Crusades and Christmas
Life in the Moyes’ household was not without excitement. Apart from family achievements such as Andrew beginning school and Jenny learning to ride a bicycle `no hands,’ there were the wider interests that concerned the church members—Mrs Jones’ expected new baby turning out to be twins. The Ladies’ Aid street stall raising $110 and breaking all previous records. The C of C Cricket Club beating the locals by 30 runs.
Next in line came the postman. They never knew what the daily mail might bring. Besides the usual avalanche of accounts due and shiny literature on supermarket specials, there was the occasional offer to change pulpits.
One or two were from larger churches. To these he judiciously replied that while he could not accept their offer at the present time, who knew what the future might bring?
“A nice way of keeping the door open in case Cheltenham ever kicks me out,” he grinned at Beverley. They both knew there was not much likelihood of that.
One memorable day in July, 1975, Gordon sat in his study opening the day’s mail. In the kitchen Beverley washed the breakfast dishes and pondered the omnipresent question of what to prepare for dinner. Suddenly she heard Gordon’s chair scrape back and next minute he came dashing down the hall waving a letter in his hand.
“What do you think of this?” He pulled up halfway across the kitchen. “This letter is from someone—I don’t know who—and it has two cheques in it. The larger one is to help church members in need, and the other cheque is for us, personally. It says, `Buy yourself a new suit, Gordon, but leave enough change so that Beverley can buy herself a new dress.’”
“How much is it?”
“The cheque for the members in need is for $1000, and the other one is for $200. Who could have sent them? I don’t know of anyone with so much money to spare.”
“It might not even be from any of our church members.” Forgetting the dishes, Beverley dropped onto the nearest chair. Who could have noticed that her `church’ dress had certainly seen better days? With four children in the family, and a husband always in the public eye, her own wardrobe received scant attention.
“I can’t imagine who it’s from.” Gordon turned the envelope over. “Whoever it is, he or she wants to remain anonymous because the letter has been posted in a city mailbox so we can’t trace any suburb.”
“What about the writing? Can you recognize it?”
“The message is typed, and signed, `A Friend.’”
“Well, blessings on him or her,” Beverley rose and tackled the dishes with renewed energy. “I wish we could thank them.”
“I suppose the best way of saying thanks is to do as the letter says. When can we go shopping?” Gordon hurried back to his study to look up his appointment diary.
About the same time the following week Gordon received another satisfying letter. This one was from W. A. Buchanan & Co, telling him that they would be honoured to publish the manuscript he had submitted for a book on counselling young marrieds. Once again he jumped up from his desk and went in search of Beverley.
On Sunday, 4th May, 1975, when he was guest speaker at the 110th Conference of the Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania, Gordon delivered a sermon which he titled “New Life in Christ.” The topic generated such enthusiasm that he enlarged it into several talks that later became known as “Right Now” Crusades. In turn these crusades took him away from his home church for weeks at a time.
With permission from Cheltenham he spent a gruelling two weeks in NSW speaking to more than eight thousand people. The overall theme, “Become a Brand New Person, Right Now,” resulted in many people responding to altar callsIn the same two-week period Gordon packed in radio talks, TV appearances, press and public rallies, addresses to High School assemblies, Rotary Clubs and luncheons. He had every right to feel exhausted when he reached home again but the heavy programme seemed to have little effect on him.
“Our Missionary Convention is due at the end of October,” Gordon remarked to his new associate minister, Jeffrey Benson, BA. MA Div. from Oklahoma, “We must try to make it a special occasion.“For years it has centred around a returned missionary. Some saintly old spinster with grey hair pulled tightly back into a bun and clothes that were fashionable a decade ago.”
“Or a man in white suit and topee,” Jeff got into the act, “who shows poorly focussed slides, badly spotted with tropical mildew.”
Both men laughed. They knew that pictures used to hold people’s interest but already TV had made the world so small that the novelty of seeing how people live in different cultures had worn thin.
“Each year less and less people attend the Missionary Convention rallies and as a consequence the offerings for missions lags behind the other church donations.” Gordon said. “We need something to catch people’s imagination. Something that will involve them personally.”
Jeff nodded. He was from U S A and had no fear of initiating new ideas. After more discussion they settled on a plan which they presented to their committee.
“Why don’t we at Cheltenham Church send out someone who will actually give the native people some help which the missionary himself cannot provide?” Gordon asked.
“Such as?” A committee member’s voice sounded skeptical.
“Such as sending out skilled tradesmen who can erect a building in a quarter the time it takes the indigenous people to do it,” suggested Jeff. “I heard of a church who paid for a plumber to go to an island and fix up a tank and pipes so that when it rained the people could store the rainwater. Before that, whenever they ran out of water they had to paddle their canoes to a neighbouring island where there was a freshwater spring.”
The idea caught on and the church accepted it whole-heatedly. Within a week three young people volunteered their skills. Marilyn Marvin offered to do clerical work at the mission hospital. She would get their field records straight and then teach a local girl how to maintain them. Mark Marshall and Robert Holmes, with Ian Helsall, an older man from Albany in West Australia, offered to erect the frames of a home for a missionary couple, a nurses’ residence and a schoolroom. They would also take care of the electric wiring and plumbing for these buildings. The total cost for fares and materials would come to about $3000. Could the church raise that amount?
The various Ladies’ clubs swung into action. So did the youth groups. So did various other organizations of the church. There were street stalls and concerts, bake sales and barbecues, every way of raising money that had ever been tried was tried again. The local newspaper gave them free publicity and donations came in from unexpected sources.
Excitement swelled as the date for the volunteers’ departure drew closer. The church was still several hundred dollars short of their goal, but a final appeal brought money rolling in, as well as clothing, books, toys for the native children, building equipment and farming implements.
“Stop. Stop.” The four volunteers implored. “We are travelling by air. We can only carry a specified weight.”
However, at departure time the airlines caught the spirit of the venture and turned a blind eye to all the extra baggage.
Working as a team the tyro missionaries exceeded expectations. They built a house, a nurses’ residence and a schoolroom. A low- flying aircraft carefully dropped the parts of a donated tractor and the volunteers re-assembled tractor and blade and with it levelled off hills to make a much needed air-strip.
The volunteers were still on an emotional `high’ when they returned to Cheltenham and thrilled supporters with reports of their achievements. They showed shiny black and white snapshots of:
“Me holding a black baby,”
“Us taking a bath in the lagoon—the soap doesn’t lather,”
“Mark trying to climb a coconut palm.”
The excitement of the young missionaries’ return had scarcely faded when Christmas Day brought a certain sadness, particularly to the children in the Cheltenham congregation, when they discovered that Lawrie the Lamb was missing.
The previous Christmas when Lawrie was only a few months old he had featured in a floodlit Nativity Scene set up on the church lawn.
Lawrie lived in the manse’s large yard and was their much loved lawn-mower. Although a whole series of ducks, fowls, mice, rabbits, fish, tortoises, cats and dogs had passed through the Moyes’ children’s loving hands, Lawrie occupied a special place in their hearts. Given to them as an orphaned lamb, they had taken turns in bottle-feeding him into adulthood.
“We saw a truck stop in front of the church early on Christmas morning,” agitated neighbours reported. “Two men walked over to Lawrie and before we realized what was happening they bundled him into the back of their truck and roared off.”
The front page of Melbourne’s daily newspapers featured Lawrie’s story and a few days later someone found his woolly hide in a nearby street.
Although he felt as badly as anyone about the sad loss, Gordon did not miss the opportunity of preaching about the Lamb of God Who was slain for the sins of humanity.
