THE LIFE OF RICHARD WILLIAM MUELLER, JR.
(Continued)

Dad’s Autobiography – Chapter 4 – In Book, Page 7

Wedding Night, Honeymoon, Teaching at Freistadt, Ordination, Blessings at Crivitz, Debbie and Dick, Lessons Learned, Ministry Blessings, Divine Call

Wedding Night! Our wedding night was spent in a little two-room apartment above a store in downtown Mequon. We had a pull-out bed. The bathroom was down the hall and shared by other tenants. But we were happy – until we found cornflakes in our bed. Our “friends” had crawled through the transom above the door and presented us with that surprise. They had also removed the trailer hitch from our car which I finally found perched above one of the trailer tires. We pulled a very small trailer which we had borrowed from one of the professors at the Seminary on our honeymoon to Florida. These “friends” had also set our alarm clock two hours ahead – which we found out only when we stopped for breakfast in Illinois – and found that we could have slept two hours longer.

Honeymoon! Even though we had very little money in our pockets, we traveled all the way to Key West and back on our honeymoon. We saw many of the things that honeymooners see today, but we also had some memorable memories. We slept in an orange grove. We had orange juice at Cypress Springs which the waiter took from me before I had finished drinking it. I hang onto my glass from that day on – and my fork, too.

We saw mermaids swimming at Weeki Wachee Springs. We looked down forty and more feet into the clear waters of Silver Springs. We saw king cobras being milked for their venom. (It was being used as a serum for polio.) We saw water and more water on our drive along the Keys. When darkness fell, when the headlights turned to the left, we saw water – and when they turned to the right, we saw more water – water, water, everywhere. Then we happened upon Cape Canaveral (later, Cape Kennedy). We did not know it at the time. We only knew that there was something secret going on when a guard told us we could not pass that way — that we had to turn around.

Teaching At Freistadt! Shortly after we returned from our honeymoon, Irene was asked to teach the first grade at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Freistadt, Wisconsin. An old farmhouse near the school was offered to us. It had no indoor toilet facilities, but we moved into it, nevertheless. Later, some of my friends and I did install a toilet in it with the owner’s permission. It is interesting to note that one of Irene’s students became a President of the Western Wisconsin District of the Wisconsin Synod. Trinity was a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod with which we were in fellowship at the time.

Before I graduated from the Seminary, Irene and I had discussed the possibility of going into Foreign (World) Mission work. We had decided that, if a Call into world missions would be offered to my graduating class, we would express our interest in it. However, no Calls into world mission work came to the Assignment Committee that year. Instead, we were assigned to Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Crivitz, Wisconsin.

CRIVITZ, WISCONSIN

Ordination! I was ordained into the Holy Ministry and installed as pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Crivitz, Wisconsin, on the 27th day of June, 1954. Most of my classmates enjoyed that wonderful blessing later on in the summer of 1954. However, Irene and I were most eager to enter upon that work for which I had been trained and to which she had committed herself as my helpmeet in all of my endeavors. This day was a special day in two more ways. It was the 52nd birthday of my mother and the 26nd Wedding Anniversary of my Mom and Dad.

Blessings At Crivitz! The two and one half years we spent in Crivitz were blessed years in many ways. We came to know many wonderful, caring people. Not only did those who were in the area attend Worship Services regularly, but they also showed their love for their Lord by bringing us all kinds of food. One member urged us to get a locker for frozen goods because she wanted to keep it stocked with goodies (meats, vegetables, fruits) of every kind. We remember her strawberry sundaes, especially. They were fit for a king and queen.

Another member kept us supplied with giblets. He raised chickens for a relative’s restaurant. He also bought and brought me my first bow. I had been borrowing his son’s bow and arrows. He also directed me to a 30.40 Krag rifle which I restored. I blued the barrel and hand-rubbed the stock with linseed oil. I was told never to shoot at a deer going over a hill. The bullet is lethal at more than five miles.

We visited our members regularly. One became a pastor. Another couple, brother and sister, insisted on ‘paying their dues’ to the church — even though they had just lost their few cattle to hoof and mouth disease. They lived in a house whose only heat was supplied by the kitchen stove. Another family lived so far back in the woods that snow plows did not come to them during the winter. Deer overran their fields – but, whenever we visited them, they gave us homemade cottage cheese which had been hung in a tree outside their home.

Debbie and Dick! In October of our first year in Crivitz, the Lord blessed us with our first child, Deborah Louise. She was born in Marinette, Wisconsin, twenty-five miles from Crivitz. A year and one month later, our second child, Richard John, was born – also in Marinette. He was born on Thanksgiving Day – in the middle of my Thanksgiving Day sermon. I had taken Irene to the hospital, gone home to conduct a Worship Service, and returned to find the new addition to our family – and to eat Thanksgiving Dinner with Irene.

Lessons Learned! This second birth elicited a comment from one of the elderly ladies of the congregation. She told me in no uncertain terms that I should be more considerate of my wife. Two children in two years were too many. She talked to me not as her pastor, but as a young man needing instruction – and I appreciated her concern.

Another elderly lady taught me another lesson. When I asked her whether she had a good day, she told me while looking directly into my eyes, “Pastor, don’t you know that, in the life of a Christian, there are only good days – different kinds of good days, but only good days.” I will never forget her wisdom.

Ministry Blessings! During our ministry in Crivitz, I downgraded the congregation from one hundred seventy communicant members to one hundred forty communicant members. (A good start for a future world missionary.) Actually, all of the thirty were members who had moved away from Crivitz, some of whom even the Church Council no longer knew. Some we transferred to other congregations with whom we were in fellowship. Others we released to congregations not of our fellowship. And still others we removed from our membership list because we could not locate them.

However, in spite of this, the congregation flourished. The attendance increased. During the summers, in order to accommodate our tourists, two Sunday morning Worship Services were instituted. Grace became known to the summer visitors as their “church away from home”. It should be noted that for a short time I also served as Vacancy Pastor to Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lena, Wisconsin. It was there that we learned to enjoy frog’s legs caught by some of its members.

Divine Call! Early in 1956, Irene and I attended a commissioning Worship Service for a pastor who was being sent to Central Africa as missionary. At a gathering after that Worship Service, we were asked if we would have accepted that Call. We think our answer was noted by the Chairman of the Executive Committee for Central Africa because a few months later we received the Divine Call to serve our Lord in Zambia, Africa.

I received that Call at the Special 1956 District Convention in Watertown, Wisconsin. That was the Convention which was called to deliberate our relationship with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. After much agonizing deliberation, I returned the Call. I thought I had not served the congregation in Crivitz long enough.

However, when I told the congregation of my decision, its members expressed their surprise. They knew how interested Irene and I were in doing world mission work. They thought that I would accept the Call.