision to go into missionary service as a call, as their decision to go to the mission field came later in life. Two, Stan Benson and Ray Hagberg, began considering a career in missions while in the armed forces, while Orv and June Nyblade began to consider missions while he was in seminary. My father, Stan Benson, was a pastor’s son. His father had wanted to be a missionary, but felt he could not be one, because he found it hard to learn languages. Stan first began to consider becoming a missionary when he was

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in the Army in the Philippines soon after the end of the World War II. A Lutheran chaplain at his base would take soldiers on Sunday afternoons out to visit local churches in the area. My father said this experience confirmed for him that he could become a missionary, because he saw what he could contribute while in the Philippines. Later while nearing the end of college, his college professor, George Hall, suggested to my father that, since he had given time to the US Army overseas, he should consider giving time to the church overseas, as well. My father had already applied to graduate school in Soil Science, but this suggestion, and the fact that his father had re-married a sister of a missionary to Tanganyika, made the suggestion take hold. He concluded that he should do it. He went on to say, “I didn’t talk it over with Mom . . . we had only had a couple of dates.” Each of these discussions seems small and insignificant, but led to a more than forty-year missionary career in Borneo and Africa—the opposite of the Road to Damascus experience of many call experiences. While Nellie Faye Hagberg knew from an early age that she wanted to be a missionary, the realization did not come to Ray Hagberg until much later. Ray served in Korea and Japan after World War II. Ray had several experiences within the military that led him increasingly to question the purpose of war and militarism. Seeing the great needs of the people in Korea, he felt that he could do more as a missionary than within the military to help meet those needs. At that point, given his farming background, he felt it would be best to become an agricultural missionary. As it was, he ended up choosing education at first, rather than agriculture, as Tanganyika needed teachers more than they needed agriculturalists. He chose not to go back to Asia as the language issues seemed too insurmountable in Asia when compared to Tanganyika and growing up in the Augustana church it was the mission he knew best. Orv and June Nyblade did not consider mission work until Orv was in seminary. During his internship year in San Diego, they began to consider where they would go in his ministry. With Augustana’s strong history in missions, this became one of the options to consider. During the last year back in seminary, they were in contact with several returned missionaries from Tanganyika and became more open to the idea of overseas work. At one point, a carload of seminarians went up to Minneapolis from Rock Island, IL, to talk to the Board of Foreign Missions. Wives did not go along on the trip. While there, members of the Board asked which of the seminarians was interested in going to Tanganyika or to Japan. Orv, Bob Ward, and another seminarian, Al Hoagland, all said they were interested in Tanganyika. Bob Ward was offered immediately a position in Tanganyika, but the Board still

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had to decide whether Hoaglands or Nyblades should go to Japan. In the end, the Board decided to send the Hoaglands to Japan. June remarked in our interview that she was very pleased that it turned out this way. For these four missionaries, their decision to go into missions grew partially out of Augustana’s long involvement in missions, but also grew out of key events in their lives as young adults. For each of them, the decision to go into missions seemed to be less of a lifelong passion or struggle, but one of deciding on taking this path at a certain point and having it feel right. In many ways, their discussions of how they ended up in a career in Christian missions seem not unlike that of any job applicant in any field. But for each of them, what began as a simple consideration of a position turned into fortyyear commitments to this work. But several of the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania struggled with what it meant to be called. I have already talked about Edith Moris’s marriage to Stan Moris. While Edith had been sure of her call to missions before marriage, her son Jon talked about the challenges she faced in defining her call after marriage. Les and Ruth Peterson both struggled to define how they would fulfill their callings occupationally. Ruth especially grappled with how to define this call while not pursuing the traditional roles of missionary women in teaching or nursing. Al Gottneid was unsure of what should be his call, as his mother pushed him to in one way, as he tried to find his own way. Jon described Edith Moris’s struggles as emanating from a strong call that she felt at an early age to become a missionary to China. This she felt was her destiny: She always felt that her calling had been to China, where she had an aunt. Actually she was given to China before birth, because the aunt had been visiting Minnesota and had her mother promise that this child would be a missionary. There was a tradition of a Call as a concept of spirituality in that branch of the Lutheran church. It . . . is necessary to understand that early recruitment, because those were the sort of people who sought out the Call to the mission field. For them it was no question. So for my mother, she basically had to abandon what she felt was her call to marry my father. The only thing she used to explain it, because she found it to be a very difficult choice, was that the mission she would have been in, the very house she would have been in, was bombed by the Japanese. So, had she stayed in China, she would have been killed by the Japanese.

As the newly formed Moris family made their way to Tanganyika, Edith Moris pondered what her new call would be in this new setting. While Stan’s writing shows a man who chose his words carefully, Jon described his mother

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as quite evangelical and dramatic, who on furloughs loved to speak about the mission field. While in Tanganyika, she kept a spiritual diary, wrote many letters back to the United States, wrote articles for publications in journals, such as Mission Tidings, and pushed for work in the mission field that she felt was important. With a small bequest, she built a youth chapel at Bumbuli, where Stan worked as a doctor, because she felt that youth work was needed in the Tanganyikan mission field. It was a life of trying to redefine a new calling for herself within a marriage. Ruth Peterson was another missionary wife who struggled with what her call should be. Ruth grew up in an Evangelical Lutheran Synod church in Boyceville, Wisconsin, where the pastor was so strict that each year during the confirmation services she recalled that a couple of the confirmands would faint from fright during the service. Despite this, Ruth loved going to the library at church and reading missionary stories. Ruth’s father was very involved in youth work within the church and the Luther League was very active. While in high school, Ruth began dating a young Methodist man, and they became engaged before he went overseas with the Army during World War II. He had been very active in his own church and while overseas, he began considering becoming a missionary to China. He wrote Ruth about this while he was laid up. Ruth kept thinking about missions through high school and college. Before she went to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, Ruth considered becoming a nurse, but her parents felt that nursing would be too hard a degree for her. They and their pastor convinced Ruth to consider going into library work, as she had worked in the library during high school. Ruth worked at the Luther College library while earning degrees in English and History. She then went on to the University of Michigan to earn a degree in Library Science. After working as a librarian in Port Huron, Michigan, she was offered a position at Augustana College as a librarian. It was there she met Les. Ruth recalled, “Things went fast. . . . One of our first things on our first date, he said, “I want you to know I’m going to Africa.” For Les, like Treadup in Hersey’s book, the Mission Board was not considering single missionary men at that moment. In many ways, meeting Les was an answer to Ruth’s prayers. Still, Ruth continued to struggle with how best to be of Christian service. She was unsure of how she would be able to use her library background in Africa. Les had also struggled with whether a call to missions was right for him. Unlike his younger brother, Dean, he was not as sure about the ministry as he was about being a missionary. He remembered praying about being a missionary during his confirmation in 1935, but was unsure how he would get to the

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mission field, considering whether he should be an agricultural missionary or a pastor. He finally made his decision to be a pastor when he was farming the year after high school. But Les, like Ruth, continued to grapple with determining what was the right way to be of service as a missionary. Being a pastor seemed to be the only way to become a missionary, so he went that route. But in the back of his head was a feeling that he could use his farming background out in Africa. For both Les and Ruth, the call was strong, but the way in which they were to carry out this call was unclear. Both went out to the mission field to take on roles that they did not feel fit them exactly. For Al Gottneid, the struggle was to define his call in a way that was his own and to not follow a call defined for him by his mother. Al Gottneid was the only male missionary I interviewed who did not eventually become a pastor. In all his years in Tanzania, he worked in education. However, for years he had pursued medicine as a career and a calling, but never feeling that it was the right calling for him. Al grew up in Omaha. At his church he was exposed to missionaries, like Ray Cunningham, Sr., who worked in both India and Tanganyika. Later, he transferred to Luther Academy and went through Luther College in Wahoo where his exposure to missionaries was even greater. Many of the missionary kids from China attended Luther College, including his future wife, Alice Lindbeck. Al felt like there were many at Luther who were searching for their calling in life, but he found that most of them found it in choosing to become ministers. He had no interest in that area. His mother was a nurse, so when he majored in biology, she encouraged him to consider medicine as a career. After finishing at Luther in 1941, Al transferred to Augustana College. With America’s entry into World War II at the end of that year, there was a strong push to get more doctors. People who had finished three years of college could apply to the Army and then begin medical school. Al finished the year at Augustana, became part of the Army, but on inactive duty, and then was able to get into medical school in Omaha. But, he found there that his science education at Luther had been inadequate. After finishing one year of medical school, the Army changed its plan for medical education and began the Army Specialized Training Program. Under this program, he received training at Walter Reed in Washington and was placed into the Medical Corps. Eventually, he ended up in Normandy, France, three months after D-Day in a tent hospital known as the 164th General Hospital. Al worked in orthopedics, making casts, and trying to bring life back to wounded soldiers. When I interviewed him, he said that he could still remember the smell of rotting flesh that permeated the hospital.

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He stayed with the Army through 1946. In that year, he decided to marry Alice, who he had been corresponding with all through the war and restarted, but then dropped out of, medical school. Despite his medical work during the war, when he returned to medical school, he found that it did not fit him. He felt an obligation to his mother, who had recently died, to pursue a medical career, but he knew he could not go through with it. He told his father of his decision: I met my father on the street and he asked, “What are you doing here?” And I said, “I just quit school.” He could have dropped dead right there, he was so disappointed. “Well, what are you going to do?” I didn’t know what I was going to do. I still did not have my bachelor’s degree. We were married and (Alice) was the bread earner.

Al finished his bachelor’s degree at the University of Nebraska–Omaha and, subsequently, worked for the psychology department at the University testing troubled children. When an opportunity for going on for further training in psychology at the University of Illinois came up, he took it. Al took classes during the day, while at night, using the mammoth computers at the university, he analyzed data for researchers in the psychology department. He felt caught, as his young family was beginning to grow with two children at home. Finally, his four-year-old son Dave asked him, ‘Why don’t you stay home sometime?’ And that was like a knife in . . . my heart. Yeah, this is it. I’m not really that keen about psychology either.” In 1953, Al saw a small advertisement in a Lutheran Companion asking people interested in working for the church to apply for a position. He applied, but heard nothing for about a year. A year later, out of the blue, he received a letter from Fred Schiotz, head of the Lutheran World Federation, stating that they had heard he might be interested in a teaching position in Tanganyika. Would he be interested in meeting in Chicago sometime about the possibilities? He went to Chicago without Alice, had the interview, was offered a position in Tanganyika, and accepted it. Alice seemed fine with the possibilities. While Al had taught at the university-level, he had never taught an age group that demanded a teacher’s license, which the British authorities in Tanganyika were now demanding that he have. As the state of Texas did not require practice teaching in order to get a teaching license, he obtained a license from Texas by taking correspondence courses. With this license, he could teach in Tanganyika. As Al recalled, he and Alice took on this new challenge with very little knowledge of what they were getting into, not knowing which teacher training school they would be at,

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where their children would go to school, what his salary would be, or even the length of the missionary term. By the time Al had accepted this call to Tanganyika he was thirty-three years old. He had searched for a calling for many years. Finally, he had one. His call experience was almost the exact opposite experience of Bob Ward, who also grew up in Omaha at about the same time as Al. Finally, in examining the question of a call for the missionaries, I will examine my mother’s experience. Marie Benson grew up in a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod congregation, which was part of her life six days a week as she attended parochial school during the week and church on Sunday. In contrast to the childhood experiences of other missionaries, my mother never mentioned any visits to her church by missionaries or having a desire to be a missionary. During college at Gustavus, she maintained her strong involvement in Christian activities by becoming involved in a church in St. Peter and being an officer with my father in the Lutheran Students Association. When my father went overseas as a single missionary, she worked as a high school English teacher and later as a librarian, keeping up a correspondence with him. Nearing the end of his first term, my father wrote to ask if my mother would consider marrying him when he returned to the States and she agreed, but told no one about their impending marriage. Missionaries in Tanganyika knew my father was returning to go to seminary, but no one knew he was also returning to get married. In August of 1956, they married and he started seminary a month later. Stan Benson was a missionary on leave while in seminary. Two years later, I was born. In 1959, he returned with his family as a missionary once again. When I interviewed them, I was curious about when exactly it was that my mother felt that she had become a missionary, as she never spoke about a feeling of being called to be a missionary nor did she speak of a desire to be one at any point. My parents were in Tanzania longer than almost all of the American Lutheran missionaries. However, she answered me by saying that she only came to the realization at the end of her career that she also had been a missionary. Though my mother did not expand on this story, she probably saw herself mostly as a wife of a missionary, coming after my father had already served for a full term as a missionary. She spoke of how the realization came to her after retirement as she was asked to take part in a panel of women missionaries at the mission gathering at Kenosha, WI. It was only at that point that she realized that she had actually been a missionary all these years. What I have tried to show through these stories of the call experiences of different American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania is how varied they all were, ranging from the dramatic experience that Bob Ward experienced

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of a definite call to mission to my mother’s realization that she had been a missionary only after a lifetime of service. What most of these Lutheran missionaries have in common with the missionaries to Ecuador Swanson studied was that they grew up in strong mission-minded churches. Like most of the Ecuadorian missionaries, most of the Augustana missionaries had a connection with other missionaries. The Augustana Lutheran Church was a very mission-minded church. While most of these missionaries did not use the word “call” to describe their decision to go to Africa, in discussing how their lives moved in that direction, their experiences were not that different from those of the missionaries to Ecuador. Where the two missionary groups most differ is in how they experienced the call. For most of the Ecuadorian missionaries, Bob Ward’s story would be similar to their own, but his was not a common experience among the Lutheran missionaries I interviewed. With the emphasis on infant baptism and “leading a godly life” within the Lutheran church, rather than an emphasis on the born-again experience, the call experience grew out of considerations of living lives of Christian service. Even as my mother never spoke of a desire to be a missionary, she did want her life to be one of Christian service and this was part of her life from her early days in parochial school. In the case of these missionaries, the call was felt by both sexes, and often felt even stronger by the women. For most of the couples I interviewed, the desire to go to the mission field was one thing they looked for in a potential mate. Most would let a potential partner know of this desire very soon in the dating process, as Les did with Ruth Peterson. But there were challenges, as the examples of Edith Moris and my mother show, as Edith struggled to define her calling after marriage and my mom’s perception that the role of the missionary wife was not considered to be one of missions, too. The call was very real for this generation as they considered going anyplace to promote the Gospel. However, the Call is often seen as a placeless command. Was it the same for those of the next generation of the children of these missionaries, as they considered working for the church, but with the strong desire to return to a specific place, Tanzania, as they worked in the church? The Next Generation: Could We Receive a Call, As Well? Vikner in a retrospective look at the Augustana Lutheran Church’s missionary work told of the number of missionaries that served on the different fields and then went on to discuss the number of missionaries that went on to be second generation missionaries, like himself:

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In its entire history Augustana sent 432 men and women missionaries overseas to ten countries. Of these, 407 served in Augustana’s four main fields: India, 32; China (including Hong Kong, Taiwan and North Borneo), 109; Tanganyika, 232; and Japan, 34. There were 25 sent to Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Persia, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay. . . The total missionary family included 25 second generation missionaries: 15 from China, 5 from India, and 5 from Tanganyika. (Vikner 1999, 194)

Out of the sixty-four children of missionaries that I interviewed, ten returned overseas at some point as a missionary or a volunteer for a church organization. However, only four worked for the LCA or ELCA, the successor churches to the Augustana church. The majority worked for other mission or church organizations. Four returned to Tanzania, and three returned to the neighboring countries in Africa. Only one served as a missionary outside of Africa. Three still serve as missionaries. Three others continue living in Africa. While the word “call” was used by some of the missionaries to describe their desire to go into missions, none of those in the generation of missionary children that I interviewed used that word. For most of them, the opportunity to return to Africa was a big part of their decision to say “Yes” to a mission opportunity. Of these ten, the experience of Vaughan Hagberg best fits the call experience that Swanson described in his book. Moreover, his call was not tied to a specific place. Vaughan was one of the younger children of missionaries that I interviewed. His schooling trajectory was different from most in that he never went to Kiomboi, but instead went to Rosslyn Academy in Nairobi and then on to RVA. As a toddler, the Hagbergs first lived in Ilboru, near Arusha, but then moved to more remote mission stations, and he went off to boarding school for most of the year. Most of his vacation times were spent a long way from the missionary community in places like Loliondo and Bonga, near Babati. He described a life that generally was unconnected to the missionary community. Vaughan’s family returned permanently to the United States early in his high school years. He graduated from high school in Spencer, Nebraska. While in high school, he decided that he wanted to go into engineering. He had done a career research project in a business class in which he found that salaries for engineers were quite high and that the field used his strengths in mathematics and sciences. He pursued his engineering degree at South Dakota State (SDSU) in Brookings, not too far from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, where his sisters were.

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His career decision likely was very similar to any that one of his classmates in Spencer might have made. Specifically, the decision involved no thought of going overseas with his skills. Vaughan did not have a strong sense of nostalgia for Tanzania or a desire to return there. He described ambivalence to Tanzania on his part. As the youngest in his family during very trying economic times in Tanzania, he had seen his parents just surviving during that period. The romance of Tanzanian life was not something he really experienced before he left. His years in the United States thereafter had not been unhappy. While at SDSU, Vaughan became involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. In his church life at university, he began by going to a Lutheran church but started questioning many aspects of Lutheranism, including its stances on infant baptism and confirmation. By his junior year, he started attending a Baptist church on a regular basis. InterVarsity had a mission training program that he took advantage of at the end of his junior year. He spent a summer working at a radio station in Liberia and liked how he was able to use his engineering training in a field such as this. He returned to SDSU and began adding radio classes to his electrical engineering training. That same summer, his future wife, Aleda, took a mission trip to Japan where she taught English. When they returned for their senior years, both Aleda and Vaughan were on the leadership committee of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and like his parents had been leaders in the Lutheran Students Association at Dana College the generation before, they began dating. They were married soon after. Both Vaughan and Aleda now shared an interest in missions. They attended Urbana Student Missions Conference sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a large evangelical missions conference held on the campus of the University of Illinois. They filled out applications with an inter-Christian mission placement agency, but decided to work for a few years. Many of the missions wanted them to have a strong background in the Bible, so they decided to spend their next years working in the Twin Cities and obtaining more Biblical training. Vaughan and Aleda worked for the same engineering firm for about three years until Aleda moved over to another firm. At this time, Vaughan began working on a master’s degree in theological studies with an emphasis on missions through Bethel College. Unfortunately, Vaughan was laid off and had a hard time finding new work. While he was laid off, they both began considering missions more in depth. They both felt that the timing was right to consider going into missions, as they had few obligations tying them to America.

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They revived their applications with the mission placement agency and were considered by several different international Christian radio missions. They were accepted as missionaries under the Far East Broadcasting Corporation (FEBC) in December of 1989, but then spent the next two years finishing graduate classes, having their first child, and raising their support. They have been missionaries in the Philippines since 1992. While FEBC is an evangelical radio station, Vaughan is content to play a behind-the-scenes role at the radio station. In our interview, he brought up a witnessing activity that I had refused to take part in when I was at RVA because I did not feel comfortable doing it. With his apparently stronger evangelical faith, I thought he would have found it easier to do. But he had a similar reaction to my own, and went on to explain how that affects aspects of his calling to missions now: I can remember getting involved in a Bible Study (at RVA) and going into Nairobi to do witnessing in a Nairobi park and absolutely hating it. I still don’t feel comfortable doing it. “Here are the Four Spiritual Laws” and you tell those. I am not an outgoing person in that respect. I don’t want to go out and initiate conversations. This business of going out and standing in front of a church and raising support—it’s not natural for me. I would much rather be on the other side of a microphone, doing the technical stuff.

Vaughan’s “calling” to missions does not fit the key event nature of the experience of many of the missionaries to Ecuador that Swanson discussed. However, it does fit the process that many of them went through to become missionaries. His is the one case among the missionary kids from Tanzania whom I interviewed where place did not play a factor in where he wanted to serve or was willing to go. His missionary “calling” grew out of his own re-structuring of his Christian faith. Like the missionary generation, his and Aleda’s shared feelings about evangelical missions helped them in making the decision when he was laid off to take the opportunity to go into missions. JP Lofgren, like Vaughan, left the Lutheran church and became more involved in Evangelical churches. When he and his family went overseas as missionaries, it was with an Evangelical mission organization. Unlike Vaughan, JP had known from the time he was very small that he wanted to return as a mission doctor. As he finished high school, he knew that he would eventually become a doctor back in Africa. As JP went on through college, married, and then went on for medical training, he became more interested in public health. This eventually led to his working at the state epidemiologist’s office in Missouri for part of

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his training. In 1980, when he had finished his training, he had to decide whether to pursue careers in epidemiology or in missionary medicine. JP felt that missions were not doing any public health work and so decided to accept a position as the State Epidemiologist for the state of Arkansas. He was thirty years old and it was his first real job. He worked in Arkansas for six or seven years. Then a friend contacted him about an opportunity in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) to work with the Paul Carlson Medical Program. The position was at a rural hospital, but it did have a public health component to it. He loved being back in Africa and felt he was once again back “home.” But, soon other frustrations set in and they eventually left this mission. JP, like many of the missionaries in Ecuador and of the previous generation, had worked his entire life to prepare himself for missions, particularly in medical missions. But it became harder as he saw his own priorities in medicine change toward a stronger emphasis on public health, which mission agencies were not doing. Later in our discussions, he could see why mission organizations continued to stress curative medicine, but he felt much more comfortable working in the public health arena. Two other missionary children returned to Tanzania as missionaries. Like JP Lofgren, Steve Friberg returned as a missionary doctor and still works in Tanzania. Paul Bolstad returned to Tanzania as a teacher in the late 1970s after working in Peace Corps in the country. Both offered insights into how they combined their love of the place and how they used their career choices in the country. Unlike JP, Steve was unsure of his direction in life through his years at Wheaton College. He did not make a decision to go into medicine until after he finished college. Part of his impetus to go into medicine grew out of a conversation with Dr. Frank Jones, a doctor who had grown up in India as a child of missionaries and who had studied for the ministry and medicine to be able to return to missions. He finally was able to go to Tanzania with three children to work at the hospital in Kiomboi when Steve and I were students at Augustana School. Steve really wanted to return to Tanzania and asked Dr. Jones what the possibilities would be if he went into medicine. Dr. Jones acknowledged the hardships of medical school but felt that, if Steve took his time, he could make it through it and eventually end up overseas again. Steve decided to give it a try. This conversation was the beginning of a long process that eventually led him to becoming a missionary doctor in Tanzania. From 1979 to 1985, Steve took classes to prepare himself for medical school at the University of

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Minnesota while living with his parents in Minneapolis. From 1985 through 1989, Steve was enrolled in medical school at the University of Minnesota. Unlike JP, Steve’s focus was not on public health. He talked of his desire to go back to Tanzania as a missionary, because he felt comfortable with the Tanzanian Lutheran church, felt good about what his parents’ generation had tried to accomplish there, felt comfortable with his Kiswahili, and wanted to contribute to somehow alleviating poverty in the country. In 1992, he finished his residencies and married Bethany Lindell, whose grandfather had died with Steve’s grandfather in Loyang, China, in the midst of a typhoid epidemic. Bethany had been a World Mission Prayer League volunteer in Nepal, where she had grown up as a missionary kid. The ELCA offered Steve an opportunity to be a volunteer doctor in Tanzania and Steve took it. Eventually, this position turned into a more permanent position. Steve and Bethany have served in Tanzania since 1993. Paul Bolstad is one of the older members of the generation of missionary children that I interviewed. He was one of Augustana’s first students when it opened in 1953. His family came back to the United States in the late 1950s when his father could not go back due to illness. Paul returned to Tanzania as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s. While he enjoyed being back, he felt conflicted as a volunteer representing America because many of the Tanzanians would question the ulterior motives of the Peace Corps volunteers, while not seeing the missionaries in the same light. Moreover, he saw himself as less of a representative of the American government than a partial African. Within the missionary community, nationalistic representation was less important than being part of the Christian community. Paul returned to the United States after his Peace Corps term and began working on a master’s degree in geography. While in graduate school in Oklahoma, he met Shirley, his wife. She was Lutheran and open to overseas living. In 1973 Paul returned to Tanzania as a secondary school geography teacher at Enaboishu Secondary School, just outside of Arusha. Apart from his sense that he wanted to return overseas with a church organization rather than a government organization, Paul felt like, while he did not feel he could go out and proselytize the Gospel, he felt he had something he could offer to Tanzania, preferably in rural development. This was why he decided to apply for a missionary position with the LCA, but they only had teaching positions available for him. Paul and Shirley spent eight years in Tanzania. During the time that Paul and Shirley were there, Paul’s mother, who was a first cousin to Edith Moris, returned to Tanzania to serve in the church. Their ties to Tanzania ran deep. In both Steve’s and Paul’s cases, there was a bond to the missionary com-

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munity to Tanzania and to the African community that prompted them to return with the Lutheran church to Tanzania. Like many of the missionaries in Ecuador, Steve worked for years to prepare for his work in Tanzania. Paul found that the Church and its lack of ties to a particular government fit much better for him as someone in-between Tanzania and America, as he felt himself to be. This, along with lifelong Christian faiths, helped both men consider missions. For both, there was no particular event that led them to their mission decisions. Rather, they were propelled by a lifetime of experiences and wanting to be of service to this particular place, Tanzania. The Lutheran connection was also important for Becky Peterson. She and her husband at the time, Richard Peterson-Davis, had been working in North Carolina and were looking at a position that might open up for Richard in Florida in a year’s time. Becky had studied Christian education at a school in Virginia, but was contemplating going on to a Lutheran seminary. Both were in a period of transition in their careers when they were contacted by the LCA about a position in Liberia. They responded positively, “flew to New York; interviewed, got the job, and then we were gone. It happened so quickly.” In Becky’s case, there was almost no contemplation about what it meant to be a missionary. She felt ready when they were called and the call came at a time when they were looking for a new opportunity. They were only in Liberia for a year. Mike Peterson, Becky’s youngest brother, had a similar experience in acting quickly on a chance to return to Tanzania with the LCA as a volunteer missionary. Mike was finishing at Gustavus (we were rooming together) and was considering going to a church camp as a volunteer after he graduated. Mike at the time was somewhat of a Christian skeptic. I recall pushing him to explain how he could make this decision to go out to Tanzania and work with the church. He said that he just saw it as an opportunity to be out helping Tanzanians with improving their lives, and less as one of being a missionary. He saw himself as a volunteer employee of the Tanzanian Lutheran church. While it might seem that both Mike and Becky only received physical “calls” to mission without much spiritual forethought on their parts, in the broader sense both saw these opportunities as allowing them to be put into places where they could be of service. Becky went to a completely new place, but for Mike it was an opportunity to return to Tanzania. He also found that the LCA was a church that did not demand a huge discussion of his Christian background in order that he be employed by them. He felt that, despite his Christian skepticism, he could work within the bounds of what

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was expected of him as a mission volunteer. Like both Paul Bolstad and Steve Friberg, he had a strong sense of what he would like to do to help ordinary Tanzanians in their lives. Serving as a mission volunteer allowed him to do that. Mike met his wife, Lisa, while in Tanzania as a volunteer, and they remain there working with his brothers in their tour company, Dorobo Safaris. Steve Cunningham also returned to Tanzania as a volunteer pilot with a small Catholic organization called Flying Medical Service. Steve was in flight school when he was asked to consider working for Father Pat Patten in this work. He immediately said yes, finished flight school, and went out to Tanzania to work for Pat for over a decade. The position paid a small stipend ($100 a month), too little to actually live on, but he loved the position and in it found a sense of purpose. When I interviewed Steve in 2000 near Arusha, he had begun working as a commercial pilot. He did not find the work as rewarding as the Catholic work had been, but he needed to finally make some money to support his wife and their children. Nowhere in our discussion of his work in Tanzania did Steve discuss any spiritual aspects or motivations. But in describing his work, like the others who ended up in Tanzania, there is a strong sense of his responding to a need to be of service to the Tanzanian people. Two other missionary kids ended up working for non-Lutheran mission organizations in neighboring Kenya. Luella Peterson Weir worked for a number of years at RVA with the African Inland Mission (AIM) and Dan Ward worked out of Nairobi for a German mission that works with issues surrounding blindness and other disabilities, the Christoffel Blinden Mission. Their stories of responding to a call to missions are different, but both grew out of chance encounters. Luella’s mission story began when she returned to Tanzania to spend time with her parents after finishing college. Chartered bus trips were a big part of the start of every term at Kiomboi or RVA and a parent or responsible adult was needed for every trip to watch over these kids. Luella was soon recruited as the chaperone for the RVA bus trip. At the end of the trip, she collected all the students’ passports and took them to the office for safekeeping while they were at RVA. At the same time, she ran into the man who had driven a busload of students from neighboring Uganda—Jim Weir, a young bachelor teaching at RVA. As it was during that year that she was spending with her parents back in Tanzania, she happened to run into Jim a few more times. They both ended up being escorts for a trip up Mount Kilimanjaro during Christmas vacation and then ran into each other again as they brought in the buses once more from Tanzania and Uganda. While at RVA, Luella had a chance to talk to Joan Harding, the school nurse, who was about to have a

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baby and looked exhausted. She asked Herb Downing, the principal at RVA, if she could help Joan with her job. He was thrilled and offered her free room and board in an extra room at the infirmary and $150 a month. Luella and Jim now began to really get to know each other as fellow staff members. She finished out her year at RVA and then stayed on for another year. In December of the second year, Jim and Luella were married at Makumira, Tanzania. I remember being at the wedding, which Luella described as the melding of the AIM and Lutheran missions. At the end of that second academic year, Jim and Lu returned to Wisconsin as a young married couple. Jim worked on a master’s degree, while Luella worked in nursing. Just when they were finally finding positions they really enjoyed, they were once again called by AIM to consider positions again at RVA. Luella had just started working as a public health nurse and AIM called to ask if they might consider returning to RVA. Both of them felt they were in a good place, so with some reluctance they considered going out again, with the attitude that if God allows it to happen, they would do it. Jim and Lu were at RVA when I was a student. Jim was my P.E. and science teacher and Lu was the school nurse. It was nice to feel like there was a Lutheran presence in the staff at RVA in the person of Luella while we were there. With the closing of Kiomboi, some of the Lutheran students went to RVA early and Luella was recruited once again to teach Confirmation classes to this small minority of Lutheran students who were among a group of people who did not have this as part of their coming-of-age rituals. Lu and Jim left RVA in 1978 and spent the rest of their working lives between Wisconsin and New Mexico. In the chapter on the college experience, I wrote about Dan Ward’s college experience. As Dan was finishing up his years at the University of Washington, he considered going to graduate school in African studies. A member of his Dad’s congregation in Nairobi told Bob Ward of the expansion of the Christoffel Blinden Mission (CBM) program in Nairobi. Dan was urged to apply. Dan both applied to UCLA for a masters/PhD program in African studies and went to Germany for interviews for the Christoffel Blinden Mission. Both accepted him, but with the UCLA position Dan wanted to make sure there was funding for a teaching assistantship, married student housing, and other things before he would accept it. They waited anxiously to hear from UCLA about having those things in place, but nothing ever came. He decided that was a sign to go with CBM. Upon returning from Germany where he had signed his contract, he received a tattered envelope from the post office with a note saying that the letter offering full support at UCLA was found behind a mail sorting machine.

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At no time in our discussion did Dan talk about Christian influences on his decision to go to Kenya. His father had felt such a dramatic call. One can see traces of his father’s experience if one considers the non-delivery of the letter from UCLA as a confirmation for him that going with CBM to Kenya was the right decision. I asked him whether in his decision to join a mission, he felt anything like his dad had experienced. He said of his own experiences, “I never really felt ‘a saved experience’ at that time in my life. I since have felt it, but not at that time. I had to become a missionary to become saved. I don’t use that terminology, but I went through different experiences.” These two experiences are tied to a particular country, but in different ways. Luella returned to work in a place she had known well as a teenager using her nursing background, in contrast to the occupational struggles that her mom, Ruth, had felt in choosing to get a degree in library science. Dan and Luella both met their spouses in Kenya, which made it easier to consider working in the country. In choosing to go with AIM a second time, Luella sought a sign that this was the right calling. AIM, as part of its mission, wanted their missionaries to feel that their service on the mission field was a calling. A clear sense of a call on the part of their missionaries did not seem to be as important for a mission like CBM. Finally, my brother, Todd, worked as a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) volunteer in Chad for three years. Todd was first exposed to the work of MCC through encounters while in Africa during his junior year of college and liked their philosophical orientation. Todd knew he wanted to go overseas. Nearing the end of college, Todd approached different Christian overseas volunteer organizations. He interviewed with Lutheran World Relief (LWR), but noted that all the people who interviewed him at LWR had worked as MCC volunteers at one point. In contrast to many of the others who wanted to be back in Tanzania, Todd wanted to explore new languages and cultures. The foreign language criterion would keep him out of East Africa. As he said of his decision making, “I knew I wanted to go overseas, but it was as much reaction against America as it was to go back to my roots. And, partially it wasn’t to go back to my roots. I didn’t want to go back to where Mom and Dad were.” Todd’s wife, Betsy, his classmate at RVA, did not mind returning to Africa, but the heat and poverty of Chad was not an easy place to immediately feel at home. Since then, Todd and Betsy have led a very African-oriented life, spending several years in Kenya and going to Malawi after six years in graduate school. After spending seven years in the States while their two children were in high school, they returned to Africa, living in Kampala, Uganda, before moving for one year to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 2013 they returned the United States, but a move back to Africa has not been ruled out.

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For many of these children of missionaries who worked for missions, a common denominator was the chance to go back to Africa and be of service. Some like Steve Friberg and Vaughan Hagberg spent years preparing to become missionaries, but for many others it was a very quick decision. While many of the missionaries spoke about having a call to missions, few of their children spoke of their own calls to mission. While the nature of their calls to service overseas fit some of the reasons that Swanson discussed related to the calls to mission experienced by the second generation missionaries to Ecuador in his study, a factor for most was a desire to help out in a place in which they grew up. I now want to consider the experience of a group of us missionary children who felt a call to return overseas, but never were able to do so. All three looked at the possibilities of a career in missions, going so far as to interview for positions on the mission field. Dean Jackson struggled with how to return to Africa with a faith that he felt was quite different from that of his parents. Pete Friberg interviewed with the mission boards of the LCA and the ELCA at different times to explore returning to Africa, but found himself turned down, even when the job felt right for him. Finally, Lynnae Hagberg looked at mission opportunities, but in the end decided to stay in the States. As Dean Jackson grew up in Tanzania, he loved hunting. His home in Iowa reflects this love with many trophies on the walls. As he neared his RVA graduation, he had a long talk with his father, Elder, about whether he could stay in Tanzania as a professional hunter. Dean had talked to people who might be able to set him up, but Elder did not see any future for Dean in it. His father asked him to give college a try, and if when he was done and he still wanted to be a professional hunter, he could come back and pursue that dream. While Dean saw that he could stay forever in East Africa, his father was not convinced. As I wrote about earlier, Dean pursued a religion major at Gustavus. He could have gone on to seminary like his father had done, but it did not feel right for him. He did not feel that his faith matched that of his father anymore, so he questioned whether he could return to Africa as a missionary. Still drawn to outdoor pursuits, Dean went to Alaska to work in natural resources. It was dangerous work with poor pay, so he decided not to pursue work in the area and returned to the Midwest. He was able to get work in a school in St. Paul as a teacher’s aide and janitor. As he worked with the students, he was convinced that he would make a good teacher. Dean obtained a master’s degree in order to teach. Still wanting to return to Africa, he decided to visit Kenya and Tanzania with his new wife, Trish, and find out if she would be willing to live there. As he set up their little pup tent in the

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middle of Maasai Mara, he was thrilled to be surrounded by all that wildlife. For her it was completely different. As he said, “For me, it was fun; for her, it was terrifying. She said, ‘No, I can’t live this far away from my family. It’s okay for a little while, but not to stay.’” Dean’s final career decision was made after that trip. He continued to contemplate seminary, but not wanting to lead a parish in the United States, and seeing mission opportunities dwindle, he decided that being a teacher was the right thing for him to do. As he said about the choice, “The way things were going there (in Tanzania) helped me decide that I might as well. . . . I wanted to do something worthwhile, and that was how I got into education, I guess.” Dean recently retired from teaching. He guides hunters on a parttime basis at a local private game reserve. He remains passionate both about his teaching and his work outdoors. Pete Friberg found himself up against brick walls when he applied for different missionary positions with LCA and later with ELCA. While at Wheaton College, Pete had decided that he wanted to be a pastor and return to Tanzania as a missionary. He completed three years of seminary in Bristol, England, before finishing seminary at Luther-Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul. As he neared completion of seminary, he met with the LCA missionary board, as the previous generation of seminarians had done with the Augustana mission board. They felt he was too naïve and needed to work for a year in a non-church environment to gain experience. While crushed by their reaction, he did as they suggested. While he accepted the decision philosophically, he still wanted to go to Tanzania as a missionary. After completing a year of employment outside of the church and another year of church internship in South Sioux City, Nebraska, he once again went to LCA, thinking that now he could return to Tanzania. This time they told him that they would hire him, but that he had to serve an American parish first before he could go. As he looked back on it many years later, he felt it was the right decision on their part, because he had no sense of how the American church worked. But, as we sat in his Nebraska parsonage, he regretted that he had not been able to leave Nebraska and pursue his plan in missions. Since I interviewed Pete in 2000, he subsequently had another interview with ELCA for the country director position in Tanzania. Again, he felt his hopes rising, and then, when he was not chosen for the position, once again felt crushed in spirit. Lynnae Hagberg had considered mission positions at different times in her life. When she finished Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD, she moved to Minneapolis to work as a nurse. She joined Trinity Lutheran Church of

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Minnehaha Falls, a very mission-minded church. Through a program through her church, she spent a few months working in a refugee camp in Thailand trying to decide if this was something she should consider as a career. She returned feeling it was not the right thing for her. This was before Lynnae married Don Winnes. Don, though raised in the United States, had a strong interest in missions through his own involvement in Trinity Lutheran Church and his friendship with the Fribergs, who belonged to the same church. Soon after they were married, Don and Lynnae considered positions at Rosslyn Academy in Nairobi. Lynnae had been a student there for part of her education. But, the timing did not seem right, being newly married. Although the mission board had a policy against sending newlyweds to the field, the board was willing to waive the policy for them. However, they felt that the policy was reasonable, and decided they should wait. Unfortunately, no other position for them has since come up. Like many from the generation of missionary children who feel they have something to offer overseas, but who continue to live in the United States, she expressed well the sense of ambivalence that pervades their lives: Well part of it, I kept thinking, is that if I can’t be a Christian to my universe here in the States, I would have to say the people here are still my culture. I mean that I am much more of this culture than I am of an African culture. You know, I am part of a Third World culture, but if I am going to have to be in any group, if I can’t start here, how I am ever going to share across a culture. And so I realized, that first I had to be comfortable here. And I had to be comfortable with the trade-off. I see it, Minneapolis, as my home, but I don’t feel deep roots here. If I moved away from here, the reasons to come back wouldn’t be strong. I don’t have those deep feelings to come back here like I still have for Africa. And I don’t know how to explain myself. It’s probably more so because I have my family now. To go back overseas, we both have got to be ready.

In Lynnae, we see a strong spirituality that was a hallmark of the first generation of missionaries, but that is often missing from the MK generation, but we also see that strong connection to place, that, despite having lived in the same Minneapolis neighborhood for over twenty-five years, she is still very connected to Africa.

Conclusion What I have tried to show in this chapter is how the experience of a call to missions overseas varied greatly among people who chose to work for mission organizations in two generations and between the group of missionaries

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that Swanson studied and this group of American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania. The differences between the generations, I feel, hinge mainly on the emphasis on spirituality. For most of the first generation, there was a strong sense of finding positions that were of Christian service overseas, but this varied between men and women. For many of the men, there was a choice to become a pastor that was not available to the women at the time. There also was the need to merge the call experiences of two people as they contemplated marriage. For the second generation, most of the people who went into missions were drawn to it because it was a chance to return to Africa. Place seemed to be just as strong a criterion for going into missions as was spirituality. However, place was not a strong criterion for Vaughan Hagberg, so that his experience seems to be the closest to the types of call experiences of the missionaries to Ecuador described by Swanson. The contrast between the Ecuador group and the Tanzania group of missionaries, I feel, centered on the lack of a monumental decision time among the Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania. Like the Ecuadorian missionaries, this group grew up in mission-minded churches and their decisions to go into missions were often made at a very young age. But the nature of Lutheranism with its emphasis on infant baptism and living a Christian life, made their call experience one that was less of a clear single event. This emphasis on Christian service lasted into the second generation. This group tended to be less spiritual, but almost all of the people I interviewed in this group wanted to do something of Christian service. How then do the missionaries and their children that I have highlighted here help us understand “the call” differently? I believe that the denominational structure of a group of Christians adds a different element to the “call” experience. While there are adult Lutheran converts, most Lutherans became Christians through their infant baptisms. This influences how they see Christianity. It was a lifelong struggle to understand what it meant to live a Christian life and be of Christian service. I also believe that place can have an equally strong influence on the nature of a call experience. Members of the second generation who chose careers in missions were strongly influenced by place. They wanted to be of Christian service to people in the place where they had been raised.

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Making Sense of an Alien Place Tanzania

For many people, the lives of missionaries are ones that have become part of folklore. Stories grew up around David Livingstone and stories in missionary book series, like Jungle Doctor, helped whet young Christians’ appetites to become missionaries. But the lives of missionaries generally were much more complicated than these stories bring out. In this section, I will explore how the missionaries made connections within the missionary community, with the African people they served, and to the land of Tanzania. Many of the stories told by the early American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania in periodicals like Lutheran Companion and Mission Tidings brought out strong feelings of disconnect between a “heathen” African culture and that of a “righteous” American and missionary culture. How did the missionaries make sense of the people in Tanzania and this place so that they might even see it as their home? For the most part, the stories that drew these missionaries to Africa were ones of evangelism. This is what they felt called to do. As they arrived and stayed on in Africa, their calls changed again and again. I will discuss what the actual work of the missionaries to Tanzania was and how this changed over time. I also will examine the dynamics of family connections and disconnections in the lives of the missionaries. For some, breaking away from their parental families to go to Tanzania was not that difficult, while for others it was very hard. More significantly given the focus of this book, the lives of missionaries often demanded breaking away from their own children. The emotional strains within these conflicting demands required considerable strength to endure.

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All of the missionaries I interviewed worked in Tanzania for at least twenty years. For some their careers as missionaries in Tanzania came to an unexpected abrupt end; others decided to end their time in Tanzania midcareer to pursue opportunities elsewhere, while the majority finished out their careers in Tanzania and chose to retire in the United States. For almost all, Tanzania was never judged to be a place in which they ultimately might settle permanently. Finally, continuing on from chapter 5, I will consider how the missionaries as they were in retirement or at the end of their careers perceived their earlier calls to mission in Tanzania and how that call played out within their time as missionaries there.

Forming Connections to the Missionary Community, the African People, and the Land Our missionaries are endeavoring to the best of their ability to follow this ideal and to try to understand the native, but those who have served the longest are the readiest to admit their limitations. A veteran of more than fifty years of service in Africa . . . said: “No white man can claim to fully understand the African. There are certain things about which he rarely if ever speaks to his white friend. (Swanson 1948, 148)

A common message in the early writings of the pioneer American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania was one of a feeling of separateness from the Africans. The Africans’ “heathenness” and their blackness stood out for these new missionaries as they contemplated how to work and feel connected to them. The theme of this section is one of connections and community as I investigate how the missionaries developed a sense of community with each other, formed connections to the African population, and how they made Tanzania a place that they called home for up to forty years. While Tanzania had been on the minds of these new missionaries for years as they planned on becoming missionaries to this new place, their first perceptions upon arrival remained vivid to them years later. Each could tell me what it had been like to arrive by ship in Mombasa or Dar-es-Salaam, make their way by train to Singida or Moshi, expecting someone to be there to meet them when they arrived and, in many cases, finding no one there. Several commented on the large pineapple plantations that they saw along the way, later sheepishly realizing that these were sisal plantations and not pineapple. For some who had been overseas elsewhere, they could see connections between the places they had been and East Africa. My father arrived first as a single man from having spent eighteen months as a mis-

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sionary in British North Borneo. He now was moving on to another part of the British Empire, and this made the transition somewhat easier, as the way they did things in one part of the Empire was similar to how things were done in other parts. Ruth Friberg, having been a missionary child in India, saw much in Tanganyika that reminded her of India and of the missionary culture that she had experienced as a child. Dar-es-Salaam seemed to her quite similar to Madras. However, arriving on the Iramba Plateau in central Tanganyika, she was surprised by the baobab trees, which did not look like regular trees. Moreover, the missionary stations in India had all been in urban settings, while in Tanganyika all the stations were very rural. But, the missionary culture was similar in both places. Most of the first few months for the new missionaries were spent in learning Kiswahili; usually someone local was hired to teach them. For many of the pastors, a mark of their Kiswahili ability was how long it took them before they could give their first sermon in Kiswahili. While some felt they received good language training, most commented on how slipshod their Kiswahili instruction ended up being. This was especially true for the missionary wives, who often had young children to run after and could not spend much time in language training. As they saw their Kiswahili improve with time, they were able to enjoy their work. In discussing the places they had lived in central Tanzania, Orv and June Nyblade discussed how the nature of their connections to the places they lived—Ihanja, Kititimu, and Mgori—were determined in part by their own growing ability to communicate in Kiswahili. In Ihanja, where they were placed first, few spoke Kiswahili and all the worship services were held in Kinyaturu, the local language, and they found it took a lot of selfdiscipline to attend church regularly. When they moved to Kititimu, just outside of Singida, with its ethnically mixed population, Kiswahili was the common language for everything and they felt they could converse with everybody. Mgori, their next stop, was a place that was also Kinyaturu speaking, but now they felt much more comfortable with the local population. June said of this time, “I felt a little more part of the African community at Mgori. The people walked right by our house, very close to our home, on the way up the mountain. I had more opportunity to interact with them.” The missionary community was growing in the 1940s and 1950s. Most new missionaries found that it was one that was easy to fit into. Many had known each other in seminary, and they became dependent on each other. Louise Faust later described the joy she felt within this missionary community and why it was so cohesive:

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It was after the Second World War and . . . they had pulled all their missionaries, except for some of the older ones—Dr. George Anderson (wife, Annette), Eugene Johnson (wife, Edythe), and Ludwig Melander (wife, Esther). . . . they were the only older missionaries when we came out. There was this big age gap, and we were all fresh out of the seminary. We were about 100 out there, counting the children, wives, and everyone. We had our 14 mission stations to draw on for children. We were all having children at the same time, and so these children sort of literally grew up together. We were aunties and uncles to the other children. . . . So it was just one big happy family. (Sweinseid 1993, 12)

I quoted Orv Nyblade earlier about how this missionary community could dominate one’s thinking and keep one from really getting to know the African people. Louise Faust did find solace in this large American missionary community in Central Tanzania, but she also felt that it pulled her away in her early years from connecting with the African people. She spoke to the same interviewer about how she had done this: I’ll have to say frankly I was very homesick. So I used my child really as an excuse (to not learn the language well). If anyone would have told me that I would spend 26 years in Africa at that time, I would have said, “I won’t survive the first five.” I was very, very homesick and very lonely, and I didn’t talk about it much, but I would find myself using the child as an excuse not to learn the language. (Sweinseid 1993, 8–9)

Louise Faust later engaged closely with the African culture as a nurse in Balangida. Herb and Kirsten Hafermann lived in the Dar-es-Salaam area for their first years in Africa. Distant from the main American Lutheran mission areas in Tanzania, they were happy that they did not have such a dominant missionary culture to live within. In looking back at the places they lived and their connection with the growing Tanzanian church, they were pleased with how it had worked out. With Tanzania gaining its independence at the end of 1961, the church became much less of a mission church and much more of a national church. The missionary men began to work under African leadership. But, for many of the women, their lives did not change much with Independence. They had to learn to form connections to women in the community in other ways. Both Louise Olson and Gloria Cunningham wrote about how African women helped them to understand grief and the need to move on after the deaths of stillborn children:

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At first I wanted the members of our Kijota congregation to comfort me, to come and weep with us, to speak God’s words of comfort and hope. It didn’t happen just the way I expected. Slowly I saw that we had joined a big group of people who had already experienced bereavements and losses of many kinds. They understood. But it was I who needed to share the joy of the angels who had carried me through dark days, the strength of the Good Shepherd whose rod and staff took us through the valley of the shadow of death. And as I was able to share these things with African friends and neighbors, I myself was comforted too and grew in the knowledge of God’s love and care. (Louise Olson in Cunningham and Okerstrom 1998, 33)

Gloria Cunningham experienced the ministry of a fellow African pastor’s wife and her two friends as she dealt with a similar loss: One afternoon, Mrs. Manase Yona, wife of the African pastor at Kiomboi Church, and two of her friends came to visit me. Love shone in Mrs. Yona’s eyes as she shared her compassion and honesty with me. “We have seen that your heart is heavy. We have been praying for you.” They talked with me about the child we had lost and who was now buried in the church cemetery just behind the school. Mrs. Yona closed her eyes in a moment of thought. “You know,” she said, measuring her words carefully, “almost every African mother has lost a child, and some have lost two or three and even more. We feel your pain.” I felt a lump in my throat and my eyes began to smart. “All mothers feel deeply grieved when they lose a child. You have been grieving, and that is needed for a time. Grieving does not mean that you lack faith,” she declared. “The three of us have been praying for you. We believe that now God has something else for you to do. When the time comes for you and your husband to move to another mission station, God will show you opportunities to share in the medical work. There is a tremendous need for child health clinics in the outlying villages, training women in basic health care and prenatal care for expectant mothers. You will be able to encourage and assist other mothers to have healthy children.” Like a flash of light, her words had touched my heart. “Oh God . . . help!” Great pain-racked sobs, tears of healing, and then my pain was eased. God had shown his presence and love for me through these special messengers. I felt at peace for the first time in many months. At that moment, when these three women so tenderly ministered to me, I comprehended the reality of the truth that mission is a two-way bridge: we bring—we receive. (Cunningham in Cunningham and Okerstrom 1998, 359–360)

Closeness with the African population came as the missionaries tried to help local villagers in times of struggle. The Hagbergs described how they had worked on famine relief in the Loliondo area in the 1960s and early 1970s.

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Later, they were called to help with the local food insecurity that resulted when the village of Bonga, where they lived, went through the Ujamaa villagization program. While the missionary children, in my interviews with them, had described the landscapes of their childhoods vividly and emotively, the missionaries, while describing their initial impressions of the landscape of Tanzania in great depth, did not describe the places they lived with as much feeling. The African people and the missionary community helped define Tanzania for most of the missionaries; the places in which they lived and worked did not. The Lofgrens, who had loved living in Ruruma in central Tanzania, found their move to Mwika on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro a somewhat hard move, because of a lack of social interaction with other missionaries at Mwika, something that was more common for them at Ruruma. For the Olsons and Nyblades, as they moved from dry central Tanzania to well-watered Makumira in northern Tanzania, the contrasts between the two places stood out. The Nyblades described living in Makumira as “luxury plus. We had electricity . . . and water most of the time . . . and we had rain, more green, and fresh fruits and vegetables all year around.” But June found that she missed the wind and “the grand vistas” of the Central region. Howie described how Makumira was partly chosen as the site for the new seminary for its water. Lou contrasted how water and electricity were viewed differently in the two places, “In Central Diocese, we could use all the electricity we wanted because it was off of the light plants (generators), where whether you had the lights on or off, it didn’t cost you anymore. But there wasn’t enough water in the Central Diocese, so we guarded the water and used electricity. But in Makumira, we used all the water we wanted, and guarded the electricity, which was expensive.” The lives of the missionaries were somewhat nomadic with most missionaries moving four or five times during their missionary career. The only missionaries to build a home in Tanzania were Dave and Eunie Simonson, who built their home in Ilboru above Arusha on the slopes of Mount Meru on land donated by the local people. In my interview with them, both spoke of how the house given him allowed their family to feel a more permanent connection to Tanzania. Through the years, the missionaries formed connections to the people and the places of Tanzania. Still, barriers remained. When I asked Orv Nyblade what had been the worst part of being a missionary, he echoed the words of Swanson quoted at the opening of this section: I always felt it was a problem to understand the nuances of language and the cultural signs that were there. Even up to the end, I often depended upon Afri-

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can faculty (at Makumira seminary) to interpret what was really going on and I was unhappy that after 37 years, I was still struggling with the communication problem of being able to fully make an independent judgment of really what the situation was in terms of what people were saying.

June, his wife, in a similar vein, wrote a poem, “Missionary Musings,” for a church publication, which expressed how hard it was for an American missionary to really know a person from a culture so different from the American one, even with knowing the language: I thought I knew you. For these many years I’ve come to know your language, Speak your idiom, Sing your tunes. And then today in our women’s meeting the discussion drifted to the proper way to announce one’s pregnancy. Ancient custom was aborted if one’s mother-in-law was not the first to share the promise of another generation. You have shed traditional cloth to gird yourself in voguish gowns and platform shoes. From visible traditions you are free. Yet, within wound close about yourself are age-old reins that curb your head and heart. When shall I know you or understand? Perhaps another year or two of serving here, Or, surely at the last. (Nyblade in Baraneck and Slifer 1987, 35)1

While the Nyblades connected in many ways with people in Africa and made it their home, along certain dimensions deep connections with the African people still eluded them. Their experience in this regard was not unique.

Missionary Work The missionary home on furlough is an unimpressive fellow because he is out of his own element, a fish on dry land. Follow him in his work on the mission field and you discover that every missionary is in fact a bishop, a church statesman, responsible, where the work has been in progress for some time,

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for thousands of Christians and charged with the guidance and direction of a large number of evangelists and teachers. He is superintendent of a large number of little elementary schools. He is constantly engaged in the construction of buildings, ranging from churches to little mud-walled bush schools. He is often the treasurer of several funds and the paymaster as well as the timekeeper of a number of employees. If he is a medical missionary, his duties are just as complex, because then he is, with the assistance of a nurse or two, running an institution which in America would call for a large staff; and he must organize his work so as to use the services of many native helpers. Besides his bed-patients, hundreds of out-patients may knock at his door in one day. (Swanson 1948, 39–40)

For us missionary children, we were aware of our parents’ work and, when we could, took part in their work life. This was easier when their role was primarily pastoral, rather than educational. But we were not as in tune to the many responsibilities of their work that Swanson describes. Kim Jackson related how his father had pointed out that the different ways the two generations perceived Tanzania was partially due to the heavy work load of the missionaries. We, their children, in contrast, he said, could just roam around on our vacations. Swanson, in the passage above, does not describe the role of missionary wives. Their responsibilities were in different areas than their husbands’. Moreover the roles of missionaries in the field, for both the men and the women, changed over time. Also, furlough time in the United States added different responsibilities and challenges. Their rural Depression-era childhoods prepared many of the missionaries for life in rural Tanganyika. Both Elder Jackson and Les Peterson, both of whom had grown up near Rosholt, SD, compared their Depression-era lives to their new life in rural central Tanganyika. Elder said, “Undoubtedly, the years growing up in rural South Dakota during the Depression helped with making do.” Les Peterson felt that some things were an improvement in rural Isanzu, Tanganyika, for him and his wife, Ruth. “Because we went from the South Dakota farm and the Wisconsin farm, we at least knew a little bit about rural life. And we had outside toilets in South Dakota. We graduated into running water and everything at Isanzu. Everything was much better in Isanzu.” Ruth added, however, that by the time they returned to the United States, their home farms were much better off than their Tanganyikan mission stations. Howie Olson described how two Kiswahili words that could be mistaken for one another also described his mistaken expectations of what he thought he would be doing out in Africa:

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In Kiswahili the word for pastor is mchungaji, and the word for builder is mjengaji. Now within one month of taking up my pastorate, I was involved in so many building projects that I didn’t know if I was a mchungaji or mjengaji. The immediate demands were for two school units, two boys’ dormitories for 60 boys in the third and fourth grades, several teachers’ houses, a missionary residence, a medical dispensary, a church and a cistern. (Olson 2001, 85)

Others questioned whether all these building projects fit into their call. Both Bob Ward and Dean Peterson described their frustrations at the end of their first terms. Was this what they were called to do? Our first term had been almost consumed in constructing buildings. We had built and maintained school buildings, dispensary buildings and put up bush school structures, as well as remodeling our house. Many times I felt much more like a truck driver or builder than a pastor. I had gotten satisfaction from doing these jobs, but I felt this should have second priority and place in my work as an evangelist, and not become number one. (Ward 1999, 117–118) That’s the time when we were busy building those 74 primary schools all over the Synod, and I found I was too much with building, too much with school supplies. I wrote the Board and said, “You know, I don’t think I’ll come back because I spent all these years to train in theology and here I am doing education secretary stuff.” They heard my cry and sent Della Brown. That made all the difference in the world. It was a real dilemma—when you go to school 20-some years and the whole last eight or nine years have been for one specific training (to be a pastor). It’s not that I didn’t think the schools were important. It’s just that I thought somebody else should be doing it. I think it’s right that you have to find your own way of doing things. You know that, as a pastor, you’re called for Word and Sacrament and teaching and all that, but at the same time, I don’t think any job description can really do it. You have to say, “This is the opportunity. This is what we’re going to do” and they surely couldn’t accuse us of not working hard. We worked hard and maybe we didn’t do it all right, but we did enough right so the Church was born anyway. (Dean Peterson)

However, many missionaries were able to pursue work that was personally meaningful to them. For example, Howie Olson was able to take his linguistic skills and begin a translation of the Bible into the Turu language. He then began working on incorporating more local hymns into the Tanzanian hymnbooks. Bob Ward was able do more evangelism work with the Watindiga, a hunter-gatherer group living near Lake Eyasi. American Lutheran missionaries in the northern area of Tanzania also had heavy workloads. Ray Hagberg came to Tanzania to work in education,

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but soon took on additional work in evangelism for several years, feeling that, since he was young, he could do it. But he found himself spread too thin, not being able to do all that both areas of work required. Elder Jackson moved from the central area of the mission to Karatu in the northern area. He was responsible for a large area of the country and felt overwhelmed. Renee described the years in Karatu as the hardest time she had while in Africa because of Elder’s frequent absences and no means of transportation for herself. The four older children were away at Augustana School, so when her twins, Martha and Debbie, were born, she felt overwhelmed in caring for them. Each missionary household was encouraged to hire many servants, so it might have seemed as if life was easy for the missionary wives. Les Peterson described the five different servants the early mission felt they should have: an ayah to care for the children, a cook, an inside-cleaning man, an outside man for wood, and someone to collect water and help with the wash. He added that these staff were often underworked, but that “We inherited the system. . . . There was nothing else.” Louise Olson described what the rationale was for each family to have so many servants: Yes, we did have help, and for that I was always grateful, because it was more than just the physical help of housekeeping and cooking, because everything had to be made from scratch, and all the water and milk separated and boiled. But it was also contact with the community, and help with the language. Contact with the whole extended family. Their extended family became our extended family and some of their children we’d helped put through school, as a way of encouraging, and thanking them for their help to us. And to this day, they remain special memories and friends of ours. A gift from God we really thought these people were, because their friendships were invaluable. (Carlson 1993, 7)

For June Nyblade, having servants brought mixed feelings, as she found it hard to have someone working in the home with her. But she did need someone to help cut wood and bring in water. Hospitality also could be an important role for many missionary wives. When I finished high school, one career path I considered was to be a hotel manager, because I always enjoyed the many guests at our house while growing up. In her memoir, my mother had a whole chapter on hospitality. She describes how it was an integral part of life among the missionary community in Tanzania, critical for communication.

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Becoming a missionary put something of a new spin on hospitality. I have written about so many facets of our life in Tanzania as missionaries but seemingly have left out one of the major roles we played, especially for me as homemaker in the partnership. Our home always had “Open House,” no matter if we lived in the bush at Loliondo or in the city of Arusha and at the other stops along the way. It was our major social life. (Benson 2006, 86)

Finally, the women took up different roles outside of the home. Some were able to use their training in nursing, others taught, and others conducted sewing classes for women in different locations. Kirsten Hafermann described how various positions evolved for her as she worked with women in their rural Dar-es-Salaam mission, but how she then became a church secretary in the city. Ruth Peterson described the joy she received from helping to teach sewing to women with leprosy. My mother found fulfillment in a multitude of tasks in the international community in Arusha, including helping in the local English-speaking Anglican church and helping start the Arusha Community Church. In addition, she served as consul for the northern area for the American Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam and on the ISM school board for many years. When Elaine Peterson lived at Makumira, she was involved in radio work, while Louise Olson involved herself with teaching and church activities at the same place. As the mission became a church and the missionaries became veteran missionaries, their roles changed. Few of the men remained as parish pastors exclusively. Building was not as important a role as it had been in the past either. Some moved into work that was more educational, becoming teachers at Bible schools or at Makumira Seminary. Others were called to administration within different church organizations. Within the education area, some were able to work with their wives as fellow teachers. Dottie Lofgren taught with Mel after they moved from the Central Diocese to Mwika Bible School near Moshi. Les and Ruth Peterson worked together at Ihanja Bible School when they moved there from the Mgori parish. Ruth was able to help teach classes in some of her areas of expertise. Similarly, when Dean Peterson took charge of the Extension Seminary in the Arusha Synod, Elaine became part of the team that helped run the program. For those missionaries involved in administration, the work could not be shared with a spouse. Both my father and Herb Hafermann took on administrative duties with the Arusha Synod and the Eastern and Coastal Diocese, respectively. My father felt that his years as vice president of the Synod were the low point of his career in Africa. While he enjoyed visiting different churches, he found church politics troubling and the administrative work

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excessive and unsatisfying. Managing the development work of the Synod and being in charge of different parishes in his final years in Tanzania were much more rewarding. “It was a very, very good mix for me. I could keep my identity as a pastor with the congregation and then I could keep my interest in Development and Social Ministry through the office.” Herb Hafermann, in contrast, enjoyed his years as Diocese president. “I could always be a pastor and still be synod president and handle administration without overdoing it.” After years of doing evangelistic work in the central area, Bob Ward spent several years running the audio-visual department for the ELCT in Arusha, but ended up being disappointed in this role. At the outset, the position was one of excitement, but it grew into a position of frustration as his efforts were affected by politics with the church headquarters and by a dishonest assistant whom the church never disciplined. He left the position somewhat disappointed. Finally, the missionaries’ lives were not all in Africa. Every four years or so, they went back to the United States to do deputation among churches, to recuperate, and to study. Many of the missionary men worked on obtaining higher degrees over several furloughs. Others, like Ray Hagberg and Harald Palm, decided to leave education work, attended seminary, and entered the ministry. Both were ordained after they had been in Africa several terms. In between classes, there were churches to visit and speak at. The missionaries generally were happy to get back to Tanzania at the end of their furloughs, but unlike us children, furloughs were something the missionaries looked forward to. However, they brought their own challenges as well. Sitting in the house where she had spent her first furlough, now retired, my mother spoke to me about how much she had anticipated that first furlough. But, her anticipation was not realized in the end as she faced weeks without my father as he was away on deputation, coped with living in a small house with my grandparents and two toddlers, and depended on others for transport. Others dealt with illness. Dean and Elaine Peterson described the furlough of 1967–1968 when Dean had a tumor removed from his spine and subsequently he became very sick and had to learn to walk again with a leg that was essentially dead. Similarly, the Nyblades spent three years in the United States while their son Walter healed from what was thought of as a brain tumor. They could not think of going back to Tanzania with Walter in this shape. Orv was able to get a position in Chicago at the Maywood School of Missions and they were able to stay there for two years. At the end of their third year in the States, Walter had regained his health, and they decided to head back to Tanzania.

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However, furloughs could bring times of celebrations. For the Olsons, who had suffered through the stillborn birth of their first son, their furloughs offered them chances to adopt children, adopting Howard Junior during their first furlough; Sharon on their next, and finally both Tim and Linda. For these missionaries, whether in Tanzania or on furlough, there was much for them to do. While often overwhelmed, most expressed a strong sense of contentment and meaning in their work.

Family Connections “I’ll be Your Mother” “Do you really mean it, Lord, that I should leave my father, mother, three brothers, and sister in order to serve you in Africa? You know I love them and can’t leave them—use me somewhere else!” My 13-year-old mind and soul prayed through tears after I returned from a most stimulating Confirmation lesson on David Livingstone’s work and the need for more missionaries in Africa. In later years, . . . more loudly and clearly than before, the call came along with His Word from Mark 10:29–30: “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the Gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” With the promise before me, but little realizing how it would be kept, I set out for Africa. It didn’t take long before I recognized that there is truly no east, west, north or south in Christ, that in Him we are one family regardless of race or color. Experiencing the extended family that the Lord provides us is one of the many joys of serving overseas. When my mother went Home to the Lord, a little Turu woman told me, “I’ll be your mother!” To this day I call her “Mother” as we share in Christian fellowship. An Iramba pastor, who had met my parents while he was in the States, immediately told me he’d be “my father” when he heard of Dad’s Homecoming. Hundreds of children, youth and adults I’ve taught have been my children, brothers, and sisters in the Lord. . . . Does the Lord fulfill his Word? Yes indeed!—A hundred-fold while living here now, “and in the age to come eternal life.” (Lois Swanson in Barnabek and Slifer 1987, 104–105)

While single worker Lois Swanson’s story is one that could fit in to how missionaries made sense of Africa, it also highlights the struggles some felt as they had to leave their parental families and how then they worked at developing their own sense of family in this new place. Most experienced a second loss as they sent their children off to boarding school. This section is about this leave taking from the parental family, issues affecting the differ-

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ent missionary families in Tanzania, including boarding school issues and its place in their work as missionaries. My mother often said that the missionaries who found it hardest to be missionaries were those who had very good and strong relationships with their own birth families. She did not consider her own relationship with her parents to be strong. Orv and June Nyblade found the leave-taking easier because of their own independent natures developed as children. Still, for many others, it was not an easy process. Jeanne Ward described the extreme sadness of her mother, a Norwegian immigrant, as she and Bob left for Africa: It was September 1954. My husband Bob and I, together with our two little ones, Kristine, two years, and Daniel, nine months, were ready to sail from New York on the Queen Elizabeth II, on our way to Tanganyika, East Africa. That was the exciting part. I was sad because saying goodbye to my mother had been very difficult. She turned away and wouldn’t—or couldn’t—say goodbye. Perhaps it reminded her of when she had left Norway at the age of 19 to emigrate to America and didn’t return to visit Scandinavia until 45 years later. She wasn’t ready to let me go and to trust in God’s care. She thought Bob was taking me to the other end of the world and that she wouldn’t see me again. (Ward in Cunningham and Okerstrom 1998, 373)

Being so far away, final goodbyes could often not be said. Eunie Simonson brought out this sadness when relating how she received the news of the death of her mother when living out in remote Loliondo. With mail and telegrams coming in bunches, the first of a set of telegrams from her family back in Minnesota told of her mother’s stroke and asking if she could come home; the next asking again if she could come; and, finally, a third one telling of her death and their quandary about the funeral time, unsure when Eunie might be able to make it back. Emotions such as guilt and depression soon followed. Her belief pulled her out. She truly believed that she and her husband were in Africa as the will of God. Events would happen in their lives that would leave them isolated from the lives of those they loved in their old world. . . . Mission had become the most important fact of their lives and inevitably it would widen the distance between those two worlds. Being thousands of miles from her mother at the time of her mother’s death could not lessen the closeness she felt with her at this moment, the gratitude for the years they’d lived together and for her mother’s counsel and love. (Klobuchar 1998 114)

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While the strength of the bonds between parents and their missionary children diminished in some respects over the years spent on the mission field, relationships between parents and children could vary, like most families, but many missionary families’ bonds could be extremely strong. The lives of two missionary families who adopted children, the Olsons and the Hafermanns, provide evidence of this. The Olsons lost their firstborn child and then adopted four more children. This loss of their first child affected Howard and Lou all their married life together. Howard, in his memoir fifty years later, described vividly the experience of this birth, as he heard the news of the baby’s death, his hesitancy at telling Lou when she woke up, writing a telegram to the States to tell of Lou’s survival through childbirth and the baby’s death, and finally sharing the news with Lou when she awoke after the delivery. Howie told about the pain that remained, “I have prayed that God would keep me from resentment and anger, and help me to rejoice instead in our four fine adopted children. However, though there is now no bitterness, the pain remains, and there is no name for our diminished state. A child whose parents die is called an orphan. A man/woman whose spouse dies is called a widow/widower. But there is no name for the grief-stricken parent who has lost a child” (Olson 2001, 122). Louise, at the end of my interview with them, brought out how important each of their four adopted children had been to them: Well, I think we want to give special thanks to God for our four children who came to us in such a special way. We felt with each adoption there were indications that this baby, this particular baby, had been saved for us, and we don’t need to go into all the particular details, but enough to say that we felt led by God and blessed by God and to this day we give thanks for Howie, Sharon, Tim and Linda.

Like the Olsons, the Hafermanns were unable to have biological children. They helped raise several Tanzanian children before adopting two boys as their own when they were fifty years old. Belarmino and Delmar, ten and twelve years old, were from Guatemala. It was not hard for them to adjust to life in Tanzania, as they were used to living in another poor country. As Herb said, “We ate ugali and beans every noon. Then, they just ran out the door. There were kids playing. You never had to worry about what they were doing or where they were. They would always come back and be dirty and take a bath.” Herb and Kirsten went on to talk about what it meant to them to have these children as their own, even if it was a strange blended family:

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Kirsten: Like I warned you, this is not your normal family. There was one American passport, one Danish passport, and two Guatemalans on one passport before they got their American citizenship; they had two on one passport. It was a very strange thing and they asked, “What kind of family is that?” “And you live in Africa?” and “What are you doing here?” . . . From the minute they came, (the boys) never asked, “What shall we call you?” They were big children. They just called us Mama and Baba. In fact, Mami and Papi, as . . . Herb: . . . in Spanish and then Mama na Baba in Kiswahili. Kirsten: And they always looked on our family as their family. There was no question. I was surprised. Herb: It was nice in a sense to really make them our own. I mean we never had a desire to possess anybody but now we can do something and have people to carry on. These people will inherit from you when you die. That’s nice.

Actually having siblings as fellow missionaries helped the two Peterson families and the Palm family to really feel at home in Tanzania. While Evelyn Palm, Les Peterson, and Dean Peterson did not speak of it much in their interviews, their children did. These relatives would often get together each vacation so that the siblings and cousins could all be together. The Jacksons were distant cousins to this group, as well. Similarly, my father and Eunie Simonson were first cousins. So, as I think of the Simonsons, I identify them as my second cousins, but in my mind I put them much closer, because they are probably closer to me than any of my first cousins who did not grow up with me in Africa. As we children grew up, our missionary parents worried about us and what we would become. In taking a selection of letters that Louise Faust wrote over her years in Tanzania, one sees how these worries changed over time: October 21, 1955: The children are well. Stevie has suffered and survived his first case of malaria. Mark is making an excellent adjustment at boarding school. We feel this largely due to the cooperative efforts of his teachers at home to prepare him for that ordeal. We shall always be grateful to them for it. Ann has taken the beginnings of this new chapter in her life and is eagerly looking forward to my teaching her kindergarten. Linda has been slow in making her adjustment to Africa. She sorely misses her little neighbor, friend and playmate, Pamela Mason, of Rock Island. (Faust 2004 170) September 9, 1965: The kids are all back in school. I must say that it’s with a sigh of relief that I know they are all back in their Christian environment. They were certainly chomping at the bit to be off. It is wonderful that they do like their schools so much, even if it means being away from home ¾ of the time. Stevie is the only one I’m concerned about. Do pray for the little guy.

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I’m just sure I haven’t done right by him in giving all of the attention, affection, and understanding that he needs. My biggest mistake was not producing a brother or sister for him within a year or so. He has been quite lonely in spite of being part of a big family because of the age span difference in the kids. He has a little African friend by the name of Nelson, who is our cook’s boy. They are approximately the same age and have grown up together since babyhood. Sypriani has been with us for almost ten years. Even though Steve went off to boarding school, Nelson and he were always inseparable. In fact, Stevie was eating so many meals at Sypriani’s house that I suggested that this might become a burden. Dear Sypriani, he really is a gem. He said, “Not at all. Just one person doesn’t matter.” Anyway I can appreciate their wanting to be together as much as possible. (Faust 2004, 383) March 21, 1974: This past year has not been a particularly easy one for us either. In fact, Hal said that if they ever decide to do a re-run on years, he hopes they won’t choose his fiftieth. Steve was unable to finish high school here because of an infraction of the school rules, so he has been in Grand Rapids, Michigan, staying with friends and repeating his senior year. It has been a sobering experience for him and he has worked for good in that respect. We are proud of the way he has buckled down and studied. We have received his school reports and he’s making almost all A’s and B’s. He’ll be coming out to Africa again in June and will spend our last year with us here. He’ll do some work toward junior college or a technical nature, wherever his interests lie, by correspondence. On top of that, Ann married a Somali student in Washington, D.C. on November 16. We wish her well and have to believe that ultimate good will come of it. Linda is busily finishing up her nurse’s training and college. She would like to finish by December though graduation will be in May. David had a lot of trouble with his ears. He has had four operations within the last year after an initial examination proved over 75% deafness. (Faust 2004, 526)

The biggest worry for most of the parents was boarding school and the impact it would have on their children. When asked what the worst part of being a missionary was, the vast majority of the women missionaries said it was being separated from their children because of boarding school. Renee Jackson regretted the many events in the development of their seven children they missed because the children were off at boarding school. My mother, in her practical way, saw it as something that she had little power to change and also as something that was so much better than previous generations of missionaries had to confront in considering their children’s education: Now boarding school was a reality in our lives, something we knew we would face even before we married if we were to have children. This was something

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we had to do, it was expected of us, and it was certainly preferable to what earlier generations of missionaries had done when they came to Africa and had children. When they were ready for school the family sailed home to Britain or USA for a furlough. When the furlough was over most of the children were left in the native land with grandparents or maiden aunts to raise them. (Benson 2006, 35)

Nonetheless, it was not an easy part of life to be separated from your own children. Jeanne Ward discussed what it was like to have to leave Kris, their oldest child, for the first time at Kiomboi: There was the sadness in sending our children off to boarding school, when at that time we knew it was best for them. I held back the tears when we said good-byes to Kristie, our first to leave. Then I turned around and saw her standing there with tears running down her cheeks. It broke my heart and then my tears broke loose. To this day, I get a lump in my throat when I recall some of those Kiomboi school experiences. (Ward in Cunningham and Okerstrom 1998, 378)

Bob Ward discussed the same scene in his memoir but added why it was so important that they left Kris, even as she was crying: As we reached Kiomboi station, we all made a joke of how soon the time would pass, and then we would all be together again. Then we kissed Kris good-bye. As we drove off I looked back and saw a sight I shall never forget. She was standing alone by a tree in Dr. Hult’s yard. She was sobbing and weeping. I wanted to stop the car and run back, take her in my arms and then carry her back to our car and take her home with us. But I couldn’t do that. This was the price I had to pay for the commitment I had made to serve the Lord as a missionary. Kris was paying her part of the price of being a missionary’s daughter. Each of our children had to pay this price when the time came to go off to school. But Kris was the first, and I believe it was tougher on her because of being the first who went off all by herself. I may be wrong. I know God will honor and redeem these payments and I apply His words to all who endure these separations by reading in all three of the Gospels Jesus’ words: Mat. 19:29, Mk. 10:29–30, and Lk. 18:29–30. Jesus said: “Verily, I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for my sake, and for the gospel’s sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” Mk. 10:29–30 (Ward 1999, 157–158)

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In a similar fashion, Dean and Elaine Peterson reflected on a conversation that they had with their children as adults about boarding school. They ended up echoing Bob Ward’s ideas on how integral boarding school had been for them to fulfill their calls: Dean: In all these decisions, you have to just believe that grace covers your inadequacies. The same is true, I wrote in this journal . . . we got talking at Mike’s table one night and he told how tremendously homesick he had gotten, and it really wrung my heart. . . . Well, you know our kids still say that it was a good experience and they don’t condemn us for doing it. . . . (But) that night I thought a long time and the only thing I could say was that we went in those days with an overriding conviction that God had called us to spend our life out there and so you had to juxtapose all other things, your family and everything under that umbrella. . . . Maybe it wasn’t right all the time, but you still have to trust that grace takes care of this. Elaine: But we saw so many families come and go home . . . for their kids to go to school at home. They never could fulfill any of their work that they started to do in Africa. Our Africa grandkids thank us today for staying in Africa where their parents continue to live.

While sending their children to boarding school helped our parents to fulfill their call, this separation at a relatively young age between the two generations still has an impact in the lives of most missionary kids long into their adulthoods and an impact on their faith as they realize the sacrifice they made. A few likened their experience to that of Isaac and the readiness of Abraham, his father, to sacrifice him in obedience to God’s will. Despite all this, within most of the American Lutheran missionary families studied, connections remain strong between the generations. Al Gottneid, in describing his relations with his own children, spoke of the heartache he felt even to this day when it came to leavetaking. As he said of saying goodbye to his son, David, when he had finished college and was working in Kenya, that he still found it “just as bad as when we said goodbye when he went to Kiomboi.” The Bible provides instruction on the familial relationships missionaries must expect and the sacrifices to be faced. None of these verses suggests intimacy and tenderness. In reality, there was both closeness and division between the two generations out on the mission field. But the divisions hurt terribly. Leaving Tanzania Missionary work is never guaranteed employment, especially when you are working for another country’s church organization. Many of the missionaries

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interviewed spent their entire careers in Tanzania, although there were times during those years when they did not know if they would be staying on or going home. Their calls, which were deeply felt within themselves, could often feel fragile on the ground. In this section, I consider the missionaries who left Tanzania early because they felt that their calls were complete, those who left early because of decisions of outside forces, the decision of those who stayed on till retirement age and why they decided to retire, and finally those who have stayed on in Tanzania into retirement. There were several missionary families who left Tanzania after serving at least twenty-five years in the country, feeling like their missions were complete. When Elder and Renee Jackson left Tanzania, they moved only as far as neighboring Kenya. During their last years at Kiomboi Bible School, located in the old Augustana School buildings, their seven children were all in the United States, except for Martha, who had married Masky, a man from Kenya, and was living in Nairobi. At the time, the border between Kenya and Tanzania was closed, so it was hard for Martha and Elder and Renee to meet despite the lack of miles that actually separated their homes. This factored in their decision to end their career in Kenya, rather than in Tanzania, as well as the work in Kenya allowed Elder to work once again with the Maasai. Les and Ruth Peterson’s decision to leave centered on family as well. Ruth’s father was not that well and four of their five children were already in the States. For the Fausts, a number of factors influenced their decision to leave, including church administrative decisions, concerns about their children in the United States, and Hal’s desire to work as a parish pastor in the United States to finish up his career. Their leavetaking was emotional as they said goodbye to both the African and missionary communities of which they had been a part for so many years. Louise wrote about the whole process in a letter to a friend: April 30, 1975: Our last days were busy, emotionally full, and wonderful. The genuine expressions of love were from so many people. We made special trips hundreds of miles just to say good-bye. We received so many beautiful letters. So many people came with gifts of milk, eggs, samli, or corn and beans from their new crops. . . . They had a village get together with all the local Christian families first and then the big community get-together. I’m sure there were more than 1,000 people there. There was a big dance and a feast of rice and meat. So many, many people, whom we know and love, came to say good-bye. There were many tears, including my own—Hal’s too. On Sunday, they had the church farewell service. This included Baptism, Holy Communion, and the Blessing of Children, as well as the farewell. Again, it was a beautiful day! I was very

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much aware that I was kneeling at that altar for the last time. It was a joy to be flanked on either side by Musa’s son’s wife and Zakeria’s wife, both dressed in their skin garments. There were many choir numbers by different groups. All of the songs had been composed for the occasion. . . . The service started at 11 a.m. and lasted until 3:30 p.m. or so. . . . Later in the evening, the choirs who had sung came over and sang for sala (devotions) together and sang “God Be With You Until We Meet Again.” The last person left at 1:15 a.m. . . . We went to Ward’s in Arusha. All the missionaries came there for a potluck supper in the evening and had another farewell for us. It was really wonderful! We felt the strong bond of love and friendship as we closed, all holding hands and singing ‘Blessed Be The Tie That Binds.’ Through it all, I’ve had such peace and a real joy together with bittersweet pain of saying goodbye to these many whom we know and love here. (Faust 2004, 598–600)

In contrast, for those who had to leave Tanzania without having a say in the decision, even into the next generation they continue to mull over why it happened. The Lofgrens, Wards, and Palms all had this experience. All three couples continued on in their mission work (Palms and Wards in Kenya and the Lofgrens in Singapore and Malaysia). For the Lofgrens, they did not find out that they were not going back to Tanzania until Christmas while on their furlough. Although they never were informed of the full reason for why they were not called back, they suspected it was linked to their being aware of management problems at Mwika Bible School, so that their continuing on there was not welcomed by some colleagues there. For the Wards, struggles with a dishonest subordinate in the church headquarters, they felt, led to them not being called back by the church in Tanzania. Shortly thereafter, they went to Kenya with the Lutheran faith mission, World Mission Prayer League. Harald Palm, who died several years before I began this project, worked at Makumira Seminary as the school’s treasurer when a student strike took place in 1969. Although different accounts of the strike specify different causes, in its aftermath, Harald, along with another African faculty member, was made a scapegoat for the strike and forced to leave Makumira. He went on to Kenya serving as President of one of the Lutheran dioceses in Kenya (Ludwig 1999, 99–101). In this case, the impact of the event was harder on those around the person at the center of the struggle than on the actual person involved. Gene, Harald’s youngest son, described for me the impact this event had on the course of his life, his relationship to Africa, and to his faith: Before this I had good feelings towards Makumira, Africans, and the Church, but with this event, things went south. . . . When I saw my Dad ripped to shreds

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and torn apart and weeping, I felt it was unfair . . . brutal and the (attacks) were coming from future men of God. To me that kind of nailed it down. At that point, I didn’t have to believe, because I knew this wasn’t fair. If these are men of God, then if God was there, then something was out of whack. . . . I think at that point was when I knew I wasn’t going back to Tanzania. . . . It was gone . . . I left Makumira with distaste. The decision to go to Mombasa was done in just a few weeks. My memory is it was just in a matter of weeks. I remember the decision, the anxiety. It was during a break and I remember them making the decision. I remember Stefano Moshi, himself, coming to the house to bring the news. And before he came to give the news, we didn’t know; we didn’t know if we were going to leave, or what was going to happen. And I thought, basically, my world was going to fall apart because I thought we were going to be shipped back to the States and I was angry about it.

For some of the missionaries who ended up staying on in Tanzania until retirement, at one or two points in their career they did not know if they would be coming back to Tanzania. My father had not enjoyed his time as vice-president of the Arusha Synod, and in 1978 was resigning from that position. They had been offered positions out in the bush again, but with my father at fifty and mother at forty-eight, they did not want to live there. In the end, he took a position as a parish pastor in Arusha town and development director for the Synod, positions he enjoyed until he retired. Dean and Elaine Peterson discussed what it had been like when they made the switch from Makumira to the Extension Seminary. While on furlough, they found that they would not be called back to Makumira Seminary. They were not sure what they would do, but with the start of the new Arusha Synod and a vision of the synod to develop an extension seminary that would allow evangelists to be educated primarily in their home villages, they were asked to help develop this program. They asked their children, who were in college or nearing it, what they wished them to do. Elaine said, “the kids just unanimously practically said, ‘’Go back! You’re still our tie to Africa.’” For Dave Simonson, a moment of reckoning came when he confronted Bishop Moshi about the inequitable distribution of funds between the Kilimanjaro part of the Northern Diocese and the Arusha and Maasai parts. “The outcome was that Bishop Moshi gave Dave an ultimatum, telling him that he could no longer work as a Lutheran missionary in Tanzania.” However, elders from Arusha interceded with the Bishop on Dave’s behalf. As Dave related in my interview with him: Sirikwa (the elder) stood up in front of him, and he said, “Bishop, we don’t know what you have done, we don’t know why you’ve done it, all we know

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is that we got Simonson . . . and we want them to be with us,” and then he took his ear and said, “Unisikia, Bwana?” (Do you hear me, sir?) The Bishop said, “Na sikia.” (I hear.) But because of that we were stationed at the furthest stations from Arusha, and that was Loliondo, and once again that turned out to be some of the best years of our life because we were sent out there without a budget or vehicle.

When the church and the mission had been one, the political dimensions for the missionaries were less salient, because the decisions were made by the mission. As the national church emerged, the roles of the missionaries changed and their work became less secure. Negotiations took place between the Tanzanian and American churches to have missionaries, but the American mission board usually followed the lead of the Tanzanian leadership in making their decisions on what missionaries to send. As the American Lutheran missionaries who came out to Tanzania in the 1940s and 1950s considered retirement, sometimes the emotions experienced by spouses were very different. Both Dean Peterson and Orv Nyblade felt very ready to retire when they did. However, their wives, whose positions had been more fluid, found leaving Tanzania a wrenching experience. Orv explained how he had approached his own retirement from Makumira with not wanting to stay in a position too long, wanting a change, and a strong desire to be close to his children, who were now all out of Tanzania. But for June, the emotions were quite different: June: I cried all the way from Arusha to Nairobi. It was hard. On the other hand, I had gotten so involved with the women and people at the door, morning, noon and night and every day of the week that it was probably good that we left Tanzania then. I don’t think that I could sustain that kind of involvement again. Orv: But I think part of the difference in our reactions was that June was involved in the local community and developed relationships with people who lived in the community. But, when you are in an education institution, your faculty are always changing, your student body is always changing, so you are always in the situation of building new relationships. You don’t have the same kind of rooted feeling in terms of your relationships because they are always changing. Certainly, I think you probably feel that . . . June: We lived there twenty-seven years off and on. A good share of our life was there.

The reactions of Dean and Elaine Peterson as they left Tanzania were fairly similar to those of the Nyblades. But they added that they experienced sharp culture shock as the resettled into life in the United States.

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It is common for people to continue living on in retirement in the communities in which they had spent their working lives, even if they were not originally from those communities. But it is not common for missionaries to do so, despite their many years in that place. Among the pioneer American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania, discussed in chapter 1, Lud and Esther Melander were the only ones who chose to retire there. They had a small home in Moshi to which they retired, and I remember him playing musical instruments for mission gatherings in the mid-1960s. Only one of the next generation of American Lutheran missionaries decided to make Tanzania their retirement home, the Simonsons. As we spoke in their house in the United States in Fergus Falls, MN, Dave talked about the temporary nature of this American house for them. As their time with the Mission Board was ending, Bishop Laiser of the Arusha Diocese of the ELCT asked them to consider staying on in Tanzania. The Bishop said that retirement was not really an African concept, and he wanted them to stay on as volunteers to help put together the Maasai Girls’ School in Monduli. In 2003, Dave had a heart attack in the United States. He was in and out of hospitals, and it looked like he would have to spend his remaining years in the United States. But despite his poor health, in late 2004, Dave and Eunie went back to Tanzania and continued to live in the house they built on the hill near Ilboru with children and grandchildren nearby until his death in 2010. Eunie continues to move between the two homes, accompanied by daughter, Naomi. While Lud and Esther Melander did not have a plot of land to retire to in Tanzania, the plot of land on which the Simonsons built their house outside of Arusha led them to see Tanzania as a permanent home. For most of the other missionaries who served in Tanzania, the nature of their calls and the examples of others who had left the mission not entirely of their own will made Tanzania, where they had devoted all their working lives, less of a sure place to finish out their days.

A Call Fulfilled? When questioned by a European college student as to whether it had been “right” for churches to send missionaries to Tanzania and thus “upset” the local culture of this land, the Executive Secretary of the ELCT responded: “My friend, remember that a Christian has no ‘right’ to withhold from another person the message of God’s love as revealed to us in Jesus Christ, our Lord. This has been God’s plan from the beginning of time until now. It is not a question of whether it is ‘right,’ but a matter of Christians everywhere

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being faithful to the task which God has given to us.” (Oberg in Baranek and Slifer 1987, 48–49)

As the missionaries left for Tanzania in the 1940s and 1950s, many of them had a sense of being called. While they lived out their years there, they were confronted with many lesser calls. Sometimes it was very hard to discern the call, and there was great frustration in that. Their calls in the United States had been ones of responding to the Great Commission to evangelize, but for different people their true calling came as they worked through the issues that confronted them in Tanzania. In the end, most felt that they accomplished a great task in their years in Tanzania. While the place to which they were to go may not have seemed to have mattered so much when they felt that they were originally called to be missionaries, specific places became part of the generalized call. The life of these missionaries was often one of movement. Most of the missionaries worked in four or five different settings during their missionary career and each of the settings could impact their callings in different ways. For Bob Ward, the decision to move from Isanzu and his work with the nomadic Tindiga people to Arusha to work in support of the audio-visual ministry of the church was a major crisis for him as he considered his own calling. Clearly, his heart was in grassroots evangelism, but this move was one that, like Jesus, caused him to go out into the wilderness to pray: Bob: It came kind of out of the blue. . . . We were hardly doing anything related to technology then. . . . Our work, by and large was with the Tindiga, . . . so it was a real challenge as to whether or not we should go or whether we should stay . . . I went out and had a three day prayer vigil and fast . . . Jeanne: . . . in prayer and seeking the Lord and that’s when he felt the Lord saying, “Go, take it.” So we did.

Louise Faust in her letters described times when they were very unsure of their future direction and what they should be doing: January 18, 1964: Our future is still blank. Harold has said that he is willing to come back for two years, but not four. Things are so nebulous these days. However, only four-year calls are being issued at present, so I just don’t know. I find it very hard to think of leaving here and all of the friends we have in this isolated valley. I have always felt that way about leaving a place, and gone on to find a new blessing elsewhere. However, maybe the work does need Harold, in particular, as they have tried to tell him. Above all, I certainly want to do what is the Lord’s will. It could be that His will is

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elsewhere for us and someone else is to come here. . . . I’ll be so glad when something definite has finally been decided. Meanwhile, DO pray for us. I do depend on those prayers. (Faust 2004, 361)

In talking with the Lofgrens about what had been the best thing about being a missionary, Dottie answered assuredly about being in a place where she knew she was called, but Mel answered much more hesitantly about how he wished he could have done so much more if he had had more training: Dottie: I felt always I was in the place God wanted me to be. . . . How do you feel about it? Mel: They were an interesting forty years and I should have used the time I had to start something new perhaps, in other words, I was sort of staying with the herd, maybe I would have done better if I would have sometimes gone on with certain ideas. I wouldn’t know exactly what they are, anyhow. Dottie: I think you have also said, sometimes we should have had a little more experience in the States and been a little more mature instead of going out straight from seminary. I had had three years as a parish worker; you had come straight out of school.

Al Gottneid, who was not sure about his call in the beginning, as time went along in Tanzania became more and more sure. He admitted that in his first years, he might wake up at 3 in the morning and ask himself what he was doing in this place, but as that passed he began to realize how important his work was to him: I suppose it was after that 3 o’clock morning when I asked, “What in the world I am doing here?” and that passed and I said, “Why not?” My father was very upset because he was beginning to fail in health, and he wrote, “Why don’t you come home?” and I wrote, “You don’t know what you are asking. I’ve got nothing at home, but I’m doing something worthwhile here.” And after that, especially the last twenty years . . . it was very good, the first ten years as a teacher were not as good. But the last twenty years when I was involved in the curriculum business and I started traveling all over Europe and Africa and Middle East and taking part in presenting papers and all that kind of stuff. Those are the kind of experiences that really broadened me and gave a kind of picture I have of the Church now. It’s not a parochial thing.

As Al looked back on their thirty years in Africa, this feeling of being involved in a worthwhile effort grew in intensity:

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The most fulfilling thing in all of the work was that we had the sense that what we were doing was appreciated. . . . They weren’t telling you something because it was nice to say, but what they were saying, they meant. I don’t think that was true all the time with everybody, but I think we had got to that place where there was great mutual respect.

Louise Olson, through the years, beginning with the African women helping her through the experience of a stillborn child, developed a strong calling to help African women. As she told an interviewer in 1993, this became vitally important for her to share: I remember speaking at a Bible study for pastors’ wives of Arusha Diocese just before we retired and speaking about how important it was for them to know—to know their church, to know their people, to know their country, and I ended up saying to know your own human rights. And we talked a little bit about the human rights of every individual especially of women, that maybe women are not aware of. And of all the things I said that morning you could count all the first three-fourths of anything I had said as being totally unimportant compared to this last one, to know your rights as women, and not to put up with battering and being put down and being raped and being abused in many verbal ways as well as physical ways. And to get our church awakened, because it always seems like the church is the caboose on the train, coming up at the end of all of things. Getting women included now in the pastoral circle, the first ordinations have taken place and we are just so glad for that, but there are many that are out there serving that their particular diocese refuses to ordain. Well the battle goes on and I am glad that I have had some small share in that, speaking up for the rights of women. (Carlson 1993, 23)

The amount of time these missionaries spent in Africa made their calling feel even stronger. Dave Simonson described what it meant for him to fulfill a call through time: We (were) definitely called. So were Bill Smith and Stan Benson and the others. We knew we were called. We understood the needs of these people clearly went beyond the spiritual. In those times, the 1950s, there weren’t many short-term missionaries. I was called for life. Bill and Stan were called for life, all of these people were. The only reason you were going to go home was illness or some furlough that took you away from your mission temporarily, but actually was part of it in fundraising or building awareness back home. (Klobuchar 1998, 48–50)

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Both Dottie Lofgren and Eunie Simonson spoke about the assuredness that serving as missionaries is what they were called to do as they began and continued living out their lives in Tanzania: Dottie: We were excited. We were called there and we felt that this was where the Lord had put us and so we got busy. Eunie: Never had any doubts . . . I think we both, from the very beginning can honestly say, we never doubted that we were doing what God had intended for us. I think that is what has made our whole experience so wonderful. . . . even after the second term, when we had a run-in with the Bishop Moshi and they didn’t want us back. That was the hardest thing I have ever experienced, but God intervened on that one and so I can really, honestly say, I think we knew always that we were in God’s plan for us.

Echoing these statements, Bob Ward described the peace that came to him from knowing that being a missionary was what he should be doing, “I always felt I was in the will of the Lord and there was nothing as encouraging to me as that.” Howie Olson described the transition years between the mission church and the formation and solidification of the Tanzanian church as wonderful years in which to serve: Louise and I say we were chosen to be missionaries at the right time and in the right place. It was sort of a golden age. . . . It was so great to be there to see the country move from colonialism to independence and the church move from mission to national church, the difference between being sent and being called. It was psychologically very satisfying to know you were there because the church really wanted you there. When we came, it was “Here I am, ready or not.” So those are very wonderful things.

For Howie and Lou Olson, the vibrant faith of the African Christians was something that kept them excited about working as missionaries over the years. It was something they still missed. Finally, in Ruth Peterson’s essay that was read at her funeral by her daughter Rachel, Ruth brought out why these missionaries felt their work was so important: Our farewell from the congregation where Les was pastor at the time of our departure meant a great deal to us. That was Ngimu Lutheran Church. The people of Ngimu became some of our closest friends. When we left the Ngimu Valley in 1962, they gave us a very long, heartfelt farewell.

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We will never forget Mama Sarah, who spoke for the women. She stood right in front of our family—all seven of us lined up in the front row—looked straight at us, and said: “You Wazungu (Whites/Europeans) could have brought cattle, and cattle are our wealth, our bank. But the cattle would have died from different diseases or been killed by animals, and they would all be gone. You could have brought us clothes—bright red, yellow, blue and green clothes. We like them very much and always need them. But we would have worn them out and they would be all gone. You could have brought us money, and we need more and more of it. But we would have spent it all and it would all be gone. But you brought us the church of Jesus Christ, and no one can take it or Him from us.” In a few sentences, Mama Sarah had summed up our real purpose for being in Tanzania. (Peterson in Cunningham and Okerstrom 1998, 144)

For these missionaries, who felt called at a young age to go to East Africa, most found peace in knowing that their calls were fulfilled and that what they had done had been worthwhile.

Conclusion As these missionaries tried to understand this place where they spent their adult lives, the key filter through which they viewed their lives was that of fulfilling their call. There was no ambiguity in this. There was a closeness formed by many to the African population and to the missionary group. They willingly moved and helped the church fulfill its mission. While familial relations remained quite strong, there were sacrifices in relationships with parents and children because of the call. Some felt their call in Tanzania was completed at mid-career, others felt their call in Tanzania shortened before they wanted, while others felt their call complete at the end of their working lives. This generation’s lives were dominated by this need to complete the call they felt asked to do and they viewed the country, their families, and the work they were asked to do through this lens. However, the experience of the next generation of the children of these missionaries as they built lives in places where they often did not feel called was more ambiguous.

Note 1. Reprinted with permission of June Nyblade.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

The Adult Lives of the Second Generation Finding a Partner

For the missionaries, their encounter with Tanzania was one of certainty in their call. In contrast, for us of the second generation, our encounter with our parent’s homeland in the United States was the opposite. We had no call to this place. For the most part, our furlough sojourns in the United States had been periods to endure so that we could just get back “home” to Tanzania. Most of us were unable to go back to Africa after our college years. How were we to make sense of the United States and build lives there? And for those of us who were able to return, how had Tanzania changed for us as we saw it now through adult eyes? I will focus on three elements of the adult lives of my generation in the following chapters: finding a partner, occupational choices, and reactions to places lived in our adult lives. This chapter concentrates on our choices in marriage partner. In looking at how we made sense of new places in our adult lives, I consider whether we chose to do so alone or had a partner to help us do so. The missionaries had chosen their partners very deliberately—spouses with whom they could share the process of fulfilling their shared callings—and their marriages all lasted. For the missionary children, there was need for a partner who could understand their life experience growing up in something of a “hidden culture.” The search for such partners has not been as smooth for the children of the missionaries as it was for their parents—more than one in five of the fifty-seven married MKs interviewed have been divorced at least once.

177

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Marriage Our independent adult lives generally began when we graduated from college and had to make our way out into the world on our own without the support of the missionary community in which we had grown up. For many of us this was a scary and lonely prospect for which a partner for life’s journey would provide both support and intimacy. For others, it was hard to consider settling down in a marriage. Out of the group of sixty-three children of missionaries studied, three of the thirty-six men and three of the twenty-seven women remained single, 9.5 percent of the sample (table 7.1). Most of the women married sooner than the men. Sixty percent of the women who did marry were married by age twenty-five, compared to 47 percent of the men. By age thirty, 81 percent of the women had been married and 73 percent of the men (table 7.2). I have broken the categories of spousal choices into two main categories. The first is those who married someone born and raised in the United States or Canada of non-missionary stock—an “American.” Two-thirds of the study sample falls into this category. The second major category includes those marriages which grew out of our international connections: marrying a child of other missionaries, marrying someone met while working internationally, and finally, marrying a non-Caucasian “African” of African or Asiandescent. This second group comprises the remaining one-third of my married Table 7.1. Percent of Male and Female MKs in Study who have Never Been Married Never Married, %

Total MKs, number

8.3 11.1

36 27

9.5

63

Male Female All Source: Interviews

Table 7.2. Age of First Marriage for MKs in Study who have Been Married, by Gender, percent Gender

Ages 20–24

Ages 25–29

Ages 30–34

Ages 35–39

Ages 40–45

Total, number

Male Female

47.1 60.8

26.5 21.7

20.6 13.0

5.9 0.0

0.0 4.3

34 23

Total

52.6

24.6

17.5

3.5

1.7

57

Total, number

30

14

10

2

1

57

Source: Interviews

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Table 7.3. Categories of Marriage Partners Chosen by MKs in Study, by Gender and Divorce Rate MKs

African

International

American

Gender

#

#D

#

#D

#

#D

#

#D

Total

# Div.

% Div.

Male Female

5 2

0 0

2 2

0 0

7 1

2 0

20 18

3 8

34 23

5 8

14.71 34.78

Total

7

0

4

0

8

2

38

11

57

13

22.81

Source: Interviews and Personal Knowledge

MK interviewees with 37 percent of this group falling within the MK group, 42 percent with international marriages, and the remaining 21 percent of this group having married “Africans.” Only two people from the three smaller groups (11 percent) ended up getting a divorce, while 29 percent of those who married an American experienced a divorce (table 7.3). Marriages were somewhat harder for women from this generation than for the men. The divorce rate for men in this group was about 15 percent, while for the women; it was close to 35 percent. It is hard to say why it is so much higher for one sex than the other. Alcohol was a factor in the divorce for three of the men. Among the women, abandonment, infidelity, and abuse were factors in some cases, but in others the causes of the divorce were not spelled out. The higher proportion of divorces among the “American” marriages deserves comment. While most of our parents considered themselves “American” and we in our generation may have even thought of ourselves in that way, there likely were more cultural differences between someone raised by missionaries and his or her American spouse than most of us realized. International spouses shared connections to places outside of the United States, those with African spouses shared a connection to Africa, and children of missionaries shared similar backgrounds. These shared connections may have mitigated tensions between these marriage partners.

Marriages with International Connections Marrying Another Child of the Mission I would ask most of my interviewees about when they met their spouse and what it was that attracted them to that person. Sometimes the answers were very minimal, while at other times, the marriage relationship became a big part of the interview. With those who had married within the missionary community, I often asked whether it had made it easier to be married to someone from within the missionary community than if they had married

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someone else. While such comparisons are difficult, generally there was an acknowledgment that having the shared background made it much easier. However, they did not want to downplay the conflicts within their own relationships. In such a tight missionary community, for many of us marrying another Lutheran missionary child would almost seem like marrying a relative. However, two from our community did marry—Pete Friberg and Marilyn Peterson. Marilyn’s sister, Bobbie, and Pete’s brother, Steve, also married children of missionaries, but their spouses grew up in other missions. Marilyn noted that, while she and Pete were very different people, the shared understanding that she and Pete shared because of their background helped, but that it sometimes left their daughter Sarah out of the picture. Later, after Sarah had gone to Tanzania on a trip with her grandfather, Sarah felt a new connection to the place and expressed a desire to return there someday to work with her uncle, Steve. For Bobbie and Matt Bainbridge, the differences between the two mission traditions that they grew up in was the main source of tension between them. Matt had grown up in the AIM mission and his Christian orientation was more aligned with the evangelical background of the mission. As high school sweethearts at RVA, they had already discussed some of the issues that they had to consider as a married couple. For example, ten years before they were married they had already begun discussing whether their children would be baptized as infants or not, and it took many years for them to resolve issues like this. As Matt said, “It’s amazing how common our backgrounds were and yet how different they were, too. Different churches, different backgrounds, different mission fields.” Finally, a fifth child of missionaries who married another one was Steve Simonson. He talked about how their shared background had helped him and Marilyn Shaffer Simonson set up the routines of their own home on a remote station in northern Kenya at the beginning of their marriage. As they formed a family, they followed the pattern set by both sets of parents of family devotions with their own children. While each of these couples acknowledged the differences, the shared common background seems to have been a solace to each of them in their marriages. International Marriages In a similar way, a shared international background helped ease a friendship into something more, as one interviewee told me when he spoke about how he met his wife, who he was drawn to because of their shared international background, as she had also grown up overseas, but as a diplomat’s

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child. This helped them be drawn to each other. Most of the others in this category married people who they met outside of the United States, most of whom were of European descent. While the bonds remain strong in most of these marriages, this is the only international category that has seen several divorces within it. Marriages to “Africans” All of these previous marriages were within a community of white people who had lived in Africa. There was a level of comfort among the missionary generation toward these marriage partners. However, four of the missionary children took spouses from the Asian or African communities. These marriages brought mixed feelings in the missionary generation. Martha Jackson left Concordia College after only one year and returned to Kenya to marry Masky Mascarenhas. They lived near his extended family in Nairobi for many years and the family was very supportive of Martha. She spoke with fondness about the Christian values that they shared despite their racial and cultural differences. Ann Faust Ibrahim caused a minor family crisis within her family by deciding to marry a Somali man in Washington, DC. Ann spoke about how later she found out from her mother how her parents had developed plans to rescue her from this man, if need be. The racial aspects did not bother them; it was the fact that she was marrying a Muslim. For Ann, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to consider marrying an African, even though the world around did not see it in that way. While inter-racial marriages were not that common in the early 1970s, a time of racial tension in the United States, Ann felt so comfortable within his Somali culture that none of these things mattered to her. Her husband, Ibrahim, remained very involved in the Islamic community in Oakland, CA, where they lived, but Ann did not convert to Islam. Ann died several years ago. The children attended a private Christian school across the street from their house that Ann said preached a religious ideology not unlike what she had received at RVA years earlier. While she continued to view things from a more Christian perspective, Ibrahim stayed true to his Islamic heritage, and together they urged the children in their home to think through their own religious directions. Two missionary sons who lived in Arusha married African wives: Steve Cunningham and Howie Olson. Steve Cunningham, after many years in Tanzania, found increasingly he had less in common with American or European women and felt more comfortable among African women, like his wife, Fatuma. Among Africans, he could talk and joke freely, something he felt he

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could not do to the same extent when he went to the United States. He had always thought he would marry an American or European woman, “but,” as he said, “in my wife, Fatuma, I found that half of my missing culture.” For Howie Olson, his struggles to find his own identity helped him in finally deciding to marry Halima. When I asked him about how they met and eventually got married, he cautioned me that it was a very long story but he would be willing to tell it. The tape ran out before he finished with it. The short story is that Howie was working as a tour guide with Overseas Adventure Travel in 1984 when he first met Halima. He began to go out with her and really enjoyed her company. But around the same time, he also developed strong feelings for Bonnie, an American woman he had met while leading tours. Howie felt conflicted, but eventually he chose to live with Bonnie in Boston. At the time, he told Halima that because both he and Bonnie were Americans, he should probably stay within his own culture. Halima, extremely hurt, soon married a Japanese man, but finding the Japanese culture hard to live within, made her way back to Tanzania in 1989. Howie meanwhile had returned to Tanzania in 1988 when things turned sour between Bonnie and him. Soon after Halima’s return, Howie realized that he and Halima had more in common than he had previously thought. As Howie said of their reuniting, “Later that year, Halima came back and it was just like, ‘You know what? Here I am in Tanzania and here’s Halima. I’m sorry; I’m really not an American. I’m Tanzanian. Let’s get married’ because we had that history from before.” Sadly, Howie, like Ann, died several years ago, after raising two children with Halima. For all four missionary children—Howie, Ann, Martha, and Steve—there was a recognition that they had more in common with their future African spouses than they may have thought when they were growing up in our somewhat segregated American boarding school environments. Marriages to “Americans” For most of us, we chose a partner who was born and raised in America. To outsiders, in many ways these couples look very similar to other couples in the United States who were born, grew up, and married there. But, to those of us in these marriages, we often feel like we are in cross-cultural marriages. My own marriage falls into this category. For some like Beatrice Palm Bastyr, international connections were part of the attraction that led them to their current spouses. A chance encounter at an astronomy lecture led to Beatrice connecting with Ben Bastyr, a returned Peace Corps volunteer. The lecturer asked if anyone in the audience might

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have heard of Dr. Richard Reusch, and Beatrice said she knew him from Africa. This caught Ben’s attention. They met in December 1979 and married seven months later. Within a year, they were headed back to Africa, to a new country for either of them, Upper Volta, soon to be renamed Burkina Faso. But for most of us, there was a need to find someone to help us navigate life in the United States, but these people had to have something in them to which we could connect. Beth Jackson Crawford lamented how poor a guide her first husband had been as she made the transition from being a naïve RVA graduate to a new mother. They married at the end of her first year at Gustavus, after only dating for three months. Finding herself pregnant, she did not feel like she could go on. She felt that her strict religious background at RVA left her ignorant, but she also questioned why her new husband did not help her more to understand this new environment in which she found herself, an environment with much different values and expectations. Most of us fortunately found partners who were good and helped us find a sense of direction. Beth’s sister, Jill, spoke about how lost she had felt during her first year at Concordia College, but how meeting Scott Grill, her future husband, helped her make sense of the place. During her second year, she and Scott often dated, but did not see themselves in any special light. However, when she went back to Tanzania after that second year, Scott wrote her almost every week. So, when she returned, she felt that now that they were a solid couple. Many of us after marriage moved off on our own to different spots. For a few, marriage pushed them into a more intense relationship with their spouse’s extended families as they lived lives surrounded by them. Both Gene Palm and Becky Simonson Weinreis experienced this in a positive way as they moved to Alaska and to a ranch in western North Dakota, respectively. Surrounded by families that cared for their well-being helped their transitions into these new places. Still raising a family was not easy. JP and Victoria Lofgren gave a very frank description of their years of marital struggle as he worked long hours as a doctor and epidemiologist and she stayed home to raise seven children and home school them. They explored how his missionary childhood impacted their own communication on how to raise children and communicating with each other. JP described how at the same time, the nomadic life of MKs had made it so he didn’t feel the need to work on keeping a relationship going: To keep a relationship going was just completely foreign to me. It never occurred to me. My history growing up as a missionary kid was you didn’t get too close to somebody because it’s going to end, just like I left RVA never figuring

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to see any of those people again. In the same way, I left home and figured I wouldn’t see many of these people for years. You are out of contact for several years so that idea of a close relationship just was kind of foreign.

Despite feeling like their communication had improved, in my interview with them, they discussed how JP’s missionary childhood had made for difficulties within their own family. They highlighted how the boarding school schedule shielded JP from many of the day-to-day experiences of raising a family, or of dealing with conflict within the household: Victoria: They, the kids (JP and his siblings), would go away for three months and come home, and that would kind of be vacation time in a way. . . (But) that wasn’t a real family situation. JP: I don’t think our family would yell and scream. That was just not their style. The Lutheran missionaries were just so uniform that forestalled a lot of disagreements and secondly, my parents tended to argue completely away from us so we weren’t aware of them. Victoria: You didn’t get to see them interact with children either, or make the decisions along the way that help you learn in the family. If you had been home as a teenager . . . We were all in boarding school for much of the time that we were teenagers.

Consequently, for many of us childrearing was a challenge. Simply, we did not have detailed models from our own upbringing in our own childhoods to draw upon and guide us in how we might effectively and lovingly raise our own children during this time of their lives. Despite these differences, most of us who married an “American” found a person who shared similar values to us in many ways. While we may not have the strong connections to a shared place and history that help solidify the relationships of those married to other MKs, other international people, or Africans, those who married someone who did not know Africa generally shared similar values—values similar to what the missionary children had grown up with in Africa. These allowed most of these hidden inter-cultural marriages in America to work and to endure.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

The Occupational Choices of the Adult Children of Missionaries

Another way in which we the children of missionaries developed our identity in our adult lives was through our occupational choices, but these were often tied to our own childhood backgrounds. Many of these choices were planned with the intent to go back overseas, were influenced in some way by the values with which we were raised in Tanzania, or sometimes they just grew out of ignorance about other options. The career dilemma for Jill Jackson Grill in college was described earlier. Her options seemed to be based on what she knew about careers growing up as a missionary kid, “We had so few options presented to us as high school students of what you could go into: teacher, doctor, pastor, or nurse. We had basically four exposures; that was it.” Those few traditional missionary career options turned out to be the careers pursued by many missionary children (table 8.1). Almost half of us ended up working in the church, medicine, education, or homemaking. The largest segment of missionary children, 19 percent, became teachers, followed by medical personnel—16 percent. With church occupations and, in particular, possibilities for mission work drying up, others chose alternative fields that would enable them to work overseas. These included being involved in the tourism industry, engineering, international research, and aircraft piloting. Finally, almost a third ended up in careers that we did not experience growing up overseas. These I have labeled American occupations. In choosing these careers, how did they help us make sense of this

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Chapter Eight Table 8.1. Categories of Occupational Choices of MKs in Study Population, percent Category

Percent

Traditional Missionary Occupations International Occupations “American” Occupations

49.2 19.8 30.9

Total, number

63

Source: Interviews

new place? Did we feel a sense of calling within these careers similar to what our parents had had in their own chosen career paths?

Traditional Missionary Occupations While church work is the smallest category in the Traditional occupation category in table 8.1, closer examination of those who followed this career path provides a useful contrast that permits comparisons between the lives of the children of missionaries with those of their parents. I will highlight the work of three people: Pete Friberg, who has worked as a parish pastor in Lutheran churches in Nebraska and Wisconsin; Ruth Lofgren Rosell, who serves as an ordained Baptist minister; and Luella Peterson Weir, who, along with her husband Jim, worked at a Christian residential facility for troubled boys in New Mexico. I also highlight some features of the work lives of Mark Faust and Tim Lofgren, who both worked as Lutheran ministers, and Beatrice Palm Bastyr, who was a church parish worker for several years. I have written earlier about Pete Friberg’s desire to be a missionary and his dashed hopes. Here I want to highlight how he came to understand the call of being a minister in the United States. Pete decided to become a pastor while at Wheaton College. Three ideas influenced his decision: he saw it as a way that he could get back to Africa; he felt that he had a good way with people that would suit him well as a pastor; and finally, he was influenced Table 8.2. Categories of MKs in Study Population who Chose Traditional Missionary Occupations, percent Category

Percent

Church Work Education Medicine Homemaking

9.5 19.0 15.1 5.6

Total, number

31

Source: Interviews

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by the ethos at Wheaton that “we were there to serve God with our lives.” Most of his seminary training took place in England before finishing at Luther Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul, MN. His internship year took place in the Nebraska Synod in South Sioux City, NE. At the time I interviewed him, Nebraska was where he had spent his entire career, although he is now pastoring in Wisconsin. At various points in his career, Pete came to certain junctures that forced him to ponder the right direction for his career and life. He began work as a single parish pastor at Salem Lutheran Church in Omaha, a small church with an aging population. One of his seminary classmates cautioned him not to take it, saying that he should wait for a call to a larger congregation. Pete, however, felt that you should go where you are called to serve. As it was, he often felt overwhelmed there. He spoke of the frustrations of being in a small church where everybody, including himself, had to take on all roles and where everyone felt overworked. During his time at Salem Lutheran, Pete married Marilyn Peterson, who had grown up with him in Tanzania. The position at Salem ended when the church formed a Hispanic ministry and Pete’s co-pastor at that point, someone who spoke Spanish fluently, took over as the pastor for both the Hispanic and English-speaking congregations at Salem. Pete decided to look into rural ministry. His bishop had described the desperate need for pastors in rural Nebraska and Pete decided that this where he should now serve. Marilyn loved living in this urban setting, so it was not an easy decision to go into a rural ministry. But, again, Pete’s attitude was to “Go where God sends you!” They were called to Blue Hill in south-central Nebraska. Pete and Marilyn quickly adapted to this place and most of it was good. There were, however frustrations in the work, particularly those few members in his congregation who were quick to complain and often unjustifiably or about petty issues. The challenges he faced in managing the handful of demanding personal relationships within the church eroded some of the ideals that guided him into rural ministry. After seven years in Blue Hill, Pete decided he needed to do something different. One of his friends in the congregation had a trucking company, so he decided to drive trucks for a year. While he did so, Marilyn and their daughter, Sarah, settled into a lake cabin by her parents’ home in Wisconsin. This change helped settle all of them. He enjoyed driving trucks, but after that year, he knew he should stay in the ministry. He began to view it in a more realistic light. In talking about his change of heart, Pete said, Mostly, I did start to realize how good I had it as a pastor. So now that I have returned to it, I find that I have adjusted my ideals . . . I learned that being a

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pastor . . . I wasn’t going to be a Messiah. Driving that truck, I saw, well, a job is a job, find a good one, and make the best of it. Being a pastor isn’t too bad a job, even if you’re not the Messiah . . . so it’s just a totally different, wonderful attitude. My outlook has changed.

When I conducted my interview with Pete, they were living in Wausa, NE, a small town in northeastern Nebraska. Pete said that after the year driving trucks, the attitudes of him and Marilyn changed completely. He described their attitudes towards life in Wausa at that point: Martin Luther says we really serve the Lord by being good family men, by being in a career, by being good citizens, and by being in the church. You know, I really grabbed onto that as a basic scheme, and I’ve gotten away from thinking that we need to be doing the extra things, of being good devotional people, and doing the heroic.

While Pete tried to follow the missionary ideals of our parents in his work in America, he often felt frustrated. Only when he began to see his job in less idealistic terms was he able to be at peace with his work in America. Ruth Lofgren Rosell came to her ministry through nursing and has had her feet in the two fields for much of her career. But it is the ministry where she wishes to stay and not nursing. Ruth attended Gustavus. One thing it gave her was a desire not to remain Lutheran. While at Gustavus, Ruth studied to be a nurse. Her dream was to be a missionary, possibly as a nurse-practitioner. After Ruth married Terry and she had worked one year as a nurse, they applied to go to Gordon-Cromwell Seminary in Boston together. Ruth spoke of her excitement about the years in seminary, “I loved (it). . . . Just so much knowledge. . . . It was just wonderful. I would get up in the morning first day of class and yell, ‘All right. Let’s go.’ I was so excited.” Originally, Ruth went to seminary without planning to become a parish pastor, but during her second year she switched to the pastoral track. Within the Evangelical traditions of this seminary, being a woman pastor was still rather new. When Terry and Ruth finished their seminary years, they right away applied for missionary positions with the American Baptist Church, the denomination within which they had studied as seminarians. They stated that they were unwilling to send their children off to boarding school. This limited their possibilities as missionaries, and they were advised to work for a while as pastors in the United States and to apply again later. They were called to several adjoining churches in upstate New York. Ruth spoke with fondness of their work as parish pastors in these churches.

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But, they retained their dreams of being missionaries. An opportunity came up at Prairie Baptist Church, near Kansas City, to work at integrating Laotian refugees into American life and into the life of this small church. Even though it was not overseas, they decided to take the position, because in many ways it seemed like a mission position. While the position was only for a certain number of years, it fit within Ruth’s sense of being a missionary. Ruth described for me how it tied in with her missionary background and her continued feelings of living someplace temporarily that was so much a part of her MK experience. As the five years at Prairie Baptist came to an end, Terry began thinking about what he would like to do with his life. He sensed a calling to be a professor at a seminary, so enrolled at Vanderbilt School of Divinity in Nashville, TN. With this move, Ruth’s work options would be limited to nursing, since there were no American Baptist churches to serve in the area. While Terry began graduate school, Ruth was home with their four children during the week and worked weekends as a psychiatric nurse. She did this for two years. Ruth then began a graduate program of her own at Vanderbilt called religion and personality. Through their different graduate programs, Terry and Ruth both found their faith re-defined. When Terry finished, he found a position back in Kansas City at the Central Baptist Theological Seminary. They returned to their old church, Prairie Baptist. Ruth worked on finishing her doctorate but the week that I interviewed her, she interviewed for a position at Prairie Baptist as an associate minister of community care that worked at developing care structures within her church. She continues to do this work. As Ruth looked back on the impact of her two careers, nursing and pastoring, she greatly prefers being a pastor, but is grateful for what nursing did for her: I really would be happy if I didn’t have to be a nurse again. I think God takes all the experiences of our life and makes us who we are and weaves it all in, so probably nursing was really an important part of me. . . . It is such a relational kind of work that I just think I grew so much personally by being a professional nurse, . . . learning how to help people and express care and compassion and all that stuff. . . . These perspectives . . . bring me to where I am now with concerns and pastoral counseling and caring for people that I just never would be where I am now and who I am without those experiences, too. So I don’t like a lot about nursing. I especially don’t like how everything is technological and how you have to be part of an impersonal system . . . .but it’s a great profession and it’s formed me, but I don’t know if I want to do it anymore.

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Ruth felt at peace with the place she should be coming back to, Kansas City, and being once again part of the same church and community. They, as a family, felt quite settled for the first time in their lives, but she remained open to still considering missionary positions. While Ruth began as a nurse, and she continued with it off and on for many years, she felt a much stronger calling within the ministry. Her feelings about nursing, somewhat mirror Pete’s feelings within the ministry, but for her, the ministry was where she truly felt at home. Like Ruth, Luella Peterson Weir had worked as a nurse for many years and enjoyed that work, but after living in Wisconsin for a few years after they left positions at RVA, Lu and her husband, Jim, started looking for someplace to be of Christian service. At the wedding of her sister to Pete Friberg, they spoke with Margaret Friberg Gibson and her husband, Charles, about their work at Boys’ Ranch in New Mexico. At the time, they were working on an old house. For many people, this type of work is very fulfilling, but they had become dissatisfied with it: Luella: Margaret and Charles had worked with Boys’ Ranch for almost twenty years at that time and we talked to them about wanting to get back into missions. Charles said, “Well, why don’t you come visit Boys’ Ranch and see what it would have to offer you?” He said, “We are short-staffed right now. We’re house parenting.” . . . it was an idea of doing mission work, but doing it in the United States. To me . . . it was a life style. It was not a job; it was a way of living that was very attractive to me. Part of that was coming from my missionary background and the boarding school situation. Jim:. . . . and the service orientation, because we both realized that as we were going along and our income was increasing and all of our money was going back into this old house we were fixing up. We started sort of saying, “This is empty. What good is fixing up a house? We’re not influencing anybody’s lives.”

As it turned out, Boys’ Ranch was a very difficult place to live and work as a family. They had the two young daughters, ages nine and eleven, and they worked with twelve boys, ages six to eighteen, all from troubled homes. They found that, while they were working sixty to eighty hours a week with only one weekend off a month, the needs of their own family often were neglected because of the demands of this job. Still, despite these struggles they felt they were being of missionary service: Jim: (Our work) at Boys’ Ranch goes back to the idea of service . . . if it hadn’t been Boys Ranch, it would have been something else. We both feel that quite strongly. People don’t come to Boys’ Ranch and say, “God has called me to

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Boys Ranch.” We kind of say, “God has called us to Christian service and this is where we serve.” And it was as much of a cultural adjustment to move to Boys Ranch, if not more of an adjustment, for me growing up in America to move to Africa. Luella: We see Boys’ Ranch as a ministry. We see it as a very important place and it is doing what it is meant to do and we’re working with kids and impacting kids’ lives from . . . Jim: . . . for God . . .

In 2002, Lu and Jim left Boys’ Ranch and moved to Wisconsin to be nearer to family. In this American mission of theirs, there was a strong sense of having a call to something and dealing with some of the hardships that arose from it. If they had gone back to RVA to work, it likely would have been much easier for everyone involved, but this work in New Mexico turned out to be much more of a mission for them than their earlier work at RVA had been. Medicine was another area that was familiar to us as missionary kids. Our boarding school, Augustana School, was located at Kiomboi because the major mission hospital was located there. Many of the missionaries resident at Kiomboi worked at the hospital. When we went to RVA, one of the main hospitals for the AIM mission, was located at Kijabe, down the hill from the school. Many of the missionary mothers had trained as nurses and this influenced many of the their daughters. For certain families, medicine was an early career choice. Three of the Lofgrens chose to go into medicine, two Fausts did, as did two of Les and Ruth Peterson’s daughters. For most of the people that went into medicine, it was a career option that they thought of early and planned for even before they left East Africa. Most of them hoped to practice medicine back in East Africa. JP Lofgren told how his lifelong plan was to go back to Africa as a doctor, seeing all his work in the States as preparation for doing so, while Luella Peterson Weir had seen an attitude of service in the work of her parents and that translated for her into wanting to be a nurse. Lynnae Hagberg Winnes remembered helping Luella Weir as part of an independent study at RVA which whetted her appetite for nursing. Lynnae also had a strong interest in public health. Both she and Ruth Lofgren Rosell found that volunteer experiences at Kijabe Hospital, just below the RVA campus, helped them consider medicine as a field. A fairly common theme among the missionary kids who went into medicine was the feeling that public health was a very important area in which to concentrate. As mentioned earlier, this was a major area of interest for Lynnae

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and it was where JP Lofgren felt he should concentrate his energies, as well. While in medical school, he almost thought of quitting because of it, saying, In fact during medical school, during our social medicine, I was fairly persuaded that curative medicine has almost no effect on health that tuberculosis rates and other diseases have pretty well bottomed out before we had medicine to treat them. I almost quit medical school, because I felt that maybe agriculture would be a better place to go, but I was already there, so I thought well maybe I can still do some good.

For others, medicine was a choice made later. David Lofgren chose to go into medicine in college, unlike his brother, JP, who knew he would do it from a very young age. David felt that he had been happier in the medical field than his brother had been with his struggles between working in curative medicine and feeling such a strong need for a public health emphasis. For Steve Friberg, there was the joy of using his medical training to go back to Tanzania and work with Tanzanian doctors to learn tropical medicine. He remained grateful for his co-workers wherever he worked: There was Mollel and Chitete who taught me tropical medicine for a couple of years at Selian (Hospital outside of Arusha). I was there for a couple of years and felt a lot of mutual respect. They both became really good friends. . . . I think it was really healthy to be learning from Tanzanians in that situation. Actually working with them, I felt like I was contributing some, but I was also gaining a lot of really valuable experience from them. I’ve enjoyed medicine in Tanzania tremendously.

Medicine seemed to be a career choice that tied in well with the values of service we had experienced in our missionary childhoods and we had seen many examples of it growing up. As a result, many were influenced to consider a career in medicine at a relatively young age. Another traditional area of missionary work, education, was one to which we were exposed as we grew up in Tanzania. However, few of us missionary children who became teachers chose to do so immediately. Most of us who went into education decided to do so after earning degrees in other disciplines. Of all the career fields chosen by the missionary children, this one attracted the most people. In the little research there is about the occupational choices of children of missionaries, teaching is usually listed as the number one choice. Moreover, those who worked in education among the missionary children I interviewed were more likely than others to state that they felt a particular calling to the field. I did not feel such a call when I worked as an

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elementary teacher, but I certainly feel it now as a university-level teacher. Dean Jackson in his work as an elementary teacher and Wes Nyblade as a math teacher both stated that they really felt like they had something that they could offer their students. For others, teaching was a way that they could get overseas. Marilyn Peterson Friberg was able to get back to Tanzania as a teacher in Dar-es-Salaam, while Linda Olson continues to teach overseas in Hong Kong. I was able early in my career to teach for three years in Colombia. Both Joel Ward and Gene Palm came into teaching later in life. Joel developed a passion for the outdoors and teaching worked well for him with the time off it afforded him during the summer. Still, he found it challenging to be a secondary English teacher. Gene Palm was disturbed by the lack of knowledge in an adult he met. He vowed to help to make sure that the children in his home area of Kenai, Alaska, really were really educated. This led him to working with others to set up a back-to-the-basics charter school there. This school and fishing are the two major spheres of engagement in his life. Among those who chose teaching as a career are several who turned away from the religious faith in which they were raised, but there remains within them a strong sense of mission as they teach. One of the greatest joys for me as a teacher educator is the strong sense of idealism that comes through from my students. Education promotes idealism and a vision of a better world. Finally, the last traditional mission career was that of homemaking. Many of the women in this study did this for a few years, others for many years. Even some men were involved as the principal parent at home. I spent a year at home with my then young daughter Claire as I finished my PhD dissertation and my wife, Cindy, was teaching. Paul Peterson, when they moved to Wisconsin for his wife to take a pediatrician’s position, stayed home with their daughters for many years. Vaughan Hagberg stayed home with his kids for some time as they prepared to go as missionaries to the Philippines. Lynnae, Vaughan’s sister, spoke about what it was like for her to give up her career in nursing and become a homemaker. “As much as I sometimes get frustrated, I have no regrets about staying home with my kids. I would do it again at the drop of a hat.” While these traditional mission careers may have been picked because they offered a chance to go overseas, they were chosen mainly because the values inherent in them fit the values in which we were raised. Ministry in the United States was not quite like the ministry we saw growing up in the churches in Tanzania. Public health work fit better into the values that we had grown up with overseas, but many of the missionary children who

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went into careers in medicine engaged much more in curative care, while still valuing the chance to be of service in doing so. Teaching provided a strong sense of calling to service for many of us. And years many of us spent in homemaking followed models and values provided to us primarily by our mothers as we grew up in Tanzania.

International Occupations Another group of missionary children chose careers to a large degree because they had strong potential to fit the East African setting. As the Lutheran church in Tanzania strengthened, the support from missionaries became less and less required. Moreover, many of the MKs with a strong desire to work in Tanzania or elsewhere overseas did not feel a sense of call to missions, if any. Consequently, many of those who pursued career options that would take them back to Tanzania took up opportunities within the safari industry, as engineers, and as pilots. The sons of Dean and Elaine Peterson and of the Simonsons all work in the safari business in Tanzania. In the early to mid-1980s, the Petersons formed Dorobo Safaris, while the Simonsons formed Serengeti Select Safaris. In addition, Jon Simonson runs hotels in Tarangire National Park and near Pangani on the Indian Ocean coast south of Tanga. Dave and Thad Peterson launched their business after they had been working on a USAID project in the Arusha area. When consultants worked on the project, Dave and Thad often took them on weekend safari trips, as they knew the country. Because of this, they decided to form their own travel company with the help of Walter Maeda, a local Tanzanian who had attended Gustavus. Later, their younger brother, Mike, joined the company in 1985. One of their former college professors at Gustavus, Bob Bellig, brought out a group of students for a January term, and with several old Land Rovers Table 8.3. Categories of Careers within the International Occupations Chosen by the MKs in Study Population, percent Categories Safari Operators Engineers International Researchers Pilots Total, number

Percent 10.3 4.8 3.2 1.6 12.5

Source: Interviews

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they took their first tour. It was a challenging time in the Tanzanian economy at that point. Thad recollected the early years of their safari business: There weren’t a whole lot of companies in Tanzania then. We only had those two old cars and a Toyota and that was it for a long time. . . . (I)t was just word of mouth of the community of friends that got us going: Gustavus contacts, Bellig, alumni, and the missionary group, which to this day is still big. Many former missionaries and their kids are returning to visit where they once worked and lived—making contact with old friends and associates.

While none of them find compelling the idea of tourism as a business, they have found that through tourism they can educate people about a broad range of issues confronting Tanzania: Dave: I think we have used tourism to pursue our philosophy, make a living, and do the kind of things we want to do. I would say tourism is not an end, it’s a means. . . . It would be a whole lot easier if I could do all the things I wanted to do without having to go through the hoops of tourism. But it’s working. . . . It enables us to be in the kinds of things we want to do and push the kinds of conservation, environmental things we want to do with tourism and play an active role. Mike: What we try to do is (to help) people to look at the landscape in a broader way, to appreciate indigenous land use systems, . . . to have that crosscultural exchange and open people’s eyes. That’s why we have gotten into the educational part of it. That’s been good. It is becoming more and more important to our business financially.

The business of the Petersons operates from a large property southwest of Arusha on which all of them have also built their houses. Thad spoke how this arrangement has worked through the years: It’s been one of those things that I really like. I really like the collaboration. I love the ability to have support and advice. The downside of course is that one at times feels restricted as you can’t just make a decision easily on your own. Needing to always collaborate and get consensus can be frustrating. Luckily, I think that my brothers and I have very similar world views and philosophies. Over the years we have all found roles and niches in the company that fit us and complement each other. I think it has been harder for our spouses, trying to figure out their roles and finding their independence and yet still being part of a larger extended family whether they like it or not. For the kids, it has been great.

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In addition, the brothers have set up a charitable organization, the Dorobo Fund, which grew out of what they felt were major issues affecting people in the area. They became involved in many projects such as blocking huge land deals when outsiders were trying to buy up land throughout Maasailand. They set up community conservation sections and funded antipoaching activities and even worked to help local schools. For these three brothers, it has been a satisfying life to be back in Tanzania. With a loan from his father and other financing, Jon Simonson set up Serengeti Select Safaris and bought Tarangire Safari Lodge, a run-down tented camp in Tarangire National Park. This was in 1985 when few tourists were coming to Tanzania. Through trial and error, he fixed it up and has run it successfully since then. He says he enjoys the work and the variety of tasks to which he must bring his skills. Living within a national park also is satisfying. While Jon worked at Tarangire, his oldest brother, Steve, ran things in Arusha for Serengeti Select Safaris. Steve previously had worked in northern Kenya on a development project with Lutheran World Relief. He says that he felt much more comfortable with and better suited for that work than he does now with tourism. He worried as he got into the safari business that he would have to fall into the corruption he commonly saw in the operations of many businesses in Tanzania. He remains ambivalent about being involved in tourism: I think I would rather run a factory than be in tourism. It’s very much meeting and talking with the tourists. . . . (Not) one of us is particularly sociable or business-like, but it’s what it takes to live here, I guess.

As Steve recognizes, tourism has allowed these six men to live their adult lives in Tanzania where they grew up as children of missionaries. The work provides some satisfaction and places them in a position to pursue other possibly more satisfying activities in the country. For others, engineering gave them a chance to return to Tanzania. Don Moris, one of the oldest missionary kids in the study, realized this when he was leaving Tanzania in the early 1960s. His plans then were to try to come back as some type of vocational missionary. As he studied in university, he found that providing water could be a way he could be of service in Africa. He returned to work with the Tanzanian government in its Water Department, working in northern Tanzania and felt like he was providing a valuable service to the communities in which he worked.

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While still attending school at ISM my brother Jeff considered how he might give back to Tanzania. One thing he thought that he could do was to become an engineer. Jeff was able to return to Tanzania in the early 1990s and work for MSAADA, an architectural non-profit that was set up by a former Danish missionary to support churches with their building projects. Similarly, Nate Simonson, like Don and Jeff, chose engineering as a career in part because it enabled him to return to Tanzania to help in some capacity. He had volunteered to work on a water project near Singida with an Australian aid project when on a break from college. It opened his eyes to the possibilities of being able to return to Tanzania as an engineer. Like Don Moris, before him, he saw providing water as a way he could be of service in Tanzania. He was able to work for the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service (TCRS) within refugee camps in western Tanzania and later to continue the work he had done around Singida earlier. Nate went on to work on a project in Lindi in southern Tanzania, and then in Mozambique and in South Africa, before returning to Arusha to help his dad with the Maasai Girls’ School in Monduli and his brothers with Serengeti Select Safaris. Finally, in this category of international work, Steve Cunningham returned to Tanzania as a volunteer pilot and now works there as a commercial pilot. I was always thinking, “How can I get back to Africa? What job can I do that could get me back to Africa?” When I was attending high school in Kenya, the border was closed between Tanzania and Kenya. We were flown from Nairobi to Arusha with MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship). I was always so excited and that excitement continued long after the border reopened. When I was in the States, I said, “FLYING! You should learn how to fly. That would be a great thing to do out in Africa.” It was during that first year in the States that I got excited about becoming a pilot. Of course, it was just an idea.

As was noted in chapter 5, Steve was able to return to Tanzania as a pilot with the Flying Medical Service and has continued flying there since. These missionary children have been able to lead international lives because of the directions they took in their careers. Those of us who followed the traditional careers of missionaries were not so fortunate, generally having to build our careers in the United States, although we shared with our parents a similar way of looking at the world and how we should engage with it in service.

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“American” Occupations When interviewing my MK peers who had pursued careers that seemed worlds away from a missionary calling or an Africa connection, several surprised me by stating that they found some of those connections in their work. I will highlight these here. Duane Palm spent much of his career as a service station operator. He credited his connections with Eliasafi, the jack-of-all-trades at Augustana School, the one who helped him the most toward pursuing a technical field. Similarly, Dan Gottneid, as a clay artist, spoke about the Makonde wood carvers in Moshi as being a large influence on his own art work. As a teenager at ISM, Dan and his friend, Erik Eriksmoen, used to sneak cigarettes while watching the wood carvers work. They helped him understand that: The big thing there is you have the wood and you have the spirit of the wood; by carving, you release the spirit in the wood. They kept talking to me about the difference between making something out of wood and making something with wood; the first type forces the wood to be something, while the second becomes a partnership between the artist and the wood and it becomes something. Anyway, they taught me that.

However, as he pursued his work with clay as an adult, he noted how little Africa was showing up in his own art. Until this year, I have not seen any African influence in my work. So I talked to Ray (his mentor) about it, “Here are all my pots. There is nothing African in there. Why doesn’t 18 years of Africa show up?” He responded that, “There is a lot of Africa in its simplicity of form.” Now, I’ve started carving on them. I make eye shapes with the lines coming around the pots, more like the Makonde scarification on the face. . . . How I was taught and how to accept influence is, first, you must see something, maybe play around with it a few times. Then let it sit up in your mind for a while. There is nothing new in pottery. It’s all been done before. But by letting an idea sit in your mind for a while it becomes yours, and I think the 18 years of this imagery stewing in me is now coming out.

Beth Jackson Crawford, when I interviewed her, was the beverage and restaurant manager at Fountain Creek Hotel in Death Valley, CA. In this work, she found many connections to her African roots and her life as a boarding school student when Martha Malloy was our house mother. She said of her work, “In a lot of ways my job is very similar to being a housepar-

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Table 8.4. Categories of Careers within the “American” Occupations Chosen by MKs in Study Population, percent Category Airlines Artist Banking Beverage/Restaurant Computers Construction Factory Home Improvement Oil Industry Organization Specialist Probation Officer Rancher Real Estate Secretary Service Station Owner Student Truck Driver Total, number

Percent 2.3 1.6 4.0 4.8 3.2 0.8 2.3 0.8 0.8 1.6 0.8 0.8 0.8 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 19.5

Source: Interviews

ent. . . . You’ve got a lot of people that live here, and I’m their manager and give guidance. And with living in the same property, it’s a lot like Kiomboi. It’s very, very similar.” Beth went on to describe the aspects of this position that gave her satisfaction: the ability to watch people she works with grow and teaching them skills within this business. Mark Faust was able to see the mission influence in his work as a probation officer. He told about why he had decided to move to that field after being a pastor for many years and then working for drugstore firms. As he considered a career change, much seemed to point him in the direction of being a probation officer. He decided to give it a try. While it seems worlds away from our childhoods in East Africa, he found many connections between this work with ex-cons and the missionary life: This has much more ties to my missionary childhood than my life working in a drugstore. In many ways, it has all kinds of similarities. It’s propounding, working with people about their core values in unusual settings. It’s taking a message of grace and of the love of God to where they live in their language. It really is.

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Paul Bolstad, who had been a teacher missionary in Africa, returned to America and tried to figure out what he should do with his life. He began to look at real estate as a career and as a way to help retired missionaries. He obtained his real estate license and become affiliated with a local company. Around 1990, Paul found some property in Eagan, Minnesota, that could be developed into a set of co-op apartments where retired missionaries and church workers could settle in to together. He tried out his dream and it worked. In 2012, Paul reported: The coop is now 20 years old and self-managed. Ida Marie Jacobson and many other missionaries and pastors have lived and continue to live there. In fact, there is a waiting list to purchase a share in the coop. I have taken great satisfaction in the success of this venture and view it as part of my “mission in real estate,” which is rooted in my mission upbringing and missionary service as an LCA missionary.

Others found positions that had no connection whatsoever to their missionary background, but they still found satisfaction in their work. Russ Nyblade works in home improvement stores. He found that his greatest satisfaction comes from being able to help people solve problems while they were working on home improvement projects, something he liked to do personally in his own home. After being a teacher for some years, Kim Jackson joined his wife, Birdie, with her family’s banking business. He had enjoyed his life as a teacher, but grew to enjoy being in the bank, too. He liked working closely with Birdie and found their marriage strengthened because of it. He enjoyed the variety of tasks that needed to be done in the bank from being a loan officer to being the main tech support person. Even though I went into these interviews feeling like this group would have found it hard being in these occupations, part of the satisfaction that they found in their work was that they were able to find connections within it either to a skill learned in Africa, something they had experienced there, or to some value held up as important within the American Lutheran mission family in Tanzania. Our careers have helped us, the children of missionaries, as we made sense of life in the United States or returned to Tanzania and made sense of it anew. The majority of us chose occupations that were aligned with the values that we learned from and shared with our parents. Others chose occupations that allowed them to work overseas and for these people, there

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was a sense of helping many of the same people their parents had helped, but within a different career path. Finally, those who chose “American” careers, tried to find ways to express through their vocations the ideals that had been expressed by their parents toward their own work as missionaries in Tanzania. Our careers have helped us see the world in a new way, but also connected us to our childhoods in ways that we might not have foreseen as we began those careers.

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The Second Generation Forming Connections to Places as Adults

I stated earlier that one of the characteristics that distinguished missionary children from their missionary parents was a strong connection to the places of their childhood. But now as adults, they were often asked to make sense of another landscape (table 9.1). In this chapter, I explore how the missionary children made sense of these new landscapes. There were some that were able to return to Tanzania as adults, but they generally now saw it in a new light. Others went to other parts of Africa and formed a connection with another part of the continent in a different way from what they had experienced in Tanzania as children. Still others went elsewhere in the world and built ties to those places in ways that, while influenced by their African childhoods, were entirely new. Finally, most of us settled in the United States and had to make sense of this land of our parents’ childhood. Many of us initially found Table 9.1. Continental Locations of Adult MKs with at least one stay in . . . Continent

Percent

Africa Asia Australia Europe Latin America North America

43 7 2 3 3 97

Total, number

58

Sources: Interviews

203

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Chapter Nine Table 9.2. Number of Moves during Adulthood by Adult MKs in this Study, percent Moves

Percent

1 2 to 4 5 6 to 9 10+

13 43 15 23 5

Total, number

60

Sources: Interviews

the place inhospitable and we often were uncertain of the value and wisdom of our growing connections to the United States as time passed. However, this changed as we entered into our careers, got married, and had children. Our childhoods can be characterized as nomadic, with moves every three months between boarding school and our homes, and every four years between Africa and the United States for furlough. For some of us, this itinerant pattern of life also became part of our adult lives—among the missionary children studied, 28 percent had moved at least six times in their adult lives; however, 13 percent had settled into one place quickly and remained there (table 9.2). This stability is seen both among those who ended settling back in East Africa and those who established themselves in the United States.

Returning Home For many of us, as we thought of where we wanted to be in our adult lives, our dream was to be able to get back to Tanzania. However, those who realized this dream found that they had to see the place through new eyes. Nonetheless, they were often comforted by their childhood connections to the place and know that their family had roots there. But as they settled in, mainly in non-missionary positions, they also were able to look critically at the roles their missionary parents had played in Tanzania. Don Moris spoke about his arrival in Africa in the early 1960s. Despite an inauspicious arrival with baggage missing and no living arrangements prepared, he remained thrilled to be back. As he said, “I shuttled around from house to house, but to me, I just loved Africa, so the adjustment was easy.” Jeff, my youngest brother, arrived back in Tanzania almost thirty years later. He too found this profound sense of coming home:

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Probably, the number one thing was a real confirmation that it was home. . . . it was where I had a history, regardless of what would happen to me for the rest of my life. . . . And the other thing I felt was some reconciliation . . . feeling that I’m giving something back here. My technical skills, my experience, my language skills, my history were actually being used for what they should be used for. And for me, for Tanzanians to come up to me and say, “This is your nyumbani (home).”

Dave Peterson told of his sense that we, children of missionaries, together with other Europeans that had been raised in East Africa, were a tribe in the context of the broader Tanzanian society. Mike Peterson expanded on this idea, discussing how he had to learn to accept the in-between social and cultural position that all of us feel as MKs, not really being American and not really being African: (T)he sense of not having a culture. . . . I’m not Tanzanian. As close as I can be to our guides, I’m not one of them. I don’t quite fit the mode. It is important to accept that and not try to be an American or Tanzanian, necessarily, and just accept who you are as much as possible. I think that’s a stumbling block that we have as MKs. It’s really hard to accept that we are going to always have that cross-cultural experience. . . . I’ve struggled with that here, and wanting to be more identified as a Tanzanian and realizing . . . hey, you know, I’m different. I’m only partial. I have a certain understanding of it, but when it comes right down to it, I’m American, too, but I’m not that either.

Mike’s perspectives on this changed when he returned to Tanzania as an adult. “I think the difference was that I lived it more. I saw the reality of different cultures, being non-Tanzanian. Whereas before you lived in this little missionary closed (community) with friends and whatever, and your contact with Tanzanians was through your parents’ missionaries’ eyes.” Nate Simonson, after stints working elsewhere in Tanzania, and then in Mozambique and South Africa, returned to live in Arusha. He appreciated being back in the area where he grew up, near family and friends, and to be part of a community that he saw as his own: At least for me, this is home. Not this house, or this home, but the area. It’s home for me. Of course, my brothers are both here and their families and having kids to play with, children around. I had hoped for them that they would be playing with neighborhood kids more, but going to international school is not conducive to that. That is a negative aspect of it.

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Steve Simonson had lived in Kenya for many years before moving back to Arusha. He had both longed for and worried about moving back to a place where the Simonson extended family was so important. They had been living as a separate nuclear family for their years in Kenya and enjoyed it, so Steve tried to find another place in Tanzania in which he might work, before finally settling on Arusha. He told of their deliberations in this way, For me personally, it was a longing to be back with the family. But for my immediate family, it would be good to be somewhere else so we did look around. I genuinely was hoping for and wanting the Biharamulo job that I had applied for when we were leaving Kenya. It would be like moving back to Arusha slowly, but still in the bush, still our own separate family.

Nate had mentioned how his own children were not as involved in playing with the neighborhood children around Ilboru, as he was in his own childhood. Steve Friberg remembered the separation of our generation from local African children because of boarding school. On returning to Tanzania, but did not want his own children to live in the narrow cultural framework that boarding school forced us into as children and the narrow confines of our cultural exposure. He wanted his own children to have more cultural connections than we had experienced during our boarding school years. So, as they home schooled their children in Kitumbeine near the Kenyan border among the Maasai people, he made sure that they would take their twin boys and would stay in a local boma every few weeks. As he said, his parents were connected to the Tanzanians in their work, but he felt he had been separate from most Tanzanians while growing up, and he did not want that to go on for another generation. Steve Cunningham, in talking about the differences he felt returning to Tanzania as an adult brought out how he often longed for the easier times as a child when he did not have to make any major decisions on his own. All the changes going on in Tanzania made it even harder to make these decisions. For Steve Simonson, the changes he sees in Arusha now are depressing. Now the beauty of Arusha that he had known as a child was gone: Houses going up everywhere, crowding, crowding, and more crowding. I think it hurts a lot more when you have memories as a kid of all the nice forests you played in, like the Ilboru Road being well-shaded. . . . It feels like it’s being raped or something. I sort of despise Arusha, whereas I used to be extremely proud.

Steve still feels that peace of being in Tanzania when he goes out into the bush and is reminded of what it was like for him as a child. This is why he

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still wants to continue living in Tanzania. Dave Peterson also felt that this childhood connection to the savanna environment of Tanzania continues to define who he is to this day. Thad Peterson was glad that he did not work as a missionary in Tanzania as an adult. It allowed him to look critically at what the missionaries had done and see it through African eyes: I am more aware of . . . issues like environmental change and poverty and all of that stuff, much more than growing up. Now, it’s very real. While there is that community that comes from our upbringing through church . . . I feel myself much more able to also be a bit critical at times. We can see the negatives. . . . There is a very imperialistic and insensitive side to Christianity and probably every religion. Maybe because we have worked with the Maasai and other more culturally-intact groups of people, one begins to see things from very different perspectives. I once was with a group of students visiting the Hadza and they wanted to know about the Hadza religion. When I asked them, the reply was that they don’t have religion: “That is something you outside people have brought to us.” So then we asked if they believed in God. “Oh yeah, we believe in God, but we just don’t have any of that stuff you guys call religion.” And so again things get very blurred—whose world view and belief system is right, wrong, or better?

So, for those missionary children who returned to Tanzania, there was a joy in being back in this land, but there was a renegotiating of their connections to this place based on their new responsibilities of adulthood. They were having to follow the Apostle Paul’s injunction of having to re-do the thinking patterns of their childhood now that they were adults.

Going Elsewhere in Africa In the same way, those who went to other parts of Africa as adults had to rethink how they saw Africa in a context that was different from that which they experienced in Tanzania in their childhoods. For some, living in other parts of Africa was even better than being in Tanzania, while for others Tanzania remained the ideal location for them. For Steve Simonson, Martha Jackson Mascarenhas, and my brother, Todd, their times in other parts of Africa stood out as enjoyable parts of their early adulthood; for others, like Joel Jackson, it helped give him a sense of being an adult, while in Nate Simonson’s case, he was able to see in other places what he really missed from Tanzania. Martha, after marrying Masky, felt welcome into his extended family in Nairobi and loved living around them. She described this time succinctly by

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saying, “I think it was very good in the sense that we had the community of my husband’s family. Their friends were a very good part of our life” Steve and Marilyn Simonson moved to the Hurri Hills, a remote location in northern Kenya, where they lived for eight years. They found that they both enjoyed living in this isolated setting and raising children there: That was really good. The good included isolation, I guess. . . . Just isolation and . . . we both really liked it. We had worried about Marilyn because she is a very social person, but she . . . adapted and turned into that type of person that enjoyed the isolation. Serena was born almost right away. . . . We weren’t worried about her because there really wasn’t anything you could do about anything really. We just lived with the idea of Shauri ya Mungu (God’s problem) and decided not to worry—because there were lots of snakes and if she got really sick, it was hours to anywhere.

Later, it became hard for them to contemplate moving from this isolated location into Arusha where they would be surrounded by people they had both known all their lives. Todd, my brother, has a stronger attachment to some other parts of Africa than he does to Arusha, in contrast to my youngest brother, Jeff, and I, who feel the deepest attachment to Arusha. He described how living in Chad as a Mennonite Central Committee volunteer influenced him early on in his adult life: I guess the fact that I was a missionary kid mattered in my ability to adapt quite quickly to the situation, but it was very different. . . . But (in Chad) I was almost an adult . . . and (the experience there) affected how I viewed the world. . . . The years there, I think for both of us were good. We developed a much greater respect for the Africans, a recognition that they . . . (have) very sophisticated cultures that I was fascinated with to no end. . . . In many ways, Tanzania is a place where I grew up and that’s about it.

For Joel Jackson, his two years with Peace Corps in Ethiopia were in some ways similar to his years in Tanzania, but because it was someplace where he had no family connections, he was influenced by it in a way similar to Todd’s experiences in Chad. He found that this experience helped him see Africa differently: I learned to see Africa very differently. I was a working person there. I was working directly with the local people the whole time I was there, instead of being there as a son of someone who was working there. I think I looked at the people differently from that experience. I formed some real close friendships there.

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For Nate Simonson, moving on to Mozambique and South Africa, from his early years in Tanzania, allowed him to appreciate Tanzania more. In Mozambique, he worked without knowledge of the local language, and this made him appreciate how his knowledge of Swahili had helped him connect with Africans in different ways. As he moved on to work with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa, he was struck by the impact the years of apartheid had had on the self-esteem of South African Christians he met, compared with the Tanzanian Christians he knew: They were totally different than Tanzanians. The effect of that apartheid system on people’s way of thinking about themselves had such a negative impact. . . . “Why do people feel so negative about themselves as a people?” I guess being told that you are second-rate and you are different person than someone of a different color for decades and decades, it starts to sink in after awhile and that I found very hard sometimes to relate to. It permeated the church and the way they thought about themselves, and was very different from the church here and the way people think of themselves here in East Africa.

Nate and Susan worried about the impact the legacies of apartheid would have on their own young children living in South Africa. They were living in a segregated community in Johannesburg, and Nate was worried his children would pick up the negative ideas of their white neighbors. They made a conscious decision to leave South Africa, and move back to Tanzania, because of it. For each of these people, there was a comfort in knowing they were back in Africa. For all of them, the relationship to these new places allowed them to understand Africa in a new way. For Nate, it helped push him back to Tanzania despite the new understanding he gained from living in these other countries. For others, it was finding that those places entered them and made them into new people, committed to Africa, but not necessarily Tanzania.

Making Sense of Another International Place For others, just being overseas felt right. I experienced this when my wife, Cindy, and I moved to Colombia in the mid-1980s for three years to teach. The country was violent but there were wonderful things about the place. We formed a strong community of teachers, many of whom remain friends to this day, and it formed another layer in my connections to place. Both Linda Olson and Vaughan Hagberg similarly connected to the places they moved to.

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Linda Olson has moved between Turkey, El Salvador, and Hong Kong in her teaching career. Her first position was as an ESL teacher in a private for-profit school in Istanbul. It was poorly run and the teaching situation was fairly miserable. Linda described it as the worst school she taught in during her career as a teacher. Yet, she enjoyed living in Turkey and the strangeness of it made her feel at home. As she said of herself, “I think I always feel at home where I am not at home. I’m used to being the outsider.” From Turkey, Linda moved on to El Salvador at the height of the Civil War and spent five years there, leaving only when she was eight months pregnant with her daughter, Tasha. She considered going to El Salvador in the first place because at that time in her life, she saw herself as a risk taker. Linda taught at a British school in the suburbs of San Salvador, the only American teacher at the school, but once again this did not bother her. She made friends with both the local Salvadorans and her fellow British teachers. From El Salvador, Linda moved to Florida for a year to live with her parents and have her daughter, Tasha. Linda then found a position in Hong Kong at the United World College where she has been teaching since 1993. Working at this residential two-year secondary institution has made Linda feel at home, even though Asia still feels rather alien to her: I don’t really think of Asia as my home. I actually think of that specific place where I am living as home . . . I really love the school. I like Hong Kong, now. I didn’t like it when I went because it was so alien to my growing up years. There are a lot of things there in terms of things I didn’t have as a kid, that Tasha can access as well, educationally, there is a very good medical system, even just the fact that there are good book stores, which is important to me. And a lot of . . . very high level performances come through Hong Kong because it is a major . . . hub in Asia. The other thing I like about it is in terms of their view of the family and the respect for the elderly; their values are very close to African values. . . . It may be because my boyfriend is Chinese. . . . I feel more at home with the values there than I do with what I perceive as the values here (in the United States), at least the values that are out in the open in the States.

In looking at pictures of Linda’s children, one who is now in her twenties, the other a primary student, you see Linda’s international story. Both reflect their fathers’ respective African-American and Asian heritages, but you see the genetic imprint of Linda in each of them. Linda’s family picture reflects her sense of being an international person. Vaughan Hagberg went to Asia as a missionary. His connection with the places he has lived in have been mediated by the type of work he has done as

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a radio engineer, which has given his children a different type of missionary kid life than he experienced as a child growing up in Tanzania. In the Philippines, work and a lack of language has often limited Vaughan’s involvement with the wider Filipino community. The church they attend has helped with wider community involvement, but being in an English work environment and a lack of strong Tagalog language skills limits his interactions with the local Filipinos. In comparing his life with that of Aleda, his wife, and that of his children, he feels that his life is more restricted due to the nature of his work. Aleda has a more flexible schedule and can be involved in the life of the school where their children attend, Faith Academy. Vaughan, in contrast, is limited in his interactions with those he works with at the radio station. The compound they live on is very international with a mix of many nationalities and Filipinos. However, the Filipino school schedule is very different from that in the international schools, so, while their children played with others from around the world, they were limited in their involvement with local kids. In comparing his own childhood in Tanzania with his that of his children in the Philippines, Vaughan saw both differences and similarities: I think of the time that I had, like when I was in Oldonyo Sambu or Loliondo, it was with Tanzanians. And I know some of the people that live out in the provincial areas or working among the tribes (in the Philippines) certainly have some of those opportunities. I think my kids are missing some of that. They are missing out on the interaction within the Filipino culture, and some of that is our own fault, because we got involved in the community of Faith Academy.

American Regional Variations Finally, we get to those who had to live and make sense of their adult lives within the childhood homes of their parents. Most missionary children settled either in the Midwest or moved to the West. Only a very few have settled in the East or South, so I will concentrate on the first two regions. The Midwest I will begin with those of us who settled in the Midwest, the area of the country where most of our parents were raised. All the other places that missionary children have settled have a type of exoticism to them, but the Midwest with its flat landscapes, road grids, and its dominant northern European

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heritage has none of it. We ended up in a place where the weather gave us an exotic place, not the landscape, and we have ended up responding to this place in many different ways. The Jacksons can think of St. Peter, MN, as their hearth in America with their parents having retired there and with five of the seven children choosing to live in the town for some period of time. The reaction of the four Jackson daughters to settling in St. Peter is a microcosm of the ways that so many of us have reacted to living in the Midwest. Beth, the oldest, settled in St. Peter first. She found she enjoyed many aspects of life here and had been involved in many civic organizations, but never could feel that it was home, a feeling that came to her right away as she contemplated moving to Death Valley, CA. Debbie has lived in St. Peter a long time and raised her family in the town, forming an attachment to the place that seems to have eluded Beth. She spoke about how through her many years here and her children having grown up in the place, she feels comfortable there. For Martha, Debbie’s twin, who moved here after many years living in Nairobi, St. Peter was much harder to form an attachment to, as she and Masky saw themselves more as East Africans than as Americans. Consequently, it was hard to form the rituals that fit into this new place: He and I both feel we are East African. We are wananchi there. The people I was very comfortable with and to have anybody from there come in your home, it was just like having my brother or sister coming home. It was so open and you always have chai and something to eat with them and anytime of the day they could come in. I found that very different when we came here and found everybody here has to make appointments. You can’t just stop by. We felt it the first year we came here, because we had a tradition every Christmas of making all kinds of cookies and sending them to our neighbor houses, a plate of Christmas cookies, which was a tradition in the Goan communities. We sent cookies to our neighbors here and nobody ever accepted it. I think they felt it was strange, and you don’t know what is in the food. They said, “We didn’t think that we should eat it because we didn’t know you.” We’ve been told that and to me, that was like, “Oh, my goodness, I would never have even thought that.”

However, Masky’s outgoing personality soon permeated the cold of the neighborhood and made it much warmer for them. Jill found that having good neighbors helped make St. Peter more of a home for her when she and her family first moved there. But unlike the experience of Martha living several blocks away, they have seen their neighbor-

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hood lose some of its earlier warmth and ease. Simply with the growth of her boys to adulthood and people moving out of her neighborhood, at the time of our interview thirteen years after she had first settled in St. Peter, she no longer felt as home in the neighborhood as she once did. The Midwest also featured in interviews with people who had not lived here after college. Linda Olson spoke nostalgically about Minnesota, even though she had not lived in the area since she graduated from college in 1985. “If there is anywhere in the States that I feel a kind of loyalty to it is Minnesota. I was driving the car over to go shopping. I didn’t realize that I had it on NPR and Lake Wobegon came on. All these really positive feelings about Minnesota came back.” Rachel Peterson Jones and Steve Faust found their attachments to Wausau, Wisconsin, and Iron Mountain, Michigan, grew out of seeing their children grow up in a certain place. Rachel said, “Once you start setting down roots, especially for your children, you make a home and that’s when I was able to start saying it was no longer Africa.” For Steve, when his own children started school, he started to see Iron Mountain as his home, but he still had Africa as a deep place in his heart. Kris Ward Tyler lived in Minnesota for a few years and found the winter landscape particularly hard to accept. In contrast, in my talks with her husband, Keith, a native Minnesotan, he made it clear that he truly missed the place, while they continue to live in the West. Kris described how she saw the Minnesota landscape: I don’t like winter, and I don’t like fall, and I don’t like the muddy spring when nothing is growing yet, so I didn’t like that. I absolutely hated the flat, unending. You couldn’t see landscape. It was trees or houses that were the highest thing. The feeling that was nice was going to the Mississippi and putting my hands in the water and just knowing someday that that water would be free in the Gulf of Mexico.

Marilyn Peterson Friberg has contemplated missionary life at different times as she has moved between Houston; Omaha; Blue Hills, Nebraska; Wausa, Nebraska; and now Wisconsin. As she contemplated where they were living in the Midwest, she described their lives as settled, but, nonetheless, still feeling some wanderlust. For many of us who have settled in the Midwest, there is a feeling of still being unsure if this is someplace we can call home. I have lived in the Midwest off and on for almost thirty years and still think of it as “Minnesota” rather than “home.” Like Kris, the bipolar nature of Minnesota’s landscape

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prevents me from fully embracing it. I love Minnesota in the summertime, but find that I just have to endure winter. No one spoke of a connection to the Midwest through an attachment to the Midwestern environment; instead those who formed an attachment formed it through social connections. It grew either through raising families in one place or living in close neighborhoods. With many of us living in the Midwest, there seems a greater reluctance to give up their sense of Africa as home. The West In contrast to the Midwest, the West was a place where the landscape was truly embraced. The wildness of the landscape reminded many of the Tanzanian landscape. And like the Midwest, connections grew through raising families and finding social connections. Still for others, there was a sense of dislocation here as well. Three different people from the generation of missionary children who settled in different parts of the West told of how where they were living reminded them of the Tanzanian landscape and how that gave them peace: Becky Simonson Weinreis in describing her life on the VVV ranch near Golva, ND: I felt very much at home, I guess, people were very, very nice to me and like I say, a lot of it is like Africa, the wide open spaces. I think if I was in the city, I would have gone crazy. It would have driven me nuts. The city would have done me in. Beth Jackson Crawford in describing Death Valley, CA: Why here? I think there are a lot of things. The environment, it doesn’t even compare in heat, of course, it is way hotter. But a lot of the remoteness, the being out in the bush, and being able to see as far as you can see and no cars. I feel closer to living out in Africa here than anyplace else I have ever been. And the ruggedness, I think has a lot to do with that. The other thing is the structure here is like a niche for me, because growing up with Auntie Martha, growing up in Africa, growing up in boarding schools, that’s kind of what it is like here. And in a lot of ways, my job is very similar to being a houseparent, especially in the type of position I carry. Jon Moris in describing his connections to Utah while at his house in Richmond, UT: So there are parts that are as wild as Africa, and the other thing I didn’t expect was when I began to deal with native communities. It’s the same colonial story. The Navajo are colonized by American culture in the exact same way as the Maasai were by the British. When I went down to the reservation, and you see the expert sitting in his car, waiting for the driver. It’s just uncanny. So, I find I can interpret the dynamics of the situation. I can carry over a lot of my previous experience in Africa into this inter-mountain West but particularly with regard to the minority peoples,

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the Indians, the Navajos, the Utes, and the others. . . . I find the West, as I see it, a very satisfying link. It has enough of traditional Africa that for me, it works. And when I go back to Minnesota, or other places in the US, I don’t get that at all. They’re still strange territory, and I don’t particularly feel a psychic link. I can appreciate the beauty, like when I went to Norway, I see the beauty. (But,) it’s not my place. But when I am here in this part of the inter-mountain West, I do have that feeling. I have that continuity, and I suppose that’s why I have stayed here.

The social world in the West of the United States allowed some missionary children to feel more connected. My brother Jeff said that he felt at home in Southern California. When he lived in that area, he loved the sense of being among many other foreigners like himself. For others, as in the Midwest, a connection to family allowed one to feel connected. For Jon Moris, that his parents had retired nearby in Idaho made Utah more of a home for him. For Gene Palm, it was the closeness he felt to his wife’s family in Alaska that helped make him feel settled there. Jon also found something else that helped make Utah home and that was the feeling of being an outsider as a non-Mormon. As someone who had been an outsider in all his years in East Africa, this continued feeling of being an outsider in this corner of the United States, helped him feel at home, but also allowed him to make stronger connections to the Mormon community when he saw them as similar to the evangelicals he had met back in Kijabe. In many ways, his feelings as an outsider in Utah are akin to his feelings as a Lutheran child in the Evangelical environment of 1950s RVA. When Kris Ward Tyler moved to the San Francisco Bay area, she enjoyed it, but her husband did not. So, they came up with a compromise home in Phoenix, AZ, where they live now. Kris described that she loved exploring the whole Bay Area where she worked at a small airport. Nonetheless, her husband Keith disliked California, and more than anything, wanted to live back in Minnesota, a place she disliked. So as a compromise, they chose Phoenix. As she said, “I just thought if we both chose a place that neither of us really liked that would be the fairest thing to do.” Finally, Kris’ brother, Joel Ward, has made Modesto, CA his home. He has stability in this place and is working at making it his home. He described the process in this way: I think it is just . . . a stoic determination: This has got to work. I started thinking that I am going to make it my home. That idea of establishing roots, . . . this is it. This has got to work. For me, establishing that base was fulfilling my educational dreams, getting my job, financial stability, acquiring the important

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things, buying this house, and trying to enjoy life as much as I can. . . . It’s rather a pragmatic view of life, the idea that you got to create it yourself, and wherever home is, is where you’ve made it.

But later in my interview, I asked Joel if it had really made Modesto his home. He answered in this way: “Well, I think, emotionally, as far as real connection, if I wanted to identify someplace as home, it’s very clearly Africa still. . . . It’s Isanzu. . . . And here? It’s something I’m working on.” I think Joel’s final comment gets to the heart of how many of us have seen the places in which we have spent our adult years. We continue to work on making new places into homes, but often are unable to obtain the emotional resonance that our childhood homes in Tanzania had for us. We have formed connections through family and in some ways finding landscapes that approximate Tanzania, but for many there is still a longing. But for those who did return to Tanzania, they realize that they cannot view Tanzania in the same way as they did as children. Rather, they often realize that they are an in-between people—in-between Tanzania and the United States in many ways—and that needs to be embraced. But, this in-between nature unites us as a group, wherever we might be living. This sense of in-between-ness and our different history permeates our adult lives. The strongest marriages tend to grow out of a sense of shared histories, places, and values. The careers that most of us chose had some connection to the careers we knew as children and the inherent values we saw in them. Finally, the places where we settled had to be renegotiated during our adult lives. Some of us are still not at peace with our adult places. The strongest connection to place grew in places with similar landscapes to our childhood homes or through long involvement with family in a particular place. We were uncalled to the places where we lived and still feel ourselves negotiating our lives through the “tribal” prism of being children of missionaries, but living lives in which we are dispersed from fellow members of our tribe.

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CHAPTER TEN

Faith of Our Fathers Living Still?

Growing up on the mission field, the idea of God permeated the lives of us missionary children. However, even though we grew up in this same place, our resulting faiths varied greatly, and they have kept changing into adulthood. In contrast, the faith of the missionary generation seemed to have solidified in their young years and remained relatively steadfast throughout their years in a foreign environment. Because of this, I will concentrate in this chapter primarily on the faith journeys of the second generation, rather than on the seemingly unwavering faith journeys of their missionary parents. In the introduction, I discussed how Erikson (1950) viewed identity as the crux of all development. Despite their strong connection to place and some sense of identity that growing up in Tanzania provided, many of the members of the generation of missionary children spent a great deal of their lives trying to define their own religious identity. Marcia (1966) adapted some of the Erikson’s perspectives to show how we often form our identity around key values, like our religious faith (table 10.1). Marcia’s conceptual framework is built around a four-cell matrix based on high and low levels of Commitment (X) and Conflict (Y), and I find it useful for understanding how the missionary children developed their own faith identity. The faith most of us had as children was in the quadrant he labeled Identity Diffusion (–X and –Y quadrant). In this quadrant, we have made no commitment and have no conflicts within it to prompt us to think differently from our parents. An area of low conflict and higher commitment was in the quadrant he labeled Identity Foreclosure (+X and –Y quadrant). In the case of the missionary

217

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Chapter Ten Table 10.1. James Marcia’s Identity Achievement Framework

Source: Marcia 1966

children, this was where we made a commitment to the Lutheran faith of our parents with little questioning about it. This may have occurred during Confirmation for many. An area of high Conflict and low Commitment in one’s faith he labeled Identity Moratorium (–X and +Y quadrant), which many of us experienced when we went to RVA and were confronted with other manifestations of Protestant faiths. Our minds were in conflict as we considered these other faith patterns, but most of us made no decision on our own faith. Finally, in the area of high Conflict and high Commitment (+X, +Y) is an area he labeled Identity Attainment. This is where we have made a decision about which path of faith or unbelief we would take. Erikson and Marcia place these decisions as part of the adolescent experience. At RVA, staff often would exhort us “to make a decision for Christ,” possibly because they felt few of us would make the decision in adulthood. However, what I found in studying my generation is that adulthood was where most faith decisions were finally made. This stands in contrast to the experience of our parents, the missionaries, who had made their faith decisions primarily in their youth.

The Missionary Generation Earlier I discussed the early missionary story of the Hersey’s fictional character, David Treadup, whose life story was told in The Call (1985). The character is partly based on the life of Hersey’s father. In an article for The New Yorker (May 17, 1982), in which he explores his father’s missionary service in China, Hersey states that he himself gave up his faith, but he never mentioned that his

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father lost his. In my earlier discussion on the book, I brought out how Treadup ended up becoming a missionary, but as the book proceeds, Treadup works for years as a missionary, before finally giving up on his faith. I was troubled by this because, like the missionaries I interviewed, Treadup was also a long-term missionary, but unlike the missionaries that I interviewed, the faith that they gained in childhood never seemed to waver. It was a faith that grew throughout their childhoods and then remained with them throughout their years in Africa. Hersey projected his own religious development as a child of missionaries onto a missionary, where it did not belong. In my interviews with the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania, periods in which their faith was weak were recalled. There were times that the missionaries felt spiritually dead, as when my mother described how, when she had gone to church out at the mission station in Loliondo with two young boys and a faulty knowledge of Swahili, she quit listening and found herself receiving no spiritual renewal. She recalled that when she returned to the United States for furlough, she found she continued this habit, until she realized the preaching strengths of the pastor at the church she attended and started listening again. However, most missionaries reported continual confirmation of their faith in their service as missionaries. Dottie Lofgren spoke of how her faith continued to grow during her years as a missionary. She related a story of how she learned to trust that God would come through for her. At one point late in their missionary career when they were serving in Singapore, she became worried for her son, JP, who was serving in Zaire. He needed to travel to Kinshasa and stay there for six weeks in order to get his medical license. Worried that they did not have enough money to bring his family with him during those weeks, she mentioned this to a women’s group that she belonged to in Singapore. The next day, the president of the club called to say that they had a check to help pay for JP’s family expenses. She said of this and other things she had seen in her life of faith, “Your faith matured and you realized you could really trust God. You didn’t have to plan all ahead for yourself.” The Hagbergs and Dean Peterson spoke about how the situation in Tanzania pushed them to see their faith in a new light. For the Hagbergs, it was the material poverty of the country. For Dean, it was the studies he was doing to understand African theology and how to reconcile all the aspects of religion, both Christian and animistic, that influenced his seminary students. These studies led him to look deeper into his own American Christian faith. He was able to reconcile some of the dichotomies he faced:

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I don’t think on basic cardinal faith issues, I ever had a turnaround. As I grew to know the Africans, I thought more positively about their traditional religion and their culture. I usually came to the place where God was at work even before we got there in these societies. God didn’t begin with redemption. He began with creation. You can’t make redemption of the Church bear the whole load of a society. . . . But then I would always say that Christ is necessary because he fulfills. I think he fulfills the best in every traditional religion. But, I surely changed, and I wasn’t so quick to write off whole peoples on the other side of the abyss beyond. I think somewhere or other; I began to think God has got to be big enough to handle this in a way that is consonant with his justice.

And it was this deepening of understanding in their faith that kept most of the missionaries in Tanzania going and growing in their faith. In contrast to the main character in Hersey’s novel, Africa reinforced their faith, rather than changed it drastically.

The Second Generation In contrast to the faith of the missionary generation, the faith of the next generation was one of flux. While the missionaries seemed to gain their faith in childhood, only a minority of their children whom I interviewed reported that their current sense of their faith reflected closely that which they had as children. And, while a majority remained Lutheran, like our parents, it was not a large majority. Here I explore this generation’s religious development and how it sharply differed from the spiritual development of their parents. However, the differences in spiritual development were not only generational; there were fairly strong differences between the genders among the missionary children. Religious ideals, in general, solidified much earlier for the women than for the men. While 35 percent of the women reported that they had their religious ideas solidified by the end of the high school, while only 25 percent of the men did (table 10.2). Nonetheless, about half of both genders reported that their religious ideals did not really solidify until adultTable 10.2. General Time Period where Current Religious Ideas by MK Study Population were Solidified, by Gender, percent Gender

Elementary

Secondary

College

Adulthood

Total, Number

Female Male

27 11

8 14

15 25

50 50

26 36

Total

18

11

21

50

62

Total, number

11

7

13

31

Source: Interviews

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hood, despite having grown up in an environment where God and religionbased values were talked about constantly.

Categories and Gender To examine the spiritual development of the children of the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania who were interviewed, I have categorized them into four categories. The first category is made up of those who described themselves when I interviewed them as Lutherans. As described earlier, our experiences at schools like RVA made our own Lutheranism stand out for us as a point of identity in our adolescent years and we formed groups around this shared heritage. I wondered if that remained within any of us into adulthood. Many I talked with were involved in churches that were non-Lutheran. This is the second category I consider. Those missionary children attending non-Lutheran churches spoke freely about what it meant. For some, this choice did not fit them well, while for others they had freely given up aspects of the Lutheran faith that they felt no longer fit them. The third category consists of those who, when I asked them about their current religious life, stated that, they were Spiritual, but not part of any organized religion. Finally, the fourth group is those who said they could no longer believe. These categories are defined sometimes fairly arbitrarily, but I do bring out the overlap between categories in my discussions. Gender differences persisted across these analytical categories. For men, more than three out of four chose to remain Lutheran like our parents, while less than half of the women (38 percent) did so (table 10.3). While most of the remaining women chose to remain involved in a Christian church, most of the men who did not remain Lutheran chose to not be involved in a religious institution. There is an apparent earlier solidification of faith among the women. That early spirituality allowed them to consider Christian alternatives, whereas the men either went with the “faith of their fathers” or tended to reject Christianity and its institutions altogether. Still Lutheran The majority of missionary children remain Lutheran in our worship practices and faith. It might seem that we just followed in our parents’ footsteps following the path of Identity Foreclosure in Marcia’s conceptual framework. But among all the people I spoke with about their faith journeys, even if they ended up Lutheran, they still had thought deeply about their choices. Their choice of a Lutheran spiritual identity was a choice based more on Identity Attainment than on Identity Foreclosure.

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222 • Table 10.3.

Chapter Ten Religious Categories Chosen by MK Study Population, by Gender

Gender

Lutheran

Christian, Non-Lutheran

Spiritual

Non-Believer

Female Male

10 (38%) 28 (78%)

14 (54%) 3 (8%)

1 (4%) 2 (5%)

1 (4%) 3 (8%)

Total

38

17

3

4

Total %

61

27

5

6

Female, percent (no.)

38 (10)

When solidified spiritual orientation: Elementary school, no. 6 Secondary, no. 1 University, no. 1 Adulthood, no. 2 Male, percent (no.)

78 (28)

When solidified spiritual orientation: Elementary school, no. 3 Secondary, no. 4 University, no. 6 Adulthood, no. 15 Total, percent (no.)

61 (38)

54 (14) 1 1 3 9

4 (1)

4 (1)

— — —

— — —

1

1

8 (3)

5 (2)

8 (3)

1

— — —

— 2

5 (3)

6 (4)

2 — 27 (17)

— 1 1 1

Source: Interviews

The gender differences are quite striking when we compare the women and men who remained Lutheran. The majority of the “Lutheran” women’s religious ideas was solidified during their elementary school years, while most of the “Lutheran” men did not return to Lutheranism, or re-choose it as their faith, until adulthood. This is similar to the general religious development patterns of the two genders, but somewhat more pronounced. I am one of those who are still Lutheran. The decision to remain Lutheran came to me in my adult life, but it built on what I had experienced as a child, teenager, and college student. I have already described some my spiritual directions during my school years. My wife and I spent our first years after marriage moving between Texas, Minnesota, and Colombia. In Texas, we attended a Methodist church for awhile, her childhood faith, but found its services too evangelical and eventually quit going. In Faribault, MN, we spent time finding a church that would fit us. Finally, we joined a Lutheran mission church in town, but were there for only a year, before moving to Colombia for three years.

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While in Medellin, Colombia, we were not involved with any church. Some of our fellow teachers met for Christian fellowship in individual apartments, but I had no interest in joining them. I came to a point where I felt Christianity meant nothing to me. Rather, it seemed like a club and did not say anything to me personally. At one point, I wrote my family that I had given up on Christianity. I was somewhat surprised by my parents’ response. That they seemed okay with it bewildered me. They sacrificed for their missionary work to the Africans. Yet, when their own son gave up Christianity, they just accepted it. Perhaps they knew that my decision was not something permanent. However, despite my new “non-believer” status, I still defined myself as a Lutheran, if a secular Lutheran. We returned to the United States in 1988 and my brother, Todd, and I ended up in the same graduate program in Geography at the University of Minnesota. Near both of our homes was Emanuel Lutheran Church, where a former Tanzanian missionary, Carl Lindell, was the pastor. Carl was a great preacher. In addition, this church did not seem like a club. It consisted of regular, run-of-the-mill people who, like us, came to church for sustenance. It was small, so we were soon involved in many aspects of the church. In the end, our involvement there was enough to get the glue back into my Christianity, something that had been missing earlier. So, now I am and remain strongly Lutheran. I like that I am part of a Lutheran church that is a big part of life both in the Upper Midwest of the United States and in Tanzania. I support how the larger Lutheran church grapples with the issues of the day and is part of this world, rather than trying to separate from it. I find peace within the liturgical structure of the traditional Lutheran service. And I like its stance on infant baptism and open communion, because I feel they are there to welcome all people and to offer the comfort of Christianity to all people throughout their lives. I still have many doubts. The contrast between my Lutheran heritage and the messages I heard at RVA continue to bounce within me. While I did have a return to Christianity, I never really had a “born again” experience. For many of us Lutherans living in a Christian world that emphasizes this, we continue to have our doubts about the validity and strength of our own faith because of this. As I talked with my peers while doing this research, each person I spoke with had thought long and hard about the role that Christianity and religion played in their lives. For many, like me, their current faith decisions were something that often happened later rather than early on in their lives. My two brothers, Todd and Jeff also remain Lutheran, although the solidification of their faiths happened much earlier than did my own. Jeff, my

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youngest brother, found that his experiences as a child and teenager made his faith strong at an early age. Todd retained some of my skepticism, but like Jeff was influenced by the work of fellow missionaries and my father in developing his faith. In talking about his own faith development, Jeff spoke of how key it was to hear the missionaries speak about religious issues together at gatherings and how it helped him see what faith really meant. As we would gather at different potlucks as a community, the missionary men would often get together and grapple about issues they were confronting in their work, and Jeff would listen in. He looked on many of these missionary men as his faith mentors, something he found lacking among preachers he came into contact with in the United States. As he said, “My problem is I compare all my pastors to the ones I grew up with. . . . I grew up among such strong Christians . . . with a real reasonable sense of their place.” During his teenage years, several non-traditional experiences helped him solidify his faith. Going to Catholic mass on his own helped him grow and appreciate the importance of worship, seeing friends from other religions grow in their own faith helped him understand the importance of his own Christian faith, and a house parent helped him develop “an intellectual curiosity in faith.” Jeff has remained a Lutheran through these years, but maybe because of these early forays into searching for faith, he is much more vocal and willing to share his faith than his two older brothers who tend to question it more. Todd in talking about his faith expressed some of my same doubts. Two events during college solidified his thinking on faith. Todd in his second year at Gustavus spent a January interim in Washington, DC, with the then fledgling Lutheran Volunteer Corps and worked in a poor section of the city. In evaluating how it helped his faith, he described how it helped him see how the faith he had grown up with could be used: “It came from a spiritual basis, but it was a spirituality that was of importance to the world. It seemed like a really important path to follow given my background, given that there was an overwhelmingly spiritual side to my upbringing.” Soon thereafter, Todd was in Tanzania doing independent studies and working with Ray Hagberg on a water project near Babati. He also studied a heifer project that my father had managed near Arusha. Like Jeff, listening to the discussion by the older missionary men, Todd was influenced by the actions of these men within a Christian context. I recognized that there was value in having a spiritual perspective on the world and how you deal with the world . . . doing real good work out of good motives and out of a Christian calling. Many people would say it’s a shallow Christian-

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ity, that’s not a faith-based one, but you do see good works, you do see good examples, and I guess that . . . ( provides a model for) living.

When I wrote about my own faith development, the role of the Lutheran liturgy and worship experience was a key part for me in retaining my Lutheran heritage. A traditional liturgy is also what brought Daudi Faust back into the Lutheran church in college in Marquette, MI. At the time, Daudi felt he was on a “plateau” in terms of his own Christian growth. He went to the local LCA church where they had liturgical dance as part of the liturgy. This way of worship troubled him, so he began attending a Missouri Synod Lutheran church with a liturgy more similar to the liturgy he had experienced in Tanzania. “It was the familiarity of the liturgy and my memory of it at Kiomboi that . . . helped me in my ‘faith walk’ through my college years.” Later Daudi, at the urging of his parents went to a weekend program called Cursillo. At this event, he had a born-again type experience. I believe it was the spirit working through my parents, missionary parents, siblings, and friends that had finally unleashed (in me) a true understanding of Grace. It was a cathartic moment for me. . . . All those years of knowing the truth, suddenly “shifted” and, BOOM, all of it melded together and made sense to me, not only at the intellectual level, but an emotional level as well. . . . We Lutherans are good at talking about Grace but to actually be immersed in it is overpowering. My emotional understanding of Grace finally caught up with my “head” knowledge.

After the Cursillo event, participants stay involved in small groups in their communities. Daudi has done this for years. It has nurtured his faith and supported a strong devotional life. Both Nate and Steve Simonson still live in Arusha and have attended Arusha Community Church. They continued to find comfort in their Lutheran roots. I used Nate’s quote in an earlier chapter to tell how he found great comfort in the Christianity that was practiced at Kiomboi but was very uncomfortable with it at RVA. The Arusha Community Church (ACC) is an interdenominational mix but has a strong Lutheran flavor to its service. Some members wanted to add a more charismatic service as an alternative. Nate and Steve both were uncomfortable with a more charismatic worship style. When I interviewed them in 2000, Nate spoke of how his RVA experience colored the discussions around this issue: It brings you back to . . . where you start getting people categorizing you . . . based on how you expressed yourself as a Christian. It brought back memories from

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RVA. . . . Our reactions came out and people didn’t understand them. People seemed to think, “How can you question this? This is all good stuff. There is nothing wrong with it. Why are you questioning it?” . . . It’s a hard thing to deal with the fundamentalism. It’s a hard thing to agree with sometimes.

For both Nate and Steve, the rituals of faith they experienced in their home and at Kiomboi are those that have stayed with them into adulthood because of the balance they provide. In Lutheranism, they have the “faith of their fathers” and of their childhood. Other forms of worship bring back too many memories of a time of discomfort. In a similar vein, both Duane Palm and Joel Jackson feel most comfortable in the Lutheran church because of its inclusive message. While at RVA, Duane became bitter about how he saw Christianity presented there. With its strong stress on evangelism and pervasive legalism, he felt it was missing something. Duane told how one of his professors at Golden Valley Lutheran College explained how he had been a missionary in China in the 1930s and 1940s and was interned by the Japanese. But the professor he did not let this experience make him more bitter toward God, but taught him to study the Bible in more depth. After this lesson, Duane started to feel comfortable with Christianity when he saw it in more universal terms. His Christianity is one that is more universal than exclusive and one that has stayed within him for his whole adult life. Similarly, Joel Jackson saw Christianity in a much broader framework than in its usual interpretation. Unlike Duane, he arrived at college fairly content with Christianity and initially was part of some evangelical outreach teams. However, later he began to question the church and left it for many years before eventually returning to the Lutheran church. When I interviewed him in 2000, he described his theology in this way: Simply put, my theology is socially based and the spiritual side of religion is something I continue to struggle with, think about, and ponder. To me, the concepts of heaven and hell have no meaning. I do not view religion in terms of a carrot held out as a reward for “right” thinking and/or action. If the purpose of religion has only to do with the afterlife, I don’t have any place for it. Just as we cannot quantify or adequately define the concept of God, what happens to us after we die remains conjecture. To me, religion offers a social structure for understanding what we term as moral values that can hopefully lead us to live together more harmoniously. The Christian faith to me promotes the idea that lives should be more selfless and less selfish. When it creates a basis for fellowship between people and relieves human suffering, it succeeds. When

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it divides us and causes enmity and strife, it fails miserably. And I think, this is the case with all religions.

Like Joel and Duane, Thad Peterson has stayed within the Lutheran tradition but has a broader vision of what it should entail. Thad straddles several worlds as he works on environmental issues with different groups in rural Tanzania, while remaining involved in the more European-oriented Arusha Community Church. He sees the rituals of his church and the rituals of other people as equally valid ways of worship. As such, religion is much broader than the Christian vision. In remembering his Confirmation, a key Lutheran ritual, Thad questioned whether he had any say in the matter. As he talked about raising his own children, he was glad they were growing up in a broader community than he had grown up in, but he still felt it was good that they were part of a religious community as part of their childhood. Thad continues to be comfortable with the Lutheran rituals and recognizes that these rituals helped define his own religious and cultural being, while also recognizing them to be of secondary importance. There is a mystery in it all—communion—but I’m not sure it’s any more unique than a lot of others that bind people between the spiritual and the body. . . . The struggle for me has been to decide what is important in the church, what is worth fighting about and what really is dogma or human institutions or rituals that just divide us and get in the way of the core of what it is about.

While many of the people I spoke with remain Lutheran partly because of a strong rejection of the type of Christianity they experienced at RVA, others felt that the traditions at RVA fit them very well. Some of the Lutheran MKs who are still Lutherans as adults, told of feeling perfectly content in other types of churches and at times had left the Lutheran church. Two of these people were Lynnae Hagberg Winnes and Kris Ward Tyler. Lynnae saw her own spiritual development as consisting of a pattern through time of lesser and stronger growth, but not one of sharp changes at particular points in time. She described two periods of strong spiritual growth in her early life that occurred within a Lutheran context. A Lutheran evangelical team called Crossfires came out to East Africa during her childhood, and she remembers her interactions with this team having an influence on her own spiritual growth. She also found her Confirmation training to be of great value, something that few other missionary children said helped them very much. These periods of spiritual growth in her childhood helped her to form her own Christianity, separate from the faith of her parents.

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I asked Lynnae how she would compare her own faith as an adult with that of her parents. She described it as one not that dissimilar from how many of her non-Lutheran classmates at RVA might have described their own: “a little more evangelical and conservative than that of my parents.” While Lynnae was a member of a Lutheran church when I interviewed her, she no longer attends one. Kris Ward Tyler at the time of my interview was a member of a Lutheran church, but has since become a member of an Assemblies of God Church. However, in recalling her spiritual influences she spoke fondly of the Christianity she experienced at RVA and often despaired of the Lutheran churches she attended in the United States. As a child, she remembered how much she enjoyed the church services and singing the liturgy in various languages. The singing in particular helped her as a child in her spiritual growth. Her earliest memories are of singing songs from the black Lutheran hymnal and then moving on to Youth’s Favorite Songs at Kiomboi. Someone would yell out a number from it and they would all sing all the verses by heart. She considered this religious singing as part of her own spiritual stirring. For Kris, confirmation training was disappointing, with its emphasis on facts of religious history, memorizing key passages, while neglecting to point out the importance of faith. That RVA emphasized the importance of faith was something she loved. While many of the American Lutheran missionary children from Tanzania balked at the type of worship we experienced at RVA, Kris found that it fit her sense of what it meant to be a Christian. When she came to the States to attend Pacific Lutheran University, she found the Lutheran church lacking in many other areas. She kept away from it, attending a Baptist church. During her adult life, Kris would attend churches now and then, but none had the excitement she had experienced as child. Kris looked back on her adult years of sporadic church involvement and lack of devotional life as wasted years. I asked what it was that brought it back I know what it was. It was being slapped in the face with alcoholism (in my family). That no matter how hard any of us in our family tried—all of our best efforts, prayers—nothing at all was effective. And we came to a point where all the very capable individuals in our family, I looked at them that way, I looked at myself that way, said, “There is nothing more I can do.” And I realized in this whole equation, God is there. “God, you do. I’m a shell. Pour through.” And he did. He was transformational.

She went through a number of steps to be in solidarity with her siblings, but also to renew her own spiritual life. She spoke of a number of steps she

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took to understand some key things for her own spiritual growth. The key idea that she felt that had been missing in her Christian search had been to understand what it meant to be obedient to God’s teachings. I have a real heart for evangelism. I don’t mean I have a mouth for evangelism, but I have a real heart for it. So when I see a program that’s like Alpha, in a very comfortable, non-threatening way, you can invite, your Buddhist neighbor to come and find out what Christianity is all about and nobody is going to preach at them. That’s gold. That’s wonderful and that is what Alpha is. And I don’t have to be the one that comes up with the sermon or that kind of a thing. I can just invite and I like its inclusive nature.

In looking over the quotes that I used from Kris’s interview with me, she asked me to add that she had left the Lutheran church shortly after our interview and explained why they decided to do so: We left the Lutheran church shortly after your visit, about 8 years ago. . . . mostly we felt God calling us to worship somewhere else. After worshiping in many churches, we felt God’s leading us to join an Assembly of God church. Its primary focus is evangelism outreach and mission ministries. . . . In January 2012, I began a 2 year Chaplaincy training course . . . it is excellent! A series of experiences added to my recognizing God’s call for me to be a hospice Chaplain. I’m very excited, yet peaceful at the same time.

For us children of Lutheran missionaries who have stayed within the Lutheran church, we find a broad spectrum of people who have found a home within it. For some, it is a tie to their roots; for others it is sufficiently broad to include their own broad sense of what it means to be a Christian or spiritual person, while for others it still has room for them, even though they may have more in common with people in more evangelical churches. But for all of these people, the choice was an individual one, made with a point of spiritual struggle, and where they decided that part of their Identity would be as Lutherans. Still Christian The next largest group was those of us who remained Christian but were no longer involved in a Lutheran church. This included 27 percent of the people that I interviewed. This category is dominated by women, with 54 percent of my female interviewees having joined a non-Lutheran church, compared to only 8 percent of the men. In contrast to the Lutheran group, most of the women came to this decision in adulthood. People in this group

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sometimes overlapped in their religious thinking with the Lutheran group, but not with either of the other two groups I consider. There were some who had become strongly non-Lutheran, but the vast majority felt grateful for their Lutheran heritage and used it as a foundation for their current beliefs. I have already written about Vaughan Hagberg and his move away from the Lutheran church in college as he contemplated theological issues like infant baptism. One of the women I interviewed described her disillusionment with the Lutheran church in this way. I’ve never seen a Lutheran church that allows the Holy Spirit to move. You have got to give time for God to work if he’s going to work. You can’t plan His services for Him all the time. How is he going to do anything? . . . I think there is a part you’re missing out on by the release of complete, exuberant worship to God. There is a power in that. That is what I like.

But others who were attending more evangelical or charismatic churches regularly found that they missed parts of the Lutheran services and wished for a more liturgical service. David Lofgren questioned the emphasis in every service in his church on conversion and Rochelle Hagberg Funk missed the Lutheran hymns. Others joined non-Lutheran churches as part of marital compromises. Beatrice Palm married Ben Bastyr, a Catholic, and then they promptly moved overseas. They attended both Catholic and Protestant services while working in Burkina Faso, but when they returned to the United States, they chose to go to an Episcopalian church as a compromise. Beatrice describes herself more as a “Lutheran attending an Episcopalian church” rather than a full-blown Episcopalian. When Martha Jackson married into the Goan Mascarenhas family, she joined them in worship at the Catholic church they attended in Nairobi. She found comfort in the Catholic services: First of all, his family were wonderful Christians, and very strong in their Catholic religion. There were certain things that I started to notice, that I felt that were so meaningful to me in the Catholic services. . . . I didn’t feel like I wanted to go for confession and talk to somebody. I want my relation with God to be personal and my own, but at the same time, they had this part before Communion, where you say, “I know I’m not worthy to receive you, but just say the word and I’ll be saved.” It’s a committing; at the same time it’s a receiving, and we don’t have to actually do things to be accepted because it is a gift from God. That is what I felt was so strong. It was a very meaningful part of the service because I felt I will never earn enough to be right enough to be

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with God, but at the same time, it is a gift from God through mercy. That was very meaningful to me.

When Martha and Masky moved to the United States, they first attended a Lutheran church, but felt themselves drawn back into the Catholic church. Martha eventually decided to become confirmed in the Catholic church along with her daughter. Like Martha, her sister Debbie Jackson Andros felt a deep need to have a personal relationship with God. I wrote about how Debbie felt that she had developed a personal relationship with God during her years at RVA and this has stuck with her for many years. Married to a Methodist pastor’s son, Paul Andros, Paul and Debbie have tried different churches in St. Peter, MN, not feeling the need to always go to a Lutheran church. When I interviewed Debbie, they were members of First Lutheran Church, but Debbie needed more in her continuing spirituality and in raising her children, than the church was providing: I hear from (my kids) all the time, “Church is so boring. I don’t get anything out of it. Why do I have to go there?” I don’t want them to have that aspect of what religion means, so I try and show them the personal part, because they don’t seem to be getting it there. And it has not been as easy for us to have a steady, every Sunday-type thing, like we had, so that’s part of our life, too.

Debbie and Paul later began attending a local Assemblies of God where they remain. Becky Simonson Weinreis also felt the need for a personal relationship with God in her faith. She described the apathy she felt toward religion in her college years, but now after experiencing a brain tumor and having to walk with a cane; Becky is very vocal about her personal faith. Though she attends an Evangelical Free church, its tenets have less influence in her life than what she experienced in going through the brain tumor. Diane Cunningham Hunter was drawn back to the church in a time of brokenness. Diane’s husband had abandoned her and their young son. Diane did not know where to turn. Her sister suggested she attend Grace Baptist Church near Minneapolis. Her involvement with it helped Diane through the early times of her broken marriage: It was one of the biggest influences on my life. Here was a group called Rebuilders, and it was probably the most powerful group in that church. The church is kind of big, and I didn’t like the big crowds. But this little group supported anybody that was going through a divorce or separated or even the

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death of a child with the emotional and psychological things that you have to deal with. They were all devout Christians. . . . There were a couple of angels in there. . . . and were there all the time for us during these several years.

For others, differences of theology prompted them to leave the Lutheran church for other churches. While JP Lofgren liked much about Lutheran worship, he found the liberal direction that the denomination seemed to be heading toward misdirected. With his wife, who also is of Lutheran background, they decided not to remain within the framework of the Lutheran church. Two of the Friberg children also left the Lutheran church, but in telling their stories they both speak of the deep connection they feel to the Lutheran church and mission. Their father, Dan Friberg, was known for his strong evangelical nature when he was a missionary in Tanzania, never being afraid to talk to anyone about Christianity. His father, Dr. C. P. Friberg, had a similar reputation as a missionary in China. Four of the six Friberg children attended Lutheran colleges at some point, and three of them attended Wheaton College. The three youngest work for the Lutheran church either as a pastor (Pete) or have been affiliated at times as missionaries (Steve and John). The three oldest, Joe, Margaret, and Mary, were involved in different Evangelical churches, but none of them likely would claim that they have moved any great distance from the faith within which they grew up. Joe, the oldest, lives in Minneapolis and works with information technology at a large insurance firm. At one point, he considered becoming a Lutheran pastor. But, he was not happy with how the Lutheran faith was presented when he attended Augustana College, and his disillusionment continued to grow in seminary, especially with the teaching on key issues of Christianity. When I arrived at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, I was surprised to meet Luther Mattson who had briefly been my classmate my first year at Kiomboi, so many years before. . . . We got to know each other again and formed a deep friendship. While he was a student at Bethany College in Kansas, Luther and other classmates had become influenced by the charismatic movement that was gaining strength during the 1960s in the Lutheran church. . . . We started a Bible study together . . . (and) participated in prayer meetings in the Chicago area. We then decided to take that summer to visit a few conferences that Luther had become acquainted with. This ended with our leaving seminary to become part of a charismatic ministry based first in Minnesota and later in the Chicago area. I eventually spent about ten years in a communal fellowship in West Chicago, Illinois, that served as a counseling

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center for spiritual growth and a live-in refuge for those who needed emotional healing, help with drug problems, or a fresh start from prison. This experience developed in me a profound appreciation of the breadth and depth of the Christian tradition. . . . I discovered that God was not extinct, but is alive as ever and very active.

Joe in looking over these quotes in 2012 wrote to add the following about his faith: By the way, Carol and I have been members and deeply involved with Trinity Lutheran Church now for more than a dozen years . . . so I am still very much Lutheran—although I had the hiatus of my years in the non-denominational fellowship setting. Carol has been director of choirs and children’s ministry (although she grew up Methodist). My theology has always remained essentially Lutheran.

His younger sister, Margaret, followed Joe to Augustana College and like Joe, found it an uncomfortable Christian environment. Transferring to Wheaton College, she found there a Christianity with which she was comfortable. Margaret went on to nursing school and worked with her husband, Charles, for many years at Boys’ Ranch in New Mexico, before moving to Blaine, Washington. Charles serves as a pastor of a Christian and Missionary Alliance church and teaches at a seminary in Vancouver, BC. As Margaret looked back on her own faith journey, she saw the connections to her childhood at the boarding school in Kiomboi, Tanzania: I think our life in Tanzania, our life in boarding school, gave us this vast exposure to . . . people who have not shared our tradition. . . . What is life all about? Well, for me, it’s a life of faith informed by my Lutheran heritage, informed by some of these other traditions. . . . In this gorgeous place here, we are in one of Washington’s poorest counties, that background gave me the ability to reach out to others unlike myself. . . . We have desperate families, . . . relationally, . . . economically, they are bankrupt in so many ways, and they are trying to raise kids who have no moorings. . . . They don’t have a sense of who they are, and I thought: Kiomboi has prepared me to be in Blaine, Washington.

Mary is a few years younger than Margaret. Attending Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, the smallness of the college and connections to others who had been in Tanzania made her feel at home, but spiritually she was searching for some answers. Not having seen her older brother, Joe, for some years, she went to visit him in Chicago. This visit with Joe in his Christian community kindled in her a desire to reconnect with her spiritual roots.

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When she returned to Bethany, she found herself seeking for more connections with her Christian faith. A little later, her sister Margaret invited her to attend the Urbana Missions Conference with her. Some key speakers helped her feel stronger about her Christian faith and she returned to Bethany much surer in her convictions. Because her parents were living in Moline, Illinois, on furlough, Mary transferred to Augustana College to be near them. She described her new faith life in this way: So then when I went to Augustana, I took all this with me . . . I was with my folks at the time. So I thought, “Yes, I have returned to the faith of my father” so to speak and I was really glad to share that with them, to identify with their faith and to be part of their devotions and just pray with them and experience the heritage that in some ways I hadn’t really appreciated before. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate it; it was just that it didn’t really make any sense to me. So I remember renewing that a lot, but also really praying, really praying, about what I should do, probably harder than I had in my whole life. Like what should I do next?

Mary went on to join the Daystar Community that Joe was part of, worked with them for some years in Illinois and Minnesota, and then moved to Minneapolis where she worked as an elementary teacher at a Christian elementary school. On a mission trip to China, she met her future husband. They married and she moved to his home on Vancouver Island in Canada. Within the spiritual life histories of these three Fribergs, though they seemed to have given up their Lutheran worship experiences (temporarily for Joe), for none of them was there a feeling of estrangement from their Lutheran heritage that was part of their mission field experience as children. The Lutheranism of their college years that repelled them is not reflected in their feelings about the denomination and the value it had for them. The key theme that emerged from my interviews with those missionary children who left the Lutheran church for other churches was their desire to have a very personal spiritual life. This came through especially in my interviews with the women. For several, the rituals of the Lutheran church seemed to prevent them from experiencing their own spirituality. Others who worship regularly within another faith tradition miss elements of the Lutheran tradition. Overall, these individuals did not reject their spiritual heritage within which they had grown up, but had extended the spiritual resources on which they drew beyond the Lutheran church in a desire for a more personal expression of their own faith. In relation to Marcia’s Identity Attainment Matrix, it seems as if some have embraced a Christian label that

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is non-Lutheran, while others seem to remain in a state of Moratorium about their move away from Lutheranism. Still Spiritual Here I examine the experience of those people who still worship in some way, but it is mostly in a personal fashion and not within an organized religious structure. This is the smallest category of missionary children, although there is some overlap with other groups. Ann Faust Ibrahim married a Muslim man and had to figure out how to raise her family as a bi-religious family. As I wrote earlier, she felt that it had not been a problem and that the children were exposed to both a Christian and an Islamic world view. She attended church occasionally, but found she questioned the exclusivity of both the Christian and Islamic world views: I go to church on occasion. I consider myself to be a spiritual person. We have a lot of religious, theoretical, theology discussions, my husband and I and the kids. But I have always said, if I take my mother, who is one of the purest Christian spirits I have ever known, and I take my mother-in-law, who is just as pure of heart, just as careful to be kind to all, who follows the tenets of her religion absolutely (just) as my mother does, and you tell me which one of those pure spirits is going to hell? . . . I don’t believe either of them will. I really don’t.

One of the issues that many of the people in this category spoke about was disgust with organized religion. Ann felt that the piety of her RVA years had really had an impact on how she looked at organized religion: “RVA turned me off of organized religion for the rest of my life, really and truthfully. I am not uncomfortable going to church. . . . You prayed in the morning. You prayed after breakfast. You had to turn off the record.” Dan Gottneid is a potter in Lindsborg, Kansas, the home of Bethany College. Even though his parents were living in Lindsborg at the time and there were two large Lutheran churches in town, in our interview he stated that he considered his church going as very sporadic. Instead he tries to find spirituality in his art work and journaling. Lambert Dalsten, professor of organ at Bethany, asked me to talk on church art at a synod conference. Basically they wanted somebody to give a how-to lecture and say, “Well to make your banners, use pastel colors.” But he didn’t tell me that . . . what do I know about making banners? So I did some research into the Chartes Cathedral and discovered that that building is a prayer. Every stone that was put down was an act of faith. How can it not be when you put

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down a stone and you know that your grandkids will finish it? So then, that got me into looking at cultures. Every culture has their art form. The Protestants have hymns and music, . . . whereas the Catholics were putting more emphasis on visual works in their churches. But that got me thinking: “Okay, can making and using pots be a spiritual thing, too?” I believe it can be. Most of our daily lives are pretty dull. I mean, you wake up, you eat breakfast, you go work, work, go back home, watch TV, eat supper, and then you go to bed. So why not have . . . dishes or things in your house that give you a little pleasure? . . . To drink a cup of coffee out of your favorite mug to make that day a little bit better. It is a spiritual event, a daily communion with life.

In 2012, Dan added, “I haven’t made pots for a few years. I thought I would be a better potter if I learned to cook. I started cooking in restaurants. Now, I am an administrator and don’t do much of either.” But, integrated into his work is some ongoing spiritual writing that, while not daily like drinking out of the mug you made, helps him think through life in a spiritual way: I do devotions things for myself. When I write in my journal, it ends up being a written prayer, more affirmations instead of. . . . “Today I did this and this and this. . . .” It’s more like “God, why did this happen?” But it is an on-and-off type thing. I write in it consistently for a few months and then something will happen and I stop for awhile. Then something else will happen and journaling prayers are needed.

Mark Faust, Ann’s brother, served as a Lutheran minister for many years. He described his own religiosity as being spiritual rather than religious because his life had not been an easy one as he battled the demons of alcoholism within himself: One of the phrases to think about is that there is a difference between religion and spirituality, I believe. Religion is for people who are interested in getting into heaven. Spirituality is for people who have been to hell and are mostly interested in getting out. It’s a slightly different frame of reference.

In describing the religious nature of his wife and himself as being quite similar but also different, he reflected on his own Christian background: No, I am not a member of a church now. At some point, I might be. It’s just that it’s going to have to be when I have a different job. My wife started out . . . as a devout atheist and angry about organized religion. She had gone through her own experiences and gotten beat up by them. She has . . . arrived

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at a lot of the same places I have, and that is “Yeah, there is a Being out there,” and even arrived at the point where she could say “That Being loves me.” If you push me hard enough, I will identify myself as a Christian. She won’t. . . . She’ll say, “No, there is something out there, but there is something about Jesus that just spooks the hell out of me and I won’t go there.”

Like Dan, Mark has his own spiritual exercises, but they are much more formalized. Our interview lasted till quite late, but Mark knew that before he went to bed, he would make sure he had his “nightly and morning devotions,” not totally unlike what he experienced as a child in Balangida: I have today a daily walk with God. When I go home tonight, no matter what hour it is, I will light a candle, and I will get on my knees, and I will meditate and pray for twenty minutes. I have done that for years. When I get up tomorrow morning, I will do a moving meditation called Tai Chi, which lasts about twenty minutes, and I will read out of two meditation books. . . . In that it is solitary, (it is) different than my parents’ devotions; otherwise, pretty similar. Well, except they probably weren’t doing Tai Chi.

Mark in 2012 added this information about his own religious life in an e-mail aside: “I don’t recall when we talked whether I had started preaching at this congregation or not. I have for the past seven years, and it has been a delight in many ways. I am their part-time pastor, a tiny Disciples of Christ church.” I asked if he still felt comfortable being placed in spiritual development category for my study. He said that this still fit how he saw himself. Dave Peterson attends church regularly in Arusha, Tanzania. The ceremonies he follows are within a Christian framework, but in trying to define his own spirituality, he reaches into the African traditional religious framework of the Hadza people. He also has been influenced by the writings of several scientists and social scientists, plus he follows his own ecological interests that he feels Christianity does not really address. In describing his own belief structure, he stated that ideally it should combine the best of Christianity with that of the Hadza animistic structure: My theology is . . . in ecology. . . . What is ecology? It is relationships that are sustainable. And so my theology is a relational theology. Jesus Christ has a part in that, but Jesus Christ dealt in the human-to-human form and in the human-to-bigger form, but did not deal in a holistic way with what makes it all happen, whether by default, whether by prior history. . . . That is how it is, but there is no question that there is a message there that is important in terms of relationships, very important, it is central. But . . . Christianity doesn’t cover enough.

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Almost an ideal for me is a Hadza animism combined with Jesus’ grace and forgiveness. Somehow combine those two into a spiritual ethos. . . . That is pretty much where I am at, I think, if you want to sum it up.

His relationship with the Christian church is ongoing, but one that he does not want to dominate his life. In this spiritual group, they freely described themselves as belonging to this group, but its ambiguous nature makes it harder to fully identify with it and some remain in Moratorium about their choices. No Longer Believing In 1993, Nancy Henderson-James sent out a survey to graduates of the American School of Kinshasa in Congo. Eighty-four percent of the respondents were missionary kids. When asked about their religious beliefs, 19 percent said that religion was not a factor in their lives (Henderson-James 2007). In contrast, only four (6 percent) of the missionary children interviewed for this study said that religion played no part in their own lives. Sometimes a key event triggered the giving up of faith, but generally this was within the context of a larger unease with religion. Gene Palm’s unease with religion began very early on and by high school, he had made up his mind. As Gene went through Confirmation at the end of 8th grade, he remembered feeling that he was not really sure about his beliefs, even as he went through the ceremony. I have related earlier how the students’ strike at Makumira Seminary, resulting in his parents being forced to leave there and move to Kenya, added to his unbelief. As Gene went on into the religious atmosphere of RVA, his unbelief solidified to such an extent that he was willing to tell a girl he was dating that he was an unbeliever, even though it would mean he would lose her: Judy DeYoung and I (I think it was my junior year) started going out. I have always liked Judy and she will always have a special place in my heart. Every time I had a birthday, she would make me a cake. For a guy who is hungry all the time, that really means something. But we started going out and one time, she said, “There is something I need to know now if we are to keep on going out. I need to know if you are a Christian.” I told her, “I’ll think about it and get back to you,” which was how I responded to pretty much everything. I remember wrestling with this particularly, to answer that question, yes or no. First time it had been put to me that way. I remember I wrestled with that for a week or two, even talking to Pete Friberg about it. So then I saw Judy and I said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, but the answer is no.” At that point, I declared it. And so then she said, “We can’t continue.”

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Linda Olson was also influenced in an even stronger fashion by RVA in making her decision to leave the church. Earlier I shared how Linda described the religious ethos of RVA in the early 1980s; she bluntly described it as an “evil theology.” I could not go into a church for ten years after I left RVA because I would literally break into a sweat. I do not go to church now, but when I was in El Salvador I started going because the Church was involved in politics there, because they were supporting the underdog, in what was a very abusive system.

When Linda was a freshman at Gustavus, Mike Peterson and I were living together in an apartment. Linda would often visit us and we three would have long talks about different issues. She described how in one of these conversations with Mike, she realized that she no longer had any faith: I can remember when I really lost my faith. Mike Peterson, with his religion major, would throw all of these senior theories at me. One really hit me and suddenly . . . poof . . . here I am in the States with no faith. I just have a lot of trouble actually accepting the dogma, we’re all born sinful and unclean. Even things like Jesus’ resurrection, sometimes I believe it, sometimes I don’t. Like the very basic core beliefs, I have a hard time believing. I don’t like the view of humanity as born evil, because it’s not what I see. With my Mom because she has got that view, she sees childhood as not eradicating but dampening those very selfish impulses. Whereas, I just see it as child development and a survival thing as a young child that need for attention. It is totally different view of humanity, especially once you have a child and you think, that’s not the way they are actually. It’s used an excuse for all types of things.

I have written earlier of how Wes Nyblade was influenced by the multisectarian environment when he attended ISM and how that influenced his religious beliefs. While at Allegheny College, he took classes on other religions. But the breaking point for him occurred while going to a Good Friday service at a local Lutheran church in Meadville, PA: What really turned me off to the church was going to one Good Friday service and hearing the minister say, “I don’t want you to smile for two days. I want you to be very sad until Sunday morning, but then on Sunday morning you’ll get real happy.” It was just total nonsense and that was a turning point. That was not what it is about, and that is not what my life is about, and I’m not going to do it. . . . That was the turning point where I just started saying, “Not really.” I’m not really interested; maybe there is different ways to start thinking of things.

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Joel Ward had been my roommate at RVA. We saw each other again in 1978, when we were both back in East Africa for a few months. At the time, Joel was a born-again Christian. It was hard for me to reconcile the rebellious Joe I had grown up with with this new Joe. We did not see each other again until I interviewed him in 2002. His religious beliefs were very different. When I first came back to the States, I got involved in some pretty intense stuff, so it was kind of one of those counter-pendulum effects. . . . I really got steeped deeply into religion, almost if you will, as a penance. Not that it was insincere, it wasn’t. That was my first year here in Modesto, and I was very actively involved in my church. We had a musical group in that church where we actually put on some concerts. I was very actively involved in that and thoroughly enjoyed it. . . . (But) shortly after coming back from Africa, that extinguished.

Joel went on to attend California Lutheran University and took a course in biblical studies: It really opened my eyes to a different way of seeing the Bible. It was also during that time that I actually read the Bible from end to end . . . and got hung up on some religious, philosophical issues. . . . I forget where it is but somewhere in one of Paul’s writing . . . I came to the conclusion at that time that, even if He did exist, that I wanted nothing to do with Him, with God. I came to the conclusion from Paul’s writings that He was a manipulative God because, in effect, what Paul said . . . was He made us and He can do whatever He wants with us and even if that is using us and through His using us damning us for His purposes. Finally, I was troubled in a discussion about Judas Iscariot and how Judas Iscariot really had no choice. He was a pawn and that was kind of like the clincher.

Other factors influenced Joel. He was disturbed by the cliquish nature of the religious set at California Lutheran and then he began attending more philosophical discussion groups and looking for scientific truths that would explain the world to him. He found that these struck him as something he could believe in more. For each of these missionary children who no longer believe, there was an intense searching trying to see if they could capture the “faith of their fathers” inside of themselves and then finding that it did not offer them anything. This group remains one that achieved Identity as non-believers. None of them would consider where they were as one of being in Moratorium. For them, the world was a wider place than the Christian beliefs that we had been raised with.

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This chapter took many months to write. Doing so has changed how I view the lives of my generation of missionary children. Earlier on, I felt that place was a more central determinant of the identity of these missionary children as adults than was religion. However, after transcribing all of the manifestations of the faith of this generation and compared those to the similar manifestations of faith in the earlier generation, I now conclude that, while our faith is often vastly different from that of our parents, religion was as much a defining characteristic of our lives and of our identity as place. While we often struggled with what we believed long into adulthood and often came out very different from who our parents are, it defines who we are. All of us—from the most devout Lutheran to the most adamant non-believer—went through a religious struggle that ended up defining us as much as did having been raised in an African environment. Part of what made it hard to understand this struggle is that we never saw this religious struggle in our parents. The faiths of their childhoods defined them. The religious struggles of our adulthood have defined us.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Placing Our Lives

Once again, I return to the idea of place. This chapter begins by exploring the decisions made by the missionaries to find a retirement place, how that spot was chosen, and their feelings of connection with these new communities. It moves on to the next generation and their mixed feelings about where home is for them. Many of them have now lived in America for many years, but often they still have an African fire burning within them. Many incorporate Africa into their daily lives and routines and into their broader thinking patterns. Finally, I discuss how the children of the children of the missionaries, additionally, are affected by their heritage of the mission field in Tanzania. To take something from a metaphor that had guided my writing of this book, place is an unseen guest at each of our daily tables and influences us, just as our Christian backgrounds do.

Retirement Decisions The places we live our adult lives are often dictated by our employers. We go where they say they can use us. This was as true for the missionaries as it is for me in my life in Moorhead, Minnesota. As the missionaries worked in Tanzania, they often moved between different places as the church saw the need to move them. But when retirement comes along, key decisions can be made about place. As I shop for groceries in Moorhead, I often see retired faculty members shopping there, and I question whether I will still be shopping at Hornbacher’s grocery store in Moorhead after I retire. While many

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Americans stay put in the cities where they spent their working lives, only two of the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania stayed on in Africa in retirement: Lud and Esther Melander and Dave and Eunie Simonson. None of the other missionaries had homes in Tanzania. As part of their retirement planning, many ended up buying property in the United States. They felt like they needed something tangible after years of living in mission and church housing in Tanzania. But still there was an ache in some of them to be back in East Africa. Bob Ward spoke of how part of him still wished he could have retired there: Yes. I definitely had thoughts of retiring there. I probably would have tried to get Jeanne to think in those terms but I thought, “Well, what if our health goes?” The Africans have enough trouble without having some worn-out Europeans around to have to work on. . . . I’ve often said if anything ever happened to Jeanne, I would go back to Africa, and I would. I really would. I would head for Samburuland. I would get up on top of that mountain where the weather is so nice and build a nice little house up there.

My father missed the community aspect of life in Arusha, finding that part of his life missing in the United States: I can’t say that I feel community here as I did in Arusha. I’m Arusha. That’s home to me. Even though I have good friends, good relations, but you never get that same spirit. I mean I don’t feel that same spirit.

My mother, on the other hand, spoke of why she felt it was easier to retire in the United States rather than in Tanzania, when she said, “Life is so easy here physically. African life just takes a lot of energy just to live. You know what I mean by that, don’t you? Boil your water. . . .” Many of these retired missionaries easily became enmeshed in these places in the United States where they retired. My parents were honored as the outstanding senior citizens of Nicollet County, Minnesota, because of their strong community involvement. Similarly, Ray and Nellie Faye Hagberg have made Spencer, Nebraska, Ray’s childhood home, a new home for themselves as they took part in school bonding issues, served on city council, and being elected king and queen of Turkey Days because of their community involvement. As Ray said, “We are losing our sense of home in Africa. Not losing it, but it’s lessening its grip. We’re not there anymore. The involvement in community here in the last couple of years has been so meaningful.” Ray returned to his childhood home for retirement, but others searched out and found completely new places. Mel and Dottie Lofgren found their retire-

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ment home in Bella Vista, Arkansas, very systematically, a new place in which they had no previous involvement. Dottie explained how they made the decision to stay on in this new place. They chose it because of its high rating in the Places Rated for Retirement book and liked it for its centrality to their children’s homes, its beauty, having good medical care, and its rural setting. Many factors went into Dean and Elaine Petersons’ decision to retire to Bonners Ferry, Idaho. They loved the beauty of the place, but it was also a place that could give roots in America to all their kids, most of whom still resided in Africa. June and Orv Nyblade at first thought they might settle in Florida when they retired, but later thought that Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, would be a much better choice for them as it was nearer to where their children lived. June mentioned how much she liked the town, its climate, and its closeness to their children, while Orv spoke of its proximity to bigger cities like Baltimore and Washington, DC, and the fact that it had both a seminary and college in it. In addition, Orv and June have a cabin on Lake Erie where they spend most of the summer, a home that has been part of June’s family since she was a child: “Oh we really should mention what is meant when someone asks, ‘What’s home?’ The cottage on Lake Erie is really home. My folks brought it in 1932. We had always gone when we were home on leave, so the kids knew it as home in the United States.” The missionary generation had formed strong connections to Tanzania. Like Dave and Eunie Simonson, some of the missionary men, in particular, expressed their deep connections to the place that they wish that they still could have lived there in their retirement. Still for many, like they had on mission station after mission station, they chose to make these new American places their home and thrived in these settings as well.

Where is Home? This question is one that is often asked of people who grew up overseas. A very common theme running through the comments of many of the missionary children was a strong feel that they had two homes: one with their current family in the towns in which they were living, but a strong connection of the heart back in Tanzania. In evocative ways, different people expressed the deep and continuing love they had for their childhood homes: Mark Faust: Oh yeah, Dallas is my home and Balangida was my home. When I came back from a visit there after my junior year in college, I knew I wasn’t

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going to be traveling anywhere anytime soon. There is a part of me that will always weep for a land that isn’t anymore. I understand that man in that movie watching that woman walking across that plain and realizing that that wasn’t going to be part of his life, but very grateful for the memories and the strength that it brought. Sharon Olson: And for me, Makumira will always be my home. I feel the same way they (my parents) do. But I feel the same way they do, wherever we are placed, that is our home, but my heart is back there. Kris Ward Tyler: I still say home is my heart’s home and that is where I spent my formative years, Tanzania and Isanzu. Diane Cunningham Hunter: Well, I feel like there is a little fire that still burns in you, in me for Tanzania. It’s still there. It will always be, and it doesn’t go out. It just becomes hotter when you go back there. I mean it really is on fire. Yeah, you’re definitely in touch and you know that your heart has been served there.

Diane had recently returned from trips back to East Africa when I interviewed her, and her connections had been re-formed like they have for me on my trips back. For many others, they felt torn in how to answer this question. They know they cannot live in Tanzania, or possibly go back there, so they adopt where they are as home. Some have long stays in the community of their adulthood, and so that history has made it a partial home. It is a question many struggled with as they tried to figure out where home was at for them. Joel Jackson: Where do I consider home? That is the toughest question . . . St. Peter is a home, Tanzania is a home, Ethiopia is a home . . . I feel the most at home when I am in Tanzania, personally. This is home to the extent that I have probably spent more time here than I have anyplace else. Now at this point, I have been here in St. Peter for twenty-six years. When I went back to Tanzania . . . , I felt connected with the people around me, even if I didn’t know them. It never left . . . and I spent hours rattling on in Swahili with people. . . . Even the concept of this house being my home is very difficult for me. It doesn’t compute in my head as home, even though I own this house and have lived here now for eleven years, this house is not my home, necessarily. . . . I don’t think there is a harder question to answer. If you look at it, using your intellect—“Yes this is my home”—but when you start looking at it with your heart, that’s another thing. There is something missing. Martha Jackson Mascarenhas: I think I do see myself as a Minnesotan in a way, because even in Africa, when I would go with my husband to visit people, they would say, “Where are you from?” I would say, “Well, I was born in Africa, but

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my folks were from Minnesota” and it was not like I was from Minnesota. But now I can say that I have lived here these years, so I’m from Minnesota. Still I’m originally from Kenya or Tanzania. I feel like Kenya and Tanzania are the same because I spent so many years there, sixteen years in Kenya and my childhood in Tanzania. The sixteen years in Kenya were after married life, so that was a big part. That was where my kids all grew up, where they were born and brought up, so that was part of them. So they feel that they are African, even until now. They figure they are African Goan, and American. Jill Jackson Grill: That’s a hard one. I guess home right now is St. Peter. This is where Scott and I have raised our family. This is our home, our base. . . . I guess Tanzania is home because that is where I grew up as far as home, but it’s not my home now . . . I would say that I made the switch to accepting the United States as home in the last ten years. When my folks actually left the mission field, it was like there was no home to go to. . . . All of a sudden you realize you’re in your 40s, and you keep saying that that’s my home. But it’s really not, it was where we lived, but it’s not home like where people who . . . have lived in St. Peter their whole lives and their parents have and that really is home. When you move, home is just where you’re at.

Both Tim Olson and Wes Nyblade spoke of how it made them somewhat angry that they could no longer call Tanzania home: Tim Olson: Home? This is a tough one. . . . This right here (in Fergus Falls, MN) is a comforting home to me right now. . . . But the first thought that jumps in my mind is always that place under Meru. . . . Home is where the heart is and this is where my heart is now. My child is here and I am here. . . . I like Minnesota overall. I feel like I’m here because I came from here. . . . I guess it’s got to be here. It’s got to be where I am now. Wes Nyblade: Home is where I am at. . . . I get tired of explaining Tanzania to people who have never lived outside of Burley, Idaho. So I think there comes a point where . . . early on, I used to tell a lot of people where I was from. I don’t know whether other kids did this or whether just I did this. I mean kids are just amazed when they find out that I grew up overseas. . . . Tanzania will always be home. I mean that is where I grew up and where I spent my formative years and where I spent my early life. That will always be home. . . . I miss what Tanzania was all about and if I sit and dwell on it, it gets rather depressing, so I just don’t think about it. At least, that is what I do about it anyway. I can’t escape Tanzania. It’s what gave me my foundation.

But even someone like my brother Todd, even though he was living in Africa when I interviewed him had a hard time defining home. He echoed the comments by Tim and Wes that home was where his family was at:

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This is home. When Bets was sick, it was forced on us. Where do we go? What happens? And I couldn’t think of anyplace, except in the short term, of where we could go to, to run to. . . . So home for us has to be where we are. I mean, it’s not a stable situation. . . . No, I have never had a place I considered home in the States. . . . When I try and think about this idea of home, I try to think of a place which I have warm feelings about and that place ends up being Oldonyo Sambu. . . . Part of it was I was a young kid there, no cares and all of that. . . . But our Africa home has been a rootless home.

Growing up within such a tight-knit community, for some people, home was not so much a place but a group of people and for some like the Moris sons, “home” was a certain group: Don Moris: Having the expanded missionary family, the whole missionary family was our home, as far as I was concerned, not the geographical location, the people and the relationships and getting to know their kids and everything. To me, it was like having three families. You had your family in RVA and the kids (in) the missionary family, . . . and . . . (in) our own family. Jon Moris: It is only with the Kijabe reunions, that’s my family. The RVA reunion with my group, basically it’s the RVA classmates, and I feel at home with them in that way.

Mary Friberg Pullen also expressed some ambivalence about where home is: Is my home Tanzania? Is it Minnesota, or Kansas, or Illinois? Is it Canada? I have lived in all these places. . . . “For the missionary kids, everywhere is home, but nowhere is home.” That really sums up my personal experience. For me, home is a lot about connections: connections with my husband, my family, the missionary family, God’s family around the world, and ultimately connection with God himself. I feel akin to Abraham, the nomad: truly, my home is in heaven. “Thou hast made us, Oh, God, for Thyself; and our heart shall find no rest, until it rests in Thee.” (St. Augustine of Hippo)

I often describe myself as a nomad, though I have lived in the same town now for about twenty years. In my way of thinking, it seems unnatural to live in one place so long. Ruth Lofgren Rosell shared some of these same sentiments when she answered where was home: “I suppose right here. . . . I think we will be happy for awhile, although there is that whole big world out there. . . . Not going to just stay in one spot. How can you live in just one?” While many of us struggled to define an actual American home, Joel Ward spoke about why it was often so hard for us to accept a psychic connec-

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tion to the American places where we lived compared to the strong feelings we had for our African homes: Well, I think emotionally, as far as real connection, if I wanted to identify someplace as home, it’s very clearly Africa still. Very definitely. It’s Isanzu. Here in Modesto is something I am working on. Uprootedness defines us. I think it does. I mean we can never go back and do we ever fully develop the psychic connection to our new home, sufficiently so that it makes up for the loss of Africa? For me the jury is still out on that. I have found ironically that as I talk to the young people here who are my students, so many of them can’t wait to get away. From my own experience, I don’t know why that is, because clearly for us, it was the total opposite.

Like Joel, I feel this strong psychic connection to Africa, that America has never seemed to replace, and I often feel like he does, someone living in exile here. I did not choose to move here and I have often tried to return to Africa to live as an adult, but have been thwarted many times. Still we all do not feel this way. Tim Lofgren was the classmate of Joel and me all through Kiomboi, RVA, and even all the way through Gustavus for me. His attitudes toward the place he lived as a child are a strong contrast to those of Joel and me: Home is where my car is parked. Africa ceased to be home a long time ago. It happened in college. I accepted it easily. I think part of that is that I see America as a mission and that I don’t have to go back. I hope to stay here for a long time.

Kim Jackson also is one that has made the crossing from only considering Africa as home to now considering America more his home, all the while retaining his love for many aspects of Africa. I did four trips when I was at Breck School and always Africa was home. I was antsy to get there, like I was leaving home when I left. Then in 1995, I went out and I had a great time then, too. . . . But I also started feeling a little more distance to it and began appreciating Minnesota a little bit more while I was out there. I never did that before. Minnesota. . . . It’s obviously an easy life. When you get sick or whatever, it’s so easy to take care of yourself here. I like the seasons. I have come to really like fall and winter. I like summer and you just don’t really have any of those seasons out there. You’ve got a wonderful average. I never thought I would ever like these changes. I remember very many times, vehemently

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saying, “I would just like it to be nice the whole time.” And now, I just love it when it is five below zero and just a crisp snowy day out there. To me, that’s just great. I like the long hours of summer. I hate the short ones of winter. But I like the length of time, and you don’t get that in Africa, really. It’s always the same. But comfort is certainly part of it as I just crossed over the 50-year road. That makes a difference, too. But the people I still like. I always will. I always will appreciate more out there. The actual creature comforts and things—I kind of like the ease of this here, but as far as interacting with people, I will always miss that.

For most in this generation, home remains an elusive concept. Most of us live in America with our American families in our physical homes. But for some of us our emotional home is far away from these individual houses in this country. Few of us have made that full transition like Tim and Kim have made to accept America as our new “home.”

Africa in Our Daily Lives A few years ago, I met with a gastroenterologist who suggested that I would be better off if I gave up on spicy food and caffeinated drinks. I did not think I could give up on spicy food, so I did not even try. But I did give up on caffeine. I had only been drinking a mug of coffee in the morning and a cup of chai or AfriCafe, the Tanzanian instant coffee, in the afternoon, but I decided I would give them up. Though I kept it up for more than a year, it did not make me feel any better. I missed the morning coffee, because it was a nice way to start a day, but I really missed the afternoon cup of chai or my AfriCafe, because it was truly one of my connecting rituals with Africa. I am happy to say that I have returned to these rituals. My stomach is not any better, but my heart feels better with these African rituals. Like many, I think about Africa on a daily basis. I find my African background showing up in my own thinking patterns—from my troubles at accepting American patriotism, to how I treat those older than myself, to driving our old car for so long that the only place that would take it in the end was the junk yard. All are influenced by my African childhood. Many of the other missionary children continue to have Africa in their daily thoughts, even though some have not set foot on the continent in more than thirty years. The Faust family left Tanzania in the mid-1970s. None of the children ever returned, despite their deep and continuing love for their childhood home. Ann and Daudi Faust spoke of how there is never a day that goes by

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when it does not enter their thoughts. Daudi went on to say that he does not share it with others on a regular basis. He finds it too hard to explain, but it keeps his co-workers from knowing the full context of who he really is as a person. Tim Olson, like the Fausts, has not been back to Tanzania for many years, but it enters his thoughts on a daily basis and he finds different environmental triggers that can take him back: I don’t think there is a day in my life that I haven’t thought of somebody from Africa or from the past or an incident or a joke or a song or a smell or a bird. You know how the TV will do that? You’ll hear the dove or something and you’ll know that sound. That was Africa and you’ll go out there and you’ll see that. . . . The other days, when the Maasai Girls Choir was here, when they were done with their program, and I was in the back and they came running by. I could smell them, and I couldn’t tell anyone, because they would have thought I was a pervert. But I could smell those African women and it was comforting. It was just an African woman smell. You know what I am talking about? It just made me smile.

Like Tim and me with my rituals, many of this generation have different things that they do or own that keep them connected to Africa in their daily life. For Diane Cunningham Hunter, it is the artifacts from Africa, but also finding peace in key things, that continue to remind her about Africa: Well, the artifacts we have here. We even brought back beach sand from Mombasa. Oh yeah. Nature, that reminds me. There is that . . . it’s the Lord. . . . That’s the connection, that same thing I had in Africa, that peace I was feeling there, that windy breeze, I feel it here, too. So it’s all around me. I think that’s the connection.

Kim Jackson has some of the same ways of connecting to Africa as I do with chai and books: I read African books regularly and I listen to a lot of music, a lot of choir music and a lot of bar music and whatever I can get my hands on, South African, it doesn’t matter. I drink a lot of chai, but I have actually gotten into a lot of other types of tea, too. So I don’t just drink chai anymore, but I love it. I love chai. My kids still consider that one of the real treats. They never turn it down.

Kris Ward Tyler, now a watercolor artist living in Phoenix, found that the colors of the Southwest and some aspects of its landscape often helped take her back to East Africa:

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I guess it depends. I can go sometimes for awhile without thinking about it, but it depends on what triggers it. I like thinking about some things of Africa. I like looking around here (in Phoenix) because so many of the colors are the same colors that I see in Africa, the landscape colors and stuff. And at certain times of the year, it even smells like it, especially right before the rain, the beginnings of the rain. Honest, it has the same smell as the wet, straw grass, and the color of the sky during storms; it is the same as Africa.

Kris continued on by talking about her families’ connection through the use of Swahili in Ward family gatherings. Joel Ward, her younger brother, brought it out more fully, how the language influences his own thinking patterns: Well, whenever I am with my family, of course, that is most obvious. We immediately revert to African-isms, the way we speak, our mannerisms, our humor, but I even talk to my cats in Swahili. I use a lot in both thought and speech, and a lot of my humor is colored by African humor.

And it is this, in our thinking patterns that forms the deepest connection that most of us have to our lives in East Africa. How it influenced the way we look at the world and the way we function in this new world in an African way. Dean Jackson: Oh well, there’s the way we talk about things. It influences pace. Pace is a big thing. Everything is rushed here. “Got to get done,” “Got to get people on time,” “Got to get keep on schedule.” Well, that’s not Africa. I’m inevitably late to everything. I was on time for my wedding, but that was the last time I was on time for something. Debbie Jackson Andros: First, there is the fact that the world goes beyond our town, beyond the United States and the reality of that. I think that going out there influenced the way I look at things here, taking one day at a time, you never know where you’re going to be, especially we were brought up not knowing what was going to happen the next day. Not taking things so seriously. If you are going to have to wait an extra day, it’s not going to change the fact that you’re going to make it through. Secondly, faith. The fact that I know that my folks prayed for us when we were all gone has made me as a parent, when I find that I am starting to say to my kids, “I don’t want you to do this or that, because I don’t know where you are or what you are doing.” I have to stop and say to myself, “My parents didn’t know where we were. Where is your faith in praying that God’s going to protect us?” Jill Jackson Grill: The kids were reading a book about someone having to leave and move away from home. The teacher (of the class in which I am an aide), who knew where I had come from, said, “Jill went off to boarding school.” The

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kids wanted to know about that and how far away. They can’t imagine, they can’t imagine. I think back and think, “It was a good learning experience.” To us it was. People say, “How could you do that? How could you live in a foreign country?” I said, “That was our home. That was where we grew up. It wasn’t abnormal for us. It was normal.” Coming back to the States was very abnormal for us. It was very trying. It was so normal to live in Tanzania. We didn’t see anything different and people don’t understand that.

Like Jill, for many of us this larger world view is what we took with us from Africa and it is a source of tension as we live in a country that does not seem to think much beyond its borders. Marilyn and Pete Friberg both experienced this living in Wausa, Nebraska, as did Ruth Lofgren Rosell in her Kansas home: Marilyn Peterson Friberg: We are very interested in what is happening in the world, and our world is so much broader than this narrow little life we are living in Wausa. I think that is what is hard in a way, because people here don’t have a vision for the world. They are only interested in their own little world, and that has been hard in the rural ministry. But for us, we are very interested in what is happening to our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, and it definitely affects the way we try to live and serve. Our upbringing made a huge impact on our lives. Pete Friberg: Well, I think there is always a sense that I got a ton more things than I need. There is just a big awareness that I am as wealthy as a king compared to everybody I knew in Tanzania, whereas most people, I believe, around here don’t think they have enough. I think Marilyn and I have the sense that we have a whole lot more than we need to. Ruth Lofgren Rosell: I think it provides a world view, a way to see the world that affects me all the time. So, I walk through this neighborhood, and I think how can the world sustain this? And when September 11th hit, my response is so different because of having grown up in a country that’s disadvantaged and poor. . . . I think about those kinds of issues . . . probably daily, the unfair distribution of resources and what am I called to do, those kinds of questions.

Mark Faust found that his childhood affected his thinking in many different ways, from how he saw the landscape, to his view of time, to his understanding of culture, to how he carries himself in risky situations: I tend to notice wherever I am, I will be aware of whatever the natural horizons are, part of that is riding a motorcycle all the time, as well. Well, one of the

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things about Africa was that there was a whole lot more of creation than what man was making. Like Africans, I have a sense of time as a spiral. They wait for the moment rather than the European idea of chopping it off into these small units of time. I know I have some of that. In my job, sometimes it is a real advantage. . . . The awareness of death and the fragility and wonder and beauty of life . . . have made me very aware of how possible it is to not be here and how wonderful it is to be here, an incredible gift all this is. There is an African sense that you never take a man’s dignity, no matter what, that was wrapped around me until it was inviolate. I also tend to carry that in me. I meet people on a daily basis from a lot of different cultures and I think because I have always done that, there is a natural flow to it that isn’t always evident in some of my less extended brother and sister officers. . . . I tend to see tribes, rather than one monolithic group of people, which I think is pretty unusual. . . . Some of that carries over here and I can look and see more specifics. I think that tends to make me hone in more, be very aware that they are not a monolithic body, as with any culture, there are all sorts of sub-cultures running around in that.

Finally, despite the strong connections to Africa expressed by many missionary children and its influence in their lives, others expressed how it played almost no role in how they thought of things at present. David Lofgren: Not really (laughs). I’m not sure how different I would be if I hadn’t grown up there or not. Tim Lofgren: I don’t spend much time thinking about Africa and some people are surprised by that. . . . Right now, in terms of a direct influence at the moment, no, I don’t have a real interest. . . . It doesn’t impact me much. Other people may get excited about it, but I’m looking at where the focus should be and it’s not the mission field. To me, that says we should change our focus more towards here. The church is growing in Africa right now in more Evangelical circles.

Nonetheless, as I was interviewing Tim, I was drinking a mug of chai that he had made for me, something he does on a daily basis. For many of us, even though we live far away from our African childhood homes, within us is a core of ideas formed while we were in Africa and continuing to connect us to that place.

The Impact on the Next Generation We call ourselves “kids,” but most of us now are parents of children and even grandparents. How have our childhoods in Africa influenced the iden-

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tities of our children? As I talked with different people from my generation, I sensed a connection to Africa for this next generation. Sometimes these grandchildren of the missionaries have gone out to Africa before their parents made return trips. They wanted to experience this place on their own. With others, I sensed that our childhoods in Africa gave these children a leg up in school as they have been influenced by the global stories of their parents. However, I have heard the pain in some from my generation when they found as if their children are “too American,” without an interest in Africa or other parts of the globe. While many of us children of the missionaries struggled with whether we could ever consider being missionaries ourselves, members of the next generation, through the influence of their grandparents, also have considered going out to take on this occupation. In addition, there are some of us who have been able to stay on in Africa throughout our adult careers. Were the childhoods of their children similar to our own there? In looking at the influences that our growing up in Africa had on our children, Diane Cunningham Hunter spoke of how a trip to Africa influenced her own son as he thought of what he wanted to do in life: “David loved it. David, absolutely, thought it was awesome. He fit in right away. . . . He will be a missionary.” Others such as Kris Ward and Kim Jackson told about ways that they tried to get their children to see things more globally: Kris Ward Tyler: (I sought to build an) appreciation of other cultures from when Jackie was very small. I would pick up the little kid’s tapes, Songs from Around the World, and I would get videotapes from England or of people that had a French accent, or something like that. We do travel a lot. I still have a brother that lives in Kenya and a sister who lives in England, and I can go visit them, so we do. Jackie has cousins in both places. We have friends in other parts of the world, . . . so we visit them. I am very big on appreciating that just because somebody lives in a different country, that doesn’t mean that it is less of a place or less of a life than the one I live here. . . . She eats a lot of ethnic food. I love geography and she does really well with the globe already. I have no patience for people who don’t appreciate geography. Kim Jackson: We’ve sort of had a priority that we made sure that they got a chance to see diversity, see more, travel a little bit more. They’ve gotten to travel to Europe and Africa and Central America, and now the Caribbean and stuff like that. I just felt that was very important, because I traveled a lot, Birdie traveled a fair amount, and we just felt that that was an education, a part of life that grounds you well and gives you that balance. I think that our kids enjoyed the traveling, and I think that some of it did definitely come across to them.

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And they had a weird dad that came from Africa. Sometimes that was good and sometimes that wasn’t, but I think most of the time it was okay with them.

Like her brother Kim, sometimes Jill Jackson Grill’s sons saw her as strange because of her African childhood. She spoke of how her boys would often discount her African background as being something that could influence their behaviors here in America: As my kids tell me as we discuss things, if I say, “I don’t know if I like that?” or “How are you going to do that?” or “That doesn’t seem appropriate or whatever,” they will respond by saying, “Well, Mom, we can’t go by you, because you grew up as a missionary and a pastor’s kid and in a foreign country so your life was completely different than ours.” . . . That’s the way they see it, and then I’m thinking, “Well, yeah, it was very different, but at the same time, that doesn’t mean our moral values have changed.” I still believe certain things “that this is way we should raise you, if you are a part of this family that is the way it is.” . . . So they will agree to Scott but not me, (laughs) because he had a normal life. He grew up in the States so he knows what they are talking about, that type of thing, so that has been very interesting, especially through these teenage years.

But even those children of missionary kids growing up in East Africa experienced a different life than we had there. Thad Peterson saw most of the changes as positive: The one difference is our kids actually have a bit more stability having lived in this one spot for fourteen years. Even though we lived a long time in Tanzania and we lived in one house a long time, there were no houses for us. There is a real sense of place with this house now. Every time we moved back home, it was uprooting, and we lived in one place longer than most. You can get pretty comfortable in one place. We’ll see now. Zach is pretty ready to go. Our kids have not had that year-long furlough that we had, and that gave you a real exposure. Yet I think they had a much broader education, much more education for dealing with this world, very international, very open.

Steve Simonson felt that his children had a better religious environment to grow up in than he had had: They don’t have religious conflicts like we had from RVA, but they also missed out on some of the good stuff too, that we had from Kiomboi. They have had the family throughout, so they are probably shaped more by family that way and ACC (Arusha Community Church), rather than drastically shaped like

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we were, positively, like we were, by Kiomboi, and negatively, I guess, by RVA. . . . They had more steady exposure to the secular world in that they go to ISM, so it’s good that they can live their Christian life in a context that they are in rather than reacting against other types of Christianity, like we did. . . . You need to be “tribed,” but it is probably more realistic the way they are doing it, as it is what they will face in the future. Their religious faith seems similar to ours, but it’s hard to tell until they’re actually adults and are a little freer from family, able to come out with their own faith and express what they actually feel.

Jon, Steve’s brother, felt that, apart from having an easier lifestyle than he had experienced, his kids were experiencing a very similar life to his own in the same place: “Growing up, they get catered to a lot and probably get a little bit spoiled. But other than that, I am teaching the same values my parents did. I don’t think there is a lot different between being raised as an expatriate kid and a missionary kid out here.” Finally, Dan Ward who raised his children in neighboring Kenya felt that, while his children were technically “missionary kids,” their childhoods were more similar to that of his wife who had grown up as a diplomat’s child than his own. “Definitely they are different than Americans, but they are also very different than us. In a way they are living a life more similar to Kathi’s childhood, but the world has changed globally.” Our childhoods in Africa have influenced our children in many ways, but we are not often sure in what direction they will go. Even those who have raised their children back in Africa have not been able to give their children the same experiences that they had, but most are happy with the direction that their children’s lives have taken. As I wrote this chapter, the strongest conclusion that came to me is how deep the influence of Africa was in our hearts and minds. In many ways, through our chai rituals and thinking patterns, you can see how Casey’s ideas of place tenaciousness and subjection, which I described in the introduction are key parts of our lives. For both generations, Africa had a very strong pull on our hearts. Even if our minds said that we should accept being Americans, our hearts would not let us. And the other strong pull is the way that Africa has influenced our “schemas,” which is Jean Piaget’s way of describing our thinking patterns. Because of spending our childhoods in Africa, our thinking patterns tend to be broader than those of many of our American neighbors. I think of Mark Faust, who has pleasant memories of his years in Balangida and sees Dallas as his home, but has Africa influencing so many of his actions every day. Both of those aspects are at the heart of who we are as people—people of broad hearts and thinking. We remain an “in-between people.”

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Conclusion

Years ago, I began this study to find answers to questions about myself that were eating at me. To do this, I felt I had to understand the community I grew up within, that of the American Lutheran missionaries to Tanzania, and to tell its story. I wanted to find out from other members of this community if the same things that were perplexing me about my life path were issues that also were affecting them. While I knew the missionary generation well, I also wanted to provide them the opportunity to explain their lives in a clear and open manner, without the saccharine filters of much of the Christian literature or the often condemning tone of much of the academic literature. I have seen a worshipful attitude toward missionaries often displayed in churches. As a child, when my father would preach in different churches in the United States on furlough, I used to like standing next to him at the end of the service, shaking hands with exiting parishioners. People seemed genuinely excited to shake the hands of a missionary and his son. However, as a counterpoint to this experience, I spent a weekend in college assisting an organ tuner to tune organs in different churches around Minnesota. After service in one of the churches in which we had tuned the organ, people were very happy with and congratulated the organ tuner for what he had done. However, no one paid any attention to me, the organ tuner’s assistant. My stature had fallen drastically. Similarly, the stature associated with being a missionary’s son that I experienced as a child has since been eroded significantly. Through my adulthood, when I have explained to

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others that I am a child of missionaries, I have seen the disappointment in their eyes as they try and balance my progressive political views with having grown up in a missionary community that they might well characterize as a component of an awful system that historically wrecked the lives of native people throughout the world. I and my parents did not deserve the adulation we received in the churches. But, by the same token, neither do I nor my parents deserve the condemnation many would offer. The true story of our lives was somewhere in between. This is the one that I set out to tell. One of my favorite words in the Swahili language is the word pole. It does not have an English equivalent, and the English language and English-speaking cultures are much poorer because of it. Pole is often used as a greeting, as its use recognizes the hardships people are experiencing in life. If one walked along a rural path and saw someone hoeing with their jembe, you might greet them by saying “poleni na kazi,” meaning that you feel for them in this hard work. You recognize that people’s lives are not easy, but you support them in it. In this book, I have tried to write about the lives of missionaries and their children in such a way that their honest lives are exposed to the world. But in doing so, I have tried to tell their stories in this spirit of poleni, so that all those involved in these very different in-between lives are recognized with the humanity and dignity which they deserve. I began this exploratory journey almost seventeen years ago when I gave a paper on my ideas for this project at an academic conference at Kenosha, WI. Three years later I began my interviews. Often in the jumble of the individual interviews, I could not make sense of and draw answers from the disparate stories I was told. It was only in the long process of writing that full answers started to emerge. Here I want to summarize the questions that I began with or that arose during the research process and then try to give the answers that I feel have emerged. At the start, I had many assumptions about what I would find. This was primarily because I had lived the life of a missionary kid for more than forty years and had been in conversation with people in the community throughout this time. But you are never sure if your view of the world is the view of all others in the community. I was a skeptical son of missionaries, not someone who had had a call to mission to anyplace. I was a male, so was not confident that my experiences would be the same as the women I grew up with. I also did not know how much my experiences paralleled those of my male counterparts. Many of my assumptions proved to be true. This was a surprise. The conceptual framework I used for the study based on place and religion proved to be one that fit well for examining the life stories of both the missionaries and

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the children of those missionaries. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory was a good explanatory model for comparing the differing ways that the different generations developed religiously. Casey’s definition of place proved useful for understanding how many of us continue to live with Africa in our own lives and as an important component of our identity, even though physically we have not been there for much of our adult lives. Some of my assumptions at the outset of this research proved not to be true. I was concerned that people would not be very responsive in my interviews with them. However, for the most part I found that people enjoyed sharing their life stories to a member of the American Lutheran missionary community from Tanzania. However, I also was surprised how hard it was to come up with shared descriptions of what it meant to be a missionary or missionary kid after each interview. Each interview changed my assumptions in some way. Any common patterns in the experiences of the missionaries and their children did not really emerge until I had finished the writing process. Only in writing was I able to put it all together and draw some insights on our history and understanding about how that affected how we built our lives. I was surprised by how long this whole process looked. I had thought at one time that I could have done this for my doctoral dissertation, but now realize it was much too big for a dissertation. I believe that the Lutheran mission community has stayed a vital community in our lives for many reasons. I think it started out well, as many of the young missionaries arriving in Tanganyika had known each other in childhood through their families or communities, through youth groups, or in college or seminary. The Augustana Lutheran Church had a shared vision of mission that became part of the shared vision of the missionaries as they arrived in Tanganyika. The mission was the governing body for the missionaries in the early days. The missionaries met in community at least once a year as a full body and were often together visiting each other during the rest of the year. They missionaries depended on each other and built strong bonds, as expatriate groups often do. With Augustana School, these bonds became tighter as the children of these missionaries also formed strong bonds with each other at school. As the children moved on to RVA and colleges, alien ideas and challenges to their adolescent identities confronted them both at RVA, and then in the United States, when in college. With more and more of the people in the study living in the United States, we formed new bonds with one another. Reunions of the American Lutheran missionary community from Tanzania were held every three years for about twenty years. The last one was held in 2006. We remain electronically tied together as a community. My mother runs an e-mail prayer chain

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that gives news of people in the community and binds us together still with recipients in Africa, the United States, and around the world. This community remains a vital force for many of us, both the now aged missionaries who contributed to the formation of the community and those of us who grew up within its embrace. I had latched onto Casey’s idea of place being within us as a way to describe how the missionaries and MKs experienced place in their lives. However, Tuan has highlighted how some people are not as attached to place because they are attached to a much wider transcendent idea. As the missionaries talked about their childhoods, most primarily spoke about the important role that religion played in their lives, rather than anything having to do with their Midwestern homes and how those places shaped their identity. In contrast, those who had been raised as missionary kids talked much more about the importance of place in their lives. For the missionary children, my interviews with them were full of rich descriptions of their childhoods in Tanzania. Place had a huge impact in defining who they are. As adults, the missionaries embraced Africa, but it primarily was seen through a religious lens. The missionary kids struggled with how to embrace their adult homes without a definite religious call to these places. Many still see Africa as their home, despite years of living in the United States or other places. Africa remained in the daily thoughts of many even after years away from the place. But most importantly, East Africa had changed their thinking patterns—they see the world in much different terms than do those around them. For many, their identity is very tied to their childhood places. It is something they think about on a daily basis and influences how they see the world around them. In the same way, our identities, no matter how strong or non-existent our faith is, remains tied to religion. Like the idea of place, it impacted the different generations in different ways. For the missionary generation, their religious faith started early with Christian families and mission-minded youth groups and churches that reinforced their faith. Their faith continued to be reinforced by the faith of the African Christians with whom they worked and by spending their lives on the “mission field.” However, while it looked like the “mission field” to the missionaries, Tanzania was just “Tanzania” and “home” to their children. Religion infiltrated the lives of this generation, as well, but as they grew the Christian messages they received were often quite mixed at all the religious educational institutions they attended and were not the same, unlike the previous generation who had a consistent Christian message told to them in their Lutheran churches, Luther Leagues, and the Lutheran colleges they attended. It was hard to develop a consistent faith

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as they moved from Africa back to the United States. While the majority remained Lutheran, many chose other forms of spiritual expression in their adult lives. The religious choices of the second generation were often not made until adulthood. I came to see this common struggle to find their own spiritual identity in their own lives as another defining characteristic of the missionary kid generation, along with their strong connection to place. In many ways, the men and women in this study shared many of the same feelings. Among the missionaries, both the men and the women shared equally in the feeling of being called to go to Africa. Both told how this had been their childhood dream. In the same manner, both genders of the missionary children seem to share an equal connection to Africa, with many men and many women stating that they thought about Africa on a daily basis long into adulthood. However, there were also strong differences between the genders in both generations. Because of the restrictions placed on women in their work options as missionaries, most missionary women found fulfillment in different types of volunteer opportunities. It often drew them tighter into the communities in which they lived in Tanzania, and when it came time to leave, they experienced much harder leave-takings. At the same time, it was male missionaries who expressed the most nostalgia for their lives in Africa. Among the missionary children, several key differences between men and women are apparent. All shared equally in marital hardships, but I am troubled about how much higher the divorce rate was for women compared to the men. The other area that seems to be a strong difference is in the area of spirituality. The women MKs, possibly because of their more relational nature, were more willing and able to accept other forms of Christianity than the men and also made earlier commitments to their own personal faith journeys much sooner than men. Men were both more likely to stay Lutheran or to give up on Christianity altogether. Moreover, even though both genders might state that they share a Christian faith, the women among the missionary children seem to experience a much deeper spirituality than do the men. I have highlighted the generational differences in many ways throughout this book. The key difference, I feel, is that the missionaries felt that they were called to what they did in their adult lives, while many of the next generation of their children often found themselves muddling for significant periods of their lives without feeling a definite call to what they should be doing. Another important difference is that the connections to place and the importance of place in defining their identities as individuals were different—the missionary children generally feel a much closer attachment to place than do their parents. Finally, the two generations differed in the

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breadth of their religious engagements—the missionary generation felt closer bonds to the Lutheran faith of their childhoods and remain committed to it, while the next generation explored many religious options. But I have not highlighted the bonds between these two generations as much as I should have. The missionaries and their children share a bond of community that transcends any religious differences between the generations. There is a deep affection between the generations for each other. I feel that the bond between these two generations is probably stronger than the missionaries had with their parents; possibly even stronger than the bonds that the missionary children have with their own children, the third generation. We have shared an in-between culture that the parents of the missionaries and children of the MKs have not known. It is a community and its history needed to be told. It has been a long journey but one that has added purpose to my life. Several years ago, I presented some of my findings at an annual conference known as The Missions and Mental Health Conference, speaking with different people about my research. One man who had served as a missionary for many years came up to me and told me, “Your research has been a blessing for us.” I pray that it is.

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Appendix

Those Interviewed List of persons interviewed for this study, with place and date of interview: 1. Evelyn Palm; Elk River, MN; June 6, 2000 2. Duane Palm; Elk River, MN; June 6, 2000 3. Beatrice Palm Bastyr; Elk River & Otsego, MN; June 6, 2000 & June 13, 2001 4. Joe Friberg; Minneapolis, MN; June 6, 2000 5. Dan and Ruth Friberg; Minneapolis, MN; June 7, 2000 6. Bobbie Peterson Bainbridge; Apple Valley, MN; June 7, 2000 7. Lynnae Hagberg Winnes; Minneapolis, MN; June 8, 2000 8. Rachel Peterson Jones; Gleason, WI; June 9, 2000 9. Les and Ruth Peterson; Menominee, WI; June 10, 2000 10. Hal and Louise Faust; Spread Eagle, WI; June 14, 2000 11. Steve Faust; Iron Mountain, MI; June 14, 2000 12. Tim Lofgren; New London, WI; June 14, 2000 13. Elder and Renee Jackson. Saint Peter, MN; June 19, 2000 14. Joel Jackson; Saint Peter, MN; June 19, 2000 15. Bob and Jeanne Ward; Lindsborg, KS; July 7, 2000 16. Dan Gottneid; Lindsborg, KS; July 8, 2000 17. Herb and Kristen Hafermann; Lindsborg, KS; July 8, 2000 18. Don Moris; Lindsborg, KS; July 8, 2000 19. Luella Peterson Weir; Lindsborg, KS; July 8, 2000 265

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20. Orv and June Nyblade; Lindsborg, KS & Gettysburg, PA; July 8, 2000 & November 16, 2001 21. David “Pete” Friberg; Wausa, NE; July 9, 2000 22. Todd Benson; Lilongwe, Malawi; July 31, 2000 23. Steve Simonson; Arusha, Tanzania; August 5 & 13, 2000 24. Mike Peterson; Arusha, Tanzania; August 7, 2000 25. Jon Simonson; Tarangire National Park, Tanzania; August 9, 2000 26. Naomi Simonson; Arusha, Tanzania; August 10, 2000 27. Nathan Simonson; Arusha, Tanzania; August 10, 2000 28. Steve Cunningham; Arusha, Tanzania; August 11, 2000 29. Dave Peterson; Arusha, Tanzania; August 15, 2000 30. Becky Simonson Weinreis; VVV Ranch near Golva, ND; June 8, 2001 31. Ray and Nellie Faye Hagberg; Niobrara State Park, NE; June 10, 2001 32. Marilyn Peterson Friberg; Wausa, NE; June 10, 2001 33. Jill Jackson Grill; Saint Peter, MN; June 12, 2001 34. Stan and Marie Benson; Saint Peter, MN; June 13, 2001 35. Martha Jackson Mascarenhas; Saint Peter, MN; June 14, 2001 36. Debbie Jackson Andros; Saint Peter, MN; June 14, 2001 37. David “Daudi” Faust; Negaunee, MI; June 15, 2001 38. Howard and Louise Olson; Fergus Falls, MN; June 27, 2001 39. Sharon Olson; Fergus Falls, MN; June 27, 2001 40. Dean Jackson; Coon Rapids, IA; July 14, 2001 41. Jeff Benson; Denver, CO; July 23, 2001 42. Al and Alice Gottneid; Lindsborg, KS; July 25, 2001 43. Dave and Eunice Simonson; Fergus Falls, MN; August 8, 2001 44. Tim Olson; Fergus Falls, MN; March 13, 2002 45. Wes Nyblade; Burley, ID; June 4, 2002 46. Linda Faust Karlgaard; Coeur d’Alene, ID; June 6, 2002 47. Becky Peterson; Bonners Ferry, ID; June 6, 2002 48. Dean and Elaine Peterson; Bonners Ferry, ID; June 7, 2002 49. Margaret Friberg Gibson; Blaine, WA; June 11, 2002 50. Mary Friberg Pullen; Campbell River, BC; June 11, 2002 51. Ann Faust Ibrahim; Oakland, CA; June 13, 2002 52. Joel Ward; Modesto, CA; June 14, 2002 53. Beth Jackson Crawford; Death Valley, CA; June 16, 2002 54. Kris Ward Tyler; Phoenix, AZ; June 17, 2002 55. Rochelle Hagberg Funk; Las Cruces, NM; June 18, 2002 56. Diane Cunningham Hunter; Arvada, CO; June 20, 2002 57. Sue Gottneid Rusch; Lindsborg, KS; June 22, 2002

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58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

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Mel and Dottie Lofgren; Lindsborg, KS; June 22, 2002 Steve Friberg; Camp Patmos, MN; July 17, 2002 Ruth Lofgren Rosell; Lenexa, KS; July 22, 2002 Kim Jackson; Waverly, MN; October 17, 2002 Paul Bolstad; Corcoran, MN; October 19, 2002 Vaughan Hagberg; Between Doland & Frankfort, SD; January 31, 2003 Howie Olson; Apollo Beach, FL; June 13, 2003 JP (John Paul) Lofgren; Deatsville, AL; June 15, 2003 David Lofgren; Thief River Falls, MN; July 20, 2003 Heidi Ward Broward; Saint Paul, MN; August 2, 2003 Jon Moris; Richmond, UT; October 11, 2003 Walter Nyblade; Gettysburg, PA; March 14, 2004 Mark Faust; Euless/Grape Vine/Fort Worth, TX; March 24, 2004 Dan Ward; Nairobi, Kenya; May 22, 2004 Thad Peterson; Arusha, Tanzania; May 24, 2004 Laura Jacobson; Arusha, Tanzania; May 29, 2004 Russ Nyblade; Lake Mary, FL; July 16, 2004 Linda Olson; Sun City Center, FL; July 17, 2004 Eugene Palm; Nikiski, AK; September 18, 2004 Laura Nyblade; Washington, DC; September 25, 2004

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Anderson, Arthur L. “What is the American School?” Lutheran Companion 99(1954): 9. Anderson, Bertha, MD. “From Our Field in Africa,” Lutheran Companion 34(1926): 1158. Anderson, Eleanor. Miracle at Sea: The Sinking of the Zamzam and Our Family’s Astounding Rescue. Springfield, MO: Quiet Waters Publications, 2000. Anderson, Rev. George N. “A Travelogue from Africa,” Lutheran Companion 35(1927a): 533–4, 589–90, 613–4, 637–8, and 661–2. ———. “African Mission—Tanganyika,” Lutheran Companion 35(1927b) 878, 901–2, 926, 949–50, 973–4, 997–8, 1022. ———. “From Our Mission Field in Africa,” Lutheran Companion 37(1929): 780–1. ———. “What About Foreign Missions?” Lutheran Companion 44(1936): 998–9. ———. “Meeting the Crisis in Africa,” Lutheran Companion 49(1941a): 172–4, 208–9. ———. “Till the Resurrection Dawn,” Lutheran Companion 49(1941b) 461–2. Baranek, Rev. Paul (editor and compiler) and Dr. Ruth E. Slifer (co-editor). With Love From . . . Missionaries around the World. New York: Designated Advanced Giving, Lutheran Church in America, 1987. Bell, Linda. Hidden Immigrants: Legacies of Growing Up Abroad. The West and the Wider World, no. 11. Notre Dame, IN: Cross Cultural Publications, Inc., 1997. Benson, Marie. Marie’s Memoirs—Farmer’s Daughter in Africa. St. Peter, MN: By the author, 2006. Bergstrand, Wilton E. “Youth Ministry and the Luther League.” In The Augustana Heritage: Recollections, Perspectives, and Prospects. Chicago: Augustana Heritage Association, 1999.

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Bonander, Elveda. “The Annual Conference at Marangu Mission,” Lutheran Companion 34(1926): 557. Brandelle, G. A. “Yet A Little Bit About Our African Mission,” Lutheran Companion 31(1923): 40. Bronfenbrenner, Urie. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Bystrom, Martin A. Letters from Africa. Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1951. Carlson, Mary. Women in Global Mission, An Oral History: Louise Olson. Chicago, IL: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Division for Global Missions, 1993. Casey, Edward S. “Body, Self and Landscape: A Geophilosophical Inquiry Into the Place-World.” In Textures of Place: Exploring Humanistic Geography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Chilstrom, Herbert W. “What Was/Is Augustana?” In The Augustana Heritage: Recollections, Perspectives, and Prospects. Chicago: Augustana Heritage Association, 1999. The Cobber Yearbook. Moorhead, MN: Concordia College, 1951, 1975. Cresswell, Tim. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Cunningham, Gloria. “A Tanzanian’s Woman’s Touch.” In Touched by the African Soul. Hillsboro, KS: Partnership Book Services, 1998. Cunningham, Gloria and Lois Okerstrom (compilers). Touched by the African Soul. Hillsboro, KS: Partnership Book Services, 1998. Danielson, Elmer R. “After Six Months among the Waniramba People of East Africa,” Lutheran Companion 37(1929): 1548–9, 1581, 1612–3; and 38(1930) 12–3, 77, 140–1, and 172–3. ———. “Ten Years in Africa,” Lutheran Companion 45(1937): 716–7. ———. “Letter to the Africa School Committee,” ELCA Archives, Augustana— Tanganyika File, January 15, 1940. ———. Forty Years with Christ in Tanzania, 1928–1968. Rock Island, IL: Eleanor Anderson, 1996 (1977). Danielson, Elmer R. and Bror Olson. “A Hero of the Cross,” Lutheran Companion 53(1945, July 11): 5–6. Dow, Phil. “School in the Clouds”: The Rift Valley Academy Story. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2003. Editor. “Ralph Hult Is Dead” Lutheran Companion 51(1943): 429–30. Engelhardt, Carroll. On Firm Foundation Grounded: The First Century of Concordia College (1891-1991). Moorhead, MN: Concordia College, 1991. Erikson, Erik. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton, 1950. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Division for Global Missions. Global Mission in the Twenty-first Century: A Vision of Evangelical Faithfulness in God’s Mission. Chicago: ELCA, 1997 [Accessed at http://www.elca.org/globalmission/policy/ index.html on May 29, 2007].

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———. International Personnel Directory, 2003. Chicago: ELCA, 2003. ———. The Changing Role of Missionaries. Chicago: ELCA, 2007 [Accessed at http:// www.elca.org/globalmission/resource/changingrole.pdf on May 31, 2007]. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Global Mission Unit. Accompaniment: a Lens and Methodology for Mission Today. Chicago: ELCA, n.d. PDF document [Accessed at http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Discipleship/Mission-Partners -Founders-Builders/The-Accompaniment-Model.aspx on April 8, 2011]. ———. Companion Synod Profiles. Chicago: ELCA, 2012 [Accessed at http://www .elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/ Global-Mission/Engage-in-Global-Mission/Companion-synods/Companion -Synod-Profiles.aspx on July 24, 2012]. “Evangelicalism,” Wikipedia [Accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism On February 9, 2015]. Faust, Hal. Letter to Ruben Pederson, July 3, 1967. Found in Ruben Pederson Papers, Lutheran Church in America, Elk Grove Village, IL: ELCA Archives. Faust, Louise. “Traveling Midwife for Tanzania,” Lutheran Women December 1969: 10–13. Faust, Louise with Darlene Strand. Mama Gawistchi: Letters from Louise. By the author, 2004. Gottneid, Al. Letter to Ruben Pederson, November 6, 1967. Found in Ruben Pederson Papers, Lutheran Church in America, Elk Grove Village, IL: ELCA Archives. Groop, Kim. With the Gospel to Maasailand: Lutheran Mission Work among the Arusha and Maasai in Northern Tanzania, 1904–1973. Abo, Finland: Abo Akademi University Press, 2006. The Gustavian Yearbook. St. Peter, MN: Gustavus Adolphus College, Various Years. Hall, George F. The Missionary Spirit in the Augustana Church. Augustana Historical Society Publication no. 32, Rock Island, IL: Augustana Historical Society, Augustana College, 1984. Henderson-James, Nancy (compiler and editor). Africa Lives in My Soul: Responses to an African Childhood. By the author, 2007. Hersey, John. “A Reporter at Large: Homecoming.” New Yorker, 10 May 1982: 49–79; 17 May 1982; 46–70; 24 May 1982: 44–66; 31 May 1982: 47–67. ———. The Call: An American Missionary in China. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Heyse, Herbert. “Learning at the Foot of Mount Kilimanjaro,” World Encounter 17(Summer 1980): 14–16. Hult, Ralph D. “A Greeting from East Africa,” Lutheran Companion 31(1923): 291–2. Hultgren, Arland and Vance L. Eckstrom (editors). The Augustana Heritage: Recollections, Perspectives, and Prospects. Chicago: Augustana Heritage Association, 1999. Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship. Lutheran Book of Worship. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1978. Johnson, D. E. “A Growing Church in Africa: North Tanganyika Mission Is Flourishing,” Lutheran Companion 100(1955): 8–9.

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Johnson, V. Eugene. “Back to Africa,” Lutheran Companion 42(1934): 1194–5. ———. Pioneering for Christ in East Africa. Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1948. Kiambogo Yearbook. Kijabe, Kenya: Rift Valley Academy, 1976. Klobuchar, Jim. The Cross Under the Acacia Tree: The Story of David and Eunice Simonson’s Epic Mission in Africa. Minneapolis: Kirk House Publishers, 1998. Latourette, Kenneth Scott. Missions and the American Mind. Indianapolis: National Foundation Press, 1949. Ludwig, Frieder. Church and State in Tanzania: Aspects of Changing Relationships, 1961–1994. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Luther College, Wahoo, Nebraska, Archives. “Mission Society Minutes, 1942– 1943.” Midland University, Fremont, Nebraska. Magney, Herbert S. “First Annual Conference of the Tanganyika Lutheran Mission,” Lutheran Companion 31(1923): 739, 754–755, 771. ———. “A Visit to Iramba, Our African Mission Field,” Lutheran Companion 34(1926): 845–6, 869–70, 893–4, and 917–8. ———. “The Opening Up of Our Second Mission Station on Our African Field,” Lutheran Companion 35(1927): 1197–8. ———. “Annual Augustana Lutheran Mission Conference in Africa,” Lutheran Companion 36(1928): 452–3. ———. “Where is Our Builder for Africa?” Lutheran Companion 37(1929): 875–6. ———. “The War and Tanganyika Missions,” Lutheran Companion 48(1940a): 587–9. ———. “Relieving German Missions,” Lutheran Companion 48(1940b): 1005–6. Marcia, James E. “Development and Validation of Ego Identity Status,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3(1966): 551–558. Mattson, P. A. “Our Mission Fields in Heathen Lands,” Lutheran Companion 31(1923): 609–10. Melander, N. L. “Annual Conference Tanganyika Missionaries,” Lutheran Companion 33(1925): 418–9. ———. “Marcus Anderson Victim of Tropical Fever,” Lutheran Companion 35(1927): 1046. ———. “Bible Conference of Tanganyika Mission,” Lutheran Companion 41(1933): 332, 342. Meyer, Kristen Satre. “The New Missionaries,” World Encounter 23(Fall 1985): 12–16. Miller, Edna. “African Mission Annual Conference,” Lutheran Companion 37(1929): 650–1. Moris, Stanley W., MD. Which Doctor: Medical Experience on Three Continents. By the author, 1997. Nelson, Chris. Augustana School, 1953–1957: A 25-Year Tribute. Nevada City, CA: By the author, 1981. Nesvig, Milton. “Teaching Africans to Read,” Lutheran Companion (August 28, 1968): 21–22.

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Nyblade, June. “Missionary Musings.” In With Love From . . . Missionaries around the World. New York: Designated Advanced Giving, Lutheran Church in America, 1987. Oberg, Esther. “The Pebble in the Pond.” In With Love From . . . Missionaries around the World. New York: Designated Advanced Giving, Lutheran Church in America, 1987. Ojanto, Antero. “Letter to Chris Nelson.” In Augustana School, 1953–1957: A 25Year Tribute. Nevada City, CA: By the author, 1981. Olson, Howard S. Footprints. Sun City Center, FL: By the author, 2001. Olson, Louise. “Growing Through Pain.” In Touched by the African Soul. Hillsboro, KS: Partnership Book Services, 1998. Pederson, Dru. “No Room for Boredom,” Lutheran Women (October 1965): 6–9. Petersen, Peter. A Place Called Dana: The Centennial History of Trinity Seminary and Dana College. Blair, NE: Dana College, 1984. Peterson, Rev. Peter. “The Object of Our Mission Work in Africa,” Lutheran Companion 31(1923): 25–26. Peterson, Ruth Hedlund. “God, You Do Plan Well!” In Touched by the African Soul. Hillsboro, KS: Partnership Book Services, 1998. Pollock, David C. and Ruth E. Van Reken. Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up among Worlds. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 2001. Smedjebacka, Henrik. “Lutheran Church Autonomy in Northern Tanzania, 1940– 1963,” Acta Academiae Aboensis, Ser. A Humaniora 44–3(1973). “Special Places and Faces Report: Houseparents in Africa,” World Encounter 2(December 1964): 30–32. Steimer, John and Edla. “Our First Month in Mbaga,” Lutheran Companion 31(1923): 67, 83, 99–100. Swanson, Jeffrey. Echoes of the Call: Identity and Ideology among American Missionaries in Ecuador. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Swanson, Lois. “I’ll Be Your Mother.” In With Love From . . . Missionaries around the World. New York: Designated Advanced Giving, Lutheran Church in America, 1987. Swanson, S. Hjalmar. “Missionary Missive,” Lutheran Companion 48(1940): 425. ———. “Recruits for Africa,” Lutheran Companion 49(1941): 495. ———. Three Missionary Pioneers and Some Who Have Followed Them. Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1945. ———. Touring Tanganyika. Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1948. ———. Foundation for Tomorrow: A Century of Progress in Augustana World Missions. Minneapolis: Board of World Missions, Augustana Lutheran Church, 1960. ———. “The School for Missionaries’ Children.” In Chris Nelson, Augustana School, 1953–1957: A 25-Year Tribute. Nevada City, CA: By the author, 1981. Swanson, S. Hjalmar (editor), and the Augustana Synod Passengers. Zamzam: The Story of a Strange Missionary Odyssey. Minneapolis: The Board of Foreign Missions of the Augustana Synod, 1941.

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Sweinseid, Solveig. Women in Global Mission, An Oral History: Louise Faust. Chicago, IL: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Division for Global Missions, 1993. Tall, Deborah. “Dwelling: Making Peace with Space and Place.” In Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Trexler, Edgar R. “Mother Goes to School in Kijota,” Lutheran Women (December 1970): 3–7. Tuan, Yi-Fu. Cosmos and Hearth: A Cosmopolite’s Viewpoint. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Vikner, David. “LCA in World Mission 1842–1982.” Elk Grove Village, IL: ELCA Archives LCA 28/1/2/1/2 Folder #7, 1982. Vikner, David. “Augustana in World Mission, 1861—1962: Introduction.” In The Augustana Heritage: Recollections, Perspectives, and Prospects. Chicago: Augustana Heritage Association, 1999. Vinz, Mark and Thom Tamarro (editors). Imagining Home: Writings from the Midwest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Vitek, William and Wes Jackson (editors). Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Ward, Jeanne. “God’s Promises—Fulfilled.” In Touched by the African Soul. Hillsboro, KS: Partnership Book Services, 1998. Ward, Rev. Robert E. Messengers of Love. By the author, 1999. World Encounter. Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Church in America, Board of World Missions and Division for World Missions and Ecumenism. Various Years. Yona, Manase M. “The Central Tanganyika Story,” World Encounter 2(December 1964): 4–7.

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Index

Abraham, 165, 248 Accompaniment Mission Philosophy (ELCA), 39 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 141 Africa, 255; Inland Mission, 31, 71, 139, 140, 180, 191; in the Daily Lives of the MK Generation, 250– 254 AfriCafe Instant Coffee, 250 African Ethnic Groups: Hadza, 207, 237–238; Iramba, 19, 159; Maasai, 29, 101, 166, 206, 207, 214; Sara, 17; Turu, 19, 27, 30, 155, 159; Waarusha, 101; Watindiga, 29, 155, 170 Alpha Program, 229 American Baptist Church, 188 American Embassy, Tanzania, 157 American Furloughs, 73–75 American Lutheran Churches: American Lutheran Church, 88, 106; Augustana Lutheran Synod/ Church, 4, 11, 12, 15, 16–17, 18, 22, 25, 41, 46, 54–55, 76, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 99, 122–123, 126, 127,

128, 132, 261; Augustana Lutheran Church—Junior Mission Band, 56; Augustana Lutheran Church— Women’s Missionary Society, 32, 55; Evangelical Lutheran Synod, 46, 55, 94, 122–123, 128; Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), 9, 15, 38, 39, 41, 76, 133, 142, 143; ELCA Archives, 10, 18; ELCA—Global Mission Unit, 39; Lutheran Church in America (LCA), 15, 25, 34, 38, 88, 89, 97, 99, 106, 124, 133, 137, 138, 142, 143, 225; LCA—Board of World Missions, 34; Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod, 46, 92, 106, 131, 225; Old American Lutheran Church, 46; United Evangelical Lutheran Church (UELC), 94, 124; United Lutheran Church in America, 46; Wisconsin Synod Lutheran, 46 American Regions and States: Alaska, 142, 183, 215; Arkansas, 136; California, Southern, 215; East, 211;

275

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276 •

Index

Florida, 138, 210, 245; Illinois, 234, 248; Kansas, 248, 253; Midwest, 46, 211–214; Minnesota, 127, 160, 213, 214, 215, 222, 234, 246–247, 248, 249, 259; Missouri, 135; Nebraska, 188; New Mexico, 140, 186; New York, 188; Nicollet County, MN, 244; North Carolina, 138; North Dakota, 183; Oklahoma, 137; Pacific Northwest, 110; San Francisco Bay Area, 215; South, 211; South Dakota, 154; Southwest, 251; Texas, 130, 222; Utah, 215; Virginia, 138; Upper Midwest, 223; West, 211, 214–216; Wisconsin, 140, 154, 187, 191, 193, 213 American School of Kinshasa, Congo, 238 American Towns: Aitkin, MN, 48; Balaton, MN, 46, 48; Bella Vista, AR, 245; Blaine, WA, 233; Blue Hill, NE, 187, 213; Bonners Ferry, ID, 245; Boston, MA, 182; Boyceville, WI, 128; Boys Ranch, NM, 190; Bristow, NE, 48; Burley, ID, 247; Chautaqua, NY, 76; Chicago, IL, 130, 158, 233; Clinton, MN, 57; Dallas, TX, 245, 257; Death Valley, CA, 212, 214; Eagan, MN, 200; East Chain, MN, 55, 124; Faribault, MN, 222; Flatville, IL, 55; Fergus Falls, MN, 170, 247; Fremont, NE, 90; Gettysburg, PA, 245; Glyndon, MN, 108; Golva, ND, 214; Graceville, MN, 57; Grand Rapids, MI, 163; Houston, TX, 213; Iron Mountain, MI, 2–3, 213; Kansas City, KS, 189, 190; Kenai, AK, 193; Kenosha, WI, 131, 260; Lakefield, MN, 92; Le Seuer, MN, 91; Lincoln, NE, 89; Los Angeles, CA, 121; Lake Okoboji, IA, 56; Leech Lake, MN, 75; Marquette, MI, 225; Menominie,

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WI, 73; Minneapolis, MN, 73, 126, 143–144, 234; Modesto, CA, 215–216, 239, 248; Moorhead, MN, 243; Moline, IL, 234; Nashville, TN, 189; New York, NY, 160; North Branch, MN, 73; Oakland, CA, 181; Omaha, NE, 46, 121, 129, 131, 187, 213; Ortonville, MN, 57; Quad Cities, IL, and IA (Davenport and Bettendorf, IA; Moline and Rock Island, IL), 46; Phoenix, AZ, 215, 251–252; Pittsburgh, PA, 46; Port Huron, MI, 128; Portland, ND, 48; Portland, OR, 121; Richmond, UT, 214; Rock Island, IL, 126; Rosholt, SD, 48, 57, 124, 154; San Diego, CA, 126; St. Paul, MN, 46, 108, 146; St. Peter, MN, 44, 60, 212–213, 231, 246, 247; Sioux City, IA, 89; South Sioux City, NE, 143, 187; Spencer, NE, 48, 133, 134, 244; Twin Cities, MN, 134; Wakefield, MI, 46, 55, 74; Washington, DC, 163, 181, 224, 245; Wausa, NE, 188, 213, 253; Wausau, WI, 213; West Chicago, IL, 232; Wheaton, MN, 57; Apartheid, 209 Arumeru, 29 Arusha Community Church, 157, 225, 227, 257 Arusha Region, 101 Assemblies of God, 228, 229, 231 Asia, 126, 210–211 Augustana Heritage Association, 76 Augustana Lutheran Missions by Country: Argentina, 133; British North Borneo, 92, 126, 133, 149; China, 16, 17, 49–52, 90, 119–120, 122, 123, 127, 128, 133, 218–219, 226, 234; Hong Kong, 133; India, 16, 17, 49, 52–54, 90, 129, 133, 136, 149; Indonesia, 133; Japan, 17, 126, 126–127, 133, 134; Mexico,

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Index •

133; Persia, 133; Puerto Rico, 133; Tanganyika, 17, 25, 49, 52, 54, 90, 91, 122, 124, 126, 128, 129, 130, 133, 149; Uruguay, 133 Baptist, 186, 228 Bellig, Bob, 194–195 Benson, Kristen, 101 Benson, Sterling (Bud), 105 Berg, Eleanor, 90 Bergren Family of St. Cloud, MN, 22–23 Berry, Wendell, 6 Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, 12 Boarding School, impact of, 66, 163– 165 Boys Ranch, Boys Ranch, NM, 190– 191, 233 Brandelle, Dr., 17 Breck School, Golden Valley, MN, 249 Bristol, England, 143 British Empire, 149 Bronfenbrenner, Urie, 8 Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems, 8, 58, 69, 85, 261 Buddhist, 229 Burkina Faso, 183, 230 The Call, 117–118, 145 The Call, 119–120 The “Call”: for the Missionary Generation, 121–132; for the MK Generation, 132–144 Cameroon, 17 Canada, 108, 234, 248 Caribbean, 255 Carlson, August, 16 Carlson, Edgar, 91 Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin, 10 Casey, Edward S., 7–8, 84–85, 257, 261, 262

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277

Catholic Church, 224, 230, 235 Central America, 255 Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, KS, 189 Chad, 141, 208 Chai, 101, 250, 254, 257 Chartes Cathedral, 235 Children of the MK Generation, Experiences of, 254–257 Chilstrom, Herbert, 76 Chinese Red Army, 51 Chitete, Dr. (Co-worker of Steve Friberg), 192 Christian, 237 Christian, Other Denominations Chosen by MK s in Adulthood, 221 Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) Church, 233 Christoffel Blinden Mission, 139, 140–141 Church Services, Reactions to, 77–78, 79–80 The Cobber (Concordia College, Moorhead, MN), 108 College Experience: for the Missionary Generation, 88–95, 114–115; for the MK Generation, 95–115 Colombia, 193, 209, 222 Community, 6, 261 Companion Synods, 39 Confirmation, Reactions to, 79, 227, 228, 238 Congo, Democratic Republic of (DRC)/ Zaire, 136, 219 Conscientious Objectors, 100 Cresswell, Tim, 6 Crossfires, 227 Cursillo, 225 Dalston, Lambert, 235 Daystar Community, 234 Dean, Bill, 102 Denmark, 46

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278 •

Index

Devotional Life in Missionary Families and at School, 76–77, 79 DeYoung, Judy, 238 Disciples of Christ, 237 Dorobo Fund, 196 Dorobo Safaris, 43, 139, 194–195 Downing, Herbert, 37, 140 Ecuador, Missionaries to, 118–120, 122, 123, 125, 132, 135, 138, 142, 145 Education as an Occupational Choice of MKs, 192–193 Edwins, A. W., 16 El Salvador, 210, 239 Eliasafi (Maintenance Worker at Augustana School), 68, 198 Elvee, Chaplain (Gustavus Adolphus College), 102 Engineering as an Occupational Choice of MKs, 196–197 England, 187, 255 Episcopalian, 230 Eriksmoen, Erik, 198 Erikson, Erik, 8, 217–218 Ethiopia, 1, 208, 246 Europe, 255 Evangelical Free Church, 231 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Synods: Nebraska, 187; St. Paul Area, 39; Southeastern Minnesota, 40; Hauge, 29 Evangelical Lutheran Church of South Africa (ELCSA), 209 Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT), 9, 25, 27, 34, 38, 39, 40, 158, 170 ELCT Synods and Diocese: Arusha, 157–158, 168, 170, 173; Central, 30, 34, 39, 157; Eastern and Coastal, 157–158; Iringa, 39; Northern, 34, 168 Evangelicalism, Defining it, 9

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Faith Academy, Malina, The Philippines, 211 Far East Broadcasting Corporation (FEBC), 135 Flying Medical Service, 139, 197 Fonseca, Don, 111 Fountain Creek Hotel, Death Valley, CA, 199 French Equatorial Africa, 17 Friberg, Dr. C. P., 16, 50, 123, 137, 232 Friberg, Immanuel, 51 Germany, 140 Goans, 212, 230 Grace Baptist Church, Eden Prairie, MN, 231 The Great Depression, 154 Guatemala, 161 Gulf of Mexico, 213 Gustavus Adolphus Mission Society, 93 Hall, George, 55, 91, 126 Hanson Family, Missionaries to China, 51 Harding, Joan, 139–140 Henderson-James, Nancy, 238 Hersey, John, 118–121, 122, 123, 218–219, 220 Higher Education Institutions Attended by Missionaries and MKs, 87–115; Alleghany College, Meadville, PA, 239; Augustana College, Rock Island, IL, 87, 89, 104–105, 106, 111, 121–122, 128, 129, 232, 233, 234; Augustana College, Sioux Falls, SD, 106, 133, 143; Bethany College, Lindsborg, KS, 87, 105–106, 232, 233–234, 235; Bethel College, St. Paul, MN, 134; California Lutheran College, Thousand Oaks, CA, 239; Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, 94, 106–110, 114, 180, 183; Dakota

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Index •

Wesleyan University, Mitchell, SD, 93; Dana College, Blair, NE, 91, 94, 134; Golden Valley Lutheran College, Golden Valley, MN, 226; Gordon-Cromwell Seminary, Boston, MA, 188; Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, 12, 87, 88, 89, 91–93, 97–104, 105, 106, 107, 112, 124–125, 131, 138, 142, 183, 188, 194–195, 224, 239, 249; Luther Academy and College, Wahoo, NE, 17, 87, 88, 89–91, 92, 93, 124, 129; Luther College, Decorah, IA, 128; Luther/Northwestern Seminary, St. Paul, MN, 143, 187; Lutheran Bible Institute, Minneapolis, MN, 122; Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 232; Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 113; North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, 109; Northwest Tech, Moorhead, MN, 114; Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA, 106, 110–111, 228; South Dakota State University, 133, 134; University of Illinois, 130; University of Michigan, 94, 128; University of Minnesota, 10, 136–137, 223; University of Nebraska–Omaha 130; University of Washington 110, 113, 140; University of Wisconsin, Stout, Menominie, WI, 112–113; Upsala College, Teaneck, NJ, 87, 89; Vanderbilt School of Divinity, 189; Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, 111–112, 136, 143, 186–187, 232, 233 Hincks, Craig, 81 HMS Queen Elizabeth II, 160 Hoagland, Al, 126–127 Holm, Rev. (Rosholt, SD), 57

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279

Home, the Idea of, 6, 245–250 Homemaking as an MK Occupation, 193 Homesickness, 66–68 Hong Kong, 193, 210 Hosbach Family, 24 House Parents Who Served at Augustana School: Andersons, 67; Anderson, Arthur, 33, 67; Cunninghams, 67; Kruegers, 67; Malloy, Fred and Martha, 34, 67, 79, 199, 214; Philpots, 67 Hoyer, Rev. H. Conrad, 121–122 Hurri Hills, Kenya, 208 Independent Studies in Tanzania through Gustavus, 101–102 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, 134 Isaac, 165 Istanbul, Turkey, 210 Jackson, Leland, 56 Jackson, Wes, 6 January Term at Gustavus Adolphus College, 103, 105 Jembe (Swahili Word), 260 Jesus, 237, 238 Johannesburg, South Africa, 209 John Deere, 105 Jones, E. Stanley, 77 Judas Iscariot, 240 Jungle Doctor, 147 Kampala, Uganda, 141 Kenya, 107, 141, 165, 166, 167, 168, 197, 206, 247, 255, 257 Kenya, Northern, 196, 208 The Kiambogo, 97 Kijabe, Kenya, 31, 192 Kijabe Hospital, Kijabe, Kenya, 192 Kinshasa, Congo (Zaire), 219 Kinzer, Mark, 72

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280 •

Index

Korea, 126 Kurtz, Jane, 1 Lake Chad, 17 Lake Erie, 245 Lake Wobegon (NPR), 213 Laiser, Naiman, 56 Laiser, Bishop Thomas, 170 Laotian Refugees, 189 Latourette, Kenneth Scott, 55 Leipzig Mission, 17–19, 24 Liberia, 134 Lindbeck Family, Missionaries to China, 51 Lindell Family, Missionaries to China, 51 Lindell, John (Missionary to China and Grandfather of Bethany Friberg), 137 Livingstone, David, 147, 159 LutherFest, Wahoo, NE, 91 Luther College Archives at Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, NE, 90 Luther College Mission Society, 90 Luther League, 55, 57, 121, 128, 262 Luther, Martin, 188 Luther Visitor, 90 Lutheran, 186, 221–229, 232, 233, 234, 236, 262 The Lutheran, 12 Lutheran Churches (Tanzania): Kiomboi Lutheran Church, 79–80, 151; Ngimu Lutheran Church, 174–175 Lutheran Churches (United States): Calvary Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN, 122; Christ the King Lutheran Church Bozeman, MT, 113; Emanuel Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN, 223; First Lutheran Church, St. Peter, MN, 92, 231; St. Joseph’s Lutheran

15_185-Benson.indb 280

Church, Rural Rosholt, SD, 56; Salem Lutheran Church, Omaha, NE, 187; Trinity Lutheran Church St. Peter, MN, 103; Trinity Lutheran Church of Minnehaha Falls, Minneapolis, MN, 122, 143–144, 233 Lutheran Cliques at RVA, 71 Lutheran Companion, 12, 19, 22, 25, 36, 130, 147 Lutheran Colleges, 262–263 Lutheran Identity, 96, 102 Lutheran Institutions in Tanzania: Bumbuli Hospital, 27; Extension Seminary, 157, 168; Ihanja Bible School, 29, 157; Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, 31, 36; Kiomboi Bible School, 166; Lutheran Junior Seminary in Morogoro, 40; Maasai Girls School, Monduli 170, 197, 251; Makumira Seminary, 30, 157, 167–168, 169, 238; Mwika Bible School, 157, 167; Selian Lutheran Hospital, 192 Lutheran Missionary Family Who Served in Tanganyika/Tanzania (Americans): Anderson Family, 19, 20, 49, 54, 150; Anderson, George N., 22, 36; Anderson, Annette, 150; Anderson Olson, Louise, 20, 49, 52, 54; Anderson, Marcus, 20; Anderson, Roy, 20; Augustine, Rev. Doug, 79; Benson Family, 11, 27, 45, 60; Benson, Stan, 24, 43, 45, 48, 56, 57, 77, 91–92, 114, 125, 126, 131, 148–149, 157–158, 162, 168, 173, 244; Benson, Marie, 36, 43, 46, 72, 77, 92, 98, 131, 132, 156–157, 158, 160, 163–164, 219, 244, 262–263; Benson, John, 7, 38, 72, 81, 83–84, 99, 101, 102, 105, 118, 120–121, 131, 156, 162, 192–193, 208, 209, 213–214, 222–223, 243, 250, 251,

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Index •

259–261; Benson, Cindy (Wife of John Benson), 193, 209, 222; Benson, Claire (Daughter of John and Cindy Benson), 193; Benson, Todd, 70, 84, 101, 102, 141, 207– 208, 223, 224–225, 247–248; Benson, Betsy Shaffer (Wife of Todd Benson), 141, 248; Benson, Jeff, 43, 72, 84, 113, 197, 204–205, 208, 214, 223–224; Benson, Barb Nielsen (Wife of Jeff), 113; Bolstad Family, 11, 27; Bolstad, Paul, 33, 68, 136, 137–138, 139, 200; Bolstad, Shirley (Wife of Paul), 137; Budke, Clarence, 91–92; Cunningham Family, 11, 77; Cunningham, Ray, Sr., 129; Cunningham, Ray, Jr., 77; Cunningham, Gloria, 150, 151; Cunningham Hunter, Diane, 63, 231–232, 246, 251, 255; David (Son of Diane Cunningham Hunter), 255; Cunningham, Steve, 139, 181, 182, 197, 206; Cunningham, Fatuma (Wife of Steve Cunningham), 181, 182; Danielson Family, 23, 106; Danielson, Elmer, 20–21, 23–24. 31, 32, 90; Danielson, Lillian, 23; Danielson, Lois Carlson, 30; Egland, Steve and Jaynan, 43; Faust Family, 11, 27, 41, 45, 63, 77, 166, 192, 250, 251; Faust, Harold (Hal), 3, 34–35, 89, 163, 166, 171–172; Faust, Louise, 3, 46, 149–150, 162, 163, 166–167, 171–172, 235; Faust, Mark, 63, 80, 104–105, 162, 186, 199–200, 236– 237, 245–246, 253–253, 257; Faust Ibrahim, Ann, 66, 67, 100, 162, 163, 181, 182, 235, 236, 250; Ibrahim, Ibrahim (Husband of Ann Faust Ibrahim), 181; Faust, Linda, 162, 163; Faust, Steve, 2–3, 63, 77, 162, 163, 213; Faust, Vicki (Wife of Steve), 77; Faust, David (Daudi), 63,

15_185-Benson.indb 281

281

84, 163, 228, 250–251; Friberg Family, 11, 27, 41, 42, 45, 46, 144; Friberg, H. Daniel, 26, 49–52, 93, 232; Friberg, Ruth, 49, 52–53, 149; Friberg, Joe, 63–64, 66–67, 104–105, 232–233, 234; Friberg, Carol (Wife of Joe Friberg), 233; Friberg Gibson, Margaret, 69, 79, 104–105, 111, 190, 232, 233; Gibson, Charles (Husband of Margaret Friberg Gibson), 190; Friberg Pullen, Mary, 70, 106, 232, 233–234 248; Friberg, David (Pete), 62, 66–67, 111–112, 142, 143, 180, 186–188, 190, 232, 238, 253; Friberg, Sarah (Daughter of Pete Friberg and Marilyn Peterson Friberg), 180, 187; Friberg, Steve, 43, 111–112, 136–137, 138, 139, 142, 193, 206, 232; Friberg, Bethany (Wife of Steve), 43, 137; Friberg, John, 232; Gottneid Family, 11, 27, 41, 45, 106; Gottneid, Al, 34–35, 46, 89, 90, 106, 114, 127, 128–131, 165, 172–173; Gottneid, Alice Lindbeck, 46, 49–52, 90, 106, 129, 130; Gottneid, David, 106, 130, 165; Gottneid, Sue Rusch, 106; Rusch, Darrel (Husband of Sue), 106; Gottneid, Dan, 72, 106, 198–199, 235–236, 237; Hafermann Family, 11, 27, 30, 41, 45, 161–162; Hafermann, Herb, 45, 46, 55, 56, 150, 157–158, 161–162; Hafermann, Kristen, 46, 157, 161–162; Hafermann, Belarmino, 161; Hafermann, Delmar, 161; Hagberg family, 11, 27, 29, 41, 45, 77, 133, 151–152, 219, 244; Hagberg, Ray, 48, 90, 91, 93, 114, 125, 126, 155– 156, 158, 224; Hagberg, Nellie Faye, 46, 55–56, 93, 124; Hagberg Winnes, Lynnae, 142, 143–144, 193, 227– 228; Winnes, Don (Husband of

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282 •

Index

Lynnae Hagberg Winnes), 144, 192; Hagberg, Rochelle, 62–63, 230; Hagberg, Vaughan, 133–135, 142, 145, 193, 209, 210–211, 230; Hagberg, Aleda (Wife of Vaughan), 134–135; Hall, Mike, 99; Horton, Roger and Jolyn, 43; Hult Family, 20, 90; Hult, Ralph D., 17, 18, 22, 24, 90; Hult, Dr. John, 165; Jackson Family, 11, 27, 41, 45, 57, 162, 166, 232; Jackson, Elder, 29–30, 48, 56, 79, 93, 142, 154, 156, 166; Jackson, Renee Odeen, 46, 90, 156, 163; Jackson, Dean, 71, 79, 80, 99–100, 102, 103, 107, 142–143, 193, 252; Jackson, Trish (Wife of Dean Jackson), 142–143; Jackson, Joel, 69, 100, 103, 208, 226, 227, 246; Jackson Crawford, Beth, 74, 79, 100, 183, 199, 212, 214; Jackson, Kim, 71, 100, 101, 154, 200, 249–250, 251, 255–256; Jackson, Birdie (Wife of Kim Jackson), 200; Jackson Mascarenhas, Martha, 79, 106, 108, 156, 166, 181, 182, 207–208, 212, 230–231, 246–247; Mascarenhas, “Masky” (Husband of Martha Jackson Mascarenhas), 166, 181, 207, 212, 231; Jackson Andros, Debbie, 38, 74, 82, 156, 212, 231, 252; Jackson Grill, Jill, 38, 106, 108, 109, 183, 185, 212–213, 247, 252– 253, 256; Grill, Scott (Husband of Jill Jackson Grill), 183, 256; Jacobson Family, 11; Jacobson, Laura, 60–61; Johnson Family, 22– 23; Johnson, V. Eugene, 22–23, 56, 124, 150; Johnson, Edythe, 150; Johnson, Doris, 22–23, 25; Jones, Dr. Frank, 136; Lindell, Carl, 223; Lofgren Family, 11, 27, 41, 45, 82– 83, 152, 167, 172, 192, 244–245; Lofgren, Mel, 29, 30, 36, 45, 89, 90,

15_185-Benson.indb 282

106, 172; Lofgren, Dottie, 30, 46, 55, 93, 157, 172, 174, 219, 245; Lofgren, JP (John Paul), 74, 100, 103, 135– 136, 137, 183–184, 192–193, 219, 232; Lofgren, Victoria (Wife of JP Lofgren), 183–184; Lofgren, David, 95–96, 193, 230, 254; Lofgren Rosell, Ruth, 67–68, 83, 100, 103, 186, 188–190, 248, 253; Rosell, Terry (Husband of Ruth Lofgren Rosell), 188–189; Lofgren, Tim, 36, 38, 64, 77, 83, 103, 186, 248, 250, 254; Magney Family, 19; Magney, Herbert, 22; Magney, Mrs., 90; Melander, Lud and Esther, 170, 244; Melander, Lud, 22, 150; Melander, Esther, 150; Mensah, Ozzie, 67; Monson, Carl, 79; Moris Family, 11, 123; Moris, Stan, 122–123, 127, 128; Moris, Edith Okerlund, 123, 127– 128, 132, 137; Moris, Patricia, 123; Moris, Jon, 29, 70, 97, 127, 214–215, 248; Moris, Don, 70, 75, 97, 110, 113, 196–197, 204, 248; Mortenson, Dempsey, 34; Murnyak, Dennis and Meredith, 43; Norberg Family, 23; Nyblade Family, 11, 27, 41, 45, 77, 125, 126, 152, 160, 245; Nyblade, Orv, 29, 56, 93–94, 127, 149, 150, 152–153, 169; Nyblade, June, 30, 46, 56–57, 93, 149, 152, 153, 156, 169; Nyblade, Walter, 158; Nyblade, Russ, 36, 38, 62, 77, 200; Nyblade, Wes, 84, 193, 239, 247; Olson Family, 11, 27, 41, 43, 45, 152, 158, 161; Olson, Howard (Howie) (Father), 30, 45, 55, 93, 124–125, 152, 154–155, 174; Olson, Louise Anderson, 46, 89, 124, 125, 150, 151, 152, 156, 173, 174, 239; Olson, Howie (Son), 43, 68, 74, 158, 160, 181–182; Olson, Halima (Wife of Howie Olson), 182; Olson, Sharon,

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Index •

158, 160, 246; Olson, Tim, 62, 158, 160, 247, 251; Olson, Linda, 74, 81, 99, 100, 101, 158, 160, 193, 209– 210, 213, 239; Olson, Tasha (Daughter of Linda Olson), 210; Palm Family, 11, 41, 162, 167; Palm, Harald, 158, 167; Palm, Evelyn, 45, 56, 57, 162; Palm, Duane, 68, 71, 73, 198, 226; Palm Bastyr, Beatrice, 62, 68, 105–106, 182–183, 186, 230; Bastyr, Ben (Husband of Beatrice Palm Bastyr), 182–183; Palm, Gene, 62, 167–168, 183, 193, 215, 238; Pederson, Ruben and Twyla, 56, 124; Pederson, Ruben, 34; Peterson Family, Dean and Elaine, 11, 27, 41, 43, 45, 158, 162, 165, 168, 193, 195, 245; Peterson, Dean, 55, 56, 57, 90, 92, 124, 125, 128, 155, 157, 162, 165, 169, 219–220; Peterson, Elaine, 55, 56, 92, 124, 125, 157, 165, 169; Peterson, Dave, 71–72, 100, 101, 102, 103, 194–195, 205, 207, 237– 238; Peterson, Becky, 62, 73, 101, 102, 138; Peterson-Davis, Richard (Ex-husband of Becky), 138; Peterson, Thad, 77, 100, 101, 102, 103, 194–195, 207, 227, 256; Peterson, Zach (Son of Thad and Robin Peterson), 256; Peterson, Mike, 43, 81, 102, 138–139, 165, 194–195, 205, 239; Peterson, Lisa (Wife of Mike), 139; Peterson Family, Les and Ruth, 11, 27, 41, 45, 112, 128, 162, 166, 192; Peterson, Les, 29, 55, 93, 127, 128, 132, 154, 156, 157, 162, 180; Peterson, Ruth, 127, 128, 132, 141, 154, 157, 174; Peterson Weir, Luella, 68, 79, 98, 99, 103, 139–140, 141, 186, 190– 191; Jim Weir (Husband of Luella Peterson Weir), 139–140, 190–191; Peterson Jones, Rachel, 68, 73, 99–

15_185-Benson.indb 283

283

100, 213; Peterson Friberg, Marilyn, 70, 111–112, 180, 187, 190, 193, 213, 253; Peterson Bainbridge, Bobbie, 73, 111–112, 180; Bainbridge, Matt (Husband of Bobbie Peterson Bainbridge), 180; Peterson, Paul, 69, 73, 101, 193; Peterson, Laurie Medhaug (Wife of Paul), 101; Reusch, Richard, 24, 56, 91, 183; Bonander Reusch, Elveda, 18, 91; Simonson Family, 11, 27, 43, 45, 46, 60, 110, 152, 162, 170, 194, 244, 245; Simonson, Dave, 41, 45, 55, 108, 168–169, 173, 196; Simonson, Eunice (Eunie), 30, 41, 45, 48, 56, 108, 160, 162, 174; Simonson, Steve, 62, 71, 81, 107, 108, 114, 180, 196, 206, 207–208, 225, 256–257; Simonson, Marilyn (Wife of Steve Simonson), 180, 208; Simonson Badenhorst, Serena (Daughter of Steve and Marilyn Simonson), 208; Simonson, Naomi, 78, 81, 107, 108, 109, 170; Simonson, Nate, 60–61, 63, 81, 107, 108, 109, 197, 205, 206, 209, 225, 226; Simonson, Susan (Wife of Nate Simonson), 209; Simonson Weinreis, Becky, 38, 62–63, 68, 108, 109, 183, 214, 231; Simonson, Jon, 113–114, 196, 257; Smith, Bill, 173; Swenson, Rev. Vern, 79, 80; Ward Family, 11, 27, 29, 45, 167, 252; Ward, Bob, 82, 89, 121–122, 131, 132, 140, 155, 160, 164, 165, 170, 174, 244; Ward, Jeanne, 46, 48, 122, 160, 164, 171, 244; Ward Tyler, Kris, 70, 78, 82, 110, 164, 213, 215, 227–228, 229, 246, 251, 252, 255; Tyler, Keith (Husband of Kris Ward Tyler), 213, 215; Tyler, Jackie (Daughter of Kris and Keith Tyler), 255; Ward, Dan, 110, 113, 139, 140–

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284 •

Index

141, 160, 257; Ward, Joel, 36, 46, 74, 75, 78, 193, 215–216, 239, 248– 249, 252; Ward, Kathi (Ex-wife of Dan Ward), 257 Lutheran Missionary Trends Worldwide, 41 Lutheran Single Missionaries: Brown, Della, 155; Bystrom, Martin, 24; Erwin, Lola, 65; Gulleen, Vivian, 30; Halvorson, Marian, 30; Heidel, Lori, 68; Jacobson, Ida Marie, 200; Kinnan, Velura, 23; Kjellin, Edythe, 30; Lindberg, Henrietta (Hal), 65; Miller, Edna, 20; Oberg, Esther, 170–171; Olson, Esther, 23; Swanson, Lois, 159 Lutheran Students’ Association, 91, 92, 94, 114, 131, 134 Lutheran Student Movement, 113 Lutheran Volunteer Corps, 224 Lutheran World Federation, 26, 28, 130, 197 Lutheran World Relief, 26, 141, 196 Lutheran Youth Encounter, 103 Maasai Mission, 27 Maeda, Walter, 194 Makonde Woodcarvers, 198 Malaysia, 167 Malawi, 141, 248 March on Washington, 100 Marcia, James, 8–9, 217–218, 221, 234 Marcia’s Identity Attainment, 221, 234 Marcia’s Identity Foreclosure, 221 Marcia’s Identity Moratorium, 238, 240 Mason, Pamela, 162 Mattson, Luther, 232 Maywood School of Missions, Chicago, IL, 158 Meanings of Place Course (University of Minnesota), 10 Medellin, Colombia, 223

15_185-Benson.indb 284

Medicine as an Occupation for MKs, 191–192 Mennonite Central Committee, 141, 208 Methodist, 222, 231, 233 Midwestern, 262 Minnesota State University Moorhead, 1 Ministry as an Occupation of MKs, 185–191 Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), 197 Missions and Mental Health Conference, 264 Mission Conferences, 22 Mission Fields in Tanganyika/Tanzania, 4, 6, 19; Augustana Field/Iramba Field/Iramba-Turu Field/Central Area, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 93, 156; Haya Synod, 24, 26; Lutheran Church of Northern Tanganyika/ Northern Area/Northern Field, 24, 25, 26; Northern Area, 155, 156; Norwegian Mission 26; Orphaned Fields, 23, 25; Uzaramo Field, 26 Mission Stations in Tanzania 19, 20, 60–65; Balangida, 2–3, 60, 63, 77, 150, 237, 245, 257; Bonga, 133, 152; Bumbuli, 128; Enaiboshu, 137; Gendabi, 60, 63; Iambi, 19, 25; Ihanja, 27, 149; Ilboru, 27, 60, 63, 78, 133, 152, 170, 206; Isanzu, 20, 25, 29, 74, 78, 154, 170, 246, 248; Karatu, 29–30, 156; Kijota, 151; Kinampanda, 20; Kiomboi, 20, 27, 31, 32, 136, 164, 165, 192; Kititimu, 149; Kitumbeine, 29, 206; Loliondo, 30, 60, 62–63, 133, 151, 156, 160, 169, 211, 219; Machame, 18, 20; Makumira, 27, 60, 61–62, 64, 152, 157, 169, 246; Mbaga, 18; Mgori, 149, 157; Mwika, 27, 60, 64, 152; Nabarera, 29; Ngimu, 174–175;

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Index •

Ngwilu, 63; Oldonyo Sambu, 60, 211, 248; Ruruma, 19, 20, 21, 25, 29, 30, 152; Ushola, 22, 25; Ushora, 20; Vuga, 33; Wembere, 20 Mission Tidings, 12, 25, 128, 147 Missionary Community, 3 Missionary Culture, 29 Missionary Reunions, 4 Missionaries, 4–5, 45–58, 147–175, 218–220, 243–245 Missionary Kids (MKs), 3, 59–85, 177– 184, 185–201, 203–216, 220–241, 245–254 Mississippi River, 213 Mollel, Dr. (Co-worker of Steve Friberg), 193 Mombasa, Kenya, 148, 168, 251 Moris, Muriel Newman, 123 Mormons, 215 Moshi, Stefano, 26, 168, 168–169, 174 Mozambique, 197, 206, 209 MSAADA, 43, 197 Nairobi, Kenya, 135, 169, 207, 212, 230 National Lutheran Council, 93 National Public Radio, 213 Navajo people, 214–215 Nelson (Childhood Friend of Steve Faust), 163 Nelson, Chris, 33 Nelson, Darryl, 57 Nigeria, 17, 56 Non-religious, Designation Chosen by MKs in Adulthood, 221 Normandy, France, 129 Norway, 215 Nyerere, Julius, 101 Occupations of MK Generation, 185–201; “American,” 198–201; International, 194–198; Traditional Missionary, 185–194

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285

Ojanto, Antero, 34 Olson, Elinor, 24 Overaa, Anna, 79 Overseas Adventure Travel, 182 Papua New Guinea, 56 Paul, Apostle, 117, 207, 240 Patton, Father Pat, 139 Paul Carlson Medical Program, 136 Peace Corps, 100, 136, 137, 182, 208 Peterson, Mick, 57 Peterson, Milton, 57 Peterson, Peter, 17 The Philippines, 91, 126, 135, 193, 211 Piaget, Jean, 257 Place, 3, 5–8 Place in the Childhoods of the Missionary Children Generation, 59–75; American, 48; Foreign, 49–54 Pole (Swahili Word), 260 Poleni na kazi (Swahili Phrase), 260 Pollock, David, 2 Prairie Baptist Church, Prairie Village, Kansas, 189 Presbyterian, 46 Protestant, 230, 235 Radio Voice of the Gospel, 28 Rebuilders, 231–232 Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota, 1, 108 Religious Development, 3, 5, 8–9, 82, 220–241 Religious Influences on Missionary Generation: during Adulthood, 218– 220; during Childhood, 54–58 Religious Influences on MK Generation during Childhood, 75–84 Research Methods, 9–12 Retirement Decisions for Missionary Generation, 243–245

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286 •

Index

Reynolds, David and Mrs. (RVA Teachers), 70 Rosenius Movement, 56 Sack, Robert, 84–85 Samburu-land, Kenya, 244 San Salvador, El Salvador, 210 Sara, Mama from Ngimu Village, Tanzania, 175 Scale, 4 Schooling for Missionary Children, 22, 31–38, 65–73, 78–84; Augustana School (Kiomboi, Tanzania), 2, 31–36, 59, 65–69, 72, 75, 78–80, 83, 84, 112, 136, 139, 140, 156, 164, 191, 199, 225, 226, 228, 233, 249, 257–258, 261; Bryant Junior High School, Minneapolis, MN, 74; Field Elementary School, Minneapolis, MN, 74; International School Moshi, 35–36, 38, 59, 65, 72–73, 75, 83–84, 96, 115, 157, 197, 198, 239, 258; Rethy School, Congo (Zaire), 71; Rift Valley Academy (Kijabe, Kenya); 2, 9, 12, 32, 35–38, 59, 60, 65, 69–72, 75, 78, 80–83, 84, 96, 97, 99, 112, 115, 117, 133, 135, 139, 140, 142, 180, 183, 190, 191 , 215, 218, 221, 223, 225, 227, 228, 235, 248, 249, 257–258, 261; Rosslyn Academy (Nairobi, Kenya), 133, 144 Schiotz, Fred, 130 Serengeti Select Safaris, 194, 196, 197 Singapore, 167, 219 Sirikiwa (Waarusha Elder), 168–169 Smedjabacka, 18 Sorensen, Dave, 79 South Africa, 197, 206, 209 Spritual, Designation Chosen by Some MKs in Adulthood, 221 Steimer, John, 18 Study Framework, 5 Sudan, 17, 22

15_185-Benson.indb 286

Summer Institute for Missions, 43 Swahili, 252 Swanson, Jeffrey, 46, 54, 118–121, 122, 123, 125, 132, 133, 135, 138, 142, 145 Swanson, S. Hjalmar, 27, 32, 87–88, 148, 152, 153–154 Swedish Evangelical Missionary Society, 26 Sypriani (Worker for Faust Family in Balangida), 163 Syracuse University, 120 Tagalog, 211 Tai Chi, 237 Tammaro, Thom, 6 Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service (TCRS), 197 Tanzania, 25, 120, 166, 168, 205, 207, 246, 247, 248, 251, 253, 259, 261, 262 Tanzanian Ministry of Education, 34 Tanzanian Physical Features: Indian Ocean, 194; Irambaland/Iramba Plateau, 19, 32, 149; Lake Eyasi, 155; Maasailand, 28; Mount Hanang, 63; Mount Kilimanjaro, 17, 18, 64, 139, 152, 168; Mount Longido, 101; Mount Meru, 152, 247; Pare Mountains, 17, 18; Southern Highlands, 34; Tarangire National Park, 194; Usambara Mountains, 27, 60, 63–64 Tanzanian Towns: Arusha, 27, 30, 43, 44, 60, 133, 152, 156, 157, 158, 167, 168, 169, 171, 194, 195, 196, 197, 206, 207, 208, 224, 225, 237, 244; Babati, 227; Biharamulo, 206; Dares-Salaam, 24, 26, 30, 148, 149, 150, 157; Iringa, 43; Lindi, 197; Mbulu, 26; Morogoro, 43; Moshi, 28, 34, 148, 170; Pangani, 194; Singida, 19, 24, 26, 27, 148, 149, 197; Wasso, 62

5/26/15 6:56 AM

Index •

Tarangire Safari Lodge, 196 Thailand, 144 Third Culture Kid (TCK), Definition, 2 Tourism Work as an MK Occupation, 194–196 Treadup, David (Fictional Character in The Call), 119–120, 122, 123, 128, 218–219 Tuan, Yi Fu, 46, 58, 262 Turkey, 210 Uganda, 139 Ujamaa Villages and Villigization Project, 101, 152 United States, 259, 262 United World College in Hong Kong, 210 University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), 140–141 Urbana Student Missions Conference, 134, 234 USAID, 194 U.S. Army, 126 Ute People, 215 Vancouver, BC, 233 Vancouver Island, BC, 234 Van Reken, Ruth, 2

15_185-Benson.indb 287

287

Vietnam War, 99, 106; protests, 100 Vikner, David, 16, 132–133 Vikner’s Missionary Stages, 16, 18, 24, 26, 29, 36, 38 Vinz, Mark, 6 Walker-Dalhouse, Doris, 1 Walter Reed Hospital, Washington, DC, 129 West Central School of Agriculture, Morris, MN, 91 West Lakes Conference of Association of American Geographers, 10 World Encounter, 12, 34, 43 World Mission Prayer League, 167 World Radio Missionary Fellowship, 118–119 World War II, 16, 23, 24, 25, 91, 93, 123, 127, 128, 129, 150, 226 Yona, Mrs. Manase, 151 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 119–120 Youth’s Favorite Songs, 79, 228 Zamzam, 23, 32 Zanzibar, 25

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15_185-Benson.indb 288

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