Dennis and Linda Messimer: Writer's Notebook

Dennis and Linda Messimer and their grandkifs

For the February issue of Christian Standard, my editors wanted to share stories of couples who had spent a lifetime in partnership in both marriage and ministry. I was blessed to be assigned to write about the partnership of Dennis and Linda Messimer. You can read that article in the current issue or online.

As usual, not everything from my interview with the Messimers made it into the 1,100 word published version of the story. So here are some more bits and pieces from the interview:


Dennis and Linda met on Thanksgiving Day in 1966. Dennis had come to Ozark Bible College that fall to pursue a 5th-year graduate degree. Linda was a freshman that year.

Dennis' father was a professor at OBC.

"Mother called to the dorms to see if anyone was around and needed a place to eat Thanksgiving dinner," says Dennis.

"We hardly knew each other when we got married," Linda says. "We met that Thanksgiving Day because I was heading home for the holiday and the car broke down, so I was stuck in Joplin."

Getting married was not in Linda's plans at the time. "I wasn’t getting married for another ten years, and I certainly wasn’t going to marry a preacher. But I fell in love. When we decided to get married, I decided I was going to be a preacher’s wife."

Belgium

In 1970,  at the urging of Harold Fowler, the Messimers went to Belgium to help begin a Bible College, a plan which never actually came to fruition.

"In Belgium we helped start two churches that are still going," says Dennis. "At least, last we knew they still were. It was a group effort with others. Belgium has very few non-Roman Catholic churches. It was a blessing to be a part of starting these churches.

"When troubles come, you just work through it," Linda says. "God sends his little angels, like Guy and Thelma Mayfield. He was a chaplain during WWII in Italy. He took those soldiers and evangelized Italy and started a Bible College in Italy. He ended up with his wife teaching school in Germany when he retired. They would just show up on our doorstep when we were ready to give up. Literally unannounced, we would open the door and there was Guy and Thelma. That happened, I know, at least three times in Belgium. God just took care of us. Once we got to South Africa, we had been in Belgium seventeen years, and we didn’t need that kind of encouragement as much. We didn’t get so discouraged to where we were ready to go home."

South Africa

"In South Africa," says Dennis, "we worked with some churches. I felt like our work with the preachers of The Church of Christ Mission was a real privilege. Most of them were under-educated but extremely dedicated individuals. Some of them would start a church a year and some of them had as many as 15 churches that, like a circuit riding preacher, they would keep going and feeding the elders of those churches so the elders would have something to say on Sundays."

"One of the things that give us both a lot of joy is leadership training," agrees Linda. "One of my greatest joys is to see people that I’ve taught teach others. To encourage them to stretch, to encourage them to do it, gives me a lot of joy."

"She got involved with the Christian Women's club in South Africa, "says Dennis.

"If anyone made a decision to follow the Lord, I did a Bible study with them." says Linda. "It was a way to meet people in the community, and it was a way to meet non-Christians and other Christians. It was good fellowship and a great way to evangelize."

Dennis adds, "According to their rules you couldn’t talk about baptism."

"...but you could read scripture!" Linda adds, "I read lots of scripture. Extra scripture! And that led to some baptisms."

Raising Children on the Mission Field

"I would put all three children down to sleep somewhere and then go back into the room and help with the home Bible studies," says Linda. "I did that until Brent came along, and then it was too much. For the rest of those years, I did one bible study per week, and someone else taught the kids. That was my time to be in fellowship with the church people and have our kids be with other Christian kids."

"One thing we did," Linda says, "was not create a subculture for our kids. They grew up in Belgium, they went to Belgian schools, they had Belgian friends. They felt part of the culture. OK, they were different, but they didn’t feel that different. I think that is very helpful. The kids who have the most trouble seem to be the ones who weren’t as much a part of the culture. We were very blessed that the schools were good in both countries. Our kids went to Catholic schools in Belgium, and obviously there were some teachings that were not biblical, and we just dealt with those at home. In South Africa, all the schools our kids went to were advertised as Christian-biased”.

"In South Africa, the president of the PTA was from Scotland, one of our good friends was German," Dennis says. "There were some Chinese, a few of Dutch background, and more that were British background."

"It was a little melting pot of all nationalities," Linda adds.

The Messimer family

"Brent was only 11 or 12," Dennis says, "when Brent and one of his friends went for a walk with me to see someone. The people weren’t there, so we headed back. On the way back there was a man lying on the ground. He had some bullet holes in him, with blood. Someone asked me if I thought he was going to die. Just in the five minutes since we had passed that point and gotten back, there had been this shooting."

"It was a crazy place to grow up in," says Linda. "I think one of the worst times was when Brent’s friend, who lived across the street, called and said, they just shot my dad."

"We protected the kids as much as we could," she says, "but we felt like God wanted us there and we never really. In spite of all those experiences, we never really though about coming back. We were where God wanted us to be and we did a lot of praying with the kids. We did a lot of talking through those things with the kids. Everybody else’s kids were going through the same thing."

"The Lord got us there," Linda says. "When you’re so sure that you’re where the Lord wants you to be, we never thought about leaving. We thought about being smart and being as safe as we could make ourselves. Do we get a gun or not? We said, no we’re not going to get a gun. In South Africa when you use a gun you have to shoot to kill, and we weren’t going to do that."

Hospitality

"The easiest things to cook for a crowd of people, "Linda says, "is spaghetti, and if it’s wintertime, soup."

"She learned in Belgium how to make soup," Dennis days, and Linda adds, "Belgians make good soup."

"There for a while," Dennis says, "it would be oven roasted chicken with rice."

"At first, all I could cook was spaghetti," Linda says, "and then I finally learned to cook chicken, so I was confident about my baked chicken. Now we’re back to spaghetti because the crowds are so big."

"I've hit a stage in my life now where I just can’t do it anymore," she says. "For a while we had international students in for a meal every Sunday, put this past year I just haven’t been able to do it. They come – often – but not every Sunday."