MOM’S MEMOIRS – IRENE LOUISE (NEE KUCKKAN) MUELLER
(Continued)

Mom’s Autobiography – Chapter 13 – In Book, Page 31

In Malawi, Mailing Program, Ilala Trip, Thief in Limbe, Furlough 1965, Back to Zambia, Steven Born

THE LUTHERAN CHURCH OF CENTRAL AFRICA (FORMERLY NORTHERN RHODESIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH) – IN MALAWI

We moved to Limbe, a town about ten miles from Blantyre when the Cox family went on furlough. When the Coxes and we moved to Nyasaland, all of us carried on the work of the mailing program – printing translated materials (which Ray and Dick had translated), sorting the materials, putting them together, and mailing them. Tracts were printed which were also distributed by “throwing the Gospel out of the window”. There was no law against littering, so when we would travel, we would throw tracts out of the car windows. The children loved it, and the tracts were picked up right away with Africans running to pick them up. Not one was left lying in the roads.

Sometimes we would go to the Zomba Plateau on picnics. It was about fifty miles from Blantyre. It was beautiful there with lots of trees and streams. We would have to wait until the clock got to a certain time before we could drive up to the top. When we got to the top, we could see the Shire River winding its way below us. Often there would be Africans selling luscious strawberries at the place where the cars stopped at the clock.

Out daughter, Debbie, went on a school outing with teachers, which was on a ship called the Ilala, which toured all around Lake Malawi. She wrote a wonderful writing about everything they saw on the trip. But when she arrived back, she was very sick with hepatitis, which is very contagious. She was very sick, and one by one, the rest of the family got it. Not only did I have hepatitis, but malaria with it (even though we regularly took malaria pills).

I was so sick that I could not go to church with the rest of the family one Sunday. I was in bed when I heard a noise coming from the lounge. I got up and saw a youth going through our children’s school cases. They had been missing things from their cases. I said to him, “What are you doing?” He got up and headed for the dining room window. I grabbed him by the wrist and hung onto him, even though I was very weak. He bit my hand, but I pulled him toward the bathrooms. There were two. At first I was going to put him in the one without burglar bars, but changed my mind and was going to put him in the one with burglar bars. He said, “No, Dona, that one”. He wanted me to put him in the one without burglar bars. I managed to put him in the one with burglar bars and locked the door. Then I went back to bed. He banged on the bars with a scale, and kept calling, “Amai, Amai” (meaning mother, mother). His parents lived in the back.

When Dick and the children came home, they wondered what was happening. When they found out and the mother came, Dick asked the mother what should be done. She said, “Call the police,” which he did. The youth probably spent the night in jail. But do you know, that youth and his family rode to church with us the next time, and the youth handed to me a cross of mine which he had probably stolen from us another time.

He learned how to get up into the main part of the house by climbing up a pole and through a window through which Dick had put the antenna cable for his ham radio. He learned by watching some men climb that pole to get into our home before that. The men had climbed the pole Sundays when we went to church, and stolen Dick’s suit, shirts, shoes, etc. Needless to say, they did not climb the pole again.

When I was still sick, Lois Cox came to visit me, but I told her before she came into the bedroom, “Please, Lois, don’t come in here. I don’t want you to get what I have.” After I thought I recovered, we made plans with Lois and Ray to see “The Longest Day” at the cinema. But I had a relapse, so we couldn’t see it. We haven’t seen it to this day. After I recovered, I was shopping in Blantyre when a Peace Corps volunteer came up to me and said, “Oh, Irene, I’m so glad to see you. We heard that you were very sick.” She told me that a Catholic nun had died of the same thing. God again showed His loving-kindness to us.

A bit of humor – one day I took some freshly baked cookies out of the oven, went into the dining room for one minute, came out, and the cookies were gone! Someone smelled those cookies, went up the steps to the kitchen, and made off with them!!!

We had a wonderful garden in Limbe with all kinds of vegetables. I enjoyed working in the garden. Again, we lived with bees. They were in the attic of the house in which we lived. They came and went, and we didn’t have any bad experiences with them.

Mission work in Malawi kept us very busy, but it was –

FURLOUGH TIME- 1965

There still wasn’t a furlough house for missionaries, so my parents, “Pa” and “Ma” Kuckkan fixed up their basement so that we could eat and sleep there. There was one bedroom, so our children slept on beds in the garage. Dick had again arranged a lecture tour to visit many congregations in many states, including going out west. We, including our children, traveled 500-600 miles a day, and every evening Dick lectured to many very interested people about the mission work of THE LUTHERAN CHURCH OF CENTRAL AFRICA (including the Apache Indian mission in Arizona). He centered the lecture this time on helping to build a publications building so more materials telling people about the Word of God could be printed. When we came to Golden, Colorado, we visited Elmer and Ginger Schneider, and their children, Laurel and Eric. Dick interviewed Elmer to be the head of the publications program, and he accepted. By this time we had loads of laundry, so Ginger kindly let us do it there. It was a tiring, but so enjoyable trip. We met so many wonderful people.  (Thanks be to God, on September 29, 1968, a publications building was dedicated. It is located on the Lutheran Bible Institute and Seminary property). Again, it was a busy and enjoyable furlough with our relatives and friends, but then it was again time to serve God in Africa.

BACK TO LUSAKA, ZAMBIA, AFRICA – 1966 – 1969

Yes, we went back to Lusaka, only now the country in which it is in was no longer Northern Rhodesia, but Zambia. During our furlough the Executive Committee for Central Africa appointed Dick as Assistant Superintendent of our mission field in Central Africa, and also asked him to assist in the Bible Institute. Since the headquarters of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa, as well as its Bible Institute, are located in Lusaka, our return to this city became a necessity.

This time we lived in a mission house on Storrs Road in Lusaka. It is not too far from the house we lived in on Suffolk Road (Mambulima Road after Independence – Missionary Bob and his wife, Charlene, Sawall, and children, lived in that house then). I became pregnant again, and Betty Wendland had a wonderful baby shower for me. I received many beautiful gifts.

It was our Timmy’s birthday (April 24th), so I decided to have a birthday party for him. We invited all the Sawall children to come to his party. Timmy did not want the baby to be born on his birthday. The party went on, but before all the children went to bed, Timmy said, “Mommy, aren’t you going to the hospital so the baby can be born?” Ha! – as if I had anything to say about that! The baby was born early the next morning – sorry, Timmy. Debbie awoke, so she knew when Dick took me to the hospital.

The same American doctor, Dr. Foster, who had brought Timmy and Susie into the world in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia now), delivered Steve. After the birth, I noticed that I was hemorrhaging in the bed, so I called the nurse, and they wheeled me back into the labor/delivery room. Dr. Foster gave me an injection, but because he was getting old and shaky, the nurse had to hold his arm while he gave it to me to stop the bleeding. Shortly after that dear Dr. Foster retired. We missed him. He was one of those doctors who could be called in the middle of the night, and he would come.

All the ladies of the mission, including the nurses at Lumano Lutheran Dispensary, thought for sure that I was going to have a baby girl by the way I was carrying the baby. They came running to the house shortly after I got home to see the baby. Ha!! Steven Mark surprised them! He was the biggest baby I had, and today he is still the tallest of all of the six. (When our children grew up, Debbie asked me what I ate because Steve and his sister, Stephanie, the last two born, are the tallest of the six. I don’t remember anything different that I ate). Steve was born April 25, 1967, in ZAMBIA! – another blessing from our loving Lord!