Our evening Bible studies rapidly grew in numbers, even with our language problems. South West Africa, now called Namibia, was at that time mostly German, Afrikaans or tribal speaking.
As we grew in numbers, we naturally attracted the attention of the school that all of the children attended. Since there was no other choice for them, that put them in a very difficult situation. They were being punished and threatened that they would be expelled from the school if they did not stop coming to our Bible studies.
The few children had grown in numbers as we switched from small evening groups to a much larger Saturday group using the style of the Daily Vacation Bible Schools we had known in America and I had taught in Harlem the summer that I had worked with the Go Ye Chapel ater my first year at Lincoln Bible Institute. We had to improvise and make our own teaching materials there as well. I had, for example, added further scenes to the flannel-graph lessons we had taken with us so that we could teach basic doctrines as well stories. Most of these children knew nothing about baptism. They had all been sprinkled as unbelieving infants. Now they realized that Bible baptism was the immersion of a repentant believer. In anticipation that we would soon need it, we had a baptistry built at the corner of our house. Before it could be used, a teacher from their school moved in across the fence from us, and his reports all but closed us down. The school was German Lutheran run and they had no toleration for these Americans.
Our attendance dropped drastically, so I asked for Nic Qwemesha to come during the Christmas school break to hold a meeting for us and to evaluate the situation and advise us what to do. That happened also to be at the time our lease expired and he really urged that we should move to Kimberley where language would not be such a problem and where I could teach at the Minister’s training school as well. He would be my interpreter. That is what we did.
I notified our landlord that we would be leaving, and as soon as our third daughter, Donna, was born, I put the family onto a plane for Kimberley, and I loaded our meager furnishings into our Chevrolet Carryall, railed some of our things, and I brought the rest over that difficult road never to return to Wundhoek again.
I had always felt that if we had to leave, as Paul the Apostle had often had to do, we would move elsewhere and continue to serve the Lord where he opened a door for us. It never even occurred to us that we could return to America and “lick our wounded pride.” I started to teach a class at the training school and as, we had already turned to the printed page I expanded that. The Bible Corrspondence lessons was certainly the leading of God. Though we did many other things, as needed, the printed page became our main thrust over the years that followed. It opened more doors than we could ever hope to enter. Our first few enquiries grew into a veritable deluge. The more languages we added, the more people responded. We first started printing in other languages as there were educated people to make the translations. They were not always professional translatrs, but they were a real blessing to people who sometimes struggled to read at all, let lone, in their own spoken language However we did have professional teachers and ministers who helped. I just had to type every word letter by letter and then have them read it to detect the errors I made typing to me "unknown languages." I had not had a single lesson in touch typing in my life.
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