“Who drew this?” she asked, offering a chance for confession.
Guilty silence.
“Actually, I know who it was. You see, Nancy does not know how to spell Jamie.”
Jamie turned red and hung his head. La Nell dismissed the matter and sent them off to play. This was hardly the first event of its kind with which she had been forced to deal. When Nelda was three she had written on the front wall of the house with black crayon. Lucía, who helped with the housework, was horrified when La Nell set the little girl to scrub with a brush and a pail of soapy water while tears streamed down her face.
“Don’t worry, Lucía. I know she can’t get it off, but I’ll let her work on it just long enough so that she won’t want to repeat the experience.”
Nancy, on the other hand, had recently chosen a medium that was much easier to clean for her mural—the glass panels of the balcony doors, so that she had actually been able to scrub it off herself.
Meanwhile, a fascinated four-year-old Danny had yanked on one of the tantalizing weights dangling from the wall clock, snapping the chain. La Nell put the pieces away and hoped no one would be the wiser.
When Susie and Mel walked through the door, practically the first thing they saw was their eldest son’s artwork. They were naturally mortified and, although La Nell made light of it, they kept casting reproachful glances at Jamie throughout the meal, until he could bear it no longer and, undoing the Bedfords’ tactful silence, he blurted out:
“Well, what about Danny, then? He broke the clock!”
If his parents could have sunk through the floor, they would have.
Because of its convenient central location, meetings were often held at the apartment. One evening La Nell was hosting fellow members of the Education Board. After the third or fourth time she had excused herself for several minutes, her guests exchanged worried glances.
“Poor thing, she must have an upset stomach!”
Little did they realize that the meeting was taking place at the same time that La Nell’s beloved Racing Club was battling Estudiantes in the semifinals of the Copa Libertadores de América, the most important soccer championship of the Americas. The suspense was killing her, so she was making quick checks on the score on her bedroom radio.
Musical Houses
Lady, the Collie, was telling them all about it. She extended a paw, looking at them with mournful liquid eyes while she uttered a heart-rending series of throaty sounds that clearly asked, “Who are you and where is my family?”
The Caves had left on furlough and the Bedfords had gone to their house, six months after moving to the apartment and six months before their own furlough. The latest change of abode affected the various family members in different ways.
As far as La Nell was concerned, the main point in favor of the move had been to get away from the neighbors in the apartment immediately above them. The family’s son must have been in a band for he practiced his drums assiduously. The mother apparently wore high heels day and night and rearranged furniture as a hobby, judging from the clacking of her stilettos and the scraping and dragging that could be heard at all hours. La Nell adjusted home logistics and continued to juggle her responsibilities as Sunday School teacher and pastor’s wife; chair of the Stewardship Committee and member of the Youth Organizations Committee of the South Zone’s W.M.U.38 and corresponding secretary and Executive Committee member of the National W.M.U.; secretary of the Mission’s Administration Committee; and chair of the Social Committee of the Seminary.
The Foreign Mission Board paid for one round trip for college M.K.s to visit their parents, so David was back for three months between his freshman and sophomore years, and was in on the transition. He had loved the apartment and its location, but he was just glad to be home and game for anything. Nevertheless, all the excitement must have affected him at some level because one night Ben was startled out of sleep by banging noises. Tracking them down to their source, he discovered a sleepwalking David muttering in French as he purposefully attempted to climb into the closet.
Nancy began riding to school in a van that took her and several other students to Ward. She enjoyed the yard and the dog (once Lady had been taught not to jump, as she was taller than Nancy when she leapt up and put her paws on the little girl’s shoulders).
Nelda withdrew into a private world. Her comfortable cultural balance had been upset: English was supposed to be the private language of home and reading for pleasure; Spanish was for everything else. An occasional American (or even a group) was acceptable and at times even delightful. Now, not only did she have to go to an American school, she had to ride there in a vehicle full of American kids and live in “the compound,” an area that went through the heart of the block and contained five houses occupied by missionary professors and their families. Although she liked almost everyone at school and in the compound individually and got along perfectly with them all, put together they were overwhelming. Church provided both spiritual and cultural refuge.
On the other hand, for Ben the move meant huge savings in terms of time and wear and tear, since the house was on the same block as the buildings in which he had his office and carried out most of his work. As Director of In-Service Training, he coordinated the placement of 102 students in 58 churches in the first semester and 86 students in 45 churches in the second semester. In addition, he taught Pastoral Ministry, Old Testament Prophecy and Practical Work.
Apart from his Seminary activities, Ben served as chairman of a subcommittee of the Mission’s Fraternal Relations Committee. He was the Coordinator of the evangelistic emphasis for 1968 of the five associations of the Greater Buenos Aires area,39 which would reach its high point with simultaneous campaigns in October. There were numerous planning meetings, crowned by a dinner for the pastors and their wives with 125 attending, representing ninety percent of the churches. Ben also served on the Executive Committee of the Federal Capital Association and on its New Works Commission, together with Santiago Canclini, Víctor Sedaca and Samuel Martínez. A new personal challenge grew out of this.
In their 1968 Annual Report to the Argentine Baptist Mission, the Bedfords wrote:
The greatest privilege of every Christian is to be a member of a local church. Until recently, Ben served as pastor of the Solano church and each member of the family had his respective responsibilities. Mr. Raúl Duarte began serving as pastor on March 1. We are grateful that the Lord continues to bless it in a wonderful way. Since April our family has enjoyed working with the Andersons, Caves, Carrolls, Díaz and others in the new work which meets in the Seminary chapel. This work started with 21 decisions in the first revival in which Santiago Garabaya preached. Many of these decisions are the direct result of years of faithful witness by Seminary personnel, in particular that of Kitty Cooper. The work in this community will be slow and hard and we desire your prayers as we seek to make this a true testimony.
Initially, the new work was led by Ben. When it was time for the Bedfords to leave at the end of the year, Juan Ciéslar took over, and the Thompsons felt called to work with him, lending invaluable aid. Eventually this group and the small congregation of Floresta decided to join in forming a new church they named Betel (“House of God” in Hebrew).
The Hub of the South Plains
Their first furlough without school! For the adults at any rate, since the children, each born in a different decade, were in elementary, high school and college, respectively. Up to now, their time in the U.S. had been spent in Fort Worth, Texas so that the parents could study at Southwestern Baptist Seminary. Ben had earned his Master of Missions on the first furlough, while La Nell had been forced to drop out of her classes toward a Master of Christian Education to spend a month at the hospital in Dallas with seven-year-old David and his badly broken arm. On the second furlough, Ben graduated as Doctor of Theology, while La Nell had to withdraw from two different semesters, first due