19
Into All the World
The Caribbean 1958, Chicago 1962, South America 1962, Mexico 1981

A couple of years before our African trip, following the 1957 New York meetings, we held major Crusades—often lasting two to four weeks apiece—in a number of U.S. cities: San Francisco, Sacra-mento, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Washington, Minneapolis, Phil-adelphia, and all across the state of Florida. We also returned to Europe for meetings and rallies in Switzerland, Germany, England, and Northern Ireland. The schedule included dozens of other engagements as well—everything from speaking at a high school in a small town near our home in North Carolina to the annual Christ-mas services at West Point and Annapolis.

Now it was time for us to turn our full attention southward, but we had to move with great caution. Why?

First, in almost every country of Latin America, Protestants were a tiny minority. For example, when we preached in Quito, Ecuador, Protestants numbered less than 2,000 out of a population of 280,000.

Second, relations between Roman Catholics and Protestants had seldom been cordial in that part of the world; in some places, particularly in rural areas, there had been occasional discrimination, even violence.

Today it may be hard to recall the sharp divisions and controversies that sometimes marked Protestant-Catholic relations back then—even during John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960—but they were real; and in no place were they stronger than in Latin America. The Second Vatican Council, with its acceptance of Christians from other traditions as “separated brethren,” had not yet been held. (Its first session opened in October 1962, just as we were concluding our final Latin American meetings.)

Nor was the fault always on the Catholic side, I knew. Often Latin American Protestants were guilty of intolerance, negative preaching, and inflammatory language. I had no intention of adding fuel to the fire. In fact, whenever possible during our trip south (as well as on other tours), I tried to meet with local Catholic leaders, to the occasional consternation of some of our hosts.

My goal, I always made clear, was not to preach against Catholic beliefs or to proselytize people who were already committed to Christ within the Catholic Church. Rather, it was to proclaim the Gospel to all those who had never truly committed their lives to Christ. Large numbers of people in Latin America, I knew, were only nominal believers.

A third reason we needed to proceed with caution had to do with the political instability in many countries. Because most of the governments were not democratic, we knew it would be difficult to gain permission for large public gatherings.

But Ken Strachan, who lived in Costa Rica (and whose wife, Elizabeth, was one of Ruth’s closest friends), was constantly urging me to go. He was the most respected Protestant leader in Latin America, as was his father before him, who had founded the Latin America Mission. Ken held the same view I did: that there needed to be a coming together in some way and some form between Catholics and Protestants. He worked toward that end, much to the displeasure of some of his colleagues in the Latin America Mission.

Ken was a thoroughgoing evangelical and had a terrific network. He worked through all the Protestant organizations (and as many Catholic organizations as he could) throughout Latin Amer-ica. He was so highly respected that when people got a letter from him about our coming, they paid attention.

THE CARIBBEAN

Partly in response to all those invitations, we toured a number of the Caribbean countries in 1958. The crowds everywhere, I was pleased to discover, were overwhelming. And there was a good reason for that: many people on the islands had been listening to me for years over the radio. Our program came on at six in the morning (before they went to work) and at six in the evening (after they had returned home). They might not have recognized my face, but they knew my voice.

Our largest audience was in Barbados. Grady had started the Crusade there, along with singer Ethel Waters. Ethel was making a deep impression on the local population with her call for love and harmony between the white and black races.

Someone had arranged for me to stay without charge at a posh club, the St. James; but when I realized that the local population was not too kindly disposed toward the tourist hotels and resented the displays of wealth and moral laxness among the tourists, I decided to stay instead in a small, unpretentious hotel.

Before I could sign in, however, the British governor-general invited me to be his guest at the official residence. Although I accepted with genuine gratitude, it was an old place, and not very comfortable. As we drove past the Hilton Hotel on our way to the meetings, I admit I looked at it with longing eyes.

The governor-general, Sir Robert Arundell, we were given to understand, was not too enthusiastic about our visit to Barbados, but he went to each meeting. Apparently, from his friends and contacts in London, he had heard a few good words about us.

I was scheduled to preach at the closing service. That evening he drove me to the meeting place in his Rolls-Royce, one of five cars in our party. The crowd was dense, and the streets were narrow. If it hadn’t been for the police escort—a little truck that boasted a bell instead of a siren—we would never have gotten there.

The crowd pressed upon us, clapping and shouting. As we arrived at the back of the platform the pianos began to play “God Save the Queen.” We stood at attention through the last note and then were escorted by the chief of police to our seats.

The crowd stretched as far as the eye could see. Jerry Beavan put attendance at 60,000; the police estimated 75,000. Lady Arundell felt that half the island—or 100,000 people—had come. It was one of our largest crowds to date. Two thousand cars were parked at the edges of the crowd, and their passengers remained inside; but the amplification system was one of the best we had ever used, and they could hear every word through their open car windows. In that huge crowd, we could sense the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

As we left the meeting, the governor-general got a rude shock. Surrounded by people, our car was rocked back and forth. He called for the police, who finally got the crowd away from the car and gave us an escort back to the official residence. I tried to reassure him, explaining that the people were just happy—they were waving and shouting, “God bless you!”—but he thought they were drunk.

We visited most of the Caribbean islands during that trip. In addition, we held rallies of a day or two’s length in cities in Ven-ezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico. It was an exhausting time, so when Jerry—at a brief break in the schedule—told us he had made reservations for us to relax at a nice, quiet hotel on one of the islands, we were delighted. But instead of a pleasant time of relaxation, we had exactly the reverse. The spartan hotel had no beach. The food was bad. We had to boil our drinking water. From that moment on, with tongue in cheek, we thanked Jerry at every opportunity for his thoughtfulness and hospitality!

Shortly after taking off from the island’s grass runway for the brief trip to Trinidad, one of our little plane’s two engines began to sputter, but we made it safely to our destination. On landing, we went directly to the Pan American Airlines guest house for a night’s rest before leaving early the next morning for Panama.

Oddly enough, a year and a half later, in mid-1960, a similar thing happened on our flight to Rio de Janeiro to attend the Baptist World Alliance. We were flying from Puerto Rico with a stop scheduled in Belém, Brazil, where the plane would refuel. The trouble began late at night. We had sleepers, and I was up in my bunk resting. Stephen Olford and Grady were also in theirs; Martin Luther King, Jr., was with us and was sitting up reading. One of the DC–7’s motors caught fire, and the captain announced that we would be making an emergency landing in Trinidad. While the other passengers milled about waiting for instructions, I knew exactly what to do: “Let’s get a taxi and go straight to the Pan Amer-ican guest house we stayed in before,” I suggested. It was good to have a familiar haven at one or two in the morning.

We had boarded that plane for Rio de Janeiro, as I said, in Puerto Rico, where we all had stopped for a couple of days’ rest before the conference. We had stayed at the Hilton Hotel there and done a lot of swimming and praying together. I had known Martin Luther King, Jr., for several years. His father, who was called Big Mike, called him Little Mike. He asked me to call him just plain Mike.

When we got to Rio, I gave the closing address for the Baptist World Alliance in the Maracanã Stadium; it is one of the largest in the world, with a capacity of 200,000 people, including standees. While in Rio, I gave a dinner at the Copacabana Hotel, which—though I didn’t realize it then—was owned by my father-in-law’s brother, who had built a business empire down there. The dinner was in honor of Mike, and I invited Southern Baptist leaders from the United States to come. I wanted to build a bridge between blacks and whites in our own South, and this seemed like a good opportunity to move toward that goal. Our Texas businessman friend Howard Butt joined us for dinner. When the meal was over and we had made all our speeches, I said a final word: “I’d like to thank our host, Howard Butt, for this marvelous—and expensive—dinner.” That was the first time Howard had heard he was the host!

During our brief stay in Rio, some Mississippi Baptists came up to Grady to welcome him. As they were talking, Mike came by and slapped Grady on the shoulder and greeted him warmly. Our friendly relationship with Mike made the point with my Baptist friends.

SOUTH AMERICA

In 1959, the year before we accepted the invitation to go to South America for meetings in 1962, a band of Communist revolutionaries under Fidel Castro and Che Guevara came to power in Cuba. Two years later, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Castro, setting the stage for his close economic and military alliance with the Soviet Union. Cuba soon embarked on an aggressive program to export Castro’s revolutionary (and antichurch) ideas to other Latin American countries. The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion (1961) and the Cuban missile crisis (1962) not only focused the United States’ attention on its neighbors to the south but also sent shock waves through almost every Latin American government.

Back to 1960. In that year, we received a formal appeal urging us to come to South America as soon as possible: “The rapid social and political changes which [South America] is undergoing,” a group of leading pastors from several countries wrote to me, “demonstrate convincingly that we ought to take advantage of the present hour. We cannot overlook the devastating inroads which foreign political ideologies are making.”

Shortly afterward, we accepted invitations to make two extended trips to South America during 1962—the first in January and February, the second in September and October. Although my goals were not political, I could not ignore the possibility that the changing political situation might soon end any opportunities for open evangelism in these countries.

The first tour lasted slightly over a month. Bill Brown and Charlie Riggs went before us to make arrangements and to teach counselor-training classes. Working with them was Charles Ward, a very knowledgeable and seasoned missionary living in Quito, Ecua-dor. Chuck worked in evangelism with The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) and later joined our staff and represented us for many years throughout the Spanish-speaking world (along with Norm Mydske, an energetic and able man who also worked with TEAM for many years and later became our director of Latin American ministries).

As we had done in Africa, we utilized several of our associate evangelists—including Grady, Joe Blinco, Leighton Ford, and Roy Gustafson—to begin the Crusades in the main cities. We had a full musical team with us, including Cliff Barrows, Tedd Smith, and Ray Robles, a baritone soloist who was known in much of Latin America.

Russ Busby also came along to document the trip photographically. This was his first international trip since joining our Team. Formerly a portrait photographer by trade, he had also done some work with The Navigators. At one stage in his long career with us, President Johnson tried to lure him away to become the official White House photographer. Russ declined, saying he felt God had called him to our ministry.

Venezuela

We began the South American tour on January 20 and 21 in Caracas, a modern and beautiful city that reminded me in some ways of San Francisco; it was pleasantly cool at an altitude of three thousand feet. Two meetings were held in the large Nuevo Circo Bull Ring. The first night, I came through the entrance that the matador traditionally used; the next night, I came out where the bull always entered the ring. The crowd applauded both times.

Like most Latin Americans, the Venezuelans were spontaneous and effervescent. Those first nights, though, during the preliminaries, it distracted me to see them talking and moving around. But when I stood up to preach from the Bible, they became quiet and attentive, something I could explain only as the work of the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer. Veteran missionaries expressed gratitude for the 18,000 people who came those two nights; hundreds of inquirers went forward, exceeding our expectations for the Crusade. We found the political situation very tense, however: there were riots in several areas of the country during our stay. The day we left Caracas, sixteen people were killed by gunfire in broad daylight, and the U.S. Embassy was bombed. An hour after our car left the city for the airport, the police banned all automobile traffic.

We flew from Caracas to Maracaibo for two nights of meetings. The Maracaibo Basin, we were told, was the third-largest oil-producing area in the world, and the source of much of Venezuela’s wealth. Our friend J. Howard Pew, president of Sun Oil in Philadelphia, arranged for one of his company’s boats to take us on a tour of Lake Maracaibo, where thousands of wells were located— a forest of oil derricks rising out of the water. I had never seen anything like it before. In Maracaibo proper, we found the political situation very volatile, although the tension did not seem to affect attendance at the public meetings. Eleven radio stations carried the message to the whole country.

My first day in Maracaibo, I was invited to address the state legislature. When we drove up to the legislative building, we could see that a crowd had gathered for some kind of demonstration, apparently against the government. Half of the legislators did not show up; they were too afraid to come, I was told. The only ones who did come were the left-wingers and the Communists.

I was also invited to a smaller midday meeting, as I recall, in another building nearby. The man who invited me seemed to be a Christian leader, so I agreed to go on condition I could preach the Gospel. When we arrived at the meeting, we could see that everything was very secretive, although—since none of us knew Spanish—we couldn’t tell what the people were talking about.

I was introduced to the perhaps 50 people in attendance by a man who had two pearl-handled pistols tucked into his belt. He reminded me of characters in the old cowboy movies Ruth and I enjoyed watching occasionally on television.

When I got up to speak, I could see soldiers out front unloading guns from trucks. Not long into my remarks, a rock smashed through a window, followed by a bullet or two. We ducked under the table. Newsweek said I was praying the Lord’s Prayer; I don’t remember what I was praying, but the man who introduced me said we had better get out. Our escort told us we would have to stay in a back room for a time, however; he needed to size things up for himself. On our way down the narrow hall, three young girls ran toward us. “Yanqui no! Castro si!” they yelled as we passed each other.

While waiting in the back room with the lights out, I made a suggestion to Russ: “Why don’t you go out and get some pictures of what’s happening? They might be some of the best pictures of your life.”

“No, thank you,” he said firmly. “They might be the last pictures of my life!”

At last our escort reappeared and told us we would have to sneak out through a side door into an alley. Although we had no way of knowing if it was a trap, we followed him anyway. He had one last thing to say: “If anyone starts shooting at you, just stop. Don’t move: they’re very poor shots, and if you start moving, they might hit you!”

No one was in the alley when we emerged, and moments later our car came around the corner to get us. Five minutes after we left, we heard later, the demonstration outside turned more violent; windows were broken in, doors were knocked down, the place was peppered with bullets, and at least one man was wounded. We never were sure exactly what the demonstration was all about. That evening we drove back over there to see what it looked like after the shooting. It was as quiet as it could be.

Colombia

Our next stop took us to Barranquilla, Colombia. We heard, shortly before our arrival, that the mayor had canceled our permission to use the municipal baseball stadium; but the local committee hurriedly obtained the grounds of a local Presbyterian school. The mayor’s ruling caused such an uproar in the community over the issue of religious freedom that many people who might not otherwise have heard of the event came out of curiosity, and it turned out to be among our largest meetings in the northern part of South America.

When we arrived in Bogotá, we were greeted by a police escort and a limousine that saw us safely to the hotel.

While I was in Bogotá, a former president of Colombia told me that although most Colombians identified themselves with the Catholic Church, only a small percentage actually practiced their faith. Some years later, during a visit we made to the Vatican, a number of church officials expressed the same concern to me about Catholics whose commitment to Christ was only nominal; one of them told me it was the greatest challenge facing the Roman Catholic Church today.

From Bogotá we flew to Cali. Lee Fisher, Cliff Barrows, and I were together on the plane. Among our fellow passengers were two Colombian students from Yale who were going home for the holidays—one behind us, the other in the front. They began to throw things at each other. At first I didn’t mind—though I was getting hit on the side of the head with magazines, the exchange seemed fairly friendly—but things got out of hand when they began to yell and get unruly.

The co-pilot came back and talked to them, but rather than toning things down, they talked back to him. A very strong man, the co-pilot hauled them up front and handcuffed them to a seat. He and the pilot then turned the plane around and headed back to Bogotá, where the police took the troublemakers off the plane.

One of the most important people on the South American trip was my interpreter, Dr. José Fajardo. A member of the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, he was brought by the BGEA to the United States to study; he was an excellent interpreter and a real man of God. I did not know the importance of Cali in José’s mind at that time, but it was his hometown, and he was anxious that the meetings be successful.

And they were: we spoke in the soccer stadium to crowds that seemed eager to hear the Gospel. On closing night, after the meeting was concluded, guerrillas came down from the mountains and killed fourteen people not far from where we were staying. We had been warned that we were in a dangerous situation; now it was clear that we were.

A girl I had dated at Wheaton came to see us in Cali. For decades she and her husband had been doing pioneer missionary work at a spot some hundred miles from Cali. She was crippled now and in a wheelchair.

I encountered many other acquaintances on that trip. Wher-ever I went, throughout Latin America, I met missionaries I had known in other times and places—Youth for Christ, Wheaton, Northwestern Schools, my days on the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board—and those encounters gave me a whole new appreciation of what the missionaries were doing (and what they were up against).

Ecuador

In Quito, Chuck Ward and his wife, Margaret, had us over to their house for a memorable evening of fellowship. Among their guests were three of the widows of the missionaries who had been killed five years before by the Auca Indians in the Ecuadorian jungle; several of those missionaries were graduates of Wheaton College. Few events in recent years had attracted so much coverage in both the secular and religious press. The story of their martyrdom for Christ had challenged hundreds of young men and women to give their lives to missionary service.

In Quito, which was ten thousand feet above sea level, I had trouble preaching; because there was less oxygen in the air, I felt a bit breathless even when talking in normal conversation. For our next meeting, we descended to sea level in Guayaquil. That meeting was larger than our first assembly in Ecuador—and a great relief to my lungs.

Peru and Chile

Further meetings in Lima, Peru, and Santiago, Chile, brought us down the western side of South America. Elections in Peru were only a few months away at the time of our visit. Already we could sense tension in the air as conflicting parties demonstrated.

In Lima we were once again in a large bull ring. It turned out to be a good venue, accommodating the large crowds who attended. Seldom had I seen a greater contrast among people in one meeting: wealthy businesspeople sat side by side with impoverished Indian peasants as they all listened to the Gospel of Christ.

Dan Piatt was with us in Peru, and he and I had a chance to play golf one afternoon. It was a very cloudy day, so we both took off our shirts. I was already suntanned from the rest of the trip, but Dan was white as snow. He got so sunburned that he became sick and could not come to the meeting that night.

Between Lima and Santiago, there was only one jet flight a week, a Boeing jet, offered by Air France. As we took off, I was a little nervous about all the surrounding mountains.

The pilot broke in soon after takeoff to say, “They want us to fly over the city of Antofagasta as a salute.” He explained that Antofagasta was celebrating some kind of anniversary. With that bit of warning he made a steep dive over the city, flying very low. I did not think he could pull up without tearing the wings off, but he did, just trimming the treetops—or so it seemed. And then he did it two more times!

When we arrived in Santiago for the final meetings of our trip, scheduled for February 16 and 17, I was struck by how similar the city seemed to European cities; it reminded me a great deal of Geneva, in particular. Our activities in Santiago included a colorful, mile-long parade of some 8,000 evangelical Christians. The procession wound enthusiastically through the streets to the grounds of Parque Cousino, where the meetings were held.

John Bolten was there with us; he owned a lot of property in Chile. He took us out to a magnificent golf course, where we enjoyed a bit of relaxation.

From Santiago we flew across the Andes to Buenos Aires, in order to make our airline connection for the long flight home. We found ourselves on an Argentine airliner; it was a Comet, the last of a fleet of five, I was told.

“What happened to the other four?” I asked an airline employee.

“They crashed in service,” he answered.

Because the Argentine pilots seemed to be having some difficulty with this type of aircraft, the French manufacturer had sent an experienced pilot to sit in the cockpit during flights. This seemed only moderately reassuring, given the fate of the other planes in the original fleet.

I was sitting in the aisle seat of the front passenger row, which had three seats on each side of the aisle. To my immediate left, in the middle seat on my side of the aisle, was a heavyset woman; we were jammed against each other.

The door between the passenger section and the cockpit was open, and I could see what was going on up front. As we went down the runway, the Argentine crew was apparently a little slow reacting. Just before it was too late, the French pilot hurriedly leaned over and pulled back on the stick, sending us into the sky. I will always remember the Andes as the most beautiful mountains in the world.

Cumulative attendance during this Latin American trip totaled quarter of a million people, with 9,000 inquirers. Measured against the standards set by Crusades in certain other parts of the world, that outcome was not large. However, as I noted at that time on The Hour of Decision, “I have never seen such spiritual hunger in all of our travels around the world. . . . We learned once again that spiritual hunger is no respecter of persons. It exists among the rich as well as the poor, and the truth of the Gospel appeals to men universally.”

I was grateful for the statement one U.S. Catholic newspaper made as it reviewed our first South American trip: “Never once, at least in our memory, has [Billy Graham] attacked the Catholic Church. . . . In view of past history [in South America], where violence has so often prevailed, it is well to remember that the slightest disturbance could easily make tempers flare again. Billy Graham seems to sense this.”

Beyond doubt, God was at work in South America, and we now looked forward eagerly to the second South American trip, scheduled for later in the year, following Crusades in Chicago and Fresno.

CHICAGO

Sandwiched between our two trips to South America in 1962 was the significant Crusade in Chicago, held in the new McCormick Place arena. In some ways, the Chicago Crusade was just as pivotal for our ministry as the New York Crusade of 1957 had been.

On the one hand, Chicago was seen as the center of evangelical strength in America, what with the presence of Moody Bible Institute, Wheaton College (where just a few years earlier we held a memorable areawide Crusade at Centennial Field), and many other evangelical institutions. Of course, I myself had strong ties in the Chicago area, dating back to my days at Wheaton as a student, in Western Springs as a pastor, and all over the whole area as a representative of Youth for Christ. On the other hand, Chicago was also a center of social and theological liberalism, represented by the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, The Christian Century, and several major liberal seminaries.

Under these conditions, a broad-based invitation from the Windy City for a Crusade was difficult to secure, and for a number of good reasons.

First, most of the mainline churches in Chicago were liberal (and therefore refused to support us); one of the few exceptions was Fourth Presbyterian Church, one of the largest in Chicago.

Second, the city was a major Roman Catholic center; in those pre-Vatican II days, we had little open support from the Roman Catholic community, although a number of Catholics (including some priests) attended the meetings.

Third, the media were not particularly open to us; the religion editor at the main newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, was a graduate of a major liberal seminary, and he ignored us for the most part.

Fourth, we were unable to buy television time in the Chicago area in spite of the fact that Walter Bennett, the advertising executive who arranged all of our television schedules, had his offices there.

Our chairman of the 1962 Crusade was Herbert J. Taylor, chairman of Club Aluminum and one of the godliest gentlemen I have ever known. Every morning before he went to his office, he recited the Sermon on the Mount. An active Rotarian (and the international president of Rotary Clubs in 1954–55), it was he who devised the Rotarian four-way test [of things we think, say, or do]—a formulation that has since become famous. Unfortunately for us, Taylor was not able to bring a wide spectrum of support from the business community to the Crusade; while business support in New York had been massive, support in Chicago was weak.

All the evangelical churches and organizations in Chicago, however, came to our support. Night after night McCormick Place was filled to capacity. Three-quarters of a million people attended over a three-week period, with some 16,500 decisions for Christ. In addition, I squeezed in a visit to the recruits at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station.

The final rally, jammed with more than 100,000 people, was held in Soldier Field on one of the hottest days I have ever experienced. The temperature was well over one hundred degrees. Though I did preach, I had to cut my sermon short because of the heat. That decision had a consequence I had not foreseen. We were recording the meeting for later release on national television, but by shortening my message, I left a hole in the hour-long program. As a result, I had to return that night to the stadium, now empty and dark (and not that much cooler!) to speak off the cuff for seven minutes. What appeared to be a technological disaster, though, actually turned out to be a dramatic close to the program; the response was one of the highest we have ever received from a television broadcast.

We would return to Chicago for other Crusades and events in future years. One night in 1971, for example, inside the mammoth McCormick Place, Mayor Richard J. Daley welcomed us to the city and then remained with us on the platform for the service. In the audience were some 30,000 young people.

After Bev had sung the second hymn of the evening, while Cliff was leading the massed choir in a great anthem of praise, a police officer rushed on stage and whispered in the mayor’s ear, “They’re coming!”

Earlier in the day, some Satan worshipers had let it be known that they were coming to the meeting with the intention of storming the platform and stopping the proceedings. Sure enough, here they were. They burst past the ushers and hurried down the aisles, all the while chanting something of their own.

“Don’t worry about a thing, Dr. Graham,” the mayor said. “My police will handle it.”

We had never called the police before to handle a meeting disturbance, and I didn’t want this to be the first time. “Mr. Mayor, let me try it another way,” I urged.

I went to the microphone and interrupted the choir’s song. “There are three hundred, or four hundred, Satan worshipers here tonight,” I announced. “They’ve said that they’re going to take over the platform. Now I’m going to ask you Christian young people to do something. Don’t hurt them. Just surround them and love them and sing to them and, if you can, just gradually move them toward the doors.”

Thankfully, to our great relief, that’s just what happened. Hundreds of the Christian young people, pointing their fingers up, which is the Christian One Way sign, began to surround them, singing and shouting, “Jesus loves you!” and “God is love!”

“My,” said the mayor, “I ought to have you in all these riots we’re having around here!”

As one newspaper the following morning put it, “The hell raisers were routed by Jesus’ power.”

The success of that Crusade resulted in a renewed flood of invitations to Los Angeles in 1963, San Diego in 1964, and Seattle in 1965. It also encouraged committees in other midwestern cities to extend invitations to us; Columbus and Omaha in 1964 and Kansas City in 1967. Chicago also convinced us that the meetings in New York in 1957 were not a fluke and that America’s largest cities were open to evangelism in an unprecedented way. Invitations came to us all the time, and one of the biggest loads I had to carry during that period was where to go next.

SOUTH AMERICA

The second Latin American tour took place in the fall of 1962. Once again our associate evangelists began Crusades in most cities before we arrived for the closing sessions.

Brazil

We opened on September 25 with a six-day Crusade in São Paulo, Brazil. The city—named, I could not help but recall, after Chris-tianity’s greatest evangelist, the Apostle Paul—had some 350 Protestant churches giving support to the Crusade. The closing meeting, with a 200-piece orchestra accompanied by a 1,000-voice choir, drew 65,000 to the city’s main stadium.

I have always remembered the São Paulo meetings for another, more personal reason. Less than a month before, on August 28, my father had passed away, and this was my first public ministry since his death. He had suffered declining health for several years due to a series of strokes. His death was not unexpected, and yet I felt his absence very keenly even a hemisphere away from home.

My father was always so proud of me. In his last days, he sat in the S&W Cafeteria near their home in Charlotte and greeted people. The owner, Mr. Sherrill, considered my father something of an attraction. He was glad for him to sit there for a couple of hours; people knew him and would come in to say hello. There was something about this picture that appealed to me, probably because I felt that my father was a man of love.

My mother cared for him during his declining years, but Melvin, Catherine, and Jean, all of whom lived in Charlotte, also took major responsibility for his care.

When he died, the New York Times printed an obituary with a photograph of that humble and loving man, and to this day I thank God for all he meant to me.

Paraguay and Argentina

The São Paulo meetings were followed by a series of one-or two-day meetings in Asunción, Paraguay; Córdoba and Rosario, Argen-tina; and Montevideo, Uruguay. In each city, Chuck Ward arranged for a welcoming rally at the airport; this was meant to create public interest in the meetings and to unite the local believers who were supporting the effort.

At one place, I recall, our plane was three and a half hours late taking off. I was certain that everyone at the other end would give up and leave before we arrived. Instead, an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000 people greeted us. I expressed surprise to one leader, but he just shrugged. “Oh, you know how relaxed we Latins are about time,” he said. “If you’d shown up when you were scheduled to arrive, hardly anyone would have been here!”

The flight had been a rough one, stormy all the way over jungles, mountains, and wild country. The aircraft we were in—it was an old British Viscount turboprop, as I recall—was not all that sturdy. Again, to be honest, I was nervous! It didn’t help that the pilot announced, as we were circling for a final approach to the runway, “If you look to your left, you’ll see the British Comet plane that crashed last week.”

Paraguay’s longtime president, General Alfredo Stroessner, received me. I was criticized later by some back in the United States for trying to be diplomatic in my comments about him instead of condemning him outright for his alleged human rights abuses; however, I knew that those matters were already being raised by our ambassador, William P. Snow, with whom I also met. I took the opportunity to share my faith in Christ with Stroessner. He assured us of his support for the meetings. He had, we understood, a German Lutheran background, although I had no reason to believe he was a practicing Christian.

Unfortunately, however, there was strong opposition from other sources in Paraguay. These opponents clearly had considerable influence, even trying to force the local press to boycott us. In fact, the only person who showed up for our scheduled press conference was a radio technician who came to run a tape recorder; not a single reporter was there. The technician turned his tape recorder on, however, and I answered questions about the Crusade posed by members of the local committee. Two radio stations carried the interview later, we heard.

Furthermore, we learned that those opposing the Crusade were organizing a massive counterdemonstration just a few blocks from the outdoor soccer stadium where our meetings were being held. That demonstration, designed for popular appeal—with everything from a parade of 15,000 students in the afternoon to a gigantic free music and folk-dancing festival—was scheduled to start at 7:00 p.m., half an hour before our closing rally was due to begin. Needless to say, this caused a great deal of consternation among the supporters of the Crusade. They redoubled their prayers.

Lee, Grady, and I, who were rooming together in a hotel, had a lot of prayer about the meeting that night. Suddenly, without warning, a storm came up just out of nowhere. It was so fierce that it broke the glass doors in our hotel room, sending shattered pieces all over our room and forcing the three of us into the farthest corner to ride out the vicious winds.

That morning Russ Busby and Dick Lederhaus of World Wide Pictures had flown two hundred miles east to photograph Iguaçú Falls, one of South America’s great natural wonders. With the storm approaching, their pilot refused to take off for the return flight.

The local Crusade committee had already blanketed the city with leaflets and posters advertising both the Crusade with Joe Blinco and the closing meeting, at which I was to speak. In response, the counterdemonstration printed several hundred thousand leaflets advertising their evening festival, to be dropped over the city from airplanes that afternoon. But just as the planes were being loaded, the storm, with hail and winds clocked at ninety miles an hour, perhaps including a tornado, unexpectedly hit the city of 300,000, uprooting trees and knocking out electrical power. It also scattered the paraders who were beginning to assemble and destroyed preparations at the festival site, damaging even the statue of the Virgin Mary that had been brought out of the cathedral for the parade. The planes themselves were damaged and would have been unable to take off even had the storm let up in time, and the leaflets were drenched beyond reclamation.

But by five o’clock the sun was out again, and as the time approached for our meeting, electrical power was restored to the arena. In spite of the fact that some roads were blocked by fallen trees, several thousand people came. The local committee felt that God had answered their prayers in a decisive and unmistakable way. It was the first time, we later learned, that an evangelical Protestant meeting had been held on public property in Paraguay’s five hundred years of history. One small Mennonite church with only 40 members received 70 referrals of people who had made commitments to Christ during the Crusade.

The next day, when Russ and Dick returned to Asunción, they said the airport looked like a war zone. The government imposed a curfew on the city to prevent looting.

From Asunción we continued across the border to Córdoba and Rosario, Argentina’s second-largest city, with cold winds coming off the arid Patagonia that forced me to preach in a heavy coat and muffler. In Rosario I spoke to students at the Catholic university, the area’s largest, and received a very warm welcome from them. The Catholics had a reverence for the Bible; we did not have to convince them Who created the world and Who Christ was.

Uruguay

On to Montevideo. Joe Blinco held a separate Crusade in Uruguay among people who were descended from the Waldensians; this particular group were nineteenth-century refugees from religious persecution in Italy.

The vice chairman of the Crusade in Montevideo was the pastor of the city’s largest Methodist church, the Reverend Emilio Castro (not a relation of the Cuban dictator). He stayed by my side throughout our visit, taking me everywhere in his little car. He had a social burden, not so much for Uruguay (since at one time it had been among the most prosperous nations in the hemisphere) but for the rest of Latin America. The sharp disparity between the rich and the poor, and the overwhelming poverty in both the cities and the countryside, deeply troubled me as well. In later years, after Emilio Castro became prominent in the World Council of Churches, we did not always agree on all theological points. On social affairs and social conscience, though, he did sharpen my thinking.

Our Team appreciated Montevideo, but perhaps for a less-than-spiritual reason. Long-distance telephone rates were lower in Uruguay than elsewhere in Latin America (although still very expensive), so we finally got to call our families back in the States. The system in those days was actually a radio telephone; one person would speak, concluding with the word over, and then let the other person speak. It was awkward and didn’t make for the most spontaneous conversation, but I was delighted to hear Ruth’s voice anyway.

Back to Argentina

The trip concluded with an eight-day Crusade in Buenos Aires, one of the most beautiful cities in Latin America (and the largest in Argentina). Two thousand people had been trained as counselors—Charlie Riggs had taught them standing in a boxing ring, the best facility available—and in spite of a severe economic crisis in Argen-tina (some government workers hadn’t been paid in months), the Crusade’s full budget was raised in advance; no offerings needed to be taken. (In fact, we took no offerings anywhere in South America, to avoid any hint of financial motivation.)

I was invited to meet with members of the Argentine cabinet, because the relationship between the United States and Cuba was reaching boiling point. Argentina’s defense minister asked me if I would come into his office. “I want you to convey to the President of the United States that we have two aircraft carriers,” he told me, “and we will put them both at the disposal of the United States if it comes to war. It would be a tragedy if Castro should move any further than he has. His popularity is such that it affects us here.”

Shortly after my return to the United States, I was invited to the White House to see President Kennedy. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was there as well. They wanted me to brief them about my tour of the Latin American countries. Needless to say, I relayed the offer made by Argentina’s defense minister, but I never learned what use, if any, was made of the information.

What did I learn from the South American tours?

First, everywhere we went, we sensed a deep spiritual hunger and a yearning for a personal relationship with Christ. We came away committed to further ministry there.

Second, we came away with a new sense of the importance of Latin America and of its potential for the future. At the same time, I was struck by the widespread poverty we saw almost everywhere, and by the sharp division between the wealthy and the poor. I could see the potential for explosive social change and even chaos.

Since that trip, we’ve returned a number of times to various areas, eventually visiting almost every country in South America. (My doctors advised me against attempting to preach in La Paz, Bolivia; its altitude of twelve thousand feet was too high for my voice.)

In 1974 we returned to Brazil for a five-day Crusade in Rio de Janeiro. A quarter-million people gathered for the concluding meeting in Maracanã Stadium, a record for that facility. During the service, I could hear people beating on the locked doors as tens of thousands more tried to get in. The closing meeting was televised on all the networks across the country on the orders of the president; Crusade director Henry Holley was told that up to 50 million people saw the program. When we were ready to leave the stadium, the police escort was reluctant to open the gates for fear the crowd, in their enthusiasm, might riot.

MEXICO

Also memorable was our Crusade in Mexico in 1981. The organizers in Mexico City, our first stop, had been given permission to use the Olympic Stadium for the meetings; it seated 80,000. At the last minute, however, permission was withdrawn by the authorities. We were forced instead to use a much smaller basketball arena in the center of the city, which had no parking facilities. It was damaged in the earthquake a few years before and had not been used since, but the authorities assured us it was safe.

To make matters worse, publicity had already gone out directing people to the other stadium. But somehow word of the change got out, and even on the first night there was an overflow crowd of thousands. We then scheduled two services each day; people exited out one side of the arena as the second crowd entered from the opposite side.

We then went to the city of Villahermosa, a booming oil town near the Guatemalan border. It had an old western frontier feel about it; the people still carried guns in their belts. The church leaders there were some of the kindest people we have ever worked with. The meetings were held in a baseball stadium. Every night on our way there, we passed scores and scores of farm trucks on their way to the Crusade, jammed with people standing tightly packed in the truckbeds. When we gave the Invitation each night, so many people came forward that we couldn’t get off the platform until the counseling was completed.

Our 1991 Crusade in Buenos Aires—a decade after the Mexico visit just described—marked a milestone of a different sort, with an extensive outreach to millions, via satellite and video, in twenty Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America as well as Mexico and the Caribbean.

Since then, I have rejoiced in the many signs that God is still at work in that part of the world.