Travelers Together

FGZ: Pedestrian traffic only called Fußgänger Zones or foot-goer-zones

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.

Amplified Bible (AMP) Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation.

The Living Bible (LB) Copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois 60187. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the Good News For Modern Man Copyright © 1966, 1971 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Ken Dornhecker

Copyright © 2015 by Becky Dornhecker

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

First Edition: May 2015

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 9781633187580

Contents

Abbreviations

Chapter 1 The Wall That Finally Fell

Chapter 2 New Beginnings for a Vanished Country

Chapter 3 A Call in the Night

Chapter 4 Opportunity of a Lifetime!

Chapter 5 Medical Missions, Roosters, and Juanita

Chapter 6 A Marketplace Transfixed

Chapter 7 No Worries, Mon!

Chapter 8 Carrying the Cross for Jesus

Chapter 9 Von Füssen nach Flensburg!

Chapter 10 Land of the Swinging Hammocks

Chapter 11 European Road Trip

Chapter 12 Hearts for Germany!

Chapter 13 A Day Like No Other

Author's Note

Quotes

Other Books by Becky Dornhecker

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

—President Ronald Reagan

Chapter 1

The Wall That Finally Fell

We sat in our compartment on the train barreling across Germany toward Berlin—toward the East. As I looked out on the villages, fields, and cities of Germany, I was surprised to realize I felt a little trepidation at the thought of entering what only one year ago had been another country—a closed, cold Communist country called East Germany.

I recalled grainy, black and white film footage I had seen as a small child of a wall being built in a city far away. I asked my mom what they were doing and she had told me they were building a wall to keep people from going from one part of the city to the other. And then she told me the part that I'm sure was the reason I never forgot that image: Some families are even being separated by that wall! I was horrified and could not imagine never seeing members of my family again.

But it was a very real part of recent history. The wall became a solid barrier separating people, friends, family, and a country on August 13, 1961 and wasn’t torn down until the fateful night of November 9, 1989, when people scrambled on top of it with sledge hammers and started the demolition process themselves.

As our train crossed over a certain point in our journey, my husband Ken remarked, We're now in what used to be East Germany. As I looked out on the vast expanse of fields we were passing by, I felt the coldness and isolation that was part of this region in the not-so-distant past.

As we were approaching Berlin, we had to stop and change trains. Ken told me that during the communist reign, guards with machine guns would probably have boarded and checked our identifications. For people traveling out of Berlin, there would have been dogs sent under trains to sniff out people hiding in the undercarriages of the cars. But now with the wall down, it was a routine change to another train for us.

But there was a disparity. We were now on a former East German train and the difference was glaring. Where before we had traveled in clean, soft-cushioned seats, we were now seated on hard, plastic benches. The interior of the train was grubby and unappealing. Even though much had changed on the outside, eastern Germany still had a long way to go to catch up with its refined and sophisticated neighbor.

The year was 1990 and the wall had been down less than a year. I had married my husband, Ken, seven months before and he was eager to show me this great love of his life.

Only about a year after becoming a Christian, he had felt the call to be an evangelist. That calling meant he didn't just preach inside the walls of the church. The evangelist is called by God to take the gospel out where people live their everyday life and tell them about Jesus. If there are people anywhere on planet earth that have not heard the message of salvation, the evangelist cannot be satisfied until they have. That meant for me, we would be doing plenty of traveling together and a lot of our ministry would be outside the walls of the church.

Ken had gone to Bible school in 1983 and when he graduated an opportunity arose for him to go to Wiesbaden, Germany for 18 months with Teen Challenge—a ministry whose function was reaching lost, troubled people through street evangelism. This was a perfect fit for him—mission work and evangelism. Once his 18 months were up with Teen Challenge, he spent most of his time in Germany and in other countries of the world as a Missionary Evangelist.

We even met each other because of his mission work. I was working with a ministry that sent books, cassette tapes, and letters each month to missionaries in foreign lands. Ken got on my list while he was living in Germany and we began corresponding with each other. He was from the same area in Texas I was living, so when he came home we eventually met.

At times, I was even a little jealous when he would talk about Germany. God had called him to this land and he was passionate and zealous about ministering here. He would talk about Germany like someone talking about a person very dear to their heart. I was excited to be finally sharing this part of my husband with him.

When Ken had lived in Germany, the country was separated into two countries. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union army had advanced into Germany and had taken over almost half of the land, including the capital, Berlin. When the allied forces (U.S., United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union) divided the country into sectors, the Soviet Union kept the land they had acquired. The post-war agreement called for the four powers to control the German capital. The only problem was that Berlin was right in the middle of what was now Soviet-controlled land.

The solution was to divide Berlin into two sections. The result was West Berlin became an island of freedom in the middle of communist East Germany. The people of West Berlin could travel freely anywhere they wanted to go, by plane or train. But the people of East Berlin lived in a suppressed, communistic city.

When people from the Eastern part of Berlin and even the Eastern-bloc countries around Germany started using this fluid border to escape the repressions coming down from the Soviet Union, the leaders had to do something. Three and a half million people defected from the country of East Germany, using the door left open in West Berlin. They were losing all their elite, educated people and they intended to stop them from leaving.

The first wall that went up around West Berlin was made of barbed wire and was manned by guards with machine guns. The more permanent wall was then built. It was actually two walls, one enclosing the people of East Berlin and the second wall around 100 yards away on the West Berlin border. In between these walls was no man's land, a big swath of ground left open for guards in East Berlin to catch people trying to escape. They also had a good shot of these people from their guard towers and many people were killed trying to reach freedom.

Now, because of the reunification of East and West Germany, Ken's ministry area had greatly increased! The reunification had been signed just two months before we arrived. We wanted to check out the new freedom to travel unhindered anywhere in this land.

We settled with some friends in Berlin and then Ken took me around the city to show me some of the areas he had been to in his ministry to Germany. As we approached Checkpoint Charlie, he again told me some of the stories he had experienced in his many times across the wall.

When the wall around West Berlin went up, there were places or checkpoints where the allied forces from the west could pass through to the east. The most famous checkpoint was in the American sector called Checkpoint Charlie.

Ten years after the wall went up, the East began to allow West Germany visitors to also pass through these checkpoints. But only one way—people from the east were not allowed to cross. Ken came to Berlin often and would cross the line between West and East here at Checkpoint Charlie. He had a network of friends and Christians that he would minister with as they evangelized the best they could. He spent the day with them, doing as much as possible to give out tracts and witness to people.

One of their ploys was to start handing out tracts on the platform just as the trains approached. After they had given out as many as they could in these few seconds, they would jump on the train before the doors closed and go to the next station, trying to stay one step ahead of the stasi (secret police).

As an American, Ken regarded it as a game of cat and mouse, but looking back he realizes how very serious it was for the East German young people he was working with. If they had been caught it could even have meant jail time.

On the occasions when he was stopped by the stasi, they would reveal that they knew all his whereabouts for his time spent in East Berlin. My thought when I heard this was why would a government spend that much time and money following around a young guy and his friends? It still is beyond me the energy they expended on keeping their thumbs on people.

But that was all part of the mindset of this repressive nation. And it is incredible, but it was very, very serious. Ken was reminded of this on one of his trips to the east. He was probably a bit naïve as an American who was used to freedom and had the safety and backing of an American passport. But on one occasion, he realized how quickly that security can be taken away.

When he crossed the border, he knew he could only stay for a 24-hour period. In other words, he always had to be out by midnight. He had to exchange a certain amount of his West German Deutschemarks (currency) for East German Marks. The exchange rate was very unfair and the East German money could never be changed back at the end of the day (and there was very little to buy, even in restaurants). He also had to pay for an East German visa.

Ken went across the wall on several occasions and I'm sure was a great encouragement to the Christians in East Germany. But on one night, he pushed his visit right up to just enough time left to walk to the border and get across.

As he was hurrying toward the checkpoint, a uniformed man suddenly stepped out in front of him. He brusquely asked for Ken's passport and he handed it over to this stranger. Before Ken knew what was going on, the man had disappeared around a corner. It took a few seconds for Ken to realize what had just happened. He was now in East Germany, and without the American passport, just like any other young man in this country. He felt suffocated and trapped, now surrounded by barbed wire and controlled by guards with vicious dogs and machine guns.

As the minutes passed, and the man had still not returned with his passport, he began to earnestly and urgently pray! Finally, after fifteen anxious minutes, the man returned and handed him back the precious document. He made it out of the country just minutes before midnight.

As we stood there at Checkpoint Charlie, Ken also told me about being harassed in the buildings just on the other side. The guards would single him out, take him to a small enclosed room, and have him empty his pockets. They would intimidate as much as they dared, sometimes questioning him over and over, and leaving him alone for long stretches of time. It was all a well-organized plot of mind-games and intimidation.

But he also told me about his very last visit across the wall. As he was coming back through Checkpoint Charlie to the west, he was motioned to step out of the line and to follow a guard to be interrogated. When he and the guard were alone in the room, the guard asked Ken to take everything out of his pockets. Ken had done this on many occasions, so went through the familiar process.

The guard looked down at the pocket New Testament Ken had placed on the table and touched it briefly, almost caressing it. He looked at Ken and said softly, A wonderful book. Nothing more was said, but it showed Ken that many of these men were just doing a job—maybe even one they didn't truly believe in. He didn't realize it at the time, but this man turned out to be the last East German guard he ever dealt with.

We now walked through Checkpoint Charlie with ease, with no one stopping us. It was just another city street now. As we started walking toward the buildings which used to be the East Germany side, we noticed trash everywhere. As we drew closer and peeked into the buildings that were some of the stasi headquarters, we saw what had become of these elite structures.

The people of East Berlin had taken their anger and frustration out on these symbols of oppression. In their new-found freedom, they had come in and trashed the buildings—tearing down parts of them and making them unusable for any further occupation. We walked through rooms that Ken remembered and saw the devastation firsthand. Many, many memories came back to him and we contemplated the freedom that his friends from the East now enjoyed.

Right after we left Germany, we learned that the whole area around Checkpoint Charlie had been bulldozed to the ground. The site now houses sleek new office buildings and shops. But one thing still remains—the museum housing info about all the ingenious ways people used to escape the communist regime, like cars that people had hidden in and even part of a hot air balloon. It also told the story of people who lost their lives trying to simply get from one side of a city to the other…just trying to rejoin their family members—sometimes spouses or children.

Ken tried to show me as much of his beloved Germany as we could fit into our two weeks. We headquartered with some