In the meantime, the tour guide offered Andrew an official look at the “harmonious cooperation” between the church and the government. “The government does not wish to interfere with religious beliefs,” she told him. “In fact, it has an entire facility dedicated to producing a new and improved version of the Bible. Would you like to visit it?”
“Of course,” Andrew replied.
The next day Andrew and the tour guide set out for the center of Prague to a large office building called the Interchurch Center. The guide explained that the building was the center for all the Protestant churches in the country. Inside the building, Andrew and the guide wound their way through a maze of gloomy corridors until they came to a large room. Inside sat a number of scholars clad in black coats, some of them almost hidden by the piles of papers and books stacked on their desks. Andrew spoke to one of the scholars in German. “May I see the new translation?” he asked.
The scholar got up and walked to another desk. He returned moments later. Andrew had expected to be handed a bound copy of the new Bible, but instead the scholar handed him a typed manuscript, its pages dog-eared from constant handling.
“The translation hasn’t been published yet?” Andrew asked.
“No, not yet,” the scholar replied, and Andrew noted the sadness in his eyes as he answered. “We’ve had the translation finished since the war, but…”
“The scholars are now working on a Bible dictionary,” the tour guide interrupted.
Sheepishly the scholar looked at the tour guide and then down at his desk.
“Is the Bible dictionary ready yet?” Andrew asked.
“Almost,” the scholar replied.
“But what good will a Bible dictionary do if there are no Bibles? Are there earlier translations of the Bible available?” Andrew shot back.
The Bible scholar was silent for a moment, and then quickly he blurted, “No. It is difficult, very difficult to find Bibles in Czechoslovakia these days.”
With that the tour guide ended the visit and led Andrew out of the Interchurch Center building.
Andrew was very quiet at dinner that night. He was thinking about how shrewd the Communists were. Instead of openly banning the Bible, they had announced that they were producing a better version. But that better version would never be published. As he thought about it, Andrew became frustrated. Tomorrow, Sunday, would be his last full day in Czechoslovakia, and he had not yet been able to find a way to talk privately with any Christians. He decided that one way or another he was going to find a way to do just that.
The following morning the group set out on yet another bus tour of important revolutionary sites. Predictably the tour guide had the bus stop at each site while she explained why the particular place had played such an important role in the Communist takeover of the country. By the second stop, Andrew had managed to position himself at the very back of the bus, desperately looking for some way to escape from the group.
As he sat in the back, his eyes rested on the rear door to his left. The door had a faulty hinge, which left about a twelve-inch gap at the side when it was closed. Twelve inches. Andrew sucked in his breath. Could he squeeze through a twelve-inch gap? Yes! He was sure he could. He sat patiently at the back as the tour bus drove on. At each intersection he waited for the gaze of everyone to be directed toward the front, but there was always someone looking at a sight to the rear. Then finally the bus pulled up to a bronze statue of a man on horseback.
The tour guide launched into an impassioned speech about the statue’s significance. Everyone peered at the statue—everyone, that is, except Andrew, who saw his chance, slipped quietly from his seat, and moved toward the faulty door. Andrew took one last look at his fellow passengers, who were all listening intently to the tour guide. He let out his breath and squeezed through the gap in the door. He felt the road beneath his feet and managed to pull the rest of his body through the opening just before the bus belched a plume of blue exhaust smoke and drove on.
For the first time on the tour, Andrew was alone in Czechoslovakia. He looked around. He was sure that he had seen a church nearby on a previous bus tour through this part of the city. He reasoned that it was probably to the east, and he set out walking in that direction. Sure enough, ten minutes later he was seated in the back row of a church. As the congregation stood to sing a hymn, Andrew noticed something interesting that made him wonder whether everyone in the building was farsighted. Those people with hymnals were holding them up high at arm’s length. Other people were doing the same with notebooks.
After a few minutes, Andrew figured out that the people weren’t all farsighted after all. Because hymnals were in such sort supply, whoever was lucky enough to own one held it in such a way that as many people as possible could see the words to the hymns. Also, on the pages of the notebooks held aloft, people had copied the words of the hymns by hand. And when the pastor quoted Bible references during his sermon, the few people who owned Bibles held them up in the same way for people to see. Andrew suddenly realized how precious the small Dutch Bible in his pocket was—and how precious the freedom to own one at will.
At the end of the service Andrew shook the pastor’s hand and said quietly, “Brother, I am a believer from Holland. I’m here to meet with Christians in your country.”
“Please come and talk with me, brother. You are the first believer we have met from the West in many years,” the pastor said.
A short while later Andrew was seated in the pastor’s apartment, sipping coffee and listening to what the pastor had to say.
“Things here are difficult. The government is trying to gain a stranglehold on the church. They are even choosing the theological students. Only those who support the regime are allowed to study theology. And as a pastor I have to renew my license every two months. All pastors must do this, and recently a friend of mine had his request for a renewal turned down. The government did not tell him why. They don’t have to.” The pastor drank a mouthful of coffee and then continued. “And even with a license we are not free to preach what we wish. We must write out each sermon ahead of time and have it approved by the government before we can preach it.”
Andrew did not quite know how to respond to this information. He just let out a gentle whistle.
“We are going to have another service soon, brother. I would like you to come and speak to us,” the pastor said.
“But I thought sermons had to be approved ahead of time,” Andrew inquired.
“I am not asking you to preach,” the pastor said with a twinkle in his eye. “I want you to bring us ‘greetings’ from the Christians in your country. And if you wish, you could also bring us ‘greetings’ from the Lord Jesus.”
And that is what Andrew did. With the help of a young medical student named Antonin, who served as his translator, Andrew gave the people a brief greeting from the Christians in Holland and the West. Then he spent the next thirty minutes giving the people greetings from Jesus Christ. Those in the congregation so appreciated his words that they gathered around to shake his hand at the end of the service.
This approach was so successful that Andrew and Antonin spent the rest of the afternoon presenting greetings to four other Czech churches. The final church they visited was a Moravian church on the other side of Prague. About one hundred people were gathered in the sanctuary, and Andrew was surprised that about forty of these were young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.
At the end of this service, after Andrew had presented his greetings, a number of the young people gathered around Andrew and peppered him with questions. They found it hard to believe that Christians in Holland and the West were not penalized for being Christians. They explained that to be a Christian in Czechoslovakia meant being treated like a second-class citizen. The Czech government would not allow Christians to hold good jobs or attend university. For these young people, being a Christian meant having to endure a good deal of suffering.
As the conversation was winding down, one of the Moravians handed Antonin a silver lapel pin. “They want you to have this as a gift of remembrance,” Antonin explained to Andrew.
Andrew looked at the lapel pin, which was in the shape of a small cup. “What does the cup signify?” he asked.
“It is the symbol of the church in Czechoslovakia,” Antonin said, attaching the pin to the lapel of Andrew’s jacket. “We call it the Cup of Suffering.”
One of the young Moravians then said something, and Antonin translated his words. “Now you are a partaker of the cup with us. When the people of Holland ask you about the cup, tell them about the Czech Christians. Remind them that we too are part of the Body of Christ. Tell them that we are in pain, that we are suffering.”
Darkness had descended over Prague by the time Andrew said good-bye to Antonin and headed off to find the tour group. He wondered how the members of the group would have taken his disappearance. Surely, he told himself, nothing too bad could happen as a result of it.
When he got back to the hotel, the group was not there, nor were they at the restaurant where they had eaten most nights. Andrew ordered a sandwich there anyway, and he had just taken his first bite when the tour leader, the stout Dutch woman, strode into the room. Her face was bright red, and she kept her mouth firmly shut. She motioned for Andrew to follow her. Andrew got up from the table and followed her out the front door of the restaurant and into a waiting limousine. Not a word passed between them, and Andrew supposed she was too angry with him to speak.
He was right. Then just before they arrived back at the hotel, the woman could hold her peace no longer. “You have held us all up for half a day. We have looked everywhere for you, in all the hospitals, the police stations, even the morgue. And now I find you calmly eating a sandwich. Where have you been?” she exploded.
Andrew stuck his hands in his pockets so that she would not see him shaking. “Oh,” he said as lightly as he could. “I got separated from you, so I decided to do a bit of exploring on my own. I had no idea I would cause this much trouble. I apologize.”
“That’s not enough,” the woman snapped back. “You are officially unwelcome here ever again. I am sorry I brought you along on this trip. If you ever try to come back to this country, you will find your way blocked at the border. I will personally see to it.”
Andrew stared out the window of the limousine. Had he gone astray somehow or was this all part of God’s plan? He did not know.
Chapter 13
“Don’t Take No for an Answer!”
Back in Sint Pancras Andrew felt lonelier than ever before. He had plenty to do to keep him busy. He had written to the embassies of various countries behind the Iron Curtain, including Yugoslavia and Hungary, asking for visas to travel there, but he never received the replies he sought. After being turned down so many times, he began to doubt whether he was even supposed to again reach out to people behind the Iron Curtain. Money was very tight too. Andrew was embarrassed that he could not contribute to the household income. All he could do was continue writing letters to people and embassies and pray.
Slowly Andrew’s situation began to change. Andrew wrote an article about the plight of Christians in Communist countries. The article was published in a magazine, and as a result of its publication, several readers sent money to help Andrew with his mission. The amounts were small, but then so too were Andrew’s needs: a Czech Bible for Antonin, his interpreter in Prague, and a new jacket.
Soon something else happened. Andrew received a letter from a man in Amersfoort whom he had never met. The man introduced himself as Karl de Graaf. He said that God had directed his prayer group to ask Andrew to come and speak to them. It all sounded a little strange to Andrew, but he decided to go anyway. Amersfoort was near Ermelo, and Andrew could visit his brother Ben while he was there.
