Iris After Hours - Episode 47 - Rolland Baker

welcome to iris after hours casual conversations with inspirational speakers off the clock hi we are here in pemba mozambique africa on location bringing you iris after hours this is the proof we have real coke going on with real sugar like old syrupy yeah we're here in his homeland come on with the wonderful amazing my spiritual who is this guy someone else's real father yeah who could that be prophet apostle no what is he no he's an amazing he's a dad and he is keeps us on track theologically our spiritual dad and real dad papa roland i am heidi baker's husband oh my gosh do you know how do you know that can you introduce it now but we want to talk about some really important things today today's podcast firstly when is the apple watch going to be waterproof so you were making both where i want to go swimming together well i've been trying to bring that promise to full term you know but yeah i'm hanging in there okay here's the question will you buy an apple watch when they are waterproof i'll buy an apple watch if i can tell time from it when i want to tell time from it because you have to lift it you have to wiggle it and when you're speaking and you want to just glance at it it's off and you can't get it to come on right away yes frustrating i know then you go to the bush and you get you have to charge it every night you know and you really yeah so it's not a bush watch it's pretty tragic you know because a bush pilot needs a needs an omega i've always believed that any apple product has to be bought you know there's no choice you just have to get it you know but finally there was one that you couldn't get because it just didn't shape up to the we should email them talk about missionary life yeah they have no concept what we really need here we need a waterproof watch that you can scuba dive with you know on the coast of east africa for heaven's sake you know indian ocean you know you need a you need a watch you can wear exactly and i was thinking the other day we too we should get we should do something with starbucks to get some because we have starbucks coffee in the bush every week in outreach we should get a bush bush blend asking for a african bush bush blend of starbucks or something yeah yeah yeah we're trying to develop africa you know it's just there's ways to do it you know that tells you flew us out and two weeks ago you flew us out to the bush bush in the plain in the uh what's it called again the uh well the airline is iris air rsa come on yeah you have a frequent flyer card i'm sure yes i've got my friend i got my iris printer okay now on the landing just one quick question on the landing we did a bit of a bounce on the first one what happened because we came in obviously it's a dirt land strip dirt landing strip but we when we came in is this what happened it felt like we hit the ground and we bounced up and then came back now [Music] why does has happened oh why does that happen because i hadn't flown in a million years [Laughter] wait really no you have to flare at exactly the right time when you're coming very steep and fast your timing has to be exact but yeah the next five landings yeah we're spot-on you've got to use it to iron that little wrinkle out apparently people were quite nervous because a couple of them had been in a situation with you was it last year when everyone thought they were crashing and you had to save the day lift up the plane yeah strong crosswind and the pilot uh was doing everything the opposite of what what should have been done so he was veering off the runway you know when that happens you have to do something like take off again so but no lives were in danger for very long for very long for very long yeah and it seemed to me you kept a very level head when you're flying is that important to keep a level ahead well yeah if you panic and freeze you know it's that's not good yeah some pilots do that you know they just have a habit of going blank and freezing but it's good not helpful no no i'm glad you're not one of those pilots papa roland yeah so is there any spiritual analogies from flying that you bring into the spiritual walk with god because i know rick joyner is a pilot yeah and i don't know whether you've talked talk shop with rick joyner about flying but i always remember him saying that there was a white out once and he had to fly by his instruments only because he couldn't see anything and it was a bit like sometimes in life when you can't see what's going on but you just gotta just keep trusting god and walking by the word because he felt like he was flying towards the ground and he's gonna smash into the ground but his instrument said he was going straight where he needed to go but it didn't it felt the opposite yeah well your ears your your brain uh gives you feelings of motion when you can't see yeah and so sometimes you really feel like you're veering to the left or you're veering to the right or up and down when you when you're not doing anything so you have to as a pilot absolutely ignore your own feelings whoa just ignore what you think the plane is doing you know from the way it feels and you look at the instruments and you only believe the instruments you don't believe what it feels like so yeah there's a sermon in there somewhere [Laughter] that's powerful that christian life you know you're feeling all kinds of things but you know that's what faith is all about knowing when you're on course he used to fly me to south africa for braces appointments and um there's a couple times we went through a couple lightning storms just no big deal that was so fun we were flying right over hills you know and the lightning strikes we hit trees just below us on the hills and fry them you know just a just a big blast the whole tree would just explode you know and be gone you know left and right that's exciting you know fly through all that stuff i just love that stuff sarah and i would be like so can lightning hit the plane or oh not that often turns out i really can most of my pilot friends have you know not been hit by lightning most of them yeah but this kid she liked rough rides fast rides you know so she would always say come on dad let's do astronaut maneuvers you know let's punch holes in clouds you know let's come around misty come on let's let's float pencils in the air you know coming up in a strong climb and then falling away so that everything floats in the air yeah have you experienced that no you lose a sense of gravity yeah i move on the plane and everything floats let me find little puffy cumulus clouds to punch holes in it you know she was fun it's not my mom's favorite it's definitely not a lot of people's favorite it makes them pretty nauseated not even elijah like that so much but christine's you know it's just all for it come on this is some precious father-daughter moments here yeah yeah come on yeah so she's made out of the right stuff you know astronaut stuff come on yeah maybe i'll do that change course you know she could be crashing and she could just announce calmly over the radio we're going in you know you are you are very level-headed christianity see that and yet dramatic it really depends it's quite weird yes like going to literally the other day their screams were quite loud yeah and we caught them on camera so you'll see them in an update coming soon we had another flight to johannesburg at three in the morning with sarah in the back seat oh what was it emergency uh no we just had late meetings and we didn't even get off the ground to one in the morning and we fly to this big international airport in south africa at the wee hours of the morning three to five o'clock gosh but we flew through thunderstorms so the whole flight you know the sky is just lighting up with lightning strikes and and just flashing all over the place and storm scope is just lighting up with strikes everywhere but you know not very big strikes you know just not enough to take out the plane so when did you first get that plane here in africa could you you landed here in 97 well we had a cessna 206 to start with when you first came or how long did it take well we got that and got that here in 1999. what do you get first a plane or a vehicle or a a car oh we had cars before that okay poorly run ones lazarus gods must be crazy have you seen no heidi heidi comes to africa oh no way she comes to africa with no money no place to live no car no promise of anything no pledge support no she doesn't want me to clap she wants me to stay calm and still yeah one of these things so i'm learning tab this is not preaching this is hey we're in a studio it's dramatic he's a bit dramatic like you maybe you don't syndrome but yeah yeah don't don't do that okay seriously don't she comes mostly because no support yeah so she ends comes to maputo her first night but just before she comes she stops off in south africa and goes to an auction and buys an old used toyota pickup truck for some for seven thousand dollars you know ridiculous old thing and she takes it to maputo and their very first night there they people try to hijack it three times you know and it's you know it has alarms it has gear locks steering wheel locks and you know every which kind of anti-theft device and you know almost all our friends in south africa in those days are driving new cars you know because not by choice it's because they all had their cars hijacked and it was just a regular thing in those days we had missionaries that had their truck hijacked off the pier before they got it off you know when they got it off the boat before they got to the end of the pier it was on go so finally we got a brand new truck some chinese church little chinese church in orange county california bought us one wow and the pastor said you know we don't want you to get your your truck hijacked so would you please get a bucket of rocks and just throw them at the car and den it all up so nobody will want it seriously that first new truck yeah we didn't do that but then our first missionary who helped us uh the first thing he did with our brand new truck on the very first day was loaded up with rocks and we didn't have any uh rubber lining or anything like that so he just took all the paint off the the load box the very first day then he loaded up with kids and went out looking for landmines machete bill shetty built yeah machete that was the truck or the guy that was the guy ah bill redding yeah he was [Music] hardcore missionary i mean please keep elaborating on machete bill he used to carve things right with knives in order to scare well this is just at the end of the war and there's hardly any any organized police force you know they need to be trained they they don't know have a sense of proportion you know they if they see trouble up there they just start shooting and if they shoot the wrong guides you know scuba scoops one of my friends was a businessman and a thief got into his office in an upper story and he called the police supposedly the police and they said why are you calling me just throw the guy out the window so that's how they handle things in those days so it was wild mob justice yeah we had a guy in front of our house our apartment you know where we i flat he was just a petty thief stealing headlights but our neighbors got a hold of him and gouged his eyes out right in front of her house screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night oh my lord and our guard saw that and he didn't want to be a guard anymore but that that's it was just you know very bloody time yeah that's coming off of 25 years of war we were offered this this orphanage way out outside of town and nobody in town could believe anybody would want to live out there where all the bandits are you know it's just really dangerous but when we went out there the people there couldn't believe anybody would live in the city where all the bandits are [Laughter] they're everywhere so our first volunteer to live out there at that base was bill redding machete bill and so he he barricades himself into his room you know he builds a bunk bed way up there and and bars the door with big heavy beams and and you know covers the windows and nails everything down and thinks he's safe one night here come the bandits you know and they just bang everything down they just break everything down they broke the door down the beams everything but he had a machete and he made like david you know in the bible like he just made like he's insane he just goes screaming wild crazy he's just hacking up wood everything chips flying just goes completely bananas screaming yelling cursing you name it and those poor bandits they fled for their lives [Laughter] and from then on he would sit in the sun and on the grass and the day and just slowly sharpened his machete you know and he said he called the machete bill you know and people left him alone so all right that's our first missionary was you might say bacon no no he was an american he was a toothless or had something yeah yeah he had false teeth he had like some kind of lisp or a missing tooth or something yeah well he was an army engineer he helped build camron bay in vietnam during the war he was very practical wow you know he's used to building huge elaborate sophisticated military bases in the jungle and he could do anything he really was practical wow but in the military that takes money yes yes so he arrived at chihuahua where we were and he looked around and said yep yep about 3 million bucks should fix it up nice and he wanted a year's supply of food in advance for his little room uh and he made a list ham jam yam and spam you're serious i wanted 3 million bucks and a year's food and all canned stuff you know and that was his condition sam and ham ham jam yam and spam you know that's what missionaries eat you said he loaded kids up in the truck and looked for landmines you said that right yeah did he say that yes behind this i'm still to this oh you need practical steps detonate them i don't know what he's thinking i don't know if he's trying to hurt pigs and trying to set off land mines or i don't know there was a lot of landmines here wasn't it it was like yeah another thing he tried to do he tried to pull out stumps out of the ground you know you know with chains and he just rode it into the ground you know the very first week did he find any landmines there were a lot of land mines back then uh he didn't but we one of our first volunteers from south africa a teenager never been on the mission field he's just a short-term visitor he goes out walking around our property that was given to us around the edge of it and he sees a farmer you know in the bush there and a pig running by and a land mine gets set off it blows the farmer's leg off and he's all by himself oh no he doesn't have any medical training there's nobody around to help he has to load this bloody pulpy body into his truck and take it to the hospital which has almost no emergency equipment all by himself as a teenager first time in a foreign country wow gosh yeah so the situation you know we can tell funny stories but actually it really was one of the most terrible places in the world to live the world's poorest country two or three million people were killed in the previous 30 years yeah almost every christian and pastor we knew had either been in jail they had family members in jail and their stories you know those are real saints gosh it took years to clear all the landmines i heard last year that they were just finishing up somehow clearing the laws they had more landmines in mozambique than any country in the world i think they tied afghanistan you know for a number of land mines because from being from australia the most i'd heard about what were in i think cambodia yeah or vietnam a little longer but here there was way more wasn't there yeah and the primary method of clearing land mines is to poke a head with a stick you know on your hands and knees oh my god and so on well they're plastic you can't detect them with metal detectors and x-rays and all that stuff plastic yeah and so it's crazy you have a strategic thing like a bridge or a dam or something and and that one side will put ring it with land mines and then the other side will ring that ring with their land mines and then the other side will ring that one with theirs again and now you've got three sets of landmines and nobody knows where they all are and the old guys who know die off or leave yeah and there's no maps oh my goodness and so nobody's thinking about the future you know what are civilians going to do so actually when we started most villages were mostly women and children because because the men were killed killed the average age in the army at the end of the war was 12. the older guys were all dead that's crazy and the the army didn't want a flock of birds just fly up to the window that's so beautiful the army didn't want the outside world to know that they had a child army so at one point they took ten thousand of their own boy soldiers machine gun them all into a pit all in one day oh my god we hired one of the guys who saw that happen wow so is he one of the pastors it was very serious situation so did you tell the story of when you first drove into mozambique i don't think so or no i would love to hear that yeah i'd love to or i'm not sure was it the first time when the car ahead of you yeah yeah the first time i i came in i came in in january of 1995. okay about six months before heidi came oh she came first i came first and so hey this is a part of the story that nobody knows about come on he's the real pioneer come on no like hi we wanted to go to the world's poorest country and so we did some research for a few years and ready to talk magazine decided yeah read time magazine which talked about the war i read the story to heidi and she says let's go there they need help and so we never looked anywhere else from then on but it took a few years we went to england and you know got prepared in a lot of ways and but i was excited to finally get to mozambique you know because we were aiming at that for quite a long time right so in the states while we were studying finishing our degrees we met a south african in church he was a minister and he had a brother who pastored a church in mala latin which is near the border of mozambique in south africa okay so uh this friend or this brother uh heard about a a conference in mozambique and he told his brother in the states who told us and who knew of our interest in mozambique and he thought it would be good if i went and attended this conference but it was nothing like the sort of conference you think of in the states you know these guys these these people these pastors actually were from the bush you know they just didn't rags and no food and it's a totally different sort of conference but i was still you know excited to go because you know we had aimed at that for so long so i flew to johannesburg uh got into the this this pastor's truck and got all the way to balan and and uh we were putting together pieces and polls for a big tent that he needed to have meetings this is my first experience in africa so i'm helping him gather all these big tent poles these hollow pipes and poles to to use to put up the tent i find out later that these pipes are full of these super poisonous snakes that that crawl up and down the the pipes you know we're handling all these pipes with snakes in them and these are super poisonous snakes you if they bite you you've got 20 minutes to live you know like black mamba snakes you know they're i don't even know this story lots of stories you haven't heard so we're just happily loading the truck and you know the snake coming in and out of these pipes and i did not know anything better so i'm happy so like you see the snakes you just don't know that they're i no i didn't see them i would have been scared okay but ignorance is bliss yes i just found out later so okay so we finally start driving another hour and a half or so to the border south of mozambique and we're sailing along in our little datsun red truck and about a mile from the border the truck's engine starts missing but it's almost five o'clock and the border closes you know they're very security consciousness it's all barbed wires machine guns there's border posts there's really it's lying with soldiers with ak-47s this is territory south africa's africans are afraid of mozambique you know almost no south africans went in at that time wow and it got to look really scary they're closing the border at five because it's so insecure at night and we have to get across that border by five because the first meeting is that night and i've waited for years to do this and it's so the time has come you know yeah and we're not gonna miss this you know we flew a long ways for this first meeting but the our car died it got almost up to the gate and it just petered out it just it just fizzled you know like water in the gas or run out of gas or something you know just push the pedal nothing happens and it did just it just died right there with the gate in sight and then we we see a helicopter big noisy helicopter fly overhead and soldiers running all around us and people yelling and screaming and and it turned out that there was a car right ahead of us that just made it through by five o'clock and he was all shot up by bandits as soon as he crossed the across the barbed wire the road is so bomb cratered you know it's just bomb craters and potholes and all of that you have to crawl along in and out of these craters and and so the car just pokes along and it allows the bandits time to jump out and get their guns on you and hijack your car and take everything but that's happening now that happened last week and you know the wilcox's just came up last week and passed cars that have been dog burned and shot up and really and anyway god stopped the car you know saved our lives in the very first day so it was god there was it wasn't any mechanical problems no no we we hand pushed the car around and as soon as it was pointed the other direction it started up and ran fine so we went back to malalan about an hour and a half away and went the next morning in a big convoy which is what we're supposed to do in the first place you know safety in numbers so wow so you're ridiculously pretty exciting for state mosaic you know for ten of many things to come oh my gosh say the next day when you got in with the convoy it went yeah it was okay but everything was shot up what were you thinking coming in i'm thinking wow this is a there's been a war here everything's burned everything's uh this the buildings are shot out the windows are all shot out you know the doors are ripped off for firewood the roofs are gone there's you know ruins everywhere um almost nothing in the shops maputo is like a ghost town almost no cars almost no cars which is so crazy now you wouldn't believe the cars now yeah the total traffic jam not the city was never designed for this kind of traffic yeah hours to get through the city now the metropolis now yeah but in those days it was it's just it's like a ghost you walk into shops there's nothing on the shelves and everybody's quiet a couple of gas stations in a whole city of 2 million people gosh yo so that's where we dragged christy how old were you how old were you think christine 1987 to 1995 seven or eight mm-hmm yeah so we thought that was a great place to take our kids and we had no idea what we're going to do for school for this kid and her brother so you get no clue and heidi's not about to be a homeschooler you know she's not a homebody in any way shape or form yeah no i couldn't imagine people asked us that oh is your mom home school elijah are like kidding me so we didn't even think about it so god is your problem you know i don't know we're not about to leave her send her off to boarding school or anything so but here we are because you you always hit up the boarding school weren't you i was so i decided no that's not what to do so that wasn't fun so what did you end up doing for school we didn't worry about it we didn't even think about it come on we're just sitting there and i get a phone call claude myers he was one of my teachers in my boarding school when i was in taiwan as a teenager he taught me physics and science and different things and i hadn't seen him and heard of him in years and years and years and all of a sudden he calls up and says hey hi roland remember me i'm here to start a school in mapudu all one is there one this is crazy yeah he was a missionary teacher with phd and but he can't get his container of school stuff into the country because they want books textbooks materials desks chairs anything he's got this whole container of school stuff to try to do something for the missionary kids what a legend a poodle this guy says he does he doesn't have an organization he's got no duty-free status he's not an ngo he's not a 501c3 he's just needs to get his stuff in so guess who gets all his stuff in iris come on we have the people we know the government we have the permits we have the ngo we do all the paperwork we get his stuff in we're all yeah you do all the paperwork literally rolling you probably did it all did you well yeah i mean i had a you were the mighty macintosh which means you can type portuguese accents easily unlike a pc just clue you in come on so we had to do all these legal documents in portuguese but it was so easy because i had a laser printer and a mac but they could do all the accent marks and come on and you're always ahead of the curve technologically yes so he just showed up with his wife we got a few other teachers and we got the missionary kids together and and it was a small school so but it was kind of like having phd professionals be your homeschoolers you know small that's very personal what did you think of this school is that why you say smok crystal a little conservative little right wing little it was conservative but it was amazing they were very good at prepping for college it's like a couple hours of homework a day uniforms pretty strict actually yeah but some of my best friends came out of it so sarah now i think when missionary parents talk about bringing their kids to the field i think it was that's a big like for a lot of kids that's the hardest thing if you can't don't have peers in school that can be really difficult but for me i had that so it was amazing it didn't hurt elisha left two years early you know because he was doing so well he took his sats two years early oh really we've got 97 or something on them you know percentile gosh so it's good education yeah it was but we didn't we didn't expect it we didn't know what god would do you know that just didn't worry about it didn't think about it oh my god that's that is such a miracle and you and mom are academics so that was probably high on the priority yeah and it's yeah education is really important for your mum and dad yeah but i don't think mom would have enjoyed teaching you math and science i don't think i would have enjoyed mom teaching math either but her brother ended up teaching some of his physics classes for claude meyers oh really i taught at that school too yeah teaching yeah yeah that's cool getting right yeah when we when we became seniors sometimes we would teach because they really had a need for more teachers wow that's so cool yeah let's pick on the students here but it was a close family you know everybody's at each other's birthday parties and for christmas and vacations and wow best friends you know waiting with us on vacations wow is he still down there now in the buddha she's not but some of the teachers are still there that she had the school's still going claude may be in beirut now i'm not sure yeah they're part of an organization that literally finds missionary loca like missionaries around the world and start school specifically for them yeah they had started schools in china and different places but so they're moving around it's amazing that they picked mozambique you know in our city just when we arrived oh i keep saying god's sovereign and a lot of people you know doubt that but you know we have evidence yes absolutely yes you didn't pray the school evening it was his fault not her fault he's to blame we had no faith for that we just you know i didn't think about it that's amazing well see that's a theological issue have you ever heard people preach that god never does anything except an answer to prayer yes and he never does anything except he tells his prophets first yes oh there's a whole bunch of stuff that people just kind of assume however god has more ways than that yes think of all the things that we don't pray about that god does you know every day i know all right that would be what if he only could do things we prayed for yes i think i would be in trouble he's scary yeah yeah so can people change his mind hmm yes and no yes and no what's one of my favorite answers to theological questions yes and no that's true you do that a lot for example i'm the boss of the family right as the father as the father yep but then christy comes up and says um i need a fa the biggest favor in the world done for me this morning [Applause] i need you to watch zoe for two or three hours now i can say i'm the boss but who's really the boss say yes and no uh-huh so but she learned the secret of prayer i've told this before it's late at night i'm in my office i've got paperwork stacked this high urgent email to answer stuff to write books to read trying to think pray i'm busy i'm buried buried in my work and here comes christy she needs something what does she do she doesn't just beat the door down she just doesn't just crack the door and then say fall forget it you don't care anyway she doesn't collapse in a pile of tears and whimper behind the door white is in bad care she just waltzes in like it's her office it just waltzes in just walks right in brazenly doesn't care what i'm doing or how busy i am throws her arms around me and says dead dead dead you're the greatest dad in the world and oh by the way that's the secret of faith that's the secret how you treat god yeah ah come on i'm letting something here you know there's something there come on i can't remember ever saying no because she learned the secret access to daddy's mind so even though god puts that goodness in your heart to treat him like that he loves to be treated like that so in answering the question can you change god's will god is bigger than we think yes right generally speaking yeah so we tend to think that he cannot be in control and give us free will at the same time but actually he can he can go out of himself by his spirit and create somebody who loves him back freely he doesn't just hope they'll love him he creates the love in them back to himself wow and that's just the most amazing thing but when you love god like that he loves to be told what to do it's like a parent they'd love for a kid to say hey dad you got to do this you know yeah that's true and in a in a in another sense when somebody in power realizes he is really loved by somebody yeah he loves to be told by that person what to do but that's predicated on that person having a good heart and full of the spirit and all of that you know yes and when they are you they just god just loves to do what we say yes but so the trick is to know what he wants to do in a given situation but a lot of teaching on prayer and doing miracles is is not personal at all you know you're just taught to stand on certain verses and say certain things and declare certain things and believe certain things but it's not personal yes you don't even care what about what god thinks about a certain situation you just think you have the power to to do something so it's not very so you can look at faith two different ways one is that it's a gift god gives you you can do whatever you want with it and the other is that it's knowing god well enough to know what he wants to do in a given situation well it's kind of how first john sounds you know if my words abide in you and you do what i say you can ask me anything i'll do it for you wow but if you think you can just impersonally just uh do stuff you know teach people how to just do miracles without the relationship without god's will having anything to do with it now there's an aspect to that it's always a yes and no yeah it's valuable gosh it's always because it's always like that because god actually can give you a gift yeah and it's irrevocable so it can work and so wherever you're headed if you have maybe you can probably do some damage whether i guess you know coats very well but it takes a lot of risk with us doesn't he but it's still a gift you can't just work it up and decide this is what you want to do because you got taught how it's still a gift yeah right and so we should treat all things from god like a gift that's good go go lower still talk to him like it's a gift but a lot of people teach that all these all this power and all these blessings belong to us they were paid for on the cross they're ours to take and it's us you know it's our stuff let's get our stuff back you know from the devil you know he he stole it let's get it back it belongs to us you know it's all been paid for it's called entitlement but it's not even what the atonement was about no no the atonement was about he who knew no sin becoming sin becoming our sin and being punished for our sins well that idea of penal substitution is not very commonly i understood it preached it's in charismatic circles it's the atonement is often thought of as a some kind of event where god paid for where jesus paid for our blessings so the least we can do is go get them all yes but what it was really about is that uh he takes our sin away so that we can partake of his nature and have his heart and live like he did yes turning the other cheek going the second mile putting up with whatever to show the love of god which is what the atonement really accomplishes and we also get down payments on heaven and the powers of the age to come but those aren't what we love yeah we don't love stuff it's nice to have money but i'm not in love with money you know it's nice to be healed but i need a person to love yes so i've actually learned a lot about prayer and god and from family life on the mission field yeah right because i mean that's very much the kingdom is is like a family isn't it yeah people say why would a good heavenly father put you through something rough well we put our kids through what something a little bit rough at chiango and for a while they didn't even think about it it was just no normal christian life that's true i had no choice no anything different really but i think a lot of missionary kids do feel uh shafted you know cheated by the missionary upbringing right about half of them maybe did you feel a bit cheated by having a boarding school no a missionary kid gets to experience the world and cultures and travel and a broad variety of experiences and adventures and faith and miracles and and going places and seeing things and seeing what god can do that they never hardly ever see at home and seeing a side of the world most americans should see but never do yeah but you didn't love going to boarding school being away from your parents did you no but there's it's yes and no he let alone because in some ways you became socialized you got into sports you got into you know social life student politics all sorts of things clubs events became much more sociable yeah you had friends you had lots of friends lifelong friends and it was a good school academically a very very good school is that in taiwan taiwan yeah english or chinese english english yeah it was an american school right american curriculum but we had kids from missionary families from around the world so we had norwegian students and canadian students and new zealand students you know all from all over all these we had a few pentecostal students mostly evangelical students [Music] yeah but just missed out on being with our parents a lot [Music] while they were on the mission field yeah yeah we officially had uh four day weekends every six weeks with long weekends every six weeks and every six weeks we had a report card and we went home with our report card for four days ah i'd swear parents yeah the big deal was if you got straight a's you would get a banana split that was the big motivation to study and did you but it wasn't enough you know it's never enough four days out of six weeks yeah and that was it wasn't too bad though because it was a two and a half hour train trip away but a lot of boarding schools for people are completely different countries you know exactly and and more than that like rift valley school we all we we investigated that for our kids in in kenya but that that was a long ways away yeah how old were you when you went to boarding school started in seventh grade went through senior but it took a year and a half break in the states on a furlough oh did you so we complain all the time about how long it takes to get between here and the states for example how it takes a couple days jet lags all the layovers the crazy 16 hour flight can you talk about what it took back then to get from the states to china via boat well see did you do by boat you did it the boat is a much more fun way to go is it where they get the front the phrase slow boat to china yes oh snap yes my grandfather should be a real missionary you have to understand what being a real missionary is come on i want you don't just jump on a plane go somewhere you know for a week you quit your home country and culture and family and friends and everybody that you know and you say goodbye to your one world and you go to a completely different world and you never go back that for the for a hundred years that's what missionaries did wow the early missionaries to africa packed their stuff in coffins because they knew they wouldn't live six months no immunizations no vaccines no doctors they knew they'd get black fevers and malaria whatever you'd be dead in six months they went anyway and you said bye to your family knowing that really so my grandfather leaves to fulfill the great commission to china deliberately wanting to get as far away from the nearest white man as possible so it's a slow boat to china on a some old freighter it takes a month or so to get across the ocean at least and then he gets pulled by coolies up the yangtze river gorge you know this is the famous gorge in china where coolies on narrow narrow trails and dynamited into the cliffs along the sides of the gorge slowly pull them pull the boats up the river against the rapids and it took months and then you get up into the foothills of the of tibet you know and you start to pack everything on the backs of yaks and you spend more months getting up into the high mountains of tibet and finally he gets three days yak journey from the nearest white man and he's arrived on the mission field and so my father takes school by correspondence all the way until he was 20 years old all through high school everything it takes a year to take an examination mail it to america and get the result back oh my lord i did that all the way through school no classmates no american friends just chinese around him chinese is his first language this is your father my father gosh and that's how he lived but we took a slow boat once too we took a freighter in those days uh flying was rare extremely expensive and missionaries are usually get exhausted by itinerating and running around you know while they're in the states for a year so part of the reason for taking a boat was to have time off yeah it's a break so we get on a freighter and these old freighters had room for about 12 passengers you know 12 12. you know a whole one lord old old freighters this was an english line piano orient lines you know and had an indian crew from india it takes a month to go to get across the pacific to to long beach san francisco to manila oh okay a month and it was an old ship and the diesel engines would break down in the middle of the south pacific and they'd repair them while you and the plane would the ship would just drift around and the sun sets with the flying fish and the birds and this gorgeous skies and it was gorgeous we dive off the ship and swim you know for days and while they're trying to repair the engines we're just drifting around and oh my god that was a great trip that was a month the indian crew served a different kind of curry every night 30 different kinds of curry in one voyage nathan's dream yes yes yes and on that voyage i learned to play chess with the captain and he was introduced to coca-cola very momentous very momentous voyage how old were you oh about eight nine oh my gosh remember like yesterday though and we get into manila harbor that's so crazy and that was so long ago world war ii was still strong in everybody's memories so the big american vice president and where macarthur fought you know oh yes we saw the caves where the japanese would lock up american prisoners at low tide and just let the tide rise and drown everybody slowly and saw the yeah we saw a lot of stuff then we took a much smaller boat to hong kong from manila oh okay and then from hong kong to taiwan in a smaller freighter it just keeps yeah it gets smaller and smaller and as it got smaller the storms got bigger oh so we had these big storms in this little boat the yeah hall of this freighter faces the front the bow the ship with windows and we see this huge wave come you know i'm just a nine-year-old kid and this here's this whole ship going down into the wave and it crashes over and we're underwater you know and we come up through the other side climb up the next huge wave go down into the next wave and go underwater again and oh my god it was really an exciting voyage you know you're trying to sleep on your bunk you know just rolling the side to hit the stop and then you roll this way and hit the stop and just rolling back and forth that's when i came from rolling but i'm thinking how far can the ship roll and not roll over you know so the whole ship just goes just keeps going and going and going and slowly stops and then goes over all the way over here and you're just a kid wondering how is it gonna just keep going thanks oh that's crazy yeah so missionary kids just had a much more adventurous time you know than most kids oh you did i don't know if you told this in the first podcast or not about being a kid in hong kong and crossing the harbor with your little oh yeah chinese girlfriend we got kicked out of china well let's back way up you know my parents uh my mother was pregnant when they first took a boat to china why my dad was my mother's teacher in bible school oh yes still like teaching she's wonderful one of her students oh very very special students yes and so she's pregnant on the high seas and the typhoon hits the typhoon is so violent that people are being thrown from wall-to-wall breaking bones you know being hit so hard from back and forth the captain was convinced the ship was would be lost he he believed the ship was going down and the infirmary the clinic was just full of people with broken bones they were just setting bones the whole time and if everybody was sick and everybody felt they were lost and i'm not even born yet you know you were you were the pregnant you and you i was inside it was rough it was a rough trip it was really a rough trip and so we get to china and we get to queen ming and then here comes mao zedong with this red army and we can hear the guns in the distance and they're going to take over the country and you know they they're killing millions of people millions and millions of people to do it and the cultural revolution starts and they're shooting christians everywhere you know they have quotas on how many christians they they need to kill every day and we get ousted and my mother says they could hear the guns in the distance while we escaped by a riverboat down the river and then take an old army c-46 plane to hong kong oh and we end up in hong kong and hong kong's full of refugees it's just jammed full of refugees from china right so what makes it so different from singapore it's just crammed full of poor refugees right that makes it so crowded so we lived on a little island so no room in kowloon we moved we lived on a little island on the top of a hill chengdu island in in hong kong harbor just outside the harbor wow and it was so fun for a little kid in those days there was there's hardly anybody on it it was just hills and caves and beaches and we kids just had so much fun it was so much fun and i had a girlfriend five years old i had a cool girlfriend she was so neat and we'd explore caves and poke huge jellyfishes on the beach and do play all kinds of things well it's izzy's age i'll hide in caves and play games and and one day i decided i needed to take her on a date so i i took her on the ferry to hong kong this is like is he going across i'm five you know and hey you know i've been there before i know what to do so like so i just took her we we i i'm pretty sneaky we snuck on the boat without a ticket you know it's one of those starferry kind of classic hong kong boats and i'm on the top deck i still remember it exactly and it was a really a cool trip because someone fell overboard on the way to hong kong and the boat circled around getting this guy out of the water and it was really a neat date we get to hong kong and somehow i managed to get her strawberry ice cream you know downtown and all that and my parents are completely freaking out these kids have totally disappeared they're calling the police and everywhere all over hong kong city you know and and they're they send out search parties and they're just everybody's in a total panic well i come back all by myself with with my girlfriend and go home and get in bed and what's the problem my parents are all freaked out still everybody's panic stricken crying praying and i come home and i'm just asleep in bed you know it's just everything's normal out of bed i'm just the classic you just went to bed oh you've worn out you've been in the nap at five yeah a blast it really is you should try it yes i think it will well yeah okay okay i think we had a time rolling but that was awesome oh my god we need to do a serious series of this yeah starting back here the hong kong series we gotta i have more stories yeah yes and we're gonna get to the imagine like robbing graves or skeletons skulls and okay putting candles behind them swinging them outside girls dorm windows you know at night and you could do a lot of things in boarding school you don't do at home so this is like a trailer we have to do a hot one trailer for next time yes okay the boarding school series come on well guys thank you so much again for joining us for another in-depth look at the mission life with papa roland and his father and his grandfather and his daughter it's been fantastic so we will see you again very soon hope you enjoyed it see you next time this podcast is presented by iris global for more information or to support the work of iris global work please visit us online at irisglobal.org

Channel: Iris Global

Views: 5,744

Rating: 4.8431373 out of 5

Keywords: Iris After Hours, Podcast, Iris Global, Heidi Baker, Rolland Baker, Nathan Kotzur, Crystalyn Human, Christian, Missions, Iris Ministries, NGO, Free, Encouraging, Inspiring, Testimony, Stop for the One, Africa, missionary kid, war zone, love, martyr

Id: 7gxh1f5IdAM

Length: 54min 38sec (3278 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2017