Lawrence Yoder:  

After high school I was sure about going to college, but, like my brothers, I worked for a year first at Tioga Textile Associates in York, where I learned to be a weaver of silk cloth, and then also at York Division of Borg-Warner Corporation. Then in the fall of 1962 I started my studies at Messiah College hear Harrisburg. I started out in a pre-engineering curriculum but after one year moved over to a major in history education, finishing my BA in June 1966. Already the previous fall I knew that I needed to continue studies in seminary, so I took six hours of independent studies in Greek language that last semester. Right after graduation Shirlee (from Ashland, Ohio) and I got married. We lived in York for the summer and then moved to Elkhart, Indiana where I began three years of studies at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Our country had already been immersed in the Vietnam War for years by that time, but I was given a deferment because of my studies in seminary. While in seminary we were thinking what I would do to fulfill my draft obligation. My conviction and that of my church is that participation in war is antithetical to the teaching and example of Jesus, and the US government provided an alternative for people with such convictions. So I found an alternative assignment in southeast Asia--in Indonesia--teaching and working in economic and health development there. This work was under the administration of Mennonite Central Committee and at the invitation of the Javanese Mennonite Church. When I went to the Draft Board with this idea, they told me that I was too old to be drafted! But we went to Indonesia anyway where we stayed for nine years. Indonesia was slow in granting visas, so while we were waiting we studied two semesters in New York City studying Indonesian language and a course in Islamic history at Columbia University and several independent study courses at New York Theological Seminary. My studies up to that time had taught me almost nothing about the Christian Church in Asia, and since I was going to be teaching church history in the Mennonite Seminary in Indonesia, I decided I better do some more study in that area before we went. We finally departed for Indonesia on June 18--our wedding anniversary--and while on our way, the first president of Indonesia died. He had been president since independence in 1945 but had been forced out of office in 1965 in a bloodletting that cost upwards of 2,000,000 Indonesians their lives. We wondered what we were walking into. By September I began teaching my first course in our new home, the city of Pati in north Central Java. The name Mennonite seminary was Akademi Kristen Wiyata Wacana (AKWW)--which means Christian Academy for Disciples of the Word. In this teaching I needed to use Indonesian as the language of instruction. Learning to teach in Indonesian language was a challenge. Shirlee taught English language besides bearing and mothering our three sons, Chris, Greg and Brad. I also became the acting principal of the seminary for a year until an Indonesian colleague, Mesach Krisetya, came back from studies in the United States to take over that task. Soon I also became administrator for all of Mennonite Central Committee work in Indonesia in addition to my teaching. Then by 1977 I also became involved in projects organized by the two Mennonite synods for researching and writing the histories of these two synods. Living and working in Indonesia for those nine years transformed us in more ways than we even realize. When we returned from Indonesia in June 1979 we first went to Overseas Ministries Studies Center in Ventnor NJ for about 10 months and then in August 1980 we moved to Pasadena CA where both Shirlee and I did graduate studies at Fuller Seminary School of Intercultural Studies. Shirlee did a Masters in Intercultural Studies with a concentration in family studies. I did a Master of Theology in Missiology and then a Doctor of Philosophy in Missiology. It was after three years of study there that we moved to Harrisonburg VA for me to accept an assignment teaching mission studies here at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, a graduate division of Eastern Mennonite University. We have lived here in Harrisonburg from that time to this. Aside from my career teaching at the seminary here, Shirlee taught part in high school, college and seminary, and became associate pastor at our church--...Expand for more