More Light Has Come

The lives of missionaries rarely follow a straight and leisurely line. Those who want to acquaint people with the contents of the Bible and lead them to a knowledge of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, have to be prepared for anything. Hardly anyone can imagine what it means for such a person to leave the familiar European-Western cultural environment and learn to live in an alien social system, learn its language and its totally different thought patterns, and identify with it all. Missionaries see these experiences as life-fulfilling. Sometimes, though, they get caught between the front lines of world politics. That is when the most incredible things may happen, as shown by the life story of Wilhelm Friedrich and Elisabeth Kärcher, the Liebenzell missionary couple.

In the 1930s, they travel to Chuuk in Micronesia, a group of the Caroline Islands in the former German South Seas. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the family is interned by the Japanese; they survive in the midst of bombing raids in an absolutely miraculous way; and afterwards, amidst great personal sacrifices, they rebuild a totally destroyed church structure which then became an independent body in the seventies, known as the “Evangelical Church of Chuuk” (EEC).

The author, professor of ethnology, knew Wilhelm F. Kärcher and his wife personally and, in response to their invitation, worked on Chuuk for several years as teacher and Bible translator.