Amazing the amount of the world we have seen - at least the Western hempisphere and the Middle East and Africa. Some of that we saw before we ever officially were a part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. That was on our honeymoon, and it was especially great for Dad as I had travelled overseas a lot more than he had, and we enjoyed so much this travel together.
Then during our missionary career we saw more of Europe and of Africa, various countries. Sometimes as international workers, we do not realize how fortunate we are as world travellers. But the Alliance also likes us to know our own country and so they send us out on missionary tours. I do not know when tours started in the Alliance, but I do know that they existed when we joined up. Women with children at home were not required to tour, but all men and single women and women without children (at home) had to give time spring and fall to tour the U.S. and (originally) Canada.
The separation during tour is the biggest hardship of missions for me. We used to be separated for many weeks - one time Dad was gone thirteen weeks when you kids were small. He asked the New England DS if eleven weeks was not supposed to be the maximum, and the DS replied that yes that was so - but he figured since Dad had been a church planter in New England, he would not mind giving a couple extra weeks to that area on tour! I don't know where this guy got his logic - but we had no choice!
In more recent years, National Office has required districts to give time off and midway on a tour a missionary can usually return home for a week and then go back again. A great idea for wives and for families, but also expensive.
One reason I liked living in Nyack on furlough was that there were others just like me living in the same neighborhood - missionary women staying with their families while the father toured. So we were a club and had some fun times together. Dad wrote every single day and so did I. The other women were so jealous that I got a letter from him each day in the mailbox! That was before the time of cheaper phone calls. Money was more scarce back in those days and phones were expensive. I lived for those letters, and they were not short notes, but long missives telling me all about his day and sending a message to you kids and telling me he loved me. I think this kept me together emotionally during those months when I had to be mother and father both to a sweet, lively bunch of kids - all of you!
When you girls got a little older, (and could take care of the boys!) Gene Evans used to send me out on weekends for special meetings in some churches within driving distance. The boys could stay with you and I was only gone for Sunday so that worked OK. Then came the time when you all flew away from the nest and Dad and I were both required to go on tour. We would have preferred to go together, but there were so many tours that they needed us in different churches - and usually different areas of the country. I almost always went on the one-week-in-a-church tours, which I preferred. You had lots of times to speak and describe your entire ministry and drum up more prayer support. Dad was usually on those one week tours as well but in a different part of the country. More phone calls than letters went back and forth because of our schedules and maybe missing each other in the mail!
During that time, when you were all a little older, Gene Evans asked Cliff Westergren and me to go together to Puerto Rico. The Alliance churches down there had never had a missions tour, so we were their first. We flew down from New York and met by the church president and taken to a hotel in the city of San Juan. They gave Cliff a car and gave me a chauffeur-interpreter, who became a real friend and later was a single missionary in Venezuela. We got to the hotel and we were told to get our own rooms and they would pay the bill later. They also gave us money to go out to restaurants and buy all of our own food at their expense. So Cliff went to the front desk in the hotel to ask for two rooms for us. Of course the language was a barrier as the guy did not speak much English but I wondered why they were talking for so long just to get rooms for us. He came back laughing and in the elevator going up he said that the guy was quite insistent that he rent just one room to save money. No matter how much Cliff explained that I had another husband and he another wife and we just happened to be there on a speaking tour together, the guy never did get it and thought these gringos were pretty extravagant, not saving money when they could! We got a big laugh out of that!
After we retired, usually we were allowed to go together to churches and we really liked that. Dad and I complement each other in our ministries and we have always worked as a team, and it was special to be able to travel together here in the United States, touring Alliance church. (More about that later).
National office was having a hard time staffing all their U.S. missions tours, and so even after we retired, they asked us to go on tour. We had not gotten into much here in Toccoa at that time, and we were free to go - plus it was an advantage for us to travel together ministering in churches for six or eight weeks, as we had no bills during that time. A couple of times people needed a place to stay, and so we let them stay in our home while we were gone, and so our new home was also taken care of.
More about retirement and tours next time..........................
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