The Willhoite Family – Missionaries in China (Part 2)
Pastor Jeff and Verna Willhoite, former missionaries to China, now pastor the Family Worship Center on Memorial Drive in Pulaski.
By DANIELLE REID
Patriot Publishing
Part Two
The time leading up to Pastor Jeff, his wife Verna and their three daughters, Samantha, Jenna and Hallie Willoite, becoming missionaries to China took two years. During the interim, they invested their time in growing in God’s Word and learning to trust Him in all things. Pastor Jeff continued his studies, receiving a B.A. in Pastoral Ministry and Evangelism in December 1989.
It appeared their missionary plans might be scuttled in June 1989 when the Tiananmen Square Democracy Massacre happened. However, the Bamboo Curtain opened up and the Willhoite family arrived in China in August 1990. They would function as English teachers, involved in a cross-cultural studies program. They also would be doing friendship evangelism with students and teachers at a university in Anhui Province.
“When we finally got to China, the Word became more real in life. The daily cares as a missionary in a Communist country tried to choke out the Word and make it unfruitful, but the Holy Spirit would remind me of scripture to help me,” Verna remembered.
The Willhoites quickly discovered that Communism is extremely oppressive. They had to be careful and wise in what they said, knowing the effects their words and actions could have on the people living under that government system.
“The first place we lived was the university guest house in the campus gated community. They gave us the whole guest house as our living quarters, but normally it would have been four-separate rooms for guests. We had a commercial size water heater for washing clothes and dishes, a real bath tub but the kitchen was tiny. One of the workers for the guest house would visit us twice a day. She would unlock the door, come right in and bring us two large red thermoses with metal cups on top. The thermoses were filled with boiling water because it was unsafe to drink the water without boiling it first. We were told to never drink room temperature water. The boiled water delivery was like a special perc,” recalled Verna.
At times, the Chinese people in the area would come and plaster their faces against the guest house windows to watch what the Willhoites were doing inside. Some of those mothers wanted their children to get to know the Willhoite’s foreign girls. This desire would help protect the family at a later time in an unusual way.
Pastor Jeff and their eldest daughter, Samantha, were becoming efficient in Chinese and could converse with them in both languages.
“We had really cool things that the Lord did with students coming to Jesus. We started having regular Bible study in our home. Most of the students could read English, so we could share Christ with them in English. One time two teachers came to the Bible study with their children,” said Jeff.
“The same night we were holding a Bible study in our home, the mothers brought their little children to meet our girls. We had all their chairs arranged for the Bible study when a few students showed up. Earlier, one student said he might not come because the government authorities were watching us and might try to catch us. Only God knew what would happen that night. As it turned out, we didn’t have Bible study because the women came with their children and we just visited with each other,” said Verna.
While Pastor Jeff was teaching at the university, Verna was dealing with the issues of daily life in China. The Willhoites were home-schooling their children using the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) homeschool curriculum that fully integrates Biblical principles, wisdom, and character-building concepts into their easy-to-use ACE PACE workbooks. Jeff had been an instructor and school principal using this system. This gave Verna the opportunity to concentrate on home-schooling their girls, ministering to local women and preparing meals for the family.
Most of Verna’s ministry were simple things: teaching women how to make biscuits and baked bread instead of steamed bread; being kind to all people. She was able to show them the love of Jesus in everyday, simple ways. She made friends with a few of the women, especially the one who brought them the boiling water twice a day.
Verna said, “Jenna was not thriving but was getting frail. One day, the woman who brought the boiling water made motions with her hands and pointed to a closet located under the stairwell; then she pointed to her mouth. What we found was like a treasure-trove of Western European type food that the former family had left behind. Shortly after that, the Lord gave me a dream about a big bottle of peanut oil in a store in the city. We went on a scavenger hunt looking for the peanut oil. In my dream, we were directed to a store with the oil. Jeff talked with a student who led him to the wrong store. Jeff went back and asked the student if there was another store – and the student took him to the right store that sold the pure oil. From that moment on, we had good oil to cook with. Oil that they call vegetable oil looked like motor oil for a car. The other type of oil was rapeseed and it looked like oil you drain out of your car. You had to dip this oil out of a huge barrel.”
“So many things were hard to adjust to. We had no built-in closets – only wardrobes. Cooking, preparing meals, eating and cleaning up were challenging. Everything we ate was from scratch. You could spend your whole day just doing that,” lamented Verna.
In America, when we refer to “dirty rice” we think of a flavorful Cajun/Creole dish from Louisiana, cooked with minced meats and onion, bell pepper, celery, and Cajun spices. But when Jeff and Verna think of dirty rice, it reminds them of some frustrating experiences during their missionary days in China.
“The Foreign Affairs Officer was our contact person and sort of responsible for us. One day he said, ‘Come on, let’s go down to the store and get your rice for the winter.’ We took bikes to the campus store, which was a small shop that served the workers from the teacher’s college. We used our rationing coupons to buy the rice. We bought 100-pound bags of rice and loaded them onto each bike. Then, we pushed them up the side of the mountain to our apartment.
“The quality of the rice was awful, so Verna would spend two to three-hours separating rice grain by grain to clean it. We found out later that if you had the money you could buy a better quality of rice. You could buy steam-buns stuffed full of meat, but when they puffed up you could see the weevils imbedded in the buns. Verna would sift the flour, separating the weevils and larvae out of the flour in a sieve; then bake our own bread in a toaster oven,” mused Jeff.
Under Communism, choices are limited, and not everything works the way it should.
Verna recalled, “We were fortunate to have a clothes washing machine for our laundry. But there were only two types of laundry detergent available. We chose the ‘White Cat’ one. Although the washing machine was usable, I could only get one pair of Jeff’s pants in it at a time because the tub was only about 20-inches. There was a little paddle in the bottom to move the clothes around. I would have to fill the tub with laundry detergent and water; then take the clothes out and put them in the little spinning basket that looked more like a salad spinner. I would spin out the soapy water, fill it back up with clear water, rinse it out and then spin it again. We would hang our laundered clothes up in the stairway and hallway to dry.”
At the next school where they taught, they had a bit larger washing machine but the belt would break when the washing machine spun.
“In America, you’d call the repairman and get it fixed in a day or two. But in China, I had to be innovative. I used to take my panty hose or stockings and make a belt out of them. It would last long enough to do a wash load, but it was like wrestling a calf in a rodeo, tying up the legs of a calf,” she laughed.
Where the Willhoites were living in China, communication was very limited – not like now with cellphones and Starlink. Their attempts to call family and friends back in the states could have made a great comedy skit.
Verna recalls the scenario, “We took pictures of trying to make a phone call to our families. We would leave the apartment and walk down to the guest house, where we would go in and talk to the office lady. She would call the school operator, who would call the operator in the city. They would put a call into our family, but it could take three or so days to get through! When the return call came, the office lady would send someone up to our apartment and announce, ‘You have a phone call.’ We would run down to the office and sit on the little skinny bench to take the call. I remember that the phone was fluorescent orange, and the white telephone line was a narrow 1/8th inch in diameter. It ran up the wall and out through the ceiling. We could only talk a few minutes because it was very expensive.”
She laughed when she recalled how her family reacted to them “slow talking” on the phone. The Willhoites had become used to talking very slowly as they taught Special English to their Chinese students – and they started talking very slowly on the phone to their families.
The Willhoite family went on furlough, but returned in January 1996 as students to study Chinese. They had to process every year to get Visa renewals and work permits. Travel was expensive, tedious, and time consuming. Since they had no personal transportation, they went by train, sometimes by plane, a bus ride, to another train, and a ferry.
“Things turned sour pretty fast there. We were going out into the villages of the Li people – an unreached people group in Hainan Province. Several of my students were the Li people, so we had opportunities to go out and share Jesus. Then the police said it was dangerous and that we needed to go in a group. Later, they came back and said we couldn’t go without a police escort. The pressure was on and we knew where it was headed. But that’s when the Lord opened other doors for us in Thailand and eventually to build the Bible School and Mission Teaching Center,” commented Jeff.
“After almost nine years in China, Thailand was like a breath of fresh air, being able to get away from the oppression. We could sit out at a campfire with friends, sing songs to Jesus and fellowship without hiding,” Verna sighed.
The Willhoites have great compassion for the people in China who were living under demonic oppression because of Communism.
“While we were there, it seemed they had no concept of the Ten Commandments; nothing to show them what was sin or what was good. Communism as a way of life is dreadful for everybody. Communism destroys families and the people are fear-based, not trusting anyone. It breeds a contempt for people and teaches them to be ruthless. It was easy to betray someone to get to the top of the heap. Neighbors would report someone to a Communist leader for something that may not have been against the law, but the authorities would come to the house and beat the person, making them confess, while the neighbors watched,” said Jeff.
“The people had no human compassion for each other. We witnessed a woman getting beaten by a man while the crowd watched. They seem hopeless and helpless. There seemed to be no trust between each other, no love, no kindness. They don’t even know to call out to God for help. It was a dark, dark oppressive place,” added Verna.
The couple recalled a story that happened a few months after they arrived. The snow had finally stopped and the family was eager to get outside.
“We bundled up and went walking, but the girls ran ahead. ‘Oh, look! There’s a red blanket lying by the side of the road,’ said one of the girls.
Jeff approached, while Verna diverted the girls’ attention. Jeff discovered it was a baby! Someone had left a baby by the side of the road. We were shocked. We wanted to do something, but didn’t know what. We contacted our Foreign Affairs Officer who said that it was an illegal baby, and that we shouldn’t do anything. That night, I couldn’t get the baby’s face out of my mind. This seemed to be a very cruel society,” said Verna.
“After that incident, the Lord really spoke to us about the people dying and going into eternity without Christ. That event truly stirred our hearts about getting busy doing the work of evangelism. It was a spiritual awakening, letting us know we had been cautious about sharing the Gospel. But now, after seeing this, we were motivated to share the Gospel in a more deliberate way. It was the impetus to reach out to our students with the love of Christ,” Jeff explained.
The Willhoites returned to Thailand for a last time to say goodbye to friends and see the progress of the Bible School and Training Center. They were happy to learn that it was thriving.
“The goal of foreign missions is to work yourself out of your mission; to get your national believers to take over from where you left them. The Bible School and Mission Training Center has endured and continued to grow after our departure. We were Sowers and sometimes Waterers. God gave the increase and it continues to grow to this day,” declared Jeff.