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Memory Lane

What we've done since Gilead

I guess that I was the first to leave from Gilead -- and I missed a lot of the parties you all had as everyone gradually departed. I got to Japan and spent about 3 months in Tokyo with older Missionaries to get going in the language. Then, along with Maury and April, we were assigned to what was at the time, I think, the Northern-most Missionary Home in the world -- Akita. It is across the Sea of Japan from Vladivostok, Siberia.
I quickly fell in love with the Japanese people and culture and was “adopted” by a local family of pioneers. Not only did we foster the building of Kingdom Halls, and even the buying of property [unheard of at the time in Japan], but we saw good growth from one congregation in the City to about five soon after I left. Jehovah allowed us many spiritual children in that area!
In about ‘86 - ‘87 my family back home in Wisconsin had various difficulties; The Branch brothers reasoned with me that if I don’t return to help and something untoward happens, not only could I be blood guilty, but I might never be able to forgive myself. So home I went. After about three years things settled down, and I aimed to try to return to Japan. As all know, Brother Barry was the “High Priest” for the Japanese brothers -- he and Melba urged me to work with the Japanese in the States, “as the increase in Japan was "leveling off.”
At the same time, I fell in love with three people, Heidi and her two kids, Barnabas, 11, and Molly, 7. We married, and I became a “sudden” papa! Oi!

The Barrys still urged us to “go Japanese”, and we moved to San Diego at the direction of the Foreign Language Desk. We raised the kids there, in Japanese for nine years, after we had seen the Chicago Group become a Japanese Congregation in 1991.
The increase was still going strong in the U.S. Japanese field, and we saw the 200 at our Circuit Assemblies grow to about 800 by the year 2000 when we had to leave. We were too small in the U.S. to become a “real” Circuit, but we had our Pioneer Schools, Assemblies and Conventions, as well as the Elders’ School Reviews. Often we had three to five talks at our Conventions! We drew from Vancouver and Hawaii, and even New Zealand, as well as the U.S. west of the Mississippi!
We moved back to Wisconsin to handle our parents health problems: Heidi’s mother died in the fall of 2000, my father got Parkinson’s and lasted five years. Heidi’s father passing in 2005 of cancer. Only mother is left, blind and fragile now. We still helped out in Japanese from a distance, attending Chicago Japanese as we could, and getting to the Assemblies in L.A.
Barnabas married a Japanese sister, and lived in California, both Pioneering and he a Servant. Molly Pioneered “where the need is great” in HONOLULU! Then became ill, returned to us, and has never recovered. We followed her out to New York in 2005, but she never again has [yet] gotten going again in the Truth. Finally, as she moved away, Heidi and I decided to again go where the need is great. Since the Japanese field was not having increase, we were urged to try the English field in Mexico.