HomeARC ML 0806
GO YE! 31 MAY 1979 DO 806
--Talk to Faithy & Juan--And All of You!
1. DON'T FORGET THAT THE RICH PEOPLE ARE A PITIFUL MISSION FIELD too & there are only certain kinds of people that can reach them. I think to take a top FFer away from the Monte Carlo ministry for example & stick her out in the jungle singing to the Hottentots would be a little bit ridiculous, that's my opinion.
2. THAT AREA IS THE PLAYGROUND OF THE WORLD! It's like Geneva, the diplomatic capital of the world, where people from all over the world come, & Brussels is the economic capital. Monte Carlo is the place to reach people from all over the world, like Miami, another playground of the world where you reach people from everywhere.
3. THESE ARE VERY IMPORTANT FIELDS, especially the type of people we're reaching now through FFing. (Maria: They've had tremendous success there & they're also getting tremendous support, not only success in souls but success monetarily, also, & so my feeling is that it would be like changing horses in the middle of the stream. They have got a good thing going & they've started something.) Like robbing Peter to pay Paul!
4. (MARIA: IT SEEMS LIKE ONE OF OUR LARGEST RESERVES FOR PERSONNEL & LABOUR LEADERS for needy pioneer fields, almost everybody that is available, that is, is now in the States, regaining conviction & strength & raising funds for a new stronger-than-ever push on the field.)
5. OF COURSE RICH NORTH AMERICA SHOULD BE THE MAN-POWER POOL FOR LATIN AMERICA, right there next door & "Love thy neighbour"--& who is your neighbour?--Well, they say anybody, of course, & the whole world is your neighbour, but certainly the people who are closest to you are your neighbours, & Latin America is close & easier for some of our big families to go to.
6. --OR THE ISLANDS--the Caribbean or Atlantic, much easier & much less expensive, & if they don't pan out, it's not so far to go home either. I certainly would recommend that we not recruit people in Europe for Latin America, except some places,
7. RECRUITING FOR LATIN AMERICA SHOULD BE PRETTY WELL CONFINED TO NORTH AMERICA, I remember reading ads in the FN, people who had been years in Latin America now wanting to go to Japan, although they were already fluent in Brazilian or in Spanish or something. They just got tired of being there & they wanted new horizons.
8. (MARIA: OR A JAPANESE GIRL WHO WANTED TO COME TO SPAIN to FF, & she didn't even speak Spanish or English!) Just anything to travel, just anything to go someplace new & far away that they haven't been before. I think it's ridiculous when people have been in the field for years & know the people well & know the language well, to go sashaying off to some other far off, distant unknown field just for a change of life & scenery.
9. UNLESS THEY ARE JUST ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD WHERE THEY ARE & soured on it & totally fed up with it & are not fruitful & they are not accomplishing anything, I think they ought to stay put. Once they have really learned the field & the people & the methods & the language & everything else, this should be their home.
10. MOST OF THE DENOMINATIONAL MISSIONARIES that I knew & the history of missionaries over the past 200 years of real missionary work, especially in the last 100 years of worldwide missions that America has been involved in, missionaries were supposed to go to a field & expected to learn the language & the custom & the dress & the food & the methods & stay there for years, if not the rest of their lives, & not go switching fields.
11. THEY WOULDN'T HAVE THOUGHT OF CHANGING FIELDS from the Orient to Latin America or Latin America to the Orient or the Orient to Europe or all these crazy trips that some of our kids want to make just because they are bored & tired of the field that they are in. What I am saying is that I think once a missionary has done well, learned the language, customs, methods & so on of the people in a certain field, they pretty much ought to stick there.
12. IF WE NEED NEW BLOOD IN SOME OF THESE PLACES, well, why not get some of it from these tremendous man-power pools of North America & Northern Europe. I would say those are tremendous man-power pools that can be tapped which can supply the foreign field, the really needy fields like Latin America & the Orient, which are our neediest fields, Asia & Africa, for that matter--some places in Africa--some places are just a waste of time.
13. SOME PEOPLE TOOK THAT "BLACK HOLES" OF AFRICA TO MEAN WE DIDN'T NEED ANYBODY IN AFRICA & everybody ought to leave Africa, but that was not what it was intended to mean. I am an extremist & I am fanatical & radical & I really sock it to them, & I got so fed up with some of those people running around some of the most unfruitful places in Africa & having all kinds of trouble, that I just blasted away with "Black Holes" (Letter No.726), but there are certain fields in Africa which are still very fruitful & very needy.
14. THE EUROPEAN AFRICANS REALLY HAVE NOT HAD AN AWFUL LOT OF GOSPEL except for the British colonies. Now, the ex-British colonies, many of them have had a lot of religion already, they have had a lot of Christianity, even Protestantism & Protestant missionaries, & the English speaking, ex-British colonies of Africa, even the American colony of Liberia, these have been just saturated with American & British missionaries & the Gospel, & they are loaded with churches, both Catholic & Protestant & Pentecostal & whatnot!
15. IN THE OTHER AREAS OF AFRICA, HOWEVER, particularly the former French & Portuguese colonies which were almost solidly Catholic, Catholic churches, Catholic priests, Catholic missionaries, they need the Gospel still just as much as all Catholics do, because they haven't had much Gospel. They have had a lot of church & they have had a lot of ceremony & they have had a lot of Catholicism, but they haven't had much real Salvation.
16. I WOULD SAY THAT THE EX-PORTUGUESE & THE EX-FRENCH COLONIES OF AFRICA ARE STILL VERY NEEDY fields where we need real Gospel salvation missionaries. There, of course, is the language problem & we need people who have a good working knowledge, speaking knowledge, conversational knowledge of French & Portuguese or Brazilian--which is virtually almost the same, at least they can understand each other--& even Spanish.
17. THERE ARE CERTAIN AREAS OF AFRICA WHICH ARE SPANISH-SPEAKING, WHICH COULD STAND SOME MISSIONARIES--two Spanish speaking cities on the coast of Morocco: Melilla & Ceuta, which have been nothing but formerly Arab territories & Muslim & still are largely Muslim, but that Spain took over & made Catholic, so they are still pretty much in heathen darkness both ways, & they could stand some missionaries.
18. OF COURSE, SOME OF THOSE PLACES ARE DANGEROUS & some of them are closed, & most of the ex-French & particularly the ex-Portuguese colonies are now almost solidly communist & virtually closed countries to the Gospel because they hate religion & they persecute missionaries, they even slaughter them & butcher them! So they're not very open fields, particularly ex-Portuguese colonies.
19. THE EX-FRENCH COLONIES--France apparently must have, in some ways, treated her colonies a little better & in some ways must have evangelised or Christianised or Catholicised them at least in a little bit better way, so that they have not turned so bitterly anti-France & anti-Christian & anti-religion as have the ex-Portuguese colonies.
20. SOME PORTUGUESE WERE NOTORIOUS FOR THEIR CRUELTY & the barbarity with which they treated their colonies & the people that were the natives of the colonies, such as one story I told you about how if the natives didn't gather enough rubber they would cut off their hands, & things like that: Horrors of the Portuguese occupation of Africa, which is one reason why the Portuguese fought such a long war in Africa with about 50,000 people a year being killed for about 14-15 years before she finally had to give up her colonies. She just butchered the natives & slaughtered them if they didn't do what she wanted them to do.
21. SO I WOULD SAY THAT CERTAINLY PARTS OF AFRICA ARE STILL DARK AFRICA & STILL NEED THE GOSPEL of real salvation & they certainly need our Message & are much more needy than the ex-American & British colonies where they had a surplus, almost surfeited with missionaries & churches both Catholic & Protestant & everything, Gospel, Pentecostal. I mean, they've had everything, you name it, in those English language colonies of America & Britain--including us!
22. ... There are centers in Africa that are more European & more white than black.) Yes, of course, some of the ex-French colonies in particular, the blacks did not turn on them so viciously & completely wipe the Europeans out or run them out like they did in a lot of the ex-Portuguese colonies.
23. THERE THEY HATED THE PORTUGUESE & THE EUROPEANS so much that they virtually ran them all out, so there are very few left, & as a result, those colonies are in bankruptcy & have gone back to the jungle. But in the ex-French colonies, the French, apparently, treated their people fairly well. They're still very friendly with France, real strong supporters of France.
24. FRANCE IS THEIR STRONG FRIEND & SUPPORTER & there are oodles of huge white European French colonies or areas, cities, in the French colonies where there are large European populations which we could still reach, as well as the blacks. And also, of course, there are Portuguese colonies as well, whichever ones you could manage to get into, & a few Spanish areas.
25. THE FORMERLY ITALIAN AREAS, OF COURSE, NOW ARE TOTALLY TAKEN OVER BY TOUGH COMMUNIST or pro-communist dictatorships, such as Ethiopia & Libya where they still know Italian pretty well & still speak some Italian, Malta too, which has a strong Italian influence & which is now almost gone down the drain to the Libyans & will be virtually a closed communist country or pro-communist country. These are already as pro-Communist, almost, as they can get.
26. SO, AFRICA IS STILL A VERY POTENTIAL FIELD IN CERTAIN AREAS, certain isolated areas, but quite a different situation from some of those big English-speaking countries where it's easy for our Americans to go & they already speak English.
27. AND OF COURSE, THE COLOURED PEOPLE who on the whole are simple & childlike, are always open to anything & everybody & anything new that comes along & they receive it quickly & readily with smiles, but it's often here today & gone tomorrow & they've forgotten you the next day.
28. SO, ANYWAY, I'M NOT DISCOUNTING AFRICA ENTIRELY AS A POTENTIALLY NEEDY FIELD. I would say particularly, for the Europeans, or our folks who have been in Europe for a long time, & learned some of these European languages, especially French & Portuguese & some Spanish, perhaps even a little Italian, that there is a field & a potential for some of these people right across the water, right there in Africa & North Africa.
29. OF COURSE, THE NORTH AFRICAN FIELDS ARE MOSTLY ARAB & MUSLIM DOMINATED, fanatically Muslim, & closed countries where if you get caught witnessing, much less litnessing, you will probably be thrown in jail for a year or two! So, it's pretty risky & dangerous to be trying to litness in some of those places.
30. BUT SOME OF THE EX-FRENCH COLONIES, like Senegal & some of those where there are huge white European, rich colonies of whites still there, & which are fairly civilised, the blacks too, but have been only Catholicised & not really Christianised & haven't really been saved, don't really know the Gospel of salvation, to me, those are still very fruitful fields.
31. I'VE ALWAYS CONSIDERED THE CATHOLIC COUNTRIES EXTREMELY FRUITFUL FIELDS for the real Gospel of salvation because they all haven't had the Gospel. They've got everything else: They have been taught to believe the Bible & in God & in Jesus & Mary & the whole works, without taking the final step of real salvation.
32. SO, YOU'VE GOT EVERYTHING GOING FOR YOU AS FAR AS THE PEOPLE ARE CONCERNED, prepared to receive the real Gospel of salvation. I myself have found that the average Catholic is fairly easy to lead to the Lord & to salvation.
33. OF COURSE, YOU HAVE THE JEALOUS RELIGIOUS SYSTEM THERE TO FIGHT YOU, which will fight you bitterly & are very jealous of their people. We have them to contend with, the scribes & the Pharisees. Jesus & His disciples found that it was very easy to win the Jews, but their leaders killed them! So, that's one of the problems.
34. BUT I'D SAY AFRICA IS STILL A VERY HIGHLY POTENTIAL FIELD & has a lot of areas which are really needy, particularly the ex-French colonies & Portuguese colonies, which were Catholicised, but not, as you can see, really truly genuinely Christianised. They've almost reverted to savagery as soon as the Catholics were gone, & as soon as their colonial powers were gone. They certainly weren't saved, or they wouldn't be chopping off the heads of missionaries & bashing in the heads of little babies & raping the women! Africa is still a very potential needy field, certain areas of Africa.
35. I WOULD SAY THAT AFRICA, ALONG WITH THE MIDEAST, which are next-door neighbours to Europe, are good fields for our Northern Europeans, the Orient being much closer to Europe than it is to the Americas, North America particularly, except for the West Coast in North America & crossing 10,000 miles of the Pacific. But that's a long trip & a costly one too.
36. JAPAN & THE PHILIPPINES HAVE CLOSE TIES WITH THE U.S., & from the West Coast where we have a lot of people, you might say that California & that area was a fairly good man-power pool to try to encourage people to go to Japan & the Orient. Of course Japan is not one of our neediest fields, it is pretty well-supplied with labourers already, & has been pretty well-saturated by us, & the language is difficult.
37. THE PHILIPPINES, I THINK, IS ONE OF THE MOST POTENTIAL & WONDERFUL, RECEPTIVE FIELDS that we have, & haven't even begun to really plumb, although we have the highest percentage of Americans there of any field in the world, almost 50% of our people in the Philippines are Americans, or maybe more.
38. I WOULD SAY THE PHILIPPINES IS A TREMENDOUS FIELD! They speak English & Spanish as well as Tagalog, so people who speak either or both English & Spanish already have a very big field where they could instantly be useful.
39. THEY ARE VERY OPEN TO AMERICANS, as its been virtually an American colony & it's fairly easy for Americans to get in there & stay there. The immigration rules, as I understand, are fairly easy, so that's probably one reason we've got so many Americans there right now.
40. YOU CAN ALMOST TELL HOW TIGHT THE IMMIGRATION IS IN A FIELD & HOW HEAVY THE PERSECUTION BY HOW FEW AMERICANS WE HAVE THERE. In the fields like the Philippines & Greece & Portugal & Spain, to name a few of the countries where the percentage of Americans is high, either the immigration is very easy or there is very little persecution & they are very open to Americans, & that's why the Americans go there & they can stay there.
41. OTHERWISE, THERE ARE CERTAIN AREAS WHERE AMERICANS ARE NOT WANTED & they are persecuted & the immigration is very tight. It looks like they have run virtually all of our Americans out of even Australia which is a marvellous field, English speaking, & we could have done better. Thank God we did as well as we did for as long as we could. But because of the troubles they had there & the tight immigration situation, it is one of the best nationalised fields that we have in the world, with the fewest Americans. But,
42. I WOULD SAY, BY ALL MEANS, IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO ANY RECRUITING IN EUROPE, it should be primarily in Northern Europe, if anything, & particularly, if possible, amongst the areas which speak the same languages which are spoken in ex-colonies in Africa or in the Orient. Now that would be English in the former (& even present) British colonies of the Orient, including India. Although the immigration is tight there, it is not so bad for British & Commonwealth people. So what I'm saying is that I think the man-power pool on which you could draw for the Orient should be particularly Northern Europe.
43. (MARIA: MY IDEA WAS THAT I THINK MOSTLY THE PEOPLE THAT WOULD BE AVAILABLE TO PIONEER HAVE LEFT EUROPE during the Homegoing & have either gone on to other fields or have gone to the States, so I just wonder how many of these little families that have gotten established in Europe & just gotten a drop-in job & have put their children in school & are just beginning to make it in the situation where they are, I'm wondering if we have many available people now in Europe?)
44. WELL, THAT'S TRUE TOO, DUE TO THE PERSECUTION & THE HOMEGOING, the change & transition we've been going through, I would almost say that most of the people who are going to make a change have actually already made it. Myriads of them have gone back to the States, North America, & some of them have gone from there to a new field of their choice.
45. SO YOU MIGHT NOT RUN INTO TOO MANY PEOPLE IN EUROPE WHO NOW WANT TO MAKE A CHANGE, because they have made their change & they are satisfied where they are & they are in a new field in a pioneer situation & they don't necessarily want to change again this soon.
46. HOWEVER, THERE ARE QUITE A FEW PEOPLE IN NORTHERN EUROPE, from what I gather, who are still pretty well stuck. So you have to ask the Lord for real wisdom & guidance as to who needs to get out of their rut, who have been there a long time without any change, haven't been home or anything, & who needs to get moving, & who are just pioneering & have already made their change & have started now in a new field which is new to them, even though it's old Europe. I don't think we should try to push them on any faster.
47. I THINK YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO ASK THE LORD TO GIVE YOU A LOT OF WISDOM & go slow & really look into the situation deeply to find out who needs to go & who does not. So, I hope you don't go in like a whirlwind & try to sweep everybody out & blow up every town that you go into & send them all to the mission field!
48. A LOT OF THEM MAY BE ON THEIR MISSION FIELD & WHERE THEY BELONG. (Maria: And a lot of them may not be prepared to go to another mission field in more ways than one.) Yes. (Maria: I mean, if they are not even successful in their own field & they are just looking around for a change, they may not be successful in the field to which they might go either.)
49. EXACTLY, & NOT ONLY THAT, IF YOU ARE GOING TO ENCOURAGE SOME OF THESE BIG FAMILIES with a half-a-dozen children to go to the Orient or Latin America or wherever, you'd better have some place to put them & some way to support them right away, quick, because frankly, I think the time for big families on some of these difficult fields is almost over.
50. IT IS GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE SMALL UNITS, UNLESS THEY ARE REALLY USING THEIR CHILDREN, really making missionaries out of them & really making them pay & making them fruitful & useful like we did ours. If they haven't learned to teach & train their children to be helpful & missionaries also & real assets & a real advantage instead of a liability, probably they won't be able to make it.
51. A LOT OF THESE PEOPLE, I THINK, HAD TO GO HOME WITH THEIR KIDS because they didn't train their kids right to help them & didn't really train them to be missionaries too & use them as real assets to help their ministry.
52. JUST GENERALLY SPEAKING, I would say that if you find anybody at all for the Orient & Asia, for example, & Africa, that those people would be found, largely speaking, in Northern Europe. You should recruit in North America for Latin America & the Caribbean, which has a lot of Islands & places where they speak all kinds of European languages.
53. A LOT OF OUR FOLKS WHO HAVE GONE BACK TO AMERICA ALREADY HAVE LEARNED THE EUROPEAN LANGUAGES & can go nearby to some needy field like the Caribbean, those Islands, beautiful climate, easy living, & they could be very fruitful missionaries there now, even though they couldn't get along too well in some other fields.
54. ALSO, I WOULD SAY FROM THE WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA you could recruit for the near Orient, such as Japan, Philippines & so on, even China now! So, North America & Northern Europe ought to be your main recruiting areas.
55. I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE SOUTHERN EUROPE PRETTY WELL ALONE, because Southern Europe has been very fruitful, & particularly Spain right now is extremely open & free & good to Americans, & you can stay six months & nine months & longer without any problems, & then you only have to go out & come right back in to stay on. You can stay there for years!
56. AND ESPECIALLY TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE LEARNED THE LANGUAGE IT IS FRUITFUL & open & receptive & we're getting terrific response there & we have the highest percentage of litnessing in Spain of any country in the world outside of the United States!
57. THINGS ARE BOOMING IN SPAIN, so there is no point in taking labourers out of a very fruitful harvest field & sending them off some place else where they may not even know the language & may not even do as well, unless they're not doing well in Spain.
58. ITALY WE'VE PRETTY WELL SATURATED, & they have turned on us now, & Italy is beginning to be almost a hopeless case, with heavy persecution, we're banned in certain areas, especially Rome, & litnessing is very dangerous. So God bless and keep our litnessers & thank God for them! The whole situation really is extremely dangerous for anybody in Italy!
59. THE ANARCHISTS ARE TAKING IT OVER, & the communists, & Italy is going down the drain, as far as I'm concerned. I don't see any way America is going to be able to save it, in spite of everything she can do & pouring billions in there to keep the Christian Democrats in power.
60. THE POWERS THAT BE THERE HAVE TURNED ON US. They had their chance, we saturated the country for years, nearly ten years, & now the Lord, apparently, feels we must be through in any big way there, especially with Rachel & Emanuele & their high-jinks right now, speaking & working against us!
61. IT'S NOT A GOOD PLACE TO BE, it's not a safe place & it's no longer open & it's a dangerous field, although the Lord is continuing to protect the witness of some of our brave ones still there. I think if we can find any recruits in Italy to get on some of those other fields, fine!
62. (MARIA: THERE'S A NEAR FIELD FOR ITALY & NORTHERN EUROPE & that is the East Bloc, the closed or semi-closed countries of Eastern Europe that are very important fields as well, but require very well-prepared pioneers willing to risk their lives!)
63. I'D SAY THE NORTH AMERICANS FOR LATIN AMERICA & THE NEAR ORIENT, & THE NORTHERN EUROPEANS FOR ASIA & AFRICA, & THE MIDEAST would be pretty much a sensible, logical, reasonable type of recruiting.
64. I CERTAINLY DON'T BELIEVE IN GOING TO A FRUITFUL FIELD LIKE SPAIN & RECRUITING more missionaries for Latin America, unless some of them have gotten in a rut there & they do need to go. At least they speak the language & they are prepared & could be useful in a new Latin field.
65. I WOULD SAY IN SOME RARE EXCEPTIONAL CASES where people have worn themselves out or burned themselves out in the Iberian area, that maybe it might be well to ship them to Latin America, for at least that's a little bit closer & that's not too bad to catch a ship from there, & not too awfully expensive. For some places more nearby, particularly the Portuguese-speaking, Africa has a lot of Portuguese-speaking fields.
66. THERE ARE A LOT OF PLACES WHERE BRITISH CITIZENS CAN GO in Commonwealth countries where the Americans can't go. And lots of places in Africa & the Caribbean where the people speak French & could be well used. And of course there are lots of places in Africa & Latin America where people who can speak Spanish & Portuguese could be well used.--Also Dutch in East & West Indies.
67. YOU JUST NEED TO USE A LOT OF WISDOM & JUDGE EVERY SINGLE CASE ON ITS OWN as to whether they're fruitful & happy where they are & should stay there & not uproot again too soon when they haven't even hardly begun to grow roots again.
68. YOU JUST HAVE TO HAVE A LOT OF WISDOM to give wise, Godly counsel where asked for & needed. Each person must prayerfully make an intelligent knowledgeable choice based on prayer, counsel, circumstances, the leadings of the Lord & the Scriptures & the Letters, open doors, & even fleeces, as to what you should do, if you should go or if you are called to remain! Amen?
--GBAKYAMYAB! WLY!--M&M.
Copyright (c) 1997 by The Family
