My Dad's story - Peter Voran, part 2

Continuing the story.....

My father went to Grace Bible Institute, as it was known then, in Omaha, Nebraska.  He worked on the school paper.  This is where he met my mother, as she also helped with the paper.  Because he loved to sing, he joined the choir and sang in quartets and trios.  In his later years, he continued to love hymns and modern choruses too (although with his hearing loss, he was usually off-key!  We never told him!).

My mom is on the front right (Aunt Treva, who became a missionary to Africa is next to her).  My Dad is on the 3rd row, 3rd person from the left.

Dad worked in an ice-cream factory in Omaha while he put himself through Bible school.  He tells us that they allowed them to eat all the ice-cream they wanted.   Ice-cream was his favorite food!  (We often went to Braums  after they moved to Newton  and while in nursing care he enjoyed a dish of ice-cream after lunch and supper.   He was borderline diabetic and they wanted to limit him, but as a family, we felt like being in his 90's, he could eat all the ice-cream he wanted!  Below is a picture of Mom and Dad at the Blue Bunny factory in Le Mars, Iowa)

After two years at Grace, he left to attend Bethel College in Newton, Kansas, while taking on  his first job as a  pastor at the Hopefield Mennonite church in rural Moundridge.  This is why he switched colleges – to begin the pastorate.  



On a return trip to Omaha with his cousin, Chet, for a reunion at Grace, my mom happened to be passing out the programs.  Chet told my dad that he would be a fool to not marry that pretty lady.  In fact, he said if Dad wasn't going to ask her, he was going to do it!  So Dad asked my mom out and ended up proposing to her that very night!   Can you believe that??   He says he went back to the dorm and cried about it, thinking perhaps he had made a big mistake.  But it wasn’t!  They were married for 65 years!

After a total of 3 dates and a summer apart, they were married in Pandora on August 5, 1949. 

The wedding reception was held in the country at the home my mother grew up in.

For their honeymoon, they drove to a Bible conference at Pikes Peak, Colorado.  We always teased them that they had such a romantic honeymoon!  Others attending the conference knew they were newlyweds.  After my parents had checked into the lodge and gone to dinner, some people went to their room to pull a prank.  They replaced the double bed for bunk beds! 

Mom and Dad first lived in Newton, Ks. in a homette on the Bethel College campus.  These were small units with no running water.  There was a bucket for the drain in the kitchen.  Dad dug a hole outside the kitchen and put a barrel in the hole.  He had put holes in that barrel so it would drain.  Then he placed a pipe from the kitchen to the bucket so they wouldn’t have to empty the bucket daily. 

Later they moved to an apartment in Moundridge since Dad was pastoring there.  During this time, my brother David was born at the old Bethel Deaconess Hospital.  

Both Mom and Dad had felt the call to be missionaries.  They had thought they would go to Africa.  Mom's sister, Treva was going there as a nurse midwife and their good friends from school, the Ted Veers and also Sam Entz' were headed there.  However, Japan had just opened up following the end of the war and they were asked if they would consider going there.  They both knew this was God’s direction for them.

The ship stopped in Hawaii.  At that time, it was not a vacation spot.  There were hardly any tourists there at all!

They arrived in Japan September 15, 1951.  Japan was still digging out from the ruins of war.  The newly arrived missionaries lived in a big renovated house that had been turned into 4 apartments.   They lived there with other missionaries who soon became family.

For 2 years they studied diligently.  Japanese is a very difficult language to learn.

While the couples were at language school, they hired nannys to care for the children.

My Dad and Verney Unruh would teach English to Japanese students.  Two men, Yamada and Yanada started coming to the house for more lessons and to learn about Christ.  These 2 accepted Christ and eventually became pastors.  Yanada’s two daughters would one day grow up and come to Bethel College and marry Americans!  Yanada pastored a Japanese congregation in Madison, Wisconsin.

In 1953, my brother Doug was born.  

After language school was completed, "Uncle" Verney and Dad went to the southern island of Kyushu to scope it out as a possible place to begin their work.  It was agreed that the gospel was needed in this area.

 My parents loaded up their belongings and moved to the Aburatsu/Nichinan area.

Aburatsu is a coastal town surrounded by mountains.  

Land was purchased and a home was built by Will Voth, who had been a missionary in China.  Will and his family had to flee China (because of the Japanese invasion several years earlier) and came to Japan to help these new missionaries build new homes.

Our home...

 built in the midst of rice paddies

 

Their ministry began with a good old-fashioned tent ministry.  They would go throughout the town, making announcements of the time for the meeting.

It wasn’t long before there were enough people to begin a church.  At first they met in the upstairs of our home.  

One of the first people to come to Christ was a man whose family made idols.  My Dad shared the verse frpm

 Psalm 115:5-6

⁵ They have mouths but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
⁶ They have ears but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.

The man knew Dad spoke the truth and he gave his life to Christ.  As many people gave their lives to Christ, they burned their idols and objects that had to do with the Buddhist and Shinto faith.

I was born in 1955.  A trip to Kobe by plane was made for my birth.  Both my brother Doug and I were born at the Canadian hospital there.

My first airplane ride at 1 week old.


Besides church planting, they started a Christian kindergarten for Japanese children.  It was called Kei-Ai Yochiyen or Grace-Love Kindergarten.  From the beginning it was staffed by Christian teachers and was a positive Christian witness in the community.   My dad was the principal and
was called Encho-sensei.

 

My mother helped with teaching at this kindergarten.  

Approximately 200 children attended.   It was built right by our home and my brothers and I attended this kindergarten.  The playground became our own playground.


to be continued....

My Dad's story - Peter Voran, part 1

My father, Peter Willard Voran, was born on a farm in 1923 in Castleton Township, Reno county.   He was named Peter after his paternal grandfather who died when his father was only 7 years old.  

Grandpa Carl, Aunt Helen, Dad, Aunt Millie, Grandma Martha

He had 2 older sisters and 2 younger sisters; Helen, Mildred, Mary and Betty.  His mother says that he didn’t begin to speak until he about 2 years old.

He was sometimes called Petey, but they often just called him Boy.  His mother  had wanted to name him Willard but Grandpa Carl didn’t like that name.  She still called him Willard, not Peter, but he wouldn’t answer to that name, so she began to call him “Boy.”  And that became his nickname.

Grandpa Carl was very strict.  He had a razor strap that he used.  It was often  used on him because he teased his sisters and  because he did not do what he was told to do.  However, Dad remembers getting it a couple of times when he didn’t deserve it and blamed the sisters for lying about something he did.  At dinner time, he sat on his father’s right side.  He says he would get his ear pulled for being naughty.  Pretty soon they noticed one ear getting longer so they set him on the other side.

They moved to Pretty Prairie for a couple of years to help out an uncle at the hardware store and this is where my dad first attended school.  (below front right)

After they moved back to the farm, he and his sisters would walk 1 ½ miles down the road to the Zion country school, a one room school house with about 30 kids.  (below, front in the middle; 4th from left)

During the war, Germans were hated and my Aunt Millie remembers having tomatoes thrown at them.  Our relatives spoke German, having immigrated from Prussia in 1874. Grandpa Carl said it was time to learn the English language and speak it in the home.  

Their house was a one story home with 3 bedrooms on the main floor.  He slept in the basement.  They didn’t have a bathroom.  The toilet was outside and it was really cold in the winter.  They kept their house warm with a coal furnace.  They used kerosene lights and candles, then gas carbide for lighting the home.  When he was in high school, they finally got electricity.

They had 8 cattle to milk and they butchered chickens daily.  Dad learned to drive the tractor really young.   They had lots of chores.  They milked the cows, morning and evening.  All the children would milk the cows together.   They had to clean the chicken house every Saturday.  They mowed the lawn and pulled weeds in the summer.  And they had to take turns doing the dishes.  He did not enjoy doing the dishes. He remembers hiding once in a while to get away from doing things.  

A funny side note to that:  when he attended Shalom Church, he and mom served on the kitchen committee and Dad did many dishes!!  And he did the dishes for Mom regularly too!

Grandpa Carl always told him to clean up his dish whether he liked it or not.  He learned to like most anything, except cabbage.  A favorite dish was his mother’s Russian beet borscht made with red beets, green beans and potatoes.

Saturday was clean the house, polish the shoes for church, and take a bath day.  They took a bath in a tin tub in the kitchen. 

Growing up, my dad played with lots of cousins who lived in the Arlington and Pretty Prairie area.   They enjoyed roller skating at the community rink or on the ponds in the area.  In the summer they would swim in the rivers and ponds around the area.  They enjoyed hide and seek, hide the hankie, andi over and many games.  They made many make believe toys and played with sling shots.  He got his first bicycle in the 7^th grade.

There was no tv but he remembers when they got their first radio.  Their favorite program was Fibber Magee and Mollie, the Long Ranger, Jack Armstrong and the All – American Boy.

They had lots of cats and dogs and a pony for a while.  One dog got run over by a car.  Another time a neighbor came over and claimed that their dog was killing his sheep so he shot him, right there in the front yard.

During the depression they got 5 cents to spend.  They were told not to spend it all in one place so they would buy candy for a penny or penny pencils.  They could buy an ice-cream cone for 5 cents, bubblegum was a penny.  Candy bars were 3 for 10 cents.  They would save their money and go to the movies for 10 cents, or to the Fox theatre in Hutch for 25 cents.  There were 4 movie houses in Hutch at that time.  They enjoyed cowboy movies and the cartoons too.  

Besides farming, they had a mechanic shop and their own Texaco station right there on the farm.  Dad often would deliver gas to farms when he turned 17.  Even the girls would help pump gas.  They gave that up at the start of WW2.  There was too much bookwork, but they always did keep the repair shop.

My father was accident prone.  One time around the age of 6, he wanted to be smart  and show the kids how a cat will always fall on its feet.  He went into the hayloft and when he went to throw the cat out, it clung on to his bib overalls and he went out with the cat.  He broke his wrist and sprained the other.

Another time, he broke his collar bone when he fell out of a tree.

When he was 12, he was fixing the catwalk across 2 tanks (gasoline and kerosene) and his mother called them in for dinner.  The walkway was 16 feet high and he stepped too far and it pitched and he fell and broke his front teeth.  He was crying and they asked what the matter was and he told them “Now I won’t be pretty anymore!”   

We always enjoyed it when he would stick out his false 2 front teeth.

 When asked about his decision to follow Christ, Dad said that his mother had such a love for people and was so kind and that they were in church regardless of anything.  His father  served as a trustee in the church and also a Sunday School superintendent and was always helping people.  This made an impression on him.

In the 7^th & 8^th grade, his school teacher, Miss Davis, had them memorize lots of Bible verses and he often won those contests.   He won this picture of Christ with one Bible memory contest.

Before Miss Davis left the school, she told my dad that one day he would be a preacher.  In a way, he told us, that was one of the best things she ever said, since he ended up one!  But at that time he didn’t want to be a preacher so he didn’t want to get too serious about church.

But he knew a lot about the Bible and his Sunday School teacher also told him that one day he would be a preacher.  No, No, he wanted to be a farmer.  He resisted making a decision for the Lord.  In high school, there was a preacher who came to the Castleton church and he talked to them.    He had a real impact on my dad.  But when the war broke out that preacher went to war.

In high school, he attended Castleton High school.  My  husband's mother also attended the same school and is on the far left.  Incidentally, they even had a couple of dates!  

My dad was a good student, making very good grades.  He enjoyed writing poetry, as did his sisters.  He continued to write humorous poetry for much of his life.

My father had a farm deferment and worked 5 years during the war, running the farm until the war was over.  His father was very sick at that time so he did most of the work.  He did some work in the fields and at harvest time for others.  The first money he earned was $3 a week.  Later as he grew older, he made $1 a day!

During the war, they would hire on German POWs to help with the farm work.  The Germans were probably quite happy with their internment and having to help out on this family farm where the family spoke German and fed them German food.  We are pretty sure the American POWs were not treated quite as nicely!  Dad recalls however, that one POW hung himself in the barn.  

Dad enjoyed driving his cars.  He learned to drive from his father when he was 9 years old so that he could help out on the farm.   In all he had 12 cars in his life, which included 4 or 5 in Japan.  His first car was a model A Ford 1928 that he really enjoyed!  He really banged around in it.  Then he got a 1934 Olds Coupe!

After high school, Dad was in a car accident.  He was going with a Stucky girl and was coming home from her place and hit a gas truck.  He was thrown onto the  road.  A farmer who saw the accident began to run to it.  The car was beginning to tip and fall on my dad, but someone in white pushed the car so it wouldn’t roll over.  When the farmer got there, this person had disappeared.  Dad's life was spared.  He was unconscious from Sunday through Wednesday.

His arm had been broken in the accident and they needed to set it.  They bolted it together in a fixed position so it would never move again.  They had it set in a way that he would be able to still milk the cows and carry the bucket of milk.  This happened during the war.  Each day, he began to pick up buckets of sand and slowly got the arm to move and after a long time, he was able to move that arm up and down.

After the war, the Castelton pastor came back and he told them the importance of being yielded to Christ.  As my dad was driving home that night, he pulled over and cried his eyes out.  He made the decision to follow Christ.  He drove home and woke up the parents and told them what he had done and that he wanted to become a preacher.   He had led a wild life and his father drove to Kingman to tell the pastor of Peter’s decision.  My father was told he should attend Grace Bible Institute in Omaha, Nebraska.  He was 23 years old.