Andrew had been interested in all that Mr. Johnson had to say up until he heard this piece of information. Suddenly he found his mind drifting off to think about all of the people he knew who lived by faith. These people were uncomfortable to be around and made him feel guilty if he spent any money or wore a nice jacket. But they also specialized in “hinting” about their physical needs. So much for trusting God, Andrew thought as the meeting came to a close.
The following evening, Andrew went for a bike ride with Kees. As they peddled along together, Kees peppered Andrew with questions about WEC. Andrew did not have many answers for him, confessing that he had stopped paying attention when he learned that WEC missionaries lived by faith. However, he did have the address of the organization’s training school in Glasgow, Scotland, and he suggested that since Kees was so interested in WEC, he might want to write there himself.
That is just what Kees did. Much to Andrew’s surprise, Kees applied to and was accepted by WEC to train as a missionary. It all happened so quickly, and soon Kees was on his way to Scotland to train.
Kees wrote home to Andrew each week, describing the courses he was taking, the practical training he was getting, and the wonderful Christian fellowship he was enjoying. Soon Andrew was convinced that he should go too. He sent off an application to WEC. The response he received back was swift and encouraging. Yes, WEC would accept Andrew for the May 1953 intake. The date was only a few weeks away, and Andrew quickly gave notice at work that he was leaving and sold his books and his bicycle.
Andrew made a hurried visit to Gorkum to tell Thile the news in person. Thile was not pleased. To her anything that was not sanctioned by the Dutch Reformed Church was a waste of time, and she did not mince her words as she told Andrew so. But Andrew was too excited to be unduly upset by her response. He knew that Thile took a little while to get used to new plans, and he was sure that in the end she would see things his way.
April 20 was the day that Andrew was to set sail from Rotterdam for London. It was only a week away, and during that week three unexpected things happened to Andrew—all of them unpleasant!
The first unpleasant thing came in the form of a letter from Thile. In the letter Thile explained that her minister had told her that the Reformed Church would not recognize Andrew’s training at WEC, and since Andrew did not seem to care about this fact, she did not want to see or hear from him again.
Andrew felt as though he had been slapped in the face—hard. He thought of the happy times he had enjoyed attending church with Thile and how beautiful she always looked when she said good-bye at the end of his visits. She was the most wonderful person he knew, and now she was ending their relationship. Although nothing formal had been said, Andrew had assumed that one day she would be his wife. But now it seemed that this was not going to be.
Before Andrew had time to properly process Thile’s letter, which was a bitter blow, Miss Meekle came trotting along the dike road and over the footbridge into the van der Bijl yard. She knocked at the door, and Andrew opened it. Miss Meekle then immediately launched into a confession.
“Andrew,” she began, “I think you need to know that I have never actually heard English being spoken. But I know that my grammar is right, because I correspond with a woman in England, and she says I write perfectly…” Her voice trailed off. “But as far as the pronunciation goes, well…I can’t be sure if I am teaching it right.” With that she turned and hurried off.
Andrew could barely take in her revelation. He had labored hard learning to speak and understand English so that he would be able to understand the lectures in Scotland and talk to people there. Now he was left wondering whether the other missionary trainees would understand a word he said in English.
Three days later, more devastating news arrived, and it too came in the form of a letter. The letter, which was from WEC, contained an apology for any inconvenience to Andrew along with an explanation that there was no room for him in the program at the moment and he should reapply in two years.
Two years! Andrew had already quit his job, sold his bicycle, told his family he was leaving, and used all of his savings to buy a one-way ticket to London. And now WEC was asking him to delay his coming for two years! It was almost more than Andrew could bear, and he struggled to find some meaning in all that had happened to him that week. Did God want him to stay at home, get another job, and marry Thile? Or did He want Andrew to find someone who had actually heard English spoken and take lessons from that person? These were two possibilities, but as Andrew prayed about the situation, a peace descended over him, and one word came into his mind: Go.
Although it did not make much sense, since there was no position waiting for him at the other end, Andrew decided to follow the leading and go. He did not tell his family that WEC could not take him at the present time. Instead he carried on with his packing and saying good-bye to friends and family in the village. Two days later Andrew was on a bus bound for Rotterdam, where he would board the ship for the trip to London and whatever adventure lay beyond.
Chapter 10
An Experiment in Trusting God
Andrew stood in the street outside the train station in London, the address of the WEC headquarters in his hand. When he spotted a policeman in a tall, black hat, he walked over to him. “Can you tell me how to get here?” he asked, holding up the piece of paper.
The policeman looked puzzled for a moment and then pointed westward. He rattled off a string of instructions, but Andrew could not understand a single word, and he wondered whether the policeman was actually speaking English. Still, he had a direction in which to head, so he picked up his suitcase and began walking west. Double-decker buses whizzed by, and taxicabs honked their horns, but Andrew hoped to be able to walk to WEC headquarters. He had little money left, and he did not want to waste it on public transportation.
After walking for about half a mile, Andrew asked another person for directions. He got the same unintelligible answer he had from the policeman, only this time the person pointed east. Andrew sighed. He had been in London less than an hour, and he already knew two things: Miss Meekle’s “English” was not understood in England, and he would have to take a taxi to reach his destination.
Andrew hailed a taxicab, and ten minutes later the cab pulled up in front of a shabby, two-story building. Andrew paid the driver and got out. Sure enough, a sign above the door read “Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.”
Much to Andrew’s surprise, a man who spoke some Dutch welcomed him at the door.
“My name is Andrew van der Bijl,” he said. “I just got here from Holland.”
The man frowned. “Andrew van der Bijl? Didn’t you get the letter explaining that we don’t have a place for you at present?”
“Yes, I got it,” Andrew replied, “but I decided to come anyway so that I would be ready when a place opens up for me.”
The man smiled. “All right then. You are here now, so welcome. Come on in, and I’ll show you a bed. We can’t have you stay here indefinitely, but you can stay a few days until we sort something out.”
Relief flooded through Andrew. Until this point he had not realized just how much he needed to hear someone say “welcome” and offer to help work things out.
As it turned out, Andrew stayed at WEC headquarters for nearly two months. He was put to work painting the shabby outside of the building. The job was simple enough, unlike learning “English” English, which proved to be a much more stressful task. Andrew was grateful that he had not gone straight to the training school in Glasgow, as he would not have understood anything that was said, nor would he have been able to make himself understood. As hard as it was living at WEC headquarters and practicing English, he realized it would have been a hundred times more difficult trying to master the language as a student.
To help himself, Andrew read through a King James Bible that someone gave him. He kept an English dictionary nearby to look up any words that he did not know. But it was not the written word that gave him the most trouble; it was the spoken word. The Dutch language has no th sound, and Andrew found this sound difficult to pronounce. When he was asked to give a devotional talk one morning, he chose the text “Receive thy sight, thy faith hath saved thee.” But the best pronunciation he could manage was, “Receive die side, die fade had saved dee.” He felt very foolish for having chosen a verse with so many th’s in it.
By mid-June the painting job was complete, and someone else needed Andrew’s bed. Andrew went to Kent, south of London, to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins was a building contractor and a generous donor to WEC. Andrew was not surprised to discover that Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins lived in a simple, cozy house, because he had been told that they gave away ninety percent of their income to missionary societies.
Before long, Uncle Hoppy and Mother Hoppy, as everyone called Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins, became like a second set of parents to Andrew. Mother Hoppy was an invalid, much like Andrew’s mother had been, and she had the same faith and determination to live each day for God. Andrew would often come home at night to find a drunk or a prostitute whom Mother Hoppy was witnessing to staying in the house. In the morning the person would be fed a good breakfast, given a coat if he or she needed one, and prayed for before he or she left.
Andrew felt so at home with the Hopkins family that when he received word that he could begin his WEC training sooner than expected, he was sorry to be leaving them. In September 1953 Andrew thanked the Hopkinses for the wonderful care and friendship they had given him and caught the train to Glasgow.
After arriving in Glasgow, Andrew found his way to Number 10 Prince Albert Road, where the WEC training school was located. The building that housed the school was a large, two-story house set on a corner. It was surrounded by a stone wall, and on the archway over the gate were painted the words Have Faith In God. Andrew walked under the archway and up to the front door. He knocked, and moments later the door swung open. Much to Andrew’s delight, there stood Kees. The two of them embraced and greeted each other, and then Kees showed Andrew upstairs to his room and introduced him to his three roommates.
After Andrew had settled in, Kees took him to meet the director of the training school, Stewart Dinnen. Andrew shook Stewart’s hand, and then Stewart told him a little about the philosophy of the school.
“Andrew,” he began, “the purpose of this training school is to teach our students that they can trust God to do what He has said He would do. You don’t go from here into traditional mission fields. You go into new territory. Graduates of the school are on their own. They can’t be effective if they’re afraid or if they doubt that God really means what He says in His Word. I hope that’s the kind of training you are looking for in coming here, Andrew.”
“Yes, sir. That is exactly the kind of training I am looking for,” Andrew replied.
After Andrew had settled into the school, he was once again glad that he had not come directly to Glasgow from Holland. Even though his English was much better after his time in London, he had a great deal of trouble understanding the Glaswegian accent. However, he persevered because one of his class assignments was to practice one-on-one evangelism in the streets.
Andrew went to share the gospel in one of the worst areas in Glasgow—a slum called Patrick, which had such a reputation for violence that even policemen would not walk its streets alone. But because Andrew believed that this was where God wanted him to go, off he went to Patrick. He could scarcely believe the condition of the place the first time he saw it. Everything was dark and dank. The bulbs in the streetlights were broken or had been stolen, and rotting garbage was piled everywhere in the streets. Children with runny noses and draped in threadbare rags eyed him suspiciously as he made his way along the street, carrying a pile of gospel tracts. Andrew had never encountered a place like this in Holland. The Dutch penchant for order and cleanliness would never allow such a place to exist.
