On the corner of each block were smoke-filled pubs where glassy-eyed men sat getting drunk, usually spending their family’s food money on cheap whiskey. Andrew went into the pubs and asked the proprietors if he could hand out tracts in their establishment. None of them refused, and Andrew went about giving away tracts to the pub patrons and talking to anyone he could strike up a conversation with.
At one pub Andrew met a man named Jack Kearney. Jack was totally drunk, but he took one of the tracts and asked Andrew to visit him at his house the following evening. Andrew agreed to do that, and the next evening he and Albert, one of his friends from the training school, made their way up four flights of stairs to Jack’s apartment. As with the streetlights outside, the lightbulbs that lit the stairway had been either broken or stolen. Andrew and Albert were forced to pick their way up the stairs in total darkness, trying their best to avoid the broken beer bottles on the steps.
The two men located the door to the apartment and knocked. Jack opened the door, and Andrew could clearly see that he was still drunk. Jack’s eyes were glazed, he wobbled on his feet, and his breath stank of stale whiskey. “Come in,” Jack said, motioning Andrew and Albert in.
Inside the apartment was dingy, lit by a single lightbulb. The wallpaper was stained brown and peeling off the walls, and the paint was peeling from the ceiling. Moldering bread crusts and scraps of food were spread about the kitchen counter and table, and the sink was piled high with dirty dishes.
“Let me fix you a cup of tea,” Jack said, and with that he turned and pulled three dirty cups from the sink. He did not bother to wash them; he just rubbed them with a stained dish towel.
Andrew and Albert looked at each other, their eyes wide, but they did not say a word. Andrew knew that it would be insulting to turn down Jack’s offer of a cup of tea, even if the cups were not clean.
Several minutes later Jack laid three cups full of tea on the table. As they sipped the tea, the three men talked, with Jack asking Andrew question after question about his life in Holland and his experiences in Indonesia.
“So, Dutchman, since you were in the army, tell me, what’s the first law of war?” Jack finally asked.
Andrew thought for a moment and then lifted his eyes to stare into Jack’s stubbled face. “It’s your life or mine. That’s the law of war, Jack,” he said.
“Right, you’re exactly right,” Jack said. With that he pushed himself up from the table, walked to the sideboard behind Andrew, opened a drawer, and pulled something out. It was a cutthroat razor. Jack flicked the razor open, spun around, and held the razor to Andrew’s throat. “And I’m going to kill you,” he said.
Albert sat across the table from Andrew, who could see that his friend was too petrified to do anything but pray. Meanwhile Andrew thought fast. He had no doubt that Jack, in his drunken condition, was well capable of slitting his throat with the razor.
“You’re right, Jack. It is my life or yours, but because of that you can’t do this. Someone has already died to save your life and mine. His name is Jesus Christ.”
Andrew felt Jack press the razor harder to his neck. He felt the sharp blade nicking the skin at his throat. “Jack, Jesus came into the world because of these laws of war and because of the spiritual warfare where only one man can win and the other lose,” Andrew continued. “One has to die so that the other will live. And that’s what Jesus Christ did. He died so that you might live, Jack.”
Jack held completely still for a moment. Andrew’s heart thumped in his chest as he waited to see what Jack would do. Would he let him go or slit his throat? Much to his relief, Andrew felt Jack release the pressure on the razor and move it away from his throat. Jack stepped back, closed the razor, and dropped it in the drawer.
Thinking quickly, Andrew said, “Thank you for putting the razor away, Jack. We’ll be on our way now, but I’ll come back and talk some more with you about Jesus.”
Jack nodded silently as Andrew and Albert headed out of the apartment and down the darkened stairs as fast as they could. They were both ashen-faced and shaking by the time they made it out into the street.
The follow evening Andrew went back to see Jack, though this time he decided not to take Albert with him. In fear and trepidation Andrew made his way back up the stairs to Jack’s apartment. He knocked gingerly on the door. Jack opened it, and much to Andrew’s relief, although he looked terrible, with big, black rings under his eyes, Jack was not drunk.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Jack apologized. “It was a terrible thing to do to you. It’s the alcohol. It makes me do terrible things.”
“That’s okay, Jack. I understand,” Andrew said as he stepped inside Jack’s apartment. “You know, Jesus still loves you, Jack. He really does. Why don’t you pray and ask Him to come into your life and change it,” Andrew continued.
Much to Andrew’s surprise, Jack sank to his knees in the kitchen and began pouring his heart out to God, asking Him to forgive him and change his life. “I’m a really bad person, Jesus, but I really do want to follow You. Please forgive me and accept me,” Jack prayed.
That night, when Andrew left Jack’s apartment, he almost floated down the darkened stairs. Jack Kearney, the hard-drinking Scotsman from the slums who had wanted to slit Andrew’s throat, had become a Christian.
Andrew visited Jack several more times, and each time he left the apartment, he was amazed at the changes taking place in Jack. God had really touched and changed Jack’s life.
The first term of the training school passed quickly. Since there were no paid workers at WEC, all of the students had to pitch in and help with the chores. Andrew took his turn doing laundry, cooking meals, and scrubbing the toilets.
The school offered other practical lessons as well. Everyone learned how to make a shelter out of fern fronds, how to strip and rebuild a car engine, and how to form clay into a drinking vessel. These were important skills because many of the WEC graduates were headed out to live in primitive conditions in far-off lands. For his part, Andrew had no idea where God might call him, but he did not let it worry him. For now he had more than enough to concentrate on.
During his first term in the school, one of the writers Andrew came to enjoy reading was a Scottish evangelist named Oswald Chambers. Chambers had died in 1917, but his devotional book My Utmost for His Highest inspired Andrew, especially so when Andrew suffered a back problem and had to lie in bed for days at a time. During this time Andrew decided to write a letter to Oswald Chambers’s widow, an elderly woman named Bibby.
Just before Christmas Andrew received a gracious reply from Bibby Chambers. In her letter Bibby invited Andrew to visit her sometime. Andrew wrote straight back, suggesting that he come for Christmas.
When he told his classmates what he had done, they were aghast. “You can’t just invite yourself to stay with someone that famous,” they told him. But Andrew did not understand their reasoning. Bibby Chambers had invited him to visit, and he would love to go.
So at Christmas Andrew set out by train for southern England and spent the holiday season at the Chambers home. He found Bibby to be a wonderful hostess. She even let him read some of her late husband’s original texts. As a result of the stay, Andrew and Bibby Chambers became good friends.
After his visit to southern England, it was back to Scotland for another term at the training school. This time something special was in store for all of the students. In class one day, Stewart Dinnen, the director of the training school, announced that the students were about to undergo an exercise in trusting God.
“The rules are quite simple,” Stewart said. “Each of you will be given a one-pound note. With the money you are to undertake a month-long missionary tour of Scotland. You will be expected to pay all of your costs from the one pound, and when you get back to school after a month, you are to pay back that one pound. But during the time you are away, you are not allowed to take up a collection, and you cannot mention your needs to anyone. This is an experiment in trusting God to supply your needs, and you must not manipulate the experiment in any way. If you do, the experiment will be a failure.”
Andrew was ready for the challenge, and soon afterward he and four other young men from the school set out to tour Scotland, preaching and witnessing as they went. They spoke in churches and halls along the way, always being careful not to mention their needs. As they traveled, though Andrew did not know how it happened, the five young men always had enough money to cover their costs. Sometimes one of the members of the team would receive a letter from home with money inside. At other times the men would receive letters containing money from people who had heard them preach along the way. Often these letters had notes in them that said, “I know you don’t need money, because you would have said so. However, I just feel that God wants me to send you this amount.” When they received money in this way, the team was careful to tithe on what they had received.
At still other times people would arrive out of the blue and give the men produce and other farm products. While the men were staying in a small town in the Scottish Highlands, someone arrived at the door with six hundred eggs. Andrew and his teammates ate eggs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for several days, and they gave hundreds of them away as well.
Finally, after crisscrossing Scotland for a month, Andrew’s team headed back to Glasgow. Upon their arrival at the WEC training school, they each paid back their one-pound note. Not only that, but they also had an extra ten pounds, which they handed over to the support of WEC missionaries.
Andrew was delighted to be back in Glasgow, but as he thought back over the experience of the previous month, he realized that he had learned much about trusting God to supply his needs. During the time they were gone, he and his teammates had eaten every day and had had a place to sleep each night and clothes to wear. And all that while they gave away ten percent of everything they received. When you are about the King’s business, He truly does provide, Andrew told himself.
Before Andrew knew it, his first year at the training school was over. At the end of that year, a big graduation service was held for all of the second-year students, many of whom left for the mission field right away. After his graduation, Kees booked a ticket to Korea and promised to keep in touch with Andrew.
Andrew’s second year at the training school sped by even faster than the first, and before he knew it, it was springtime. Even though his time at school was almost over, Andrew still had no idea what he should do next. He had faith, however, that God would send him a clear direction at the right time. The last place he expected to find this direction was in the basement of the school. He had gone to the basement to retrieve his suitcase, but as he reached for it, he noticed a glossy magazine lying on top it. Andrew had never seen the magazine before, and he had no idea how or why it had been left there. But when he picked up the magazine and flipped through its pages, what he saw and read on those pages was to forever change the course of his life.
Chapter 11
Behind the Iron Curtain
Andrew stood in the dingy basement, transfixed by the images he saw on the pages he was flipping through. The magazine was filled with the faces of bright, smiling young people—Chinese, Russians, and Poles. In the text that accompanied the photographs Andrew read that ninety-six million people had found peace, hope, and freedom in their lives and cooperation in their communities through the wonderful new world of socialism.
Socialism! Communism! How can these people be so duped? Andrew thought. The magazine was filled with articles about a better world, but Andrew didn’t buy a word of it. As he thought about the Communists he had known, he certainly did not think that they held the key to a better world. He recalled one woman in particular. This woman, an avowed Communist, had worked with Andrew at the chocolate factory in Alkmaar. She was the most joyless, cynical person Andrew had ever known. She could hardly keep a scowl off her face, and she deeply resented the prayer groups and evangelistic outings that Andrew planned for the workers. Once she had told Andrew that God was the “invention of the exploiter class,” and according to her, the wages that she and the other workers received for their labor were slave wages. And when Andrew had told her that he was leaving the factory, she looked him in the eye and said, “Yes, but the lies you’ve told are not leaving. You have hypnotized these people with your talk of salvation and pie in the sky. You’ve completely blinded them.” That woman had nothing in common with the smiling, shiny-faced young people in the magazine.
