Memory Briefs

For 70 years BCM has had the same goal, “the proclamation and instruction of the Word of God for the glory of God.” This goal has been accomplished through Bible clubs, camps, C.E. material, teacher training, church planting, etc. The Mission has endured many attacks from the enemy but by God's grace and the faithfulness and prayers of HIS people, the work continues.
--Tom Koch, President Emeritus BCM

Miss Jordan did the teaching each morning from Footsteps Of Faith. We teens would hustle to get done so we could get to the chapel in time for her sessions where she taught the "new" series. We loved it and her! Miss Jordan would also make a special effort to meet with us teens after supper when we were finished our duties to pray with us around the bell tower at the mill at Sankanac. We developed a relationship with her and it paved the way for many of us going into missions and even BCM later on.
--BCM missionary Pam Rowntree

Bible club! Bible club! I vividly remember when I first heard these words. Why, yes! It was the voices of two full time missionaries who would walk up and down the street making that announcement. Now, for me, the summer begins when I am engaged in the teaching of a Bible club.
--Doyle H. Gray

Our family of seven had moved to Haverton, PA, two days previously. There was a knock at our door. We welcomed Miss Bessie Traber into our packing box littered living room. She got right to the point. “I understand you have some children, and I thought you might like to teach a Bible club.”
“Oh, no,” I responded. “I’m a nurse, not a teacher.”
“You teach your own children, don’t you?”
After a few more exchanges, Miss Traber left with the words, “We’ll just pray about it.”
Next day there was a phone call. “What have you decided?”
“We don’t have the money to buy the materials,” I told Miss Traber truthfully.
“We’ll just pray about it.”
When I opened the mail that day, there was $10.00 from someone we had never heard from before or since! I started teaching two Bible clubs in homes nearby, taking my four ambulatory children with me. Gradually others became interested, and soon we had 16 clubs taught by my friends. One of the privileges I had during that time was praying with Miss Traber at our monthly BCM prayer meetings at Grace Chapel, her home church as well as ours.
--Mrs. Winifred Green, retired BCM missionary

I lived with Miss Traber for several months when I first moved to the Upper Darby office to work in BCM Publications. She had a way of saying things that made them ‘stick’. For example: “It makes a difference where you put your buts! If you say, ‘I know God cares about me, but this situation is a real mess!’, the but comes between you and God. However, if you say, ‘This situation is a real mess, but I believe God cares and will help me’, the but pushes you closer to God.” A pithy truth I’ve passed along many times! Miss Traber was a woman of prayer. During those months I was impressed in our family worship time (there were four of us in her home then) by her heartfelt prayers that God would open a door to Bible Club in India. Today we see the answer to her prayers!
--Donna Culver

I am very thankful to Mr. Hirt and his godly influence in my life the entire time I was with BCM. I was serving in the BCM office when Mr. Hirt learned about my very hurtful background and all the abuse I had suffered as a child. At that point he arranged for BCM to provide counseling for me through the ministry of Marge Livingston. I will never forget him telling me that God will use this in my life. Some years later REST Ministries was formed, and now I have the joy and privilege of sharing God’s Truths with many other hurting people so they can know and experience the healing of Christ in their life.
--Judy Edinger

I have been meeting with an Old Order Amish woman in her thirties. I have been absolutely astounded at the depth of her relationship with the Lord in the midst of a family and culture that does not discuss nor teach about Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and in the midst of mental health issues of her own. Everything she knows and experiences has been based on what she has learned by herself since a child. I asked her how she started on this path of having a deep and rich relationship with the Lord? She told me that when she was a little girl, her cousin used to send her ‘Mailbox Bible Studies’ (a BCM ministry) in the mail! She had a huge smile on her face when she said that. I was SO excited. You never know where those Bible studies will show up and how God will use them.
--Linda Ingham

Back in the 40s, a lady named Mildred Dunbar came to my home on the farm in Central New York talking about how she’d heard Bernice Jordan at Homer Bible Conference challenging them to start Bible clubs in their homes and schools. The Holy Spirit used that message, and many ladies went home to start a Bible club. One mother named Dorothy Camp, who had three little children, went home and told her mother. The mother said, “You go ahead and do that, and I’ll care for the children.” Soon my sister and I were coloring those big flannelgraph figures and making backgrounds. Miss Jordan hadn’t written Footsteps of Faith yet. We used a course by Elizabeth Ranney.
--Lillie Whitenack

SWEDEN: A phone call in the fall of 1966 changed my life! BCM President Oscar Hirt was on the line with a totally unexpected request. “Don and Faye McFarland will be opening a new outreach to teens in the north of Sweden and will need someone to do follow-up work. The Board of Directors has asked you to be that person. Will you pray about it?”
I was speechless. But God soon confirmed that this was His plan, and I found myself on an ‘express train’ of preparation. By Thanksgiving my support was promised and all my stuff shipped. Soon after the New Year I found myself in the north of Sweden poised to begin the most challenging and rewarding years of ministry I had yet known. The word we heard most often was ‘impossible’.
Take Moody Science films and a Swedish-American musical team into junior high and high school? Impossible! You’ll be laughed off the platform.
Distribute bilingual Gospels of John? Impossible! They’ll just throw them away.
Have follow-up Bible clubs for interested kids? Impossible! No one will come.
But it was God’s idea and God’s time. We lived through a series of miracles. A top-notch interpreter/translator in Gunbritt Nordstrom. A film maker who’d worked alongside Walt Disney to do the lip synchronization of films. Doors opened into the schools. The team never was laughed off the platform or the bilingual Gospels thrown away. God made it possible for us to purchase a house in just the right location. God filled my life with young people who were hungry to know Him and His Word better. All this in answer to much prayer and in the face of the most intense spiritual warfare any of us had ever experienced.
Yes, that phone call did indeed change my life. I thank God for giving me the opportunity to be part of His miracle working.
--Donna J. Culver

ITALY: Miss Traber’s counsel for guidance from the Lord was to ask Him for a receipt. By that she meant a verse of Scripture which would serve as a directive from the Lord. This was her counsel to us in the spring of 1963 when we needed to know His leading regarding our departure for missionary service in Italy. It was essential for us to leave by the first part of September, 1963, as the University program for Italian language began October 1st. Should we try to make the reservations for departure when we did not have the needed funds in hand? Would God give us a ‘receipt’?
Isaiah 55:12 was His answer: “For you shall go out with joy and be led out with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
We made reservations by faith based on that ‘receipt’. On September 3rd, as the Haases accompanied us by car to New York from Camp Streamside, we were humbled to witness the trees waving their branches. We didn’t hear any audible music. But we were sure of one thing. God does keep His promises!
--Jim Lines, Camp Maranatha, Italy

SCOTLAND: It is hard not to be passionate about BCM when it has been part of your life as long as you can remember. As a child I attended Bible Club at a local school and from the age of 10 never missed camp. The seed sown in my heart came to fruit when at the age of 14 I gave my life to Christ at a teen weekend led by our Glasgow Bible Club missionaries. In my adult years I have been involved in leading and assisting at clubs, camps and short-term missions as well as with kids week in my local church, presenting the good news to a new generation. It is exciting to see how the Word of God continues to take root in the lives of children. I also serve on the local area committee. I am especially thankful that my two sons, Alister, 18, and Christopher, 15, have learned to trust God. They have good friends of their own age in BCM and the support and guidance of older Christians in the BCM family. Seeing the boys make themselves available to serve God at camps, in kitchen and other duties is a privilege. The ministry of BCM around the world continues to grow and expand. I deem it an honour that God has given me a small part to play in BCM.
--Fiona Blythe, Scotland

NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA: During morning chapel at Mt. Traber Camp in Nova Scotia, testimony time lasted for over an hour as one after another came forward, describing how God had profoundly touched them and testifying as to what He had done in their hearts. One such testimony came by way of a young 14-year-old camper, who the night before at the chapel service had cried on my shoulder for a solid half-hour. At that time I had no idea what was going on with this young person, other than that he was in deep emotional pain and needed a shoulder to cry on.
During testimony time, he told of how he had thought about killing himself many times. Early in his life, he had been abandoned by his natural parents. Moved from foster home to foster home, he felt that he was unlovable and unworthy of love and that it was all his fault. He hated himself and often thought about ending it all as a way of getting rid of the guilt and shame.
In his testimony he shared that God had ministered to him the night before. That in some amazing way the Holy Spirit was able to take away the pain and fill his heart with peace and joy. He had accepted Christ earlier in his life, but this was the first time he felt truly free. He now knew that God really love him and that he had eternal value. Like countless others, this young teenager had a life-changing experience at Mt. Traber.

IRELAND: I first went to camp at Mullartown House when I was about ten. I really enjoyed camp, and at junior teens, decided I wanted to help as a junior counselor. I signed up and went to training classes, then helped at my first children’s week. The most amazing week for me and the one which holds most memories of Mullartown House was my second year as a helper. I was placed in a dorm with two other counselors and six girls. The start of the week was really hard for us. One of the girls went home after only one or two nights, and some others wanted to follow her! We felt that every day we had to encourage the girls to stay and make sure they were keep entertained. Also, at the start of the week, some of the girls were quite shy, and we found it hard to get them to open up to us.
I especially remember two sisters who seemed to be at camp against their own wishes. Although we felt we were struggling, the girls on the whole were well-behaved and listened well during meetings and quiet times. They started opening up to us, telling us about themselves and asking questions. We discovered that the two sisters weren’t having an easy time at home and were finding it hard being away from their mum.
The week ended brilliantly. On the last evening, we had a campfire, around which campers shared their testimonies. Afterwards, the younger of the two sisters told us she was a Christian. During the quiet time that night, the older sister prayed out loud, asking forgiveness for her sins and giving her life to God. After the prayer time she couldn’t stop smiling, remembering something she’d heard in a quiet time earlier in the week. She said, “The angels in heaven are having a party because of me!”

GERMANY: Arriving in Germany for our second visit there (1951), we were delighted to find fifteen Bible Clubs going with several hundred children in attendance. One young theological student conducts seven classes himself. He explained that during his childhood and youth under Hitler, he had no opportunity to study God’s Word. Now he wants to devote his life to giving the Gospel to Germany’s children. There were many opportunities to speak to large groups of children, so many with young ‘old’ faces, indicative of past suffering.
--‘Uncle’ Jim Hutchinson, 1951 (BCM archives)

AFRICA: As soon as our daily teaching ministry was finished at the close of the mission school term, we mimeographed the teachers’ manuals. In order to avoid paper waste we had to count every paper by hand, but our mimeograph is an electric one, and so we were able to run off 1000 copies in less than an hour. When we finished two sides, we took them to the print shop to be cut. It took us two weeks and 48 stencils to mimeograph, fold, sort, assemble, and bind the first 1000 books.
--BCM missionary, 1956 (archives)