Chapter 2 ~ 1995 Social Summit and a Miracle Car

adventures

In the Spring of 1995 a "United Nation Social Summit" was held in Copenhagen.

At the NGO forum, running parrallel to the UN conference, we interacted with a lot of people - from volunteers of humanitarian NGO's to famous personalities.

One of them was the actor Peter Ustinov. Besides being a film maker and actor, starring in such films as Quo Vadis, Spartacus, Death on the Nile - to name a few - he was also Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. In the picture you can see him with my oldest daughter.

The forum was situated on Christianshavn adjacent to the freetown of "Christiania."

Christiania used to be an abandoned army base which had been squatted in the early 70-ies by radicals, intellectuals and dropouts. Incidentally I happened to live there in the early days, when I was studying at the Copenhagen Architect school. It was while living in Christiania that I met the Lord through the witness of a Jesus People movement.

Back to the NGO part of the Social Summit.

Each of the many and varied Non-Governmental Organisations represented at the forum had been allocated a stand where they they were presenting their work, and so did we. We were showing a video of some of the work our volunteers had done around the world in helping refugees, doing disaster relief, visiting orphanages, prisons, and hospitals etc (here's a short glimpse of that presentation).

A girl from Bratislava in Slovakia attended one of these viewings. I remember she sat with tears in her eyes afterwards. Her name was Monica, and she was working with an NGO that was trying to help abandoned Roma children. There is a large population of what used to be called Gypsies in that part of East Europe.

The orphans were placed in institutions around Slovakia and they had their basic needs met, but sadly they had nothing useful to keep them occupied. "We don't have trained personnel or resources to motivate them or do anything meaningful with them," she said, "after seeing what you guys are doing to help people I wish something like that could happen in my country."

Back in Sweden I couldn't get that meeting with Monica out of my mind. I kept thinking how nice it would be for somebody to go help there. We eventually came to the conclusion that perhaps that "somebody" could be our little family.

Ever since returning to Scandinavia I had wanted to go to Eastern Europe myself, but it had never really happened. Here it looked like there was a specific need - and an invitation!

We also had the feeling our time in Scandinavia was coming to an end and that it was time for new horizons, so after prayer and counsel we decided to prepare to go. - "We" being my partner and I and our three youngest kids. My oldest had taken off to Kenya with a team of young people to start a volunteer project there. She ended up working in Kenya for eight years.

To put all this into perspective it would be helpful to realize that we were "living by faith," trusting the Lord for our needs (Philippians 4:19). This was not something commonly practiced by other Christians. Usually missionaries from different denominations are being supported by the mother church back home, but I can tell you from 40-some years of personal experience, that when you put yourself out there in the Lord's service, one way or another He'll look after you! ~ Mat.6:24-34

Perhaps we were ill prepared, didn't have much in the way of information about the field and were lacking in sponsors. Perhaps we blundered along in our feeble attempts to follow Jesus, but when we did our best to help our neighbour, we discovered that He was there to carry us through every obstacles and setback. As the saying goes - and as I hope these stories will prove - the Lord may not deliver us from trouble, but He delivers us through troubles.

* * *

At that time we had our old trusty Tabbert caravan, but we didn't have a car to pull it, so that was our most immediate need.

We were able to sell a printing press, that I had restored to working order, and after dividing our combined income between the others in our fellowship, I started looking for a vehicle.

There was a car-auction every Sunday at a large parking lot on the other side of the ridge in Gothenborg. One fellow had an old Nissan Urvan for sale. It had a good diesel engine and a hitch for pulling a caravan, but it was an awful rust heap that looked something like this - no kiddin'! He was asking 14.000 Swedish kroner for it, (about €1400), but it was more than we could afford at that time. I also wanted a "confirmation" that this was the right car, so I poured water on the sacrifice (as the saying goes) and offered him half the amount.

Three days later he called me back, "OK, you can come and get it!" - I was honestly torn between jubilation and trepidation, because it really did look terrible, and the sliding door was so rusty the bottom had come apart. Nevertheless I took it as an answer to prayer. When you put the Lord to the test you have to keep your part of the bargain - if and when He come through. In the end it turned out to be a good decision.

We needed to fix it up and outfit it to our needs. I used some fibreglass to rust-proof all around the lower parts. A kind man from an auto paint shop gave it a quick coat of paint and it started to look downright decent. We also put some Nordic flags on the back of the van to give it a Scandinavian flavour - the car was on Swedish plates, the caravan was from Denmark and some of us had Norwegian passports. We built seats and space for luggage in the back, and constructed a big rooftop out of wood to carry the spare tyres and other gear.

We announced to friends and colleagues our plans to go to East Europe, not knowing exactly where we would end up, but only determined to try to follow the Lord.

Chris from Norway, (here with my youngest daughter on the back of the bike), expressed the desire to come along, and she joined us with the blessing of her mom.

So off we went - More about that in the next chapter.

Chapter 3 ~ From Scandinavia to Slovakia   ( TOC )