Three weeks passed before Andrew felt that the time was again right to ask Corrie to marry him. It was not a polished proposal, and Andrew spent most of the time dwelling on the strange life Corrie would have if she married him. Despite this, Corrie promised to think about it and give him an answer when he returned from Hungary.
Never had one of his trips behind the Iron Curtain seemed so long to Andrew as he wondered what Corrie’s answer would be. Getting across the Hungarian border proved to be just as exciting as getting across the Yugoslav border. Once again Andrew prayed that “seeing eyes be made blind.” This time he felt that he should take the time and eat the picnic he had with him while the Volkswagen was being searched. He opened the picnic basket and paused to pray just as two soldiers opened the car door. When the soldiers saw him bow his head to pray over his food, they slammed the door shut and ran away! Andrew ate his meal, packed up his picnic basket, and drove unchallenged across the Hungarian border. Once in the country, he headed for Budapest, the capital.
As Andrew drove around Budapest, he saw the unmistakable signs of the uprising that had occurred the year before. Bombed-out buildings and impassable streets were everywhere. Still, Andrew was able to make his way to the home of a man he knew only as Professor B. Professor B was a Christian who held a prestigious position in a large university in the city. The professor welcomed Andrew graciously and agreed to be his interpreter during the time he was in Hungary.
Andrew soon learned that following the uprising, the Hungarian government had cracked down on Christian churches. Many pastors had been dismissed from their positions and forced to have nothing more to do with their congregations. Only those pastors who were willing to compromise and adjust their message to the government’s views were left alone. “Adjusting,” Andrew learned, meant not only embracing the government’s political point of view but also not teaching what the government considered to be religious superstitions, such as miracle stories, Creation, original sin, the fall of man, even that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.
Christians had found ways around these restrictions, however. Weddings and funerals became the place where the gospel was now preached. On a number of occasions, Andrew found himself at the wedding of people he had never met before. He would stand and congratulate the bride and groom and then preach the hardest-hitting salvation message he could. He also used the same approach he had used in Czechoslovakia, speaking in churches where he brought greetings from Christians in the West and then brought greetings from Jesus Christ, using the opportunity to preach a sermon.
Andrew was kept busy throughout his time in Hungary. It was just as well because it kept his mind off Corrie—to some degree. But finally his time in Hungary was over, and he headed back to Holland as fast as he could, eager to learn Corrie’s decision.
When he reached Holland, instead of going to Sint Pancras, Andrew made his way to Haarlem, where Corrie was now working at a hospital. When Corrie got off work at eleven in the evening, Andrew was waiting outside for her.
“I’m back, Corrie,” Andrew said as she emerged from the front door of the hospital. “I love you, and I’ll love you whether the answer is yes or no.”
“Andy, I love you too,” Corrie replied. “You know I’m going to worry about you and miss you and pray for you no matter what. So I think I should be your worried wife rather than your cranky friend.”
Andrew could hardly believe what he had just heard: Corrie wanted to be his wife!
The following week the two of them went to a jewelry store in Haarlem and bought wedding rings. In Holland it was the custom to wear the wedding ring on the left hand during the engagement and transfer it to the right hand during the marriage ceremony. Andrew could not have been happier as he looked at the ring on the finger of his left hand.
Several weeks after returning to Holland, Andrew received a letter from Professor B, telling him what a blessing his trip had been to the Christians in Hungary. But there was also a sad side to the letter. Professor B informed Andrew that he had lost his job at the university. He said it had nothing to do with his being Andrew’s interpreter, but Andrew wasn’t so sure. “Do not be sad: many have given up far more for their Savior,” Professor B ended his letter.
Andrew and Corrie were married in Alkmaar on June 27, 1958, surrounded by their families, nurses from the hospital in Haarlem, workers from the chocolate factory, Uncle Hoppy from England, and friends from WEC.
Following the wedding Andrew took Corrie’s hand, and looking into her eyes, he said, “Corrie, we don’t know where the road leads, do we?”
“No, Andrew, we don’t,” Corrie replied, “but let’s go there together.”
Chapter 15
Nerves of Steel
After their wedding Andrew and Corrie moved into the room above the garden shed that had originally been built for Andrew’s father. The room had little space: most of it was taken up with clothes—a ton of clothes. In response to the magazine articles Andrew had written about his experiences in the refugee camps, many Dutch people had bundled up clothes for the refugees at the camps in West Berlin and sent them directly to Andrew. As Andrew embarked upon married life, hundreds of parcels had begun to arrive for him. Some of the clothes they contained were dirty, and Corrie set to work washing and ironing them. Some of the clothes also contained fleas, and the van der Bijls had to get used to being attacked by the tiny black insects whenever they entered their bedroom.
Still, Andrew was grateful to have somewhere to live, though it brought the number of people in the one-bathroom van der Bijl house to eight. Andrew’s brother Cornelius and his wife, along with his sister Geltje and her husband, Arie, and their two small children, lived in the house. This often led to a line to use the bathroom.
In the fall Andrew and Corrie decided it was time to deliver some of the winter clothes to the refugees in West Berlin. They loaded up the blue Volkswagen and set off for Germany. When they reached the refugee camps, conditions there were much as Andrew had expected them to be. But Corrie, even though Andrew had tried to prepare her for the squalor and hopelessness she would encounter, was still shocked by it all.
After distributing the clothes to the grateful refugees, Andrew felt that he should make a visit to see what conditions were like in Communist East Germany. Corrie decided to stay on at one of the refugee camps, where she was helping to set up health and hygiene procedures. Andrew hated to leave her behind, but he realized that his wife wanted to be where she felt she could be of the most use.
Finding Bibles and other Christian materials in German was no problem, since they were produced and sold freely in West Berlin. Andrew filled his car with the literature and headed for the Brandenburg Gate to cross into Communist East Berlin. The guards at the crossing did not seem to care what Andrew had in the car, and Andrew soon found out why. The East German government did not ban Bibles; it waged a much more insidious war against Christianity—a war of imitation.
Andrew learned that for every Christian ceremony, the East German government had created an equivalent nonreligious ceremony: East German babies were expected to be “welcomed,” not baptized; “youth consecration to the state” services were held instead of the traditional Lutheran confirmation service; and even wedding and funeral ceremonies mimicked Christian ones. All of these imitation ceremonies that the government encouraged were devoid of the spiritual meaning and power of their Christian counterparts.
Church leaders in East Germany were “strongly urged” to have the members of their congregations participate in the State ceremonies and to encourage their children to be “good citizens” of East Germany. Because of this, many young people could not see much use for “old-time” religion.
Andrew decided to stir up Christians in East Germany to embark upon mission work, but even here they were discouraged. “How can we go anywhere?” they asked him. “We can’t get a visa to leave the country, and there are roadblocks at every turn. We are separated from the rest of the world.”
The mission workers sounded disheartened until Andrew reminded them that they had a mission field all around them. Millions of East Germans were hearing a “secular gospel” from the state, and half a million Russian soldiers were stationed throughout the country. If that was not a mission field, Andrew told them, he did not know what was. His message seemed to invigorate the church, and many new opportunities for evangelizing were discovered right at their doorsteps.
Andrew returned to West Berlin in high spirits, but his exuberance was soon dampened when he saw Corrie. Three weeks in the refugee camp had left her tired and ill. Andrew wondered whether he had done the right thing in asking his wife to share this strange lifestyle with him. One thing he knew for sure: Corrie needed a break from her work in the refugee camp. Of course she objected that there was still so much to do in the camp that she could not leave, but Andrew pressed ahead and made plans to take her with him on his next trip, this time back to Yugoslavia.
Soon Andrew and Corrie had the visas they needed, and the young couple headed for Zagreb, Yugoslavia. They had no trouble crossing the border, and Andrew noted that a husband-and-wife team aroused fewer suspicions than did a single man crossing the border.
Back in Zagreb, Andrew again met up with Nikola, and the two teamed up to preach throughout the city. Andrew was grateful that Nikola was willing to interpret for him again, since Nikola had been fined for doing it during Andrew’s previous trip and told that if he spoke in a church again, he would have to withdraw from engineering school.
One week later, however, it was Andrew and Corrie who ran afoul of the authorities. While they were sitting at dinner with some other Christians, there was a knock at the door. Within seconds the police were demanding to see Andrew’s and Corrie’s passports and visas. Andrew soon realized that they knew who he was and where he had been, including his last trip into Yugoslavia. Although it was no use to try to cover anything up, Andrew nonetheless gave short answers to their questions. In response, the police officer in charge took out a big red stamp and stamped “No Return” across both of their visas. “You are to leave immediately,” he said.
Corrie was shaken by the experience, and the following morning she and Andrew loaded up the Volkswagen and headed for the border. Andrew spent much of the trip back to West Berlin trying to calm Corrie down. “I was so scared,” she kept saying. “I don’t know how you do it, Andrew. You must have nerves of steel!”
Andrew smiled to himself as he thought about this. He could see how so many of the circumstances in his past had prepared him for what he was doing: the childhood espionage games he had played in the village; his experience in the Dutch Resistance during the war, stealing guns and sabotaging cars; and his time in the military, where he had to stay focused and calm under fire while people were dying around him. “Yes,” Andrew told himself, “all things do work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purposes.”
When they reached West Berlin, Andrew and Corrie stopped in at the refugee camp where Corrie had been helping out. There they found a fat envelope waiting for Andrew. In it were travel documents to enter Bulgaria and Romania. Andrew was ecstatic. This meant that he could go deeper than ever behind the Iron Curtain. But first he had to get Corrie home and find out why she was feeling so ill.
The cause of Corrie’s illness turned out to be the biggest surprise of all. The doctor in Sint Pancras shook his head after he examined Corrie. “There’s nothing wrong with her that seven more months won’t cure,” he declared.
