Mildred Tengbom
Newly Revised, with an Afterword by Charles Lindquist Scripture taken from the Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted. The Spirit of God was Moving. Copyright © 2019 by World Mission Prayer League. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Mildred Tengbom
Newly Revised, with an Afterword by Charles Lindquist
World Mission Prayer League Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Spirit of God was Moving
Table of Contents
Foreword 7
The Vision 11
The Roots of the Vision 17
The Vision Shared 31
The Vision Begins to Take Shape 37
Setting Their Sights to Plow a Straight Line 43
In Search of a Harvest Field 47
Thistles and Thorns 53
The Hand of the Lord 63
Brought Together and Torn Asunder 73
Dark Days 85
Fallen Logs in the Road 89
A Surge Forward 95
Reconciliation 105
Stretching the Wings 109
The Three Continents Entered 113
Afterword 117
5
The Spirit of God was Moving
Foreword
“Write the vision” (Habakkuk 2:2, NRSV). The prophet Habakkuk received a vision, many long years ago. He was told to write it down – plainly, “in big block letters,” so that “it can be read on the run” (MSG). He was to write it in hope, as an encouragement for all the generations to come. The Spirit of God was on the move. And he was about to do something special. Another sort of prophet received another sort of vision, nearly a century ago. It was a missionary vision – a clear, broad vision for the evangelization of the world. He, too, was instructed to write the vision down – point by point, in clear and simple language, as a guide and encouragement for generations to come. The Spirit of God was on the move. And, once again, he was about to do something special. You have that vision in your hands. This was a vision given to a fellow named Ernest Weinhardt in 1929, in a little town called Mboula, in what is today Cameroon. It has found its way in the many years since to a little Bible school in Minneapolis, a little village in the mountains of Bolivia, the faraway steppes of Mongolia, the towering Himalayas of Nepal, and thousands of points in between. It has birthed as well a committed community of like-minded friends, who have prayed and dared the vision into a living reality. It is this “birthing,” this daring, that is described in the following pages. The story will be told by one of its “midwives,” you might say – an insider who was gripped by the vision as a young woman and committed her life to see it become reality. Her name was Millie. This is the story of hundreds and thousands of young men and women like her – committed to their Lord, surrendered to his Cause, and ready to give their lives for the sake of his mission in the world.
7 The Spirit of God was Moving
Now at home with the Lord, Mildred Hasselquist Tengbom (1921-2016) was one of our true pioneers. Millie’s own life echoes the themes presented in this book. Born to believing parents in 1921, Millie described a deep personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ on July 23, 1936. She was a girl of 15. A few years later, on April 9, 1939, she committed herself to the Lord and his Cause for missionary service. “A real period of ‘Processing’ began for me,” she wrote a few years later. “I began to realize that one can have a lot of light on missions without there being real life. So I asked God for a real heart vision of the world; and as I waited upon him alone, he began to give it….” You will sense Millie’s “real heart vision” in these pages. Her own vision led her into solidarity with Weinhardt’s vision, and the organization that was emerging around it. She applied for service within our fellowship on September 12, 1941, and soon was off to the Nepal border – what was then considered one of the most challenging and least reached mission fields on the planet. From the very beginning, Millie