Chapter 7, Mission as Necessity: 1930–1939 (excerpts)

“I believe our missionaries are going to do good work in foreign fields . . . if they can shake off,
mentally at least, the traditional attitudes towards other . . . groups. One doesn’t need to compromise
in principle or simply molly coddle other folks, but one must give them the same rights to interpret
Christianity’s basics as one reserves for oneself. Sometimes I get shivers on just this point.”

On the road for Miller Hess and A. N. Wolf shoe companies, Orie saw
economic distress in nearly every city he visited. In Cincinnati in a single
month, 799 new families appealed to the charitable organization, the
Community Chest. Detroit had “police watching all entrances to the city
to keep outside unemployed from coming there for jobs & then becoming
subjects of charity.” Daily, Orie heard and read stories that “make
one sick at heart.” St. Louis was no exception. “Everywhere, it’s the same
story of unemployment, bread lines, [and] distress.”

Shoe Company Prosperity
In striking contrast, the prospects for the A. N. Wolf company in Denver,
Pennsylvania, “never was brighter,” and Miller Hess in Akron was “picking
up every day.” The two companies produced quality shoes at lower
prices. If people could afford shoes at all, they chose products made
by such companies as the efficient “Mennonite” factories in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania. In comparison to the pain of millions, Orie and his
partners could “feel most happy.”

The Voice of Eastern Mennonite Missions
In July 1931, Orie’s attention was turning southward to South America
and an upcoming MCC mission to Brazil and Paraguay to help Russian
Mennonites who had settled there. “The burden of the coming task is . . .
resting more & more heavily on my heart, as the time approaches,” he
told Elta. His anxiety added intensity to his prayers: “Am praying mightily
for full submission to His Will & for sensitiveness to His leading.”
He had reported the assignment to the readers of the Eastern Mennonite
Missions paper, the Missionary Messenger, of which he was editor.

David Toews and the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization
In subsequent issues of the Missionary Messenger, Orie continued to publish
reports on the Russian Mennonite migrations to Canada. In response,
the Lancaster Conference shipped to Rosthern, Saskatchewan, and
Altona, Manitoba, 8,877 garments, weighing 7,463 pounds and valued at
$6,668. Ironically, as Russian Mennonites were immigrating to Canada,
Old Colony Sommerfelder Mennonites of Russian origin were emigrating
from Manitoba to Paraguay. The Messenger carried the report of A.
J. Miller, director of MCC relief work in Russia, that the work in Russia
was essentially finished. The Lancaster Conference had in six years given
$50,000 to MCC’s relief work in Russia. From Canada, David Toews
reported that 18,098 Russians had arrived since July 1923.

A New Crisis in Moscow
The December 1929 Messenger informed its readers of a new crisis brewing
in the Soviet Union. Thousands of refugees were camped in and about
Moscow in a “final desperate attempt to emigrate.” After Lenin’s death
in 1924, Joseph Stalin worked to outmaneuver his rivals for control of the
party and the Soviet Union. In 1927, he achieved his goal and initiated his
“five-year plan” to industrialize and collectivize the Soviet economy. This
disastrous policy enacted the confiscation of private property, religious
repression, and a systematic program of extermination of Soviet citizens
in Siberia—and sparked a new wave of emigration.

Mission to the Paraguayan Chaco
Having been thus commissioned, Orie set off on August 8 from Pier 64 in
New York Harbor on the SS American Legion. It was Orie’s first mission
to South America, a trip he would repeat, by his count, thirty-some times.
The next day, Orie wrote a letter for the Messenger, recalling his previous
journeys to Beirut and Constantinople: “Now for the third time we
find ourselves on the briny deep, cut off from homeland, loved ones, and
friends.” Orie took care, as always, to identify his MCC mission as an expression
of the church. He expressed gratitude for the promise of prayer.
“Indeed effective intercession is in itself efficient service.”

The Efficiency of Air Travel
Orie Miller, MCC liaison to the Mennonite colonies in South America and
associate editor of the Missionary Messenger, also had to earn a living.
And his family was growing—on August 8, 1930, Robert Wolf Miller was
born, the fifth and the last child to join Orie and Elta’s family. Fortunately,
despite the dramatic drop in national industrial output, shoe sales in
Akron and Denver were booming. From the Copley-Plaza Hotel in Boston
on January 13, 1932, Orie reported higher than average sales of ninetynine
cases. In March, he was expecting even higher daily sales since he
was getting into “better territory” west of Kansas City.

Shirati by Lake Victoria
After a long and arduous journey, Stauffer and Sylwulka found themselves
on the low, flat-topped Kuturu Hill overlooking a small trading
village near the eastern shore of Lake Victoria. In the region lived 550,000
people in 402 villages, “with hardly four Christians.” Chief Nyataya, who
had led them to the hill, said, “Here is where I think you should build.”
Sylwulka agreed, “That is your field.” On February 16, Stauffer, confident
that this was, indeed, the place, stepped off the perimeter of the mission
compound.82 It was a place called Shirati—a name that for Lancaster
Mennonites would become as familiar as Salunga.

Appointments as MCC and EMM Executive
The year 1935 saw another important milestone for Orie. The MCC
executive committee selected him to be its executive secretary-treasurer in
place of the late Levi Mumaw, who had served conscientiously in that role
since its founding in 1920. Orie, the new executive, moved the MCC files
from Mumaw’s office at the Mennonite Publishing House in Scottdale to
the Miller home in Akron. Thus, the inter-Mennonite relief agency’s office
was relocated to the heart of Lancaster County, a constituency wary of
such cooperation.

Growing Children
Fundraising was not the only thing on Graber’s mind. In an undated
handwritten letter, Graber wrote to Orie “as a favor,” citing Lois’s less-than-
stellar conduct as a Goshen College student. Several times during
the fall, Lois had spent weekends with her grandparents, Nettie and D.
D. Miller, at the Board of Missions headquarters on Prairie Street. The
problem was that she went out every night and came home late. Recently,
Grandpa D. D. had checked his watch when Lois came in—it was 3:00
a.m. Furthermore, she was flaunting conference rules by wearing not a
bonnet but a hat with feathers. In the course of her conversation with D.
D., Lois said she did not know how long she could remain a Mennonite.
Graber knew of no “tilts” with college administrators, but “the weekend
business had to be stopped.” They had decided not to “raise a rumpus”
before the Christmas holidays, but when she returned to campus, Graber
was “going to wake her up.”