Andrew and Corrie could see no way through their situation except to pray. Within weeks a house in the village came up for sale, and the owner offered to sell it to Andrew for half its value. This was a generous offer, but coming up with enough money to cover half or even a quarter of its value was still a distant dream.
Andrew decided to call Mr. Whetstra and discuss the situation with him. Mr. Whetstra offered to buy the house and allow Andrew to pay him back when he could. This was a startling offer, and a humbling one. Andrew and Corrie discussed it together and finally agreed to accept Mr. Whetstra’s offer. They moved into their new home when Joppie was three months old. Six months after moving in, they learned that Corrie was expecting another baby!
Baby Mark was born in 1960. That same year Andrew made his first trip to the Soviet Union. As he had in 1955, when he went to Warsaw, he traveled with a group of young people from Holland, Germany, and Denmark who were going to attend a youth festival in Moscow. He was in the country for only two weeks, but in that time he learned a lot about the plight of Christians in the Soviet Union. As with the authorities in Romania, the Soviet government was attempting to control the church through a program of consolidation, so much so that only one Protestant church was now left open in the city. And the next open Protestant church was one hundred miles away in a town outside Moscow.
While in Moscow Andrew attended the open Protestant church, and he was surprised by what he saw. The old church was built to hold one thousand people, but on the Sunday morning he attended, two thousand people were packed into the place. People were sitting two to a seat, while others stood in the center aisle and along the sides of the church. The place was so packed that when the collection was taken up, people had to pass their banknotes overhead to the front. And they wrote their prayer requests on pieces of paper that they then turned into paper darts and aimed at the front of the church.
At the end of his trip to the Soviet Union, Andrew determined that in the not too distant future he would make a return visit there, this time by car so that he could carry Russian Bibles into the country.
The following year, in 1961, Corrie gave birth to a third son, whom they named Paul. Andrew now had a wife, three children, and a unique ministry to support. Everywhere he went, Andrew saw so much need that a question began to form in his mind: should he continue to work alone, or was it time to invite other “smugglers” to join him in his ministry?
This was not an easy question to answer. Corrie was all for the idea of spreading the ministry load, but Andrew was concerned that the operation would become more vulnerable if he recruited novices to join him. But as he prayed about the situation, one name came to his mind—Hans Gruber.
Hans was a six-foot seven-inch tall Dutchman whom Andrew had met in one of the refugee camps in Austria. He was built like an ox, and there was no way he could disappear into a crowd. He was also one of the clumsiest people Andrew had ever met. But none of these things mattered once Andrew heard Hans preach in the refugee camp. When Hans spoke, everyone listened. Even the incorrigible teenage boys would stand out in the pouring rain listening to him.
Andrew decided to write to Hans and ask him to join him on a trip to the Soviet Union. The letter Andrew received back gave him goose bumps. Hans confided that he had always felt that one day he would work in the Soviet Union. In fact, he reported that when he was in the sixth grade, while he was looking at a map of Russia, he heard a voice in his head saying, “Someday you will work for Me in that land.”
Andrew was even more encouraged to learn that Hans had done whatever he could to prepare for this calling. Hans had learned Russian and was ready to drop everything at a moment’s notice and travel with Andrew.
After exchanging several more letters, everything was arranged, including a new car for the venture. The blue Volkswagen had been driven over two hundred thousand kilometers by now, and it was no longer reliable enough to make another long trip—assuming that Hans could even cram his six-foot seven-inch frame into the tiny vehicle. Money arrived just at the right moment, and Andrew was able to purchase a new Opel station wagon to replace the Volkswagen. The new vehicle was big enough to sleep in the back of, and hundreds more Bibles could be transported in it. The only problem was that Hans could not drive, but Andrew was confident that he would learn along the way.
Andrew and Hans set off for the Soviet Union, crossing Holland, Germany, and Poland to get there. Two thousand miles later, they were in Moscow, driving along the edge of Red Square, past the mausoleum where Lenin was entombed, on their way to the campsite they had registered to stay at. They arrived at the campsite on a Thursday afternoon. After Andrew and Hans had settled in, they set out on foot to find the Protestant church that Andrew had attended two years before. Back then there had been a Thursday night meeting. Sure enough, Andrew and Hans arrived at the church just as the service was beginning.
Andrew did not recognize anyone in the congregation. He began praying that God would show him the right person to contact about distributing the Russian Bibles he had brought into the country. As soon as the meeting was over, his attention was drawn to an elderly, bald man standing alone. Andrew felt the now familiar voice inside telling him that this man was his contact. He was not surprised when Hans sidled up to him and said quietly in Dutch, “I’ve spotted our man. He’s the bald man standing over there.”
Andrew smiled to himself. How good it was to have a partner.
The two of them walked over to the man, and Hans introduced them in Russian.
The man frowned. “You speak German?” he asked.
Hans nodded. “German and Dutch. We are Dutchmen,” he replied.
The man burst into a grin. “I am German! My grandparents moved to Siberia from Germany, and we still speak German in our home,” he said.
“You live in Siberia?” Andrew interjected.
“Yes,” the man replied, looking around. “I am part of a small church there. There are one hundred and fifty in the congregation, and not one Bible among us. One day God gave me a dream, and in that dream I went to Moscow and someone gave me a Bible for our church. Moscow is two thousand miles from my home. At first I would not consider going, but the dream was very alive to me, and eventually I could not resist, so I came. And that is why I am here. But where would I find a Bible in this city…?” his voice trailed off.
Andrew’s heart beat fast as he shot Hans a glance. This was far too amazing to be coincidence! Hans reached under his coat, pulled out a big Russian Bible, and handed it to the man. The man took it and held it out, staring at it. Then, like a floodgate opening, he babbled his thanks while he hugged Hans and Andrew.
Andrew tried to calm the man down before he drew too much attention to them all. “We’ll meet you here tomorrow morning at ten,” he whispered. “We have four more Bibles for you.”
“How much do they cost?” the man asked.
“They are a gift from the church in the West to strengthen and encourage you,” Andrew replied.
The man slipped the Bible under his coat, wiped his eyes, and nodded. “Tomorrow at ten,” he said. “I will be here.”
The following morning at ten o’clock, Andrew and Hans walked into the empty sanctuary and sat down in a pew at the back. The minutes ticked by. It was ten thirty, and still the man from Siberia had not arrived. At ten forty-five Andrew heard footsteps enter the sanctuary. He turned, expecting to see the man from Siberia. Instead it was the pastor of the church whom Andrew had met and talked with on his first visit to the church two years before.
“Hello. Are you waiting for someone?” the pastor asked.
“Yes, someone we met last night,” Andrew replied.
“I’m afraid your Siberian friend won’t be coming,” the pastor said.
Andrew and Hans stared questioningly at the pastor.
“At each service there are members of the secret police in attendance. They saw you and the man talking, and now the secret police have ‘spoken’ to him, and so he will not be coming to meet you. But you have something for him?” the pastor asked.
Andrew looked at Hans and knew that they were both thinking the same thing: could they trust the pastor? Finally they decided they could, and they gave almost imperceptible nods to each other. Then Hans opened the bag they had with them and pulled out the four Russian Bibles.
As the pastor reached out to take the Bibles, Andrew said, “These aren’t the only Bibles we have with us.”
The pastor raised his eyebrows. “How many Bibles do you have?” he asked.
“Over one hundred. They are hidden in our car,” Andrew replied.
“Over one hundred!” the pastor said incredulously. “I cannot deal with that many Bibles. It is not a crime to own a Bible in Russia, but it is a crime to distribute them. I have already been imprisoned and cruelly treated for my faith once, and I cannot face that again,” he said, staring at the scars on his fingers and hands.
“I understand your situation,” Andrew said. “Is there someone else who might be willing to help us?”
“Markov,” the pastor replied. “Be in front of the GUM department store in your car at one this afternoon, and I will arrange for Markov to meet you there. But be careful.”
At one o’clock that afternoon, Andrew and Hans sat in the Opel station wagon outside the store. Several minutes after one, a man got out of a car parked about one hundred yards away. He walked past the Opel, staring in through the windshield at Andrew and Hans. Then he turned and walked back. This time he stopped by the station wagon and said, “Brother Andrew?”
“Are you Markov?” Andrew asked.
The man nodded.
“Then greetings in the Name of the Lord,” Andrew said.
“We are going to do something bold,” Markov explained. “We are going to exchange the Bibles from your car to mine within two minutes of Red Square.”
Andrew and Hans looked surprised.
“Do not worry. No one will ever suspect what we are doing in such a location,” Markov said, trying to soothe their fears.
Andrew and Hans followed Markov past Red Square, and then they turned in to a street with a wall down one side and apartments on the other side. Andrew parked the Opel behind Markov’s car and got out while Hans sat inside praying. Andrew and Markov quickly shuffled the cartons of Bibles from one car to the other.
When they were done, Markov gave Andrew a handshake. “By next week these Bibles will be in the hands of pastors all over Russia,” he said before getting into his car and driving off.
With their mission of delivering the Russian Bibles complete, Andrew and Hans made their way home through the Ukraine, since they had a carton of Ukrainian Bibles with them and wanted to distribute them. In the Ukraine they stopped at various Christian meetings along the way, encouraging believers wherever they could. In one village Andrew was fascinated to see a pocket-sized Ukrainian Bible. All the Russian and Ukrainian Bibles Andrew had seen before tended to be big and bulky, so he was amazed to see such a small one. As he held it in his hand, possibilities opened up to Andrew. Why not print small copies of the Bible in the various languages of Eastern Europe? That way he could load two, three, or even four times as many Bibles into the station wagon and deliver them behind the Iron Curtain. The owner of the pocket-sized Bible gave his Bible to Andrew so that he could take it back to Holland and show the printers there just how small a Bible could be printed on fine onionskin paper.
Just before they crossed into Hungary, Andrew and Hans stopped at a Ukrainian Baptist church, where Andrew saw something he never seen before—a pastor preaching a sermon without a Bible. After the service the two men introduced themselves to the pastor and began talking about theological issues. When the pastor cited a Bible reference, Andrew followed along in his own Dutch Bible so that he could understand exactly what was being said. But as they talked, Andrew noticed that the pastor was paying more and more attention to the Dutch Bible than he was to the conversation. Eventually the pastor blurted out, “Brother Andrew, I have no Bible.”
