14 May It’s Becoming a Dangerous World

At the Cristo Rey UB church in Costa Rica.

Before Charlene and I went to Spain as missionaries, we spent a year attending language school in Costa Rica. When I visited San Jose in January to see our churches in that city, I discovered some major changes.

The city is much more violent. I used to walk all around the city with no sense of danger. Now, I was told, even the locals don’t go out walking on the streets.

Probably the biggest crime now is extortion–not only in Costa Rica, but all through Central America. Someone calls you on a cell phone and says that if you don’t leave a certain amount of money at a certain place tomorrow, they’ll kill you, or your wife, or your children. They don’t even bother to kidnap you. They just threaten you over the phone.

Anyone who appears to have any money is at risk. You don’t need to be rich; a middle class person will do. The police don’t know what to do about it, because how do you prove anything from a phone call? And people don’t go to the police, because they have no idea who called them. Maybe it was a policeman.

In Honduras, one day I walked from the Bethel School, where we held the conference, back to my hotel. I heard about it. They said I shouldn’t put myself at risk like that.

The same is true in many places around the world. In the Philippines, Sierra Leone, and other places where United Brethren churches operate, you just don’t go walking around. Even locals get mugged, have their pockets picked, have cell phones taken off their belt. If they’re hitting the nationals, sooner or later, if you visit regularly, you’ll get victimized if you don’t take reasonable precautions.

07 May Meet Galen and Maritta Fiedler

Galen Fiedler and his son, Jared, in front of the school where Galen teaches.

Before visiting Sierra Leone in December, I traveled to Germany to meet with Galen and Maritta Fielder. In April, they were approved as Global Ministries missionaries.

Galen is the son of Phil and Carol Fiedler, former UB missionaries in Sierra Leone, so he is a missionary kid. So is Maritta. She is a German citizen whose parents were missionaries in South Africa, Namibia, and Papua New Guinea.

Galen and Maritta (right) met in Israel at a kibbutz. They corresponded for about five years. Then she made her first visit to the United States. That first night, Galen proposed, and she said yes.

Now they’re married with two children, and very actively ministering to neighbors and families in their community in southwestern Germany. Galen teaches at a Christian school called Aloys Henhofer Schulem. There are very few evangelicals in that part of Germany; most evangelicals live in the north around Berlin and Hanover. People in their area would be traditionally Catholic, mostly post-Christian.

The school primarily educates Christian children, but wants to make a broader impact in the community. So Galen, because of his English-speaking ability, developed an English club for kids from the school and community.

Galen began thinking about raising partners back in the US. It’s not about finances. That’s not an issue, because the Fiedlers earn their own living. Rather, they wondered if some English-speaking people could partner with them and maybe help them reach into the community.

So we began an email dialogue. We’re working to develop a relationship between Global Ministries and the school which might include such things as:

• Short-term teams doing summer English camps.
• Practicums for Huntington University students in the new English Teaching major.
• Exchange students.

The first exchange student will come this summer and stay with Cathy and J. R. Reich (Cathy is Bishop Ramsey’s administrative assistant). This 13-year-old girl is the daughter of the school’s director.

The Fiedlers are been approved as “non-traditional” missionaries. That’s a new category. They are UB missionaries, but non-traditional since most of their support comes from his employment. They will require only a very small budget to facilitate involvement with short-term teams and other ministries. So they’re not going out in the traditional sense as fulltime missionaries, but their ministry is definitely fulltime.

This category may be used a lot more in the future by people who can support themselves through alternative means–business, retirement, other opportunities.

The Fiedlers live with Maritta’s parents, Opa and Oma. They took very good care of me, and fed me very well. Opa is suffering from cancer right now, and was quite weak while I was there. But he told me great stories. He learned to speak English from Australians while living in Papua New Guinea. It was interesting hearing this German speak English with an Australian accent.