Acts of the Green Apples

Richard repeated, "Don't you know where that is? American just don't go there."

"How could I know?" I answered, "I was asleep."

We lay quietly thinking. The dream had seemed amazingly real. We both remembered that three times I had dreamed rather astonishing things that had come to pass. "Do you think it's just a dream," I inquired tentatively, "or do you think it's from God?"

"I don't know. Let's pray about it."

And we did. No booming voice came from the heavens affirming or denying. But the more we prayed, the less comfortable we became. A sense of excitement arose in us. I couldn't stand it any longer. Feeling silly but figuring no one else would ever learn how silly I was, I said, "Let's ask God if the dream came from Him and then open the Bible at random and expect Him to give us the answer that way." (I have since discovered that other silly people, such as John Wesley, have done the same.) Instead of using the Bible I normally read, for some obscure reason I picked up a modern translation (it doesn't read the same as the King James), shut my eyes and flipped it open. It opened at Isaiah 35, which could be called a missionary chapter. My eyes fell upon verse 8, "and a highway shall be there, and it shall be called The Holy Way --"

"Where is Indonesia in relation to China?"

"Not too far," Rick answered, revealing his ignorance of Asian geography, "It's in the same part of the world."

"We know a missionary to Indonesia and you write to him through some sort of organization called The Holy Way."

Richard said, "I don't know why, but I'm getting chills."

Without taking time for breakfast, I wrote a letter to the missionary in Indonesia telling him about the strange dream. I was sure he would think we were quite mad, but I reasoned that we would probably never see him again anyway. But when I wanted to address the envelope, we discovered that we did not have the missionary's address. It was peculiar as he had been on the Trinity mailing list and we should have had both his Indonesian address and the address of The Holy Way, which was an organization somewhere in the United States. It looked hopeless. Frustrated, I tossed the letter on the desk.

"If God wanted us to write, we would have the address."

The telephone rang. It was Loraine Ewart. "Would you like me to bring your mail from the post office?" she inquired. Surprised, I answered, "Fine. I'll make some coffee." I hung up without mentioning the morning's events.

The doorbell rang and Loraine stood on the doorstep and handed the mail to me. The top letter was a personal one to me from the secretary of The Holy Way! Later, when I arrived at this point in relating the events to Dr Maurice Nelles (see Who's Who) he said, "Now you have gone beyond the realm of probability."

We traveled further beyond because the letter was surprisingly vague. It read something like, "Dear Jean, I don't know why I'm writing this, but I feel so close to you in the Lord. Is there anything you would like us to pray about? I don't know why I asked that: it's presumptuous of me. Just know that we love you in Christ."

But on the envelope was the address and it was the address used by the priest in Indonesia.

So I sent the letter in care of The Holy Way. And feeling daring I added a cover letter to the secretary telling her what had happened. Rick took the letter and left for work sans breakfast.

We had recently moved, and Loraine had been helping me decorate. That morning as we discussed Suzy's room and were going to go upstairs to look it over, Loraine said, "Could we pray?" I suddenly knew that God wanted to say something to me. I also knew that Loraine had never been used in the gift of interpretation, and that if I had to interpret a message for me I would doubt and think my own thoughts might have become involved. I said, "If you think God wants to speak through you, be sure you don't bring a message in tongues if you really have a prophecy which should come in English."

It was strange for me to speak in such a fashion. Loraine had never come up with a message in tongues or anything else when we were together. In fact we had never prayed when the two of us were alone.

She began to speak in tongues. I have since heard Mandarin Chinese and it sounded like that or some dialect of Chinese. She immediately interpreted, and the message was that I had been called by God and would be traveling to the Orient to tell people about Christ.

The day was Monday. Good things happen to me on Monday. My daughter, Suzanne, was born on Monday; Richard and I were married on Monday; the prayer meeting I began has met on Monday for twelve years. It met that night in our living room, and we told the participants the happenings of the day. Not much enthusiasm. It began to seem like the dream. I couldn't blame them; it did sound far out. Bill Duncan, one of our closest friends, said, "Maybe the Lord just wants you to pray for the Chinese, Jean." But Dick Aschenberg, who was never used by the Spirit, suddenly spoke in prophecy, and it was to the effect that we were going to China.

The days went by. Richard and I became more and more excited. Our friends humored us but nothing changed. We didn't have ticket money to China or anywhere else. A letter came from the secretary of The Holy Way. She wrote that when she received my letter the Spirit "fell" upon her, and when she prayed God "told" her (she didn't say how) that we were going to China. The letter stated that as she was praying the director of their society telephoned her and she shared my letter with him. The board decided that we should go to the Orient through their organization which turned out to be a missionary society. But then came the crunch -- the organization didn't furnish financial support -- only prayer. We irreverently laughed. We didn't need prayer, we told ourselves, we needed nearly $3,000.

Easter arrived and we purchased half a dozen fluffy yellow chicks for Suzanne. Two of them didn't make it, but the other four grew into aggressive roosters. One particularly, named Daniel Boone because of his exploratory tendencies, became a great pet. Daniel began to pine away and refused to eat; he was limping. We took him to a veterinarian who sent us to a bird specialist. The specialist diagnosed the ailment as infectious arthritis in the leg joints and gave Danny a shot of cortisone and a prescription. Danny ate a bit better, but he couldn't roost i his homemade chicken coop because of the crippling effect of the arthritis, so he slept in the kitchen at night. When dusk came he would chase the other roosters into the coop and then peck on the door for us to let him in and put him to bed. In the morning he would crow and Richard would arise and deposit him outside where he would like in front of the chicken coop awaiting the awakening of his minions.

About this time I received a letter from a woman with troubles. I suggested she come to our Monday night gathering. She did and was filled with the Holy Spirit and some of her troubles disappeared. But her biggest problem was the man she was dating, because he was not a Christian. She asked if she could bring him to see us, cherishing some vague hope that something wonderful would occur to change him. They came for dinner and a swim but somehow we never had the swim. We talked about God for hours and at 6:30 in the early evening Conrad capitulated and became a Christian. As he prayed to God for forgiveness and acceptance, out in the yard Daniel began to crow. One of the other roosters answered him, and they kept going. The din was terrific and we were furious. Why would roosters crow at 6:30 at night? Conrad stared at us with a stunned expression. Years previously, he said, he had done something very wrong and a rooster had crowed; at the time, he had thought of the cock's crowing when Peter had denied Christ. He confided that ever since that time he had felt separated inside and that as he had committed his life to Christ, for the first time he felt whole. And just then the roosters began to crow. His heart had begun to beat faster and he couldn't move his arms and he knew God was proving Himself. "How amazing," he commented, "that when I asked Christ to take over, I should be in a place where there was a rooster. I'll never forget this afternoon."

Monday night Conrad attended the prayer meeting. We told him about the Holy Spirit but that was too much for him -- he simply couldn't accept it. At 10:30 at night, during silent prayer, someone quietly spoke in tongues. Conrad later told us he had peeped out of one eye to look and that some unseen force closed the eye for him. He sat there and spoke in his mind, "Now Lord, I believe these people are real, but this speaking in tongues is just too much. If this is really You, give me a sign like You did with the rooster." Someone began to interpret, and just then the night seemed to split in two with a wild "Cock-a-doodle-doo" from the kitchen. Three times it rang out, and I silently thought, "Fried chicken tomorrow." Conrad's face blanched; his heart pounded furiously and his arms seemed paralyzed as they lay on the chair arms. Then he told us how he had prayed. Within a few days he was baptized with the Holy Spirit. Daniel the rooster had become Daniel the prophet.

The dream was beginning to come to pass: very few people were enthused about our projected trip to China, and the ones who were had no means to help us get there. Now that Conrad had become a Christian he was enthused about us but when we told him the story of the dreams, he said, "You can't go there. Those people are flaky. They'll kill you!" There were exceptions. When we shared the dream with Morton Kelsey, our rector and a psychologist who has studied dreams for twenty years, he commented, "There is no question but that you'll go. The interpretation in the dream sounds like something out of the ancient Chinese writings which even predate Buddhism."

My friend, Joan Baker, was not so encouraging. She and John came to dinner one evening and they were among the few people we told. Joan said, "I know it's God. I get goose bumps just hearing about it, but I'm not going to pray for you to go. You might get killed there."

Loraine and Jean Waltz suggested that we should exercise faith and have our passports put in order, etc. Previous to this, when thinking about the $3,000 needed, I was inclined to doubt the whole operation. It seemed just what it had been -- a dream. But when we turned our passports in, with the new information and the fee, the passport officer pushed the money back and said, "No charge." It must have been a new ruling, but it was enough to cause me to wonder if God was trying to tell me something. If He could provide passports without charge, perhaps He could also provide tickets to the Orient. It was worth thinking about.

Meanwhile, the missionary in Indonesia had written that he felt the dream was from God and that we should come to Indonesia, where we were much needed, until the doors to China swung open. This clicked with us, and we knew if it all came to pass, Indonesia would be the place we would begin. I telephoned the travel agency. They said, "Forget it. No one goes to Indonesia now. Take your vacation somewhere else." I stared helplessly at Rick. He said, "If it's God we'll get visas. And if it's not God, we don't want to go there anyway." We wrote to the Indonesian Consulate in San Francisco.

We procured yellow fever injections, which are free. I then telephoned Dr Richard Casdorph and told him we were going to the Orient as missionaries. Could he give us the necessary injections? To myself I thought, "If we don't go, I'll have to leave town after that statement." Dr Casdorph didn't normally give injections as he was a specialist in internal medicine, but he said he would see what he could do. When we arrived for the inoculations he insisted upon complete (and I mean complete) physical examinations. Mine took three hours. We told him we only wanted injections, but our protests were fruitless. We wondered how we would ever pay for all of this tender attention.

Knowing that even though God places the idea in a person's mind, He still wants him to pray to bring it to fruition, I fasted and prayed for three days about the trip. On the third day, Paul Castle stopped by to tell us God wanted him to send fifty dollars monthly toward our support as long as we were in the mission field.

The Indonesian Consulate mailed us forms to fill out to request visas. We were in the process of being injected with everything Dr Casdorph could find that the US Army gave the troops traveling to Southeast Asia. We were disposing of our possessions in all directions. People began to believe -- but not necessarily to approve. One friend argued that we could not take Suzanne somewhere so dangerous and that we should leave her with them. She pointed out to Suzanne the advantages of staying with them. I was distressed as I couldn't imagine going anywhere without Suzanne. She had been one of the biggest things in my life ever since I had discovered I was pregnant. Leave her while I traveled halfway across the world? What did God want? I knew what I wanted: did I dare be disobedient? I didn't say anything to anyone else, but I secretly prayed that I would know God's will in the matter.

We still did not have one cent toward the tickets. Frustrated, Richard and I prayed, "Lord, we know You're always last minute, but if this operation is of You, send us $500 within three days, so we will know we are going. We don't want a legacy: we want the money to actually come earmarked for the trip, so we will be in no doubt whatsoever.

We told no one about this prayer and three days later we had almost forgotten about it. We stopped at Loraine's house to leave some magazine she was to mail, and just then she drove up with a friend of hers named Rita Gould. Rita was a Baptist who had lived by trusting God for forty-three years. She sang in churches and taught in youth camps. I had met her once, several months before, when I had prayed with her to receive the gift of the Spirit. Loraine said, "I just told Rita about your dream. Come in and have some tea." We went inside and Rita said, "I think God wants me to help you with your trip. I don't have much, but I'll do what I can." She wrote a check and handed it to us. It was for $500! She later told us she hadn't meant to do anything like that -- that it had been the most involuntary act she had ever participated in. Neither she nor anyone else knew we had prayed. China was drawing closer all the time.

Richard quit his job. He thought we should learn to depend upon God. Certainly we had enough to do disposing of many years' accumulation of belongings, but I still thought he was mad. But how can one tell someone he isn't really hearing from God? It developed into one of the most instructive periods of our life, and we learned many principles that we were later to put into use with good effect.

But one night we needed $200 immediately. We were quite desperate about it then -- now I can't even remember what it was needed for. It was Monday afternoon, and Rick said all we could do was tell God and expect Him to answer. If He wasn't going to take care of us now, how could we believe He would later? That night our prayer group met, and during the evening Madeleine Duncan requested prayer. Her dentist had advised that she must have extensive work done on one tooth, and she wanted us to pray that it would not be painful. I put my hand upon her shoulder and asked God to heal the tooth. She said she thought she would trust God, and that she felt God wanted her to give the $200 the dental work would have cost to us -- and she wrote out a check for that amount. No one knew we had prayed earlier for $200. Incidentally, she still has the tooth, and it has never cause her one moment's difficulty.

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