The Call

I wonder what hearing “the call” must be like.  I think that maybe perhaps kinda sorta that  writing these 85 stories is a reflection of “a call” if not “the call,” but I’m not quite sure.  As I talk to the members of Hayes Barton Baptist Church for the 85 stories, I listen for the language of “the call.”  And the members I talked with for today’s story are the first ones to explicitly articulate that they heard “the call” of Jesus in their lives in a way that prompted them to change the direction of their lives. 

Bill and Audrey Roberson are relatively new members of Hayes Barton Baptist Church as they joined near the end of 2009.  Lifelong missionaries, they retired to the Raleigh area to be near their son and moved close to Hayes Barton Baptist Church in 2009. 

“We knew about Hayes Barton from television before we moved to Whitaker Glen,” recalls Bill. “We always thought we’d like to belong to that church. Then we moved close by.”

Bill originally felt “the call” to be a preacher.  “Winning people to the Lord was what I felt I needed to do,” says Bill.  “At my first church, I felt God had called me to preach to the people of North Carolina only.” Audrey heard a different kind of calling, though, to the mission field. 

Bill had been serving as the pastor of Second Baptist Church in Shelby in 1958.  He took a group of young people to Ridgecrest and heard one of the board staff members talk about Vietnam and all of its needs.  “It was ready and open for a missionary, but no one had gone. Here I had taken the young folks to hear this message in the hopes that they might hear the call, and I was in head over heels before I realized…God is preaching to me.  I felt called.  And I knew Audrey was willing to go.”

Bill said he was hesitant to answer “the call” when he first heard it so he and Audrey talked about it while at Ridgecrest.  He recalls he wasn’t sure he had the courage to go; after all, Vietnam?  He had a wife and three young children, between ages 3 and 7.  He and Audrey were natives of North Carolina and hadn’t traveled much outside the state.

So Bill said he wanted to go to another session by himself to make a final decision as to whether this was what he indeed was called to do “On the last stanza of the hymn, I made my decision and accepted the call,” says Bill. “We were the first missionaries among Southern Baptists who felt called to go to Vietnam.”

Although Bill, Audrey and the children were preceded in arrival to Vietnam by another missionary unit, the Herman Hughes family, their response regarding Vietnam encouraged the Foreign Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention to support missionaries in Vietnam.  Bill and Audrey finally arrived in 1960 and began their work in Saigon.  “There were very few Protestants in Vietnam,” remembers Bill. “We were permitted to work only in the cities where more people were open to the Gospel.”

The location of their house on a main street in Saigon was “a wonderful place to begin a mission point,” says Bill. “God had a hand in that location.”  “We were able to make ourselves at home,” adds Audrey.  “It was a gift from the Lord.”

At that time Saigon had about two million people, according to Bill.  “There were no Baptist churches and only a handful of Protestant ones. Some folks originally thought that, because we were Baptists, we were followers of John the Baptist,” recalls Bill with a laugh.

Bill and Audrey’s mission work began with a sign on the gate to their house:  “English Language Bible Classes.”  “The key was ‘English Language’ as that is what the draw was,” says Bill. “We filled the living and dining room two nights a week,” recalls Audrey.

In addition to offering the classes, Bill and Audrey worked hard to learn the Vietnamese language.  “It is a tonal language,” says Bill.  “We studied six hours a day.  Eventually I got brave enough to try to preach in Vietnamese,” Bill shares.  “For about twelve minutes!”

During these early years, one young man stands out in their thoughts as he was a convert who had had some exposure to Christianity and through the Bible classes made a decision to become a Baptist.  He eventually became pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Saigon which was the first Baptist church in Vietnam.  “We are proud we had a part in establishing a strong Christian witness which has become a nationwide denomination in Vietnam today,” says Bill. 

Through all the war and eventual fall of the South Vietnamese government, Grace Baptist Church was the only Baptist church that remains open, given it had its own property and so was recognized by the government.  Today, the son of the convert remembered by Bill and Audrey is the church’s pastor.  “It humbles us to think we had a part in this rapidly growing work,” says Bill.

Bill and Audrey and the family eventually moved out of the house on that main street in Saigon to allow the church. “We felt like God was in it,” says Bill.  “He was orchestrating our every move.”  And to grow faster there were many moves over many years as Vietnam was their mission field up to 1975.  “We found Vietnam very easy to love,” shares Bill.  “We loved the people; that was the key,” adds Audrey.  “If you love the people, they can love you.”

Of course, the time Bill and Audrey spent in Vietnam was war time.  “A house across the street from us was hit by rockets from the Viet Cong,” remembers Bill.  And in 1966, Audrey was pregnant with their son John.  “I went to a clinic and there were bombs going off outside,” recalls Audrey. Yet, the Lord kept them safe.  “We never questioned.  God was blessing our work,” says Audrey.  “I would say to the Lord:  ‘Lord:  You called us here.  Take care of us.”  “None of the missionaries were ever injured or killed,” adds Bill.

After Vietnam, the Robersons spent fourteen years spent in the Philippines before returning to the United States for an active retirement that included traveling to speak about their missionary experiences and a really “tough assignment,” per Bill, of mission work in Hawaii.

Yet it was the work in Vietnam that reflected “the call.”  Asking them about “the call” a bit more prompted some reflection.  “My heart was made ready,” says Bill. “The WMU of First Baptist Church in Beaufort gave me a missionary heart.  When I heard about all the needs in Vietnam, it became personal, and I was ready.” “I knew God wanted me to be a missionary since I was sixteen years old,” says Audrey. 

Bill and Audrey shared that they are currently reading a devotional entitled “Jesus Calling.”  “It is really a good one,” shares Audrey.  “We are getting a lot out of it,” says Bill.  Somehow I think they could write their own book entitled “Jesus Calling.”  They certainly have lived their lives answering “the call.”  What humility, grace, and courage their lives illustrate.  We each would do well to be like Bill and Audrey, to listen for “the call” and be ready to be hear it.  Whether it involves going to a distant land like Vietnam or writing 85 faith stories in 85 days.  Jesus is calling.  God is calling.  Listen and you will hear.