People would come up to me and say, "Oh! YOU'RE the one."
And I would answer, "What one?!??"
Then she or he would say, "One of the ones that Bishop May keeps talking about all over the world."
"Huh?"
"He says that a woman who had been translating American military documents into Russian and a woman who had been a specialist in Soviet Military Affairs were sitting together planning to reach out to former Soviet immigrants in America for Jesus."
And so the following summer, I found myself walking down an aisle in an almost empty conference room in Washington DC during a break in the Baltimore Washington Annual Conference get-together.
He asked me, "You don't mind when I talk about you and the woman from Moscow working for the GBGM, do you?"
I rolled my eyes and replies, "Well, since you seem to be implying that I was doing something totally different by working for the Lord then working for the US government, I do mind. I was always doing what I felt called to do when I was in military service, and in ministry. At the same time, I think we are giving her the benefit of the doubt in many ways, because there may have been a big conversion, and maybe not!"
The bishop seemed rather irritated with me and drop the conversation.
In the spring I had had a recurring dream where a Russian man was talking to me similar to the way a man from Macedonia talked to St. Paul. Whenever I seem to be doing something or dreaming about something that has to do with an apostle or a prophet or someone like that, the Lord makes me worried.
So I felt forewarned. My best friend from seminary who lived in an apartment next-door to me with her three kids, while my daughter lived there with me during vacations and without me but with my son in the summer, was staying with me in the hotel, as usual. On the second morning of the conference, my friend woke up before I did so after I was ready to go downstairs, I was looking for her. I also had a question to ask of somebody in the conference connection room, so I was waiting outside the door way when somebody came rushing up saying that there were some pastors from Russia and they needed help with them. He wasn't talking to me, but I said I spoke Russian and could help. He said, "No, the pastor speaks English, so we don't need any help like that."
In the dreams that I had been having the Russian man in the dreams had said "You have to help us. They keep doing what they want to do and don't listen to us about what we say we need."
Subsequently I went up the escalator to the main lobby floor and lo and behold, I saw my friend and roommate speaking with a little group of people there. I came up to the edge of the circle, and heard that they were talking to a Russian man, a Russian woman, and a Russian teenage boy.
The man spoke English in a basic way, but the woman and the boy did not speak English at all. When I was introduced to them, I spoke Russian to them, and they all looked relieved. It turned out that the sponsors of the Russian pastor were the people in the church that my friend was serving.
The Americans asked me to come to lunch with the Russians who were joining the bishop and other pastors so that I could escort interpret for them. I did that, and that's when the bishop found out that I spoke Russian, and that I was also from his hometown of Chicago, even though we were both on the East Coast.
When, as everyone else did, I talked about my hometown and where I was serving in ministry, the bishop gave me a baleful look when I said I was from his hometown. However, he was a civil rights advocate and African-American, so I said quickly, "I know we were not living in the same Chicago," to which you smugly nodded in reply.
Along with the recurring dreams, I had been fussing at the Lord to be serving three world churches in America when I had hoped to be serving in Russia or at least at the General Board of Global Ministries.
At that time in the mid to late 90s, the GBGM of the Unites Methodist Church was not at all open to women becoming missionaries, unless they were spouses of missionaries or promoted by the Women's Division, that's still mostly called women who went overseas in mission "deaconesses".
In answer to my fussing at the Lord, he both seem to be telling me to be patient, and asking me to trust Him.
I was saying to him that it didn't seem like he remembered why I thought he had called me to ministry, and I felt like he had forgotten what I had asked him about serving in the former Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, by Saturday night of the conference, I had all the answers to my questions. Besides being able to be open in front of about 1200 people helping to translate for the pastor and his wife, and their son, there was another bishop who spoke at the Saturday dinner.
Lots of times we become captive audience is to bishops and they like to hit their own soapbox subjects. That bishop started to talk about being in a fast food restaurant in the Midwest, when someone very rude spoke to a person who was not white, and the bishop said, "Just stop it!"
He was very angry about it and made it clear that he felt that enough was enough concerning racism.
Then he started talking about some missionaries in Liberia. And he talked about a woman missionary who was the wife of a man who had been an agricultural missionary of the Methodist Church, and then gone back to the US to become a pastor, and returned as a missionary to the Methodist Missionary near Monrovia, Liberia.
His wife became ill with a problem that would have been easy to address if they were in the US. but the decision was made by the missionary sending organization that they would not bring her home to the US to have the surgery she needed. Sadly, she died because of not been given the medical care she needed. When she knew that she was going to pass away, she asked that her body be sent back to the US, but that her heart would be buried in Liberia.
The first time I had heard that story was on the evening before I answered my call to ministry that I had had since I was six years old. The person who told the story was the husband missionary of the woman whose heart was buried in the Methodist Mission Compoud in Liberia.
So who is this bishop who also, by the way knew my grandmother in northern Indiana, telling the same story that I had heard the night before I answered my call to ministry, on the first anniversary of the evening before my ordination. So that answered the accusation I had made to God that he was not paying attention to me or remembering why he had called me to ministry.
By the end of the conference when I was saying goodbye to the Russians, the pastor said to me, "I really need to tell you that you have to come help us. They don't understand what we want, and they keep giving us what they think we need. You have to come and translate for us because we can't make them understand."
I walked away in a daze, thanking God in amazement.
He is very faithful and awesome, but can be extremely irritating and a bit too mysterious, too.
🙄😎❤️🌹😊
