My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 51 discovery of gold in 1851 The town was started with great promise, but then the railroad was built in a different place and nothing much seemed to be happening at Jacksonville. During the depression, people there were very poor. Because it was well known that there was gold in them thar hills and in the creek, illegal tunnels were dug all over town. The garage floor of the house I was born in collapsed into one of those tunnels. Fortunately, our car was not in the garage at the time, so we didn’t lose anything. Fast forward a very few years. Myron Meehan, who would later become our friend, had a motorcycle when he was a teenager. Times were hard, and even enough money for motorcycle fuel was difficult to come by. Myron discovered a good solution to his problem. He and a friend would cycle over to Jacksonville on Sunday, pan for gold in the creek, and find enough to pay for a weeks’ worth of fuel and additionally cover the cost of a couple candy bars from the local store.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 52
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 53 My Dream When my parents and I were baptized together when I was nine years old, they were befriended by some very outlier church members. They told us—among other things—that church schools were just as bad as public schools. They had a huge influence on my parents for quite a while until the campmeeting for righteousness by faith people where we saw the daughter of the leader of the group who did not look or live at all like the parents were saying that we should. And yet her father seemed to be fine with what she was doing. That opened our eyes to their hypocrisy, and we found other more normal friends. Down the road a few years their influence still affected us. I remember the day that someone brought a birthday cake to my school classroom. The teacher said, “I’m sorry, Calvin, that you can’t enjoy this with us.” Since I and my family were vegans and didn’t eat between meals, I had no intention of eating cake. Thinking back on it now, I’m sure the teacher was trying to be kind, but at the time it was a stinging criticism. Our family saw that experience as evidence of how bad the school was. We were—supposedly—the only ones trying to do the right thing.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 54 When I graduated from the eighth grade my folks took me out of school with no intention that I would ever get any more education. My mother only had eight years of school. My dad graduated from high school, the first one in the family to do so. Since he was an electrician, he taught me to be an electrician, so I would not need to go further in school. We all believed that Jesus would come very soon, so why bother with things like education that would take up the time that we could be spending doing something important for the Lord. We always had Bible studies that we were giving to someone or other. They seemed to be mostly without result. Furthermore, we had stopped celebrating Christmas in any way and that alienated everyone in our family. For years I was embarrassed when I happened to see kids I had gone to school with. They were progressing through high school and then college. We had moved to a remote valley where my sister and I were almost the only young people in the church. We had only adult influences in our lives. Our family had a custom at breakfast time of sharing whatever dream we could remember from the night
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 55 before. When I was sixteen my mother and I were home alone when I told her that I had had an interesting dream the night before that was still very clear in my mind. I saw a map of Africa, and Tanganyika in East Africa had a light shining on it. A voice told me I would be a missionary there. At the time it was just a dream. Probably I remembered it just because I had told her about it. Many events had to happen down the road before the dream came true ten years later. It was the only time in my life I had a dream that turned out to really mean something. Within a year after that, a colporteur came to our church and told lots of stories about selling books in Texas where there were whole counties without a church. I was tremendously impressed that I should join in that work. My parents approved of my plans, so I bought a car for $395 and headed south. The next four years were very enjoyable. I was happy to be working for the Lord. It turned out I was pretty good at selling books, and I loved doing it. Every few months my parents would need to see me for some reason, and I would drive nonstop back to southern Oregon. I made lots of those trips. After listening to my enthusiastic stories for a couple years,
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 56 they decided they should move to Texas and get involved in the same endeavor. They sold the place they had worked so hard to build up. In some ways the move did not turn out to be a good one. I decided to go to school for a year to learn more about the Bible. I should have been helping my dad full time to sell books. He wasn’t very good at selling. My mother was very good at selling, but she got sick and stayed sick most of the time. Their savings evaporated and eventually they went back home to southern Oregon where my dad knew he would have plenty of electrical work. They found some land closer to town and after my year of school I did most of the building on that new house because dad was working so much. When that project was finished, I went back to Texas to work. Soon I was training student colporteurs. These were students who spent their summer selling books to raise money for their next year of college. The leaders who directed my work started telling me I should also go to college. That seemed impossible since I had only one year of high school, plus a couple credits I had taken by home study. They assured me I could take the GED test as an alternative to a high school diploma.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 57 In the fall of 1959 I started college, not at all sure I belonged there. In the weeks before, my good friends, Ronnie Appenzeller and his wife, invited me to go with them to check out Southern Missionary College. It was a long enjoyable drive, and we were quite impressed by the school until I got food poisoning from pie I ate in the cafeteria. When that happened, we headed straight home to Texas and registered as freshmen in Southwestern Junior College in Keene, Texas. If we had gone to college at Southern, I would have been a freshman together with a girl named Virginia Schuler who I would meet several years later. College was great. I started out sleeping in Appenzellers’ garage. I soon moved to the attic of an old folks’ home across the street. It was much cheaper than the dormitory and the cafeteria. I failed my first chemistry test because I didn’t realize it was timed. After that I made A’s. I was the best student in the Greek class under M. D. Lewis who was my all-time favorite teacher. By now I was twenty-one years old and thinking that it was about time to get married. I began dating a girl I had met as a colporteur. Life was becoming complete. By the end of the school year, I was ready to get married, but my girlfriend wanted to wait until after
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 58 graduation. Since that was a two-year school, I figured we had only one more year to wait. Since I started college so late, my sister Sharon had now graduated from Milo Academy. Somehow my parents’ ideas about education had shifted. She would start college the fall of my sophomore year. During that summer I sold books again with the idea of gaining a scholarship for each of us. There were some disasters along the way, but that is a different story. By the end of the summer, I did indeed have scholarships for both of us. The second year was mostly a repeat of the good first year. I still lived in the attic and ate the same oatmeal the old folks did every day. At the end of the year, I found out my girlfriend meant she wanted to graduate from four years of college before she got married. Oh dear! I suggested we go to the same college, but her mind was set on graduating from a particular nursing school that was not near a college I could attend. My third year I went to college in northern California. And my senior year my sister persuaded me to transfer to a college in Washington state. That year my longdistance relationship fell apart. At twenty-five I was
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 59 right back where I had been four years before with no idea about the future, except I knew I wanted to go back to selling books. Near the end of that senior school year, I received an invitation to be sent to Andrews University for one year of advanced training by the Oregon Conference, which meant I would be a pastor in Oregon after I completed the year of school. With much prayer and thought I decided to accept the offer which totally changed my plans for the future. In Michigan I met Virginia Schuler, five years after we could have started college together. Including a year in Mexico, she had taken five years to finish college, so in Michigan she was a senior. The next summer we got married. Almost immediately we applied for mission service because Virginia spoke Spanish and hoped to work in a Spanish speaking country. What was our surprise when we received a letter from the mission board which stated, “We would like to send you to serve in Tanzania, which was formerly Tanganyika. We worked in Tanzania for almost ten years, and many times the memory of that dream gave us courage that God had guided us there.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 60
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 61 Getting Our Shipment We arrived in Mbeya with only the airlines luggage our little bug would hold. Virginia used most of her suitcase space for clothes and diapers for Jennifer who turned five weeks old the day we arrived in Africa. For herself, Virginia brought three dresses and wore her winter coat since we traveled through Europe in February. Because Mbeya was 5,500 feet elevation and very cool, she wore her coat over one of the dresses every day. As you will know from another story, it wasn’t long before we had no car to drive. As I was traveling by bus to visit churches, my suitcase with my Sabbath suit and other clothes was stolen when a bus slowed down on a hill, and thieves were able to climb onto the roof and throw down some luggage. The local pastor was with me and lost his clothes as well. We had paperwork on the crates that had been shipped for us and hoped they would arrive soon with sweaters and other clothes. One month went by, a second month went by, the third and fourth months went by. We knew shipments could take a long time, but that seemed like enough time had passed. When I contacted
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 62 the shipping agent to ask when we could expect our crates, he assured me it would be very soon. Another month or two went by. Again, I contacted the agent in Dar es Salaam. This time he told me the truck was on its way to Iringa which was approximately halfway to Mbeya. That was very good news, and we were happy—for a few days. But no truck showed up. The next call, he told me the truck broke down and had to return to Dar es Salaam, but another would be coming soon. By now we had waited for more than six months. It might have been approaching eight months. Enough already. After a couple more calls that were answered with more blatant lies, I had lost patience. I caught a bus and traveled to Dar es Salaam. Arriving there early in the morning, just as it was beginning to get light, I walked the streets until I found the office of the shipping agent. Looking through the windows I could read the address on our crates. All of them were there. Next, I went and found a trucking company that was willing to help me. They promised to meet me at the agent’s office at 9 am with helpers to move the crates.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 63 At 9 o’clock sharp the driver, helpers and I walked into the now open office and carried out the crates without saying anything to anyone. One person walked over and tried to engage us in conversation. We ignored him and finished the job. Two days later, just hours after I returned home on the bus, we saw the beautiful sight of the truck coming up the hill and shortly afterward offloading all the crates. It was the greatest ever Christmas, although the date was way off.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 64
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 65 Building a Bridge The bridge on the road off the Rift Valley dirt highway into Mbeya Mission had deteriorated to the extent that it was dangerous for a vehicle to enter. I realized it was essential that a new bridge be built. But what to do? I had never before built a bridge or even dreamed of doing such a thing. My job description said nothing about building bridges, and nobody else had any such skills either. I was officially the Mission Director, so I determined to try. I had noticed that whenever an accident happened on the steep Rift Valley road, the wrecked vehicle was never removed. It lay where it had landed until time and exposure returned it to the earth. Once this semi-emergency was on my mind, I measured the needed width and length for a bridge. Soon afterward I saw that a good-looking truck bed was down off of the road not far beyond the mission. I took a couple people with me to examine it. We measured its length and width and determined that it could serve the purpose. Then we found a larger group of men to help. I backed the Volkswagen up to the edge of the road above the wreck. The men and I clambered down the
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 66 hill to the truck bed and began to pull, slide, and roll it upward. With enough manpower it was possible to get it close to the car. Then we fastened it with a rope attached to the car. I drove and they shepherded the metal down the hill to the mission. First, we had to remove the existing bridge. It was so rotten that it did not take long. We were thankful no vehicle had ever gone into the swift running creek below it. Our next task was to build supporting rock walls on each side of the creek. None of the rocks had to go into the water, so it didn’t take more than a few days for the rock walls to harden. Anyone wanting to enter or leave during that time had to wade through the creek. The day arrived, as numerous onlookers stood by, to put the truck bed in place. With enough helpers to do the lifting, some of them down in the creek, we managed to cement the metal onto the rock walls. Once situated, its weight was enough to hold it firmly in place. Next, we built side rails to protect vehicles and pedestrians. At last, all was in readiness. The onlookers surged across the new bridge, eager to try it out. Not far behind were
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 67 vehicles, also eager to test its roadworthiness. One of them knocked down the side rails. That was it. They were never replaced. Now it is approaching sixty years later and as far as I know that bridge is still serving the mission.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 68
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 69 A Tanzanian History Lesson Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) was a statement adopted by the Cabinet of Rhodesia on 11 November 1965, announcing that Southern Rhodesia or simply Rhodesia, a British territory in southern Africa that had governed itself since 1923, now regarded itself as an independent sovereign state. It was the culmination of a protracted dispute between the British and Rhodesian governments regarding the terms under which the latter could become fully independent. It was the first unilateral break from the United Kingdom by one of its colonies since the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. The UK, the Commonwealth and the United Nations all deemed Rhodesia’s UDI illegal, and economic sanctions, the first in the UN’s history, were imposed on the breakaway colony. Amid near-complete international isolation, Rhodesia continued as an unrecognized state, representing only the white population of about 5% of the total population, until 1978 when movement was made toward a majority government [Adapted from Wikipedia]. Since we moved to Tanzania in 1966 and left in 1978, we were affected by this history.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 70 To influence political opinion, Zambia began to truck its petroleum products and copper bars south through Tanzania. The unpaved road became known as Hell Run for several reasons. First was the many, many accidents that took place among the trucks. According to widespread opinion, one dead body of a driver was flown out per day. Another reason for the name was the condition of the road. Enveloped in dust during the dry season and lashed by rainstorms during the wet season, the road became more and more deeply rutted. All drivers had to carefully avoid the ruts by straddling them. At times that wasn’t possible because the potholes were so big and deep that a Volkswagen Bug could have been turned upside down in one and not noticed by the passing vehicles. To say the least, journeying along that road was hazardous. In addition, it was not a very workable plan for the government of Zambia. Most of their petroleum and copper bars actually did continue to be exported and imported through Southern Rhodesia. My work forced me to frequently travel that road. Virginia trembled every time I was out there facing
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 71 those conditions. She chose to stay close to home with our two babies, Jennifer a toddler and Darcy an infant. She has recently confessed that every time I left, she immediately decided what she would do if I did not make it back. God was good, and I always came home safely. I came home with stories of counting 42 truck accidents between Dar es Salaam and Mbeya where we lived. That was about 500 miles. The wrecked trucks would be left sitting wherever they landed. Then traffic would have to drive out in the bush around them. At times other wrecks would take place out there, and the bypass would have to move further out into the bush. Most of the truck drivers were inexperienced and had never had so much money. They would spend a lot of it on women and booze along the way which did not help their driving skills. We took two trips on another highway in order not to drive on Hell Run. We needed to go to the Union headquarters in Busegwe which was north of Mwanza, far to the northwest of Tanzania. Looking at the map we noticed a thin line that looked like a minor road. It definitely did not follow Hell Run, and it was much more
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 72 direct that the main highway which would have been 900 miles, so we decided to try it out. Our Mbeya Mission was out of town along the edge of the Rift Valley. We made the back seat and the floor of the car into a bed for the children. After they ate supper and were dressed in pajamas, we put them to bed in the car and set off about six in the evening for unknown points north. At the entrance to the Mission, we turned left and started up the incline of the Rift Valley. After maybe forty miles we had reached the highest point and saw the road we were looking for on the right. By them we were on a plateau. The world was very dark and silent around us, and no house or cars were anywhere to be seen. But the road was flat and smooth, almost as though it had been paved at one time. Virginia soon joined the children in sleeping, and I drove on into the night. About midnight Virginia woke up. Then I was sleepy, and she drove until morning. It was the perfect way to travel with the kiddoes, because they slept straight through until about 7 a.m. We knew that at some point we would reach the town of Itigi and the railroad that bisected the country from north to south. There we would find a service station, hopefully with
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 73 gasoline. Before we reached there, we traveled 164 miles without seeing a vehicle. We found out at some point that that area of Tanzania is famous for reticulated giraffe. I think we saw one once. We did have one exciting experience. Suddenly, as we drove, a very long snake reared up his head and looked at us through the windshield. How long would he have to be in order to raise his head that far? We sped up and drove over him. Driving over snakes doesn’t hurt them unless you slam on the brakes at the very moment you are crossing the body. That would be difficult to do and we had no desire to kill a snake so far out in the bush where there was nobody for him to hurt or annoy. We successfully bought gasoline and continued our trip to the Union office. North of Itigi we saw many more signs of life. The trip was so pleasant that we did it again later. The second time, when we reached the service station at the railroad track, they were out of petrol (gasoline). With no other options we bought several gallons of kerosene but didn’t pour them in until the car was stopping from lack of fuel. Then we put in the kerosene and drove on with the engine rattling like a bucket filled
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 74 with stones. We managed to complete that trip also. Then I had to entirely overhaul the engine. After that it worked fine again. Cars back then weren’t filled with computers, so they could be fixed by amateurs. I overhauled our cars several times. Those were interesting years in Tanzania. In addition to Hell Run, the country turned directly left into socialism with the Arusha Declaration made by President Julius Nyerere. He was incorruptible but too idealistic. He said the country should pull itself up by its own bootstraps. The problem was, too few people had boots, let alone bootstraps. After that we saw a big difference in the stores. Many items we had depended on before were no longer available. Another problem was the lack of schools. Many children had to wait until they were ten years old to begin elementary school. All the schools at first were in English, but soon they were in Swahili. But the English language was still required to enter the university. That ensured that top-level families would be the ones whose children got into university, because they had opportunities to learn English. Average families had no such privilege, so the power stayed with the people who already had it.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 75 As a result, groups of parents began to hold their own schools for their local children. That way they could enter their children at the right age, control the curriculum, and find English teachers to make sure their children were able to progress into university. Another historic trend was the effort to break down the tribal identity by mixing together all tribes throughout the country. The plan was to make the population feel more Tanzanian, rather than just identifying with their local tribe. The country had 126 tribes. This effort was called Ujamaa, or “familyhood”. Very few people wanted to cooperate, so the government forced 80-90% of the population to move into totally different areas than they had known before. A truck with soldiers would drive up to their house where after years of saving they had been able to put on a metal roof. With whips the soldiers would force them onto the back of the truck with whatever they could carry. Then they were driven away, leaving behind the rock or tree in the yard that they considered their god. To make matters worse, there was a drought that year. People saw it as a direct result of angry spirits and the government edict. May people died of starvation.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 76 Years later, in the 90’s, I made a trip back to Tanzania and found that the country had progressed a lot. People were much better off. Even though many of them felt that Ujamaa had failed, I saw that they now looked at themselves as Tanzanians. I didn’t hear anyone talking about their local tribe.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 77 Cars and More Cars When we arrived in East Africa, 23 and 27 years old, we had to buy a car. Wealthy people drove Land Rovers and Mercedes, so-so people drove Peugeots, and poor people like us drove Volkswagens. Friends helped us find a used “bug.” We had the luggage we had arrived with in Nairobi, Kenya, and our new baby Jennifer. Well-meaning people told us we also had to take a dog with us to move the almost eight hundred miles south to Mbeya, Tanzania, our destination. Friends of friends gave us a huge dog. He was a German shepherd mix, known in East Africa as an Alsatian. The original owners referred to him as a missionary dog because he would not bark. Fortunately, common sense prevailed, and we left Nairobi without the dog. Our first day on the road was a nightmare. After a few miles of nice Kenya pavement, we turned south into Tanzania and faced almost 800 miles of dirt roads. Not just dirt, but corrugated dirt. For some reason, between the rare occasions when the road was graded, the dirt turned itself under the wheels of vehicles into humps and valleys, just like corduroy cloth but on a grand scale.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 78 That meant that the whole day was going to be an unending series of bumps. I figured out that if I went fast enough, the car just jumped over the valleys and hit all the tops of the humps. But at the same time, it was important to pay close attention to what was coming up. Bigger holes and stranded rocks had to be avoided. By the end of the day, I knew I had made more decisions than any day before in my entire life. The vibration was such that the back fenders would begin to split in the shape of an upside-down letter U. Overtime, the split continued until pieces of the fender would break off unless you caught it in time and got it welded. We spent that first night exhausted in the grand railroad hotel in Dodoma, the town at the center of the country. They served supper with about seventeen pieces of silverware. Dodoma is now the new capital. Then it was a dusty village. Virginia dreamed all night that she was still on a corrugated road. The next day was a repeat process. We were supposed to spend that night at the Kibidula farm that had been left to the church by escaping South African farmers. When we got close, we couldn’t find it. Instead, we
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 79 accidently drove up to an amazing scene. Everywhere was hip-high tall grass with several thatched roofed buildings, one very large. A barefoot giant in shorts waded out and insisted that we come in. We told him we were looking for Kibidula, but he assured us there was nobody there to take care of us for the night, so we needed to stay with him. We were very doubtful and not a little afraid. But he was insistent. When we entered the large building, we were astonished to see massive intricately carved furniture, and huge family portraits. He had inherited them in England and shipped them out to his thatched-roof house. His huge dining room walls were hung with paintings, just as you would expect in a castle dining room in England. On the wall hung a bison head that his grandfather had shot when he was hunting with Teddy Roosevelt in the United States. As we learned from him that night, and as other people who knew him told us later, he was wounded in North Africa during the Second World War, spent time in a north African hospital, and converted to Islam. Since that allowed him four wives, he married at least three African women. The smaller thatched-roofed houses belonged to them. His English wife and two sons left
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 80 and returned to England. He lived seventy miles from the nearest town and told us he would be hitch-hiking there early the next morning. We didn’t see any vehicle or any other person. He loved talking to us and was very hospitable. At bedtime he showed us a bedroom and said breakfast would be ready whenever we wanted it in the morning. There was no electricity, so the night seemed very dark and long. I got up early and looked in the kitchen then told Virginia she would not want to see what it looked like there. The reason was that all the cooking was done over three stones, so black smoke covered everything. Our host was long gone, so we ate some white toast and jam, the quintessential breakfast for foreigners, and soon got on our way. By noon that day we had reached our new home at the Mbeya Mission. There was a church, a clinic, and a school. Our house was up at the top of the hill at the end of the road. The house was far better than we had envisioned, even though it was made of mud bricks. One room was new and nice. All the others, two other bedrooms, living room, dining room, front porch office, kitchen with a kerosene refrigerator and a separate little room for a
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 81 wood stove were old but ample. We didn’t realize yet that rats could claw their way through the mud bricks around the pipes. Water came from a supply that descended the hill behind the house and was caught in a large cistern. The house was wired, but there was no electricity. Kerosene lamps were used for lighting. Before we had time to do more than take our belongings from the car, we were visited by a delegation. The pastor, the dispenser from the clinic and a couple other important people were there to say that I had to turn around and take a widow and her children to Kibidula. Her husband was the head elder of a nearby church who had died of a heart attack as he offered the closing prayer. She had nowhere to live, so it was decided to send her to the farm at Kibidula where she could help with the farm and raise enough food for herself and her two small children. They did not want Virginia to go, because the car space was needed for the family. Virginia burst into tears and refused to stay by myself for the first night in that house. She sat in front with me, Jennifer, her diaper bag and a purse. The lady and her children sat in the back
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 82 with their belongings stuffed around them and behind the seat. In the front, under the hood, her bag of corn just fit. Off we went, with better instructions on how to find Kibidula. It was about dark when we arrived there. After delivering the family to the resident farmer, we were sent to the big house to spend the night. Every room had a huge fireplace because, at 6,000 feet elevation, it was cold. Even in the dark, every room was spacious and looked very nice. It had been built by the South African farmer who lived there for years. Finally, it became clear that politics made it dangerous for South Africans to stay in Tanzania. The wife of that family was an Adventist, so they prepared the necessary paperwork for the church then fled in the middle of the night. We were very surprised years later to find out that the big house had been torn down. It seemed super special to us. But by then a large group of farmers and teachers had built homes and were running some kind of training school for local people.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 83 After a good night’s rest at Kibidula, we got up early the next morning and returned to Mbeya. At 5,500 feet elevation it was also chilly, but not quite so cold as Kibidula. Mbeya town was three and a half miles away. We went there every few days to buy food in the market and in Indian stores. I immediately began driving out to other towns and churches to visit members and do what I could to help. We heard that a few Adventists from Zambia were living in a town several miles to our west. One Friday we decide to take the local pastor and go find them and spend the weekend with them. The road was bad, and it was late afternoon before we reached the village. After a search we found the church walls they had built. Villagers told us they had some kind of immigration problem and had all gone back to Zambia which wasn’t far to the south. Since there were no Adventists and certainly no place to stay, we started back home at sunset. Once again on the rough, rocky road, the back wheels slipped into a rut and we heard something hit the bottom of the car, but we paid no attention to it and kept going. After a mile or two we noticed a red light. It didn’t seem to be the correct light for the oil gauge, so we kept going. The light stayed on, so after a couple more miles I
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 84 got out and checked the oil. None showed on the stick. We were miles from home, in the dark, with no help anywhere around. Checking under the car, I found that the bottom of the oil pan had been pushed up on one side. I had a little bit of spare oil in the car. Virginia remembered that her aunt bought a car and later discovered that the same thing had happened to it, but soap had been plastered in the slot to stop the oil leak. That was the only thing we could think of to try, so she pulled out the bar of soap that we had brought to use over the weekend, and I layered it bit by bit into the bottom of the oil pan. Then I carefully poured in a little of the spare oil I had, and found that it did not leak out, so I poured in the rest. By no means was it enough, but what else to do? The car started and we drove slowly a couple miles and saw a light in the distance over on the right. We followed a path to the house with the light and woke up an Indian man who was able to give us a little more oil. It was enough to get us home that night, with the engine rattling ominously. We knew the engine was ruined. So started the saga of our first car emergency. We were happy to be back home. But, within a couple days we knew we have also caught malaria along with
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 85 wrecking the engine. So that used up a few days recovering. I took the engine to the local mechanic who was from Alsace-Lorraine. He instructed me to take it apart. It seemed that the bearings were bad. So, the bearings were flown to Nairobi. But when they came back, they did not fit, so the whole engine had to be flown to Nairobi. It was months before it came back. In the meantime, I rode buses to visit churches, catching tropical diseases along the way. Either I or the house boy walked the three miles across the mountain to the market to buy food. That was half a mile shorter than following the road. When the engine was sent back, the factory in Nairobi had tried grinding the casing to straighten it. Aluminum does not grind well. This time the bearings fit, but when oil was poured in, it ran out through cracks and holes like water. The mechanic said, “Why don’t you plaster fiberglass all over the bottom of the engine?” It worked, and the rest of the life of the car it ran with fiberglass holding the casing together. Later we were driving to Nairobi via Musoma and the Union office at Busegwe when we came around a
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 86 corner and a child threw a rock at the windshield. It shattered into a million pieces and fell into the car. Virginia had Jennifer standing on her lap facing her, so she got a lot of tiny pin prick spots of blood on her back. She didn’t even cry. We cleaned up the mess as best we could, but then we had to drive without a windshield. The amazing thing was that by rolling up all the windows we found we could drive without even feeling the air coming in. In Nairobi we took the car to Googi’s shop. We had a mutual friend who recommended him. He was the one who cared for Jomo Kenyatta’s car. A Sikh, he was about seven feet tall, a most commanding and impressive person. Through the years he was to help us more than once to fix broken down cars. He was also the original owner of the dog we left in Nairobi. Not only did he fix the windshield, but he discovered that a much more serious problem existed. Underneath the front end of a Volkswagen are two strong pieces of metal that hold the wheels to the car suspension, stabilizing the front of the car frame. The roads we traveled on had broken off one side of the front suspension and was about to break off the other side. If
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 87 that had happened, we would have had no control of the car. In course of time, Darcy was born. When he was about two months old, I was back doing evangelism in villages. Another family came to stay with us while their baby was born. They had come from the States to live at Kibidula which was much farther away from a hospital. In Mbeya we had a Baptist hospital with American doctors. Until the time their baby was born, the husband was helping me with my work. Then he went and stayed in Mbeya with his two-year-old son until his wife and baby were back in our house. At that point he was ready to join me again. He came back down the 70 miles in his Volkswagen Microbus. Virginia chose to go with him so she could return with our Volkswagen bug and have a vehicle to use. An American Peace Corp worker went along with her. They also took the other family’s two-year-old, as well as Jennifer who was twenty months and Darcy who was two months. The trip down through Tukuyu and on to Ntaba went well. Ntaba was close to Lake Malawi. I wanted them to see the lake, so we took a quick side trip to see the beautiful lake with its dugout canoes.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 88 Here is the rest of this story in Virginia’s words: We started home and realized we couldn’t possibly get there before dark. We had to make a choice. Go back the same way we had come which included road construction with no lights or protection of any kind or go a remote back road. When we reached Tukuyu I took the children one at a time into the country club bathroom to change their diapers and put on pajamas. Then I had bottles of milk for all of them. They soon settled down to sleep. That finished, we headed for home. The back road seemed safer, so we chose to go that way. The road was gravel but good since it had very little traffic. A bus went through there one time a week. We climbed higher and higher into the mountains, then fog began to obstruct our way. It grew denser as the moments passed. I had to lean out the window to follow the edge of the road. We now realized we had no flashlight, no matches, no food, no water. We hadn’t thought about any of that before because we expected to be home much sooner. Eventually we came down the mountain, got out of the fog and reached home about ten o’clock at night, much to our great relief and the relief of the waiting mother.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 89 The next morning, I was ready to prepare breakfast when I realized that I had run out of gas for the stove. At that point I wasn’t using the wood stove all the time because it was cumbersome and slow. I decided to rush to the garage three miles away to get a new tank of gas. Just as I was turning into the garage, someone began to point at my front left tire. When I pulled up and got out to look, lo and behold, I had a flat tire. A wave of thanksgiving passed over me as I thought that I had not had to change a tire in the middle of the night without a flashlight on a dark and foggy road that was known to be frequented by leopards. I told the garage man I needed a tank of gas and the tire to be fixed. He opened the front and said, “But you don’t have a spare.” (Calvin) Now back to my stories. Somewhere we bought a Volkswagen Microbus. That allowed us to sell our bug to a student missionary. He used it without changing the oil or cleaning out the air filter or paying for it. When he was ready to leave, he brought it back to us. It ran until it reached our yard. At that point it stopped, and it was anybody’s guess whether it would ever run again. We tied it to the nearest tree.
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 90 Somewhat later I had to go to Nairobi to pick up someone important who was coming to hold a seminar. We drove back the nearly 400 miles to Morogoro where we then lived. When we stopped at the post office and then restarted the car, it was only possible to drive in first gear. We limped up the hill to our house expecting to return to Nairobi the next day. I thought I would be able to fix the car in no time. I pulled out the engine, and discovered it was not so simple. It was something wrong with the transmission. It became obvious that I could not make the trip the next day, so I arranged for the man to go back to Nairobi by bus. (I’m sure he was thrilled.) Then I again turned my attention to fixing the car. First, I took the engine to a recommended mechanic. He dismantled it into little bitty pieces and spread them across his shop. After a couple days I saw the handwriting on the wall, went and gathered up the pieces, and began to put them back together again at our house. Then I went and talked to the Frenchman who lived across the street and was there to train mechanics. He looked at the engine and said it would need to go to
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 91 Nairobi where they had a machine that would automatically get the timing right. But I hoped something faster and easier would work, so I took the engine to Dar es Salaam to the one Volkswagen garage in the country. They were sure they could fix it. Then they said I had to bring the car so they could take care of it. I got a big rope and tied it to the front of the engineless car. I found a truck along the road and asked the drivers to pull me. They were willing and did indeed pull the combi 120 miles into Dar es Salaam to the garage. However, when that garage thought they had fixed it, it was not fixed. For one thing, they left bolts lying in the bottom of the crank case! Time spares us some of the bad memories. We can’t remember how we got the combi back from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro. Undoubtedly, we imposed on endless friends and strangers. However, the next-door neighbor again assured us the engine had to go to Nairobi. But how could we get it there? It was time to reconstruct the bug tied to the tree. Someone helped us pull it to a garage close by in Morogoro. In a few days they had cleaned up the engine and it would start. It was just before sundown on Friday when I went to get it. The mechanic and I took it for a
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 92 ride and discovered quickly that they had forgotten something important, like putting oil in it, but a few days later it did actually run. So, the combi engine went onto the floor in the back, and I drove it to Nairobi to Googi’s shop. In two hours, it was fixed right. Rather than bringing it right back, Googi persuaded me to leave the bug to be restored to pristine condition. Thus, I took the bus back to Morogoro. A few weeks later the children and Virginia went to Kenya with the Chitticks. When they returned, the combi engine was on the floor of their land rover with blankets and children on top. At last, we could drive the microbus again. But the bug was still being restored in Nairobi. Then Tanzania closed the border with Kenya. We tried every known way to get the car back over the border. Shipping it down the coast was impossible. Driving across the border was illegal. Then we received a letter from the government saying they would charge us $10,000 if we did not bring the car back! It was furlough time. Before we left, we told some friends that they could use the bug when they were in Nairobi for the birth of their child. The wife was at risk
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 93 for some health problems, so they received permission to fly to Kenya for the birth. By that time the car was fixed, so they took it and put on five safety devices to be sure the car could not be stolen. When they returned to Tanzania, they brought along the car keys and the keys to all the safety devices. Also, before we went on furlough we asked our good friend, Dr. Ken Hart, who lived close to the Kenya border, to retrieve the car if the border opened. Sure enough, while we were gone it again became possible to cross into Kenya. Ken took a bus to Nairobi, found the car, discovered there were no keys, had to cut off the safety devices and then hotwire the car. When he drove back to the border he couldn’t stop the engine, because then it would be obvious he had no keys. Somehow, by God’s grace, he was able to get the car back into Tanzania. We found it there, in pristine condition, when we returned from furlough. This is actually a short version of all the car trouble we had in Tanzania. But by now, you have probably heard as much as you can stand. We have also remembered as much as we can stand. We will spare you the story of arriving home after a 1700-mile trip. That was with our nicer, newer combi that we bought a few years later. As
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 94 I pulled into our yard a valve went through a piston. We don’t remember the details of what we did about that. Also, we won’t tell you about hitting our beloved dog. It is no wonder that Virginia says we died and went to heaven when we moved to Singapore!
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 95 Resources After Sixty Years The first Adventist missionaries arrived in Tanganyika, East Africa, in 1906. Sixty years later, in early 1966, Virginia and I with our five-week-old daughter Jennifer arrived. My responsibility was Mission Station Director for Mbeya Mission and the surrounding area which extended about 50 miles in each direction. Mbeya was the furthest south town of moderate size on the main road south from Kenya which continued beyond the border down into Zambia and other points south. We were many hundreds of miles from the nearest Adventist missionaries in Tanzania. Some were a little closer in Kenya to the north, and much closer in Malawi to the south, but the political situation meant that we could not cross the southern border. I found that church members had only slight knowledge of the Bible. Most did not own one. I remember sitting in a baptismal class noting that there was zero interaction. No questions were asked or encouraged. It was just preaching, to fulfill the requirement of two years in the baptismal class before being baptized. With nothing but listening, even after baptism students understood very little. I looked around to see what
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 96 resources were available for assisting in Bible study. Amazingly, there were none. After sixty years, there was not even a simple list of Bible verses to anchor people’s comprehension. The teachers had no way of knowing what their students were learning because they never heard anything from them. An idea began to float around in my mind that we needed Bible lessons that church members could share with others to witness and advance their own learning. It took some time for this thought to jell into action. Meanwhile I held meetings in various locations, traveled often, had serious car issues, welcomed a new baby boy, moved so that Virginia could teach English in the boarding academy, and generally lived life one day at a time. Two years went by. The Union planned a major evangelistic meeting to be held in Dar es Salaam, the capital city. They invited an evangelist from Australia and assigned three missionary families and nineteen Tanzanian pastors to assist him. A big tent was erected in the middle of the city. Crowds came every night. The choir sang the same song every night. All went well for a short time. One evening just as the meeting was about to begin, a government official arrived and said, “We gave permission for these
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 97 meetings to be held. Now we withdraw permission, and you will not meet tonight or any other night.” After brief consultation, the evangelist and all the assistants left. I and two Tanzanian pastors were assigned to continue the meetings in the church building that was off on the edge of town. In our own building we did not need government approval. One of the two pastors soon moved to a different area, so Pastor Gumali and I were alone. As he and I studied and prayed, it was more than ever evident that we needed Bible lessons. The people who had been faithfully attending the meetings in the middle of town disappeared because they could not afford the bus fare to come to meetings at the church. I rode a Vespa motor scooter all over town trying to find them, to encourage them to attend. None of them came. Fortunately. others did attend and we had some success. Now I knew for sure that there was a need for lessons that would necessitate the students answering questions rather than just listening. As Pastor Gumali and I continued to study, we found important statements about the need for all church members to
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 98 be involved in witnessing. The pastors alone can never finish the work. Those who are witnessing are learning. Everyone needed the experience that would help them understand better the various Bible subjects. At the close of those meetings, Virginia and I rushed back to Mbeya after being away for months and packed up everything we had left behind. It took us two days. That allowed us one more day before the truck could arrive. We spent that time visiting a beautiful waterfall we had not seen or heard of before. I don’t remember who told us about it or where it was. Then we moved to Morogoro. I began to concentrate on writing lessons using a mastery learning format. The “teacher” would ask a Bible question and help the student find the appropriate Bible verse. After the student read the verse, seeing the Bible answer, he/she would answer the question in his own words. Upon turning over the page, the correct answer could be compared with that given by the student. Each lesson had about ten questions. At the end of the lesson the “teacher” would again review the questions, and then ask the decision question that was written at
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 99 the bottom of the page. After such study, even if the student were illiterate, he/she could usually say the correct answers. It was clear that this method guided students to real understanding. Ultimately there were thirty-four lessons. I put a lot of study and prayer into writing the lessons. My only plan was to use them for the people I worked with in Tanzania General Field that had been newly established. The headquarters was in Morogoro where we were living. It covered most of the country of Tanzania. First, I took the lessons to Dodoma in the middle of the country where the church had eight members. We studied together and prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide and impress hearts. Then we went door-to-door with a simple survey which led people to the option of studying the Bible with the church members. In an hour and a half we found fifty-two people who wanted to study. Six months later there were nine individuals who were ready for baptism. Churches began to hear of the results we were having, and they requested copies of the lessons for their churches. The news spread and I could not keep up with
My Life Stories by Calvin Lloyd Smith 100 the demand. I paid three lay leaders to help me go to the churches and teach the new method of study. They were Herry Mhando who later held worldwide evangelistic meetings, Jeremiah Mgogo who converted several whole churches to become Adventists, and Brother Maramoko. Brother Maramoko was in a village training two people to teach the lessons. As they walked down a road, a lady looked at them, then turned around and ran back into her house. When they approached, she brought out her husband, pointed at the three workers and said, “These are the people I saw in my dream. And these are the lessons I saw.” She took the course and was baptized. That story flew around the country and sparked great interest. The only way we could prepare sets of lessons was to use a hand-operated duplicating machine. This was soon too slow and cumbersome to meet the demand. We were praying for a solution to this problem, but the Union had no money to publish the lessons. Then a blind literature evangelist in Holland sent enough money to print an initial supply.