A Team of Friends

Days 22-27--For the 15 years we lived in Wheaton (from 1982 to 1997), I (Bas) served in several leadership positions with World Relief. On this trip, we met with a number of former World Relief staff members who still live in the Wheaton area. 

Our staff was a special group of people who were united by a common purpose—to help churches show the love of Christ to people in need. This common purpose transformed our relationships. In many cases, we became much more than colleagues. We became close friends. We had great parties and great fellowship. We prayed together, struggled together, celebrated together.

The Lord shaped us into something precious and rare—a team of friends united in faith, committed to the same purpose, and joined together in love.

One evening we had dinner with three of my former colleagues. 

Carla and Marilyn, the two women in the center of the photo, worked with me as administrative assistants. They were not only gifted, talented, and dedicated, but their faith, optimism, and love for people also helped shape my life. Their grace set the tone for our entire international ministries team. Each was a blessing from God to me and to the organization we served together.

Barbara and her husband, Manny, also joined us for dinner. Barbara served as a staff assistant to several of our program staff.  During the time that Barbara worked for World Relief, Manny attended Wheaton College as a Charles Colson scholar.

A former inmate, Manny had plans to organize a church-based program to help prisoners succeed after their release from prison. With Barbara’s help, he founded a program that continues to thrive today in various places around the country. Among other things, Manny is currently helping to establish a seminary in a prison in Indiana, sending out regular teaching videos to prisoner groups around the country, and encouraging churches to find ways to minister to sex offenders in their communities.   

One morning we had a 7 am breakfast with Muriel and Duane. That’s early for retired people. Even though Muriel and Duane are trying to be retired, this was the only time they could fit us into their busy schedules.

Muriel helped World Relief develop our early child-survival programs. Duane, a seminary professor, led a number of workshops that enabled our staff to clarify communication, purpose, and vision for our work together.

One of the programs Muriel helped to establish was a child-survival program designed to reduce child mortality in Cambodia. This program was integrated into a new micro-enterprise community-bank effort focused on small groups of women in rural areas.

More than 20 years later, this program is still helping women and their families. Recently, a former colleague sent us some current program statistics. This program, which started with about $100,000 in loans, now has a loan fund of $250 million. In the early years, the program served a few hundred mothers; now it has 151,000 loan recipients, who have invested nearly $100 million of their own savings.

While statistics do not tell the full story of any program, Muriel and I just shook our heads in amazement when we thought of what God had accomplished from such humble beginnings—more than we ever imagined or thought possible.

Another day we had lunch with Marlene and Anna. Both women were involved in the communications and fundraising side of World Relief. Marlene and I worked together again at Medical Teams International where she served as our vice president for communications. Marlene loved to laugh, and she loved to pray. Her faith and talent were a great blessing to many at both World Relief and Medical Teams.

Anna now has her own graphic design company in Wheaton and has done design work for several Medical Teams publications. Recently, she worked with Lynn on a revision of Doing His Time, the prison devotional book that Lynn edited and helped to write with Jim Vogelzang.

It was a joy to have lunch with Marlene and Anna—to laugh about some of our memories of traveling overseas together, to remember some of the wonderful (and unusual) people with whom we worked, and to talk about how God is at work in our lives now.

Several years ago World Relief moved its headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland. The former headquarters, where we worked together, is now a training center for a trade union. Life is not static. It continues to change.

Meeting with former staff of World Relief during our time in Wheaton rekindled many memories. Parties at our house. People who stayed with us. The stories we shared with each other. The prayers. The tears.

God used many of these staff members to touch not only our lives but also the lives of our kids, who came to know and love many of them while we lived in Wheaton. 

As we continue our journey east, we look forward to meeting with others from our World Relief days.