ComfortZone

I have been offi­cially detained and ques­tioned four times in my life… twice in Poland, once in Roma­nia, and once in what used to be Czecho­slo­va­kia. When I was in Ger­many attend­ing a Torchbearer’s Bible School in 1979 and 1980, I joined a group that enabled me to travel for a few action-​packed weeks through sev­eral com­mu­nist East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries: Yugoslavia, Roma­nia, Hun­gary, Czecho­slo­va­kia, and Poland.

We went during Christ­mas break and spring break posing as tourists, how­ever our main pur­pose was to deliver Bibles and other Chris­t­ian lit­er­a­ture (all strictly for­bid­den in those coun­tries in those days) to Chris­t­ian pas­tors behind the “Iron Cur­tain”. Those com­mu­nist gov­ern­ments fell in 1989, and no longer exist, so I sup­pose it’s OK to talk about it now.

Here is an arti­cle from Time Magazine’s March, 1979 issue that describes more about the work.

This par­tic­u­lar inci­dent took place on Christ­mas Day in 1979, in Bielsko-​Biala, Poland. We were on our way back out of Poland, and head­ing for Vienna, Aus­tria. My two com­pan­ions and I were in the park­ing lot of the train sta­tion having our very spe­cial Christ­mas Dinner… pork and beans. One of us had the great idea of taking a pic­ture of the spe­cial occa­sion, since it was Christmas!

(Some of you will rec­og­nize Greg Buchan on the left. He’s a friend from New­berg High School and the New­berg Friends Church youth group. That’s me in the middle, and Sam on the right.)

Not too long after climb­ing back in to the “Porce­lain Pony” (we affec­tion­ately called our Fiat van this since it was sort of a dull white color), we heard some unin­tel­li­gi­ble yelling and tap­ping on the window. It was a uni­formed offi­cer, and a machine gun-​toting guard, motion­ing us to accom­pany them into the train station.

The com­mu­nist author­i­ties were sus­pi­cious of lots of things, and they espe­cially did not like anyone taking pic­tures near their gov­ern­ment build­ings. After ques­tion­ing us thor­oughly (through an inter­preter), they finally believed us (that we were weren’t spies!), and they let us go. We told them that it was a common Amer­i­can tra­di­tion to pho­to­graph the Christ­mas meal. (Which is true, of course!)

Another main point that we made to the offi­cer was that the train sta­tion is not even in the pic­ture, since the camera was aimed down the street in the oppo­site direc­tion. They didn’t pull the film out of my camera that day, so I got to keep the prized picture!

Here is a draw­ing I made soon after I got home, to record the exact moment they inter­rupted our jolly laugh­ter. It was a mem­o­rable and Merry Christmas!

Later that week we deliv­ered a large load Bibles to a pastor in Romania—five of which had a one-​inch hole drilled straight through them! That is a story I will save for another post.