While serving with Operation Mobilisation in India in 1967, tuberculosis forced me into a sanatorium for several months. I did not yet speak the language, but I tried to give Christian literature written in their own language to patients, doctors and nurses.
Being an international seminary student in America, and studying the Protestant Reformation in Germany, as well as more recent church history in England and America, made me realise how little I know about the Reformation in my own country of Finland.
Everyone refused — some politely, some rudely. I sensed many weren’t happy about an American (to them, all Americans are rich) being in a free, government-run sanatorium. They did not know I was just as broke as they were!
The first few nights I awoke around 2.00am coughing. One morning, during my coughing spell, I noticed one of the older, sicker patients across the aisle trying to get out of bed. He would sit up on the edge of his bed and try to stand, then in weakness fall back into bed. I did not understand what he was trying to do. He finally fell back into bed exhausted. I heard him crying softly.
