"I knew that I would have to come to see you, but I kept fighting it. I knew a long time ago that it would come to this. Now I am so weak and close to death; I didn't want to come. For me it is so hard to be here. This really is the end of my life. In coming here I have admitted defeat. You see, I have tried everything to keep going. I kept thinking, praying, believing that somewhere the door would open for me to change things. I really didn't want to come here and see you. I knew a long time ago that things would come to this, and I have wanted to avoid it, but Father was right. Even last week I didn't want to come. In my heart I was thinking that if Fritz1 said I couldn't travel then this would not happen. But, here I am."

I told him, "Sir, last week I felt that you were considering not coming, and I tried to call you to tell you that if you couldn't come I would come to see you wherever you said to come to, but I couldn't get hold of you."

"Son, over the years your perception has blessed me. Since you have been in Europe you have really blessed me. You have come up with the proof that so much of what I had been seeing spiritually and saying was right. Really, no one believed me when I said a lot of the stuff, but you have proved me right. Your perception has proved to be real sharp. Everyone else has been giving me facts to tell me that I am wrong, and you come up with the facts to prove me out.

"Son, I really should have died rather than let them take my eye out."

"You see, when I first got sick Father had already told me by then that I couldn't change the things that were happening in the Ministry, but I kept thinking that I could get Don to change and live as a spiritual man, that I could get things back on the right track. I don't know how it got so far developed without me really knowing what was going on. I do know that I was aware before I gave up the Presidency. I saw things starting and then what I said was rejected. Then things started going worse faster and faster. Really, it is too far gone and I am too tired. The days are so limited; they are really gone for me.

"I know that over the past few years I have cost the Ministry a lot of money. If I had gone to sleep when I knew I should have it would have been much cheaper, but I didn't. I kept thinking that maybe things would change. I kept looking for reasons to go on, thinking that He would open a door.

"Son, I need to warn you, when I am gone what will happen is that Don will really `flourish'. He will look like he is coming into his own and really developing. He may even start to talk like a Biblical man. Son, it won't be true; don't believe it, it will just be a lie. Do you hear me? He won't develop suddenly once I am gone. There have been so many opportunities for him to make a commitment, and my death won't be the one to make him spiritually grow. They will say that he has come into his own, but that won't be true. I will finally be out of his way, and there will be no one to stop him from running things with sense knowledge and without God. Why should it come from within my own household? Son, it has cost me my friend and will end up costing us the Ministry.

"You know, to live these past years has cost a lot compared to what I have been able to contribute. I just kept thinking there might be an open door. I really believed past where Father told me I could go, to see if there would not be the opportunity to change things."

He went on in the same vein, "He told me before, when I first got sick, that it was time. I knew it then, but I sure wanted to see things different. See, son, spiritually things are in a real mess. You were the first one to come along and find out the legal problems that our men were making for us. I knew it spiritually and spoke up a long time ago, but no one would listen to me then. All I got was facts. We are losing this Ministry to facts -- putting facts ahead of God."

"I pretty well have gotten out of the fight, but it looks to me that unless we have a major change spiritually we are going to lose to the IRS. We have walked away from God, and His hand of protection will be off us. It's just a matter of time. You can't run the Ministry without God; you just cant. You know, I told them a number of years ago to get their head out of the legal and drive themselves on the Word but facts -- facts -- facts. When you found out that stuff about our lawyer2 I knew you were right. I had told them a number of years before that I felt spiritually he was doing things behind our backs to hurt us, to get us in trouble. When you spoke up I had the facts that he was. No one wanted to believe me, but now we see it in evidence.

"It has been a hard time for me. I have watched men that I have fought for ruined. Well, for me anyway the time is up.

Then he suggested we go get a cup of coffee. By the time we got back up to the Suite he was too tired to even have the coffee, so he went to bed and rested.

That night Barbara and I spent the evening with Dr. and Mrs. Wierwille in the Suite watching movies and fellowshipping. He made no mention of anything in our talk and we all just enjoyed each other's company. Needless to say, I was thinking a great deal about the events of the day.

The next morning Doctor wanted to go for a ride around the grounds again. We had been looking at maps of the property as he tried to gain an understanding of how out ground was laid out. Also, I had given him books about the property, its previous owners, the Cayzers, and the surrounding area, which, as he began to read them, had raised questions about places in the immediate area as well as the property itself. As we left the house to get into the Land Rover, Dr. Wierwille had the opportunity to meet John Watt, a local man who worked for us. Howard had told Doctor about him and Doctor had wanted to get an opportunity to meet him.

As we drove around, we looked everywhere that we could go with the Land Rover -- driving over the grass and through the fields, first close to the house and then working our way to other areas.

Though he was physically very tired he still wanted to see every angle of the campus. We drove in and out of every entrance at least twice and looked at the grounds from every angle.

The evening before we had gone out in a car for a few minutes following supper to see the village of Gartmore, he had seen the arch and had met a couple of the neighbours. That day, though, he wanted to see every side that he could and, as he put it, "put it all together in my mind". He particularly liked the entrance from the south.

I took him around and showed him how the ground all fit together and where everything lay on the land. We talked a lot about the work that needed doing and, as he always did, he quickly made some very solid and good recommendations. He was quite amazed, as he had been on previous visits to Europe, with the difference in construction and conventions. He told me that he really felt lost in looking at the work, which I told him I could understand very well. It had taken me a very long time and a lot of hard work to get to the place where I could understand them and work here myself.

One of our fields begins adjacent to the campus and then it heads away in an oddly shaped piece and at its head comes very close to a roadway. He was in trying to get a clear mind-picture of the layout of the top pasture field then he started to talk about the work programme as it relates to The Way Corps. He started by commenting that I really could not be away from the work for more than an hour at a time, the way that he saw it. I told him that he was not too wrong because at the time I was still coordinating the work on the campus personally.

When we got to the head of the field I showed him where we could see the tall pines from the campus. This really seemed to put it all together for him, and he was satisfied. He kept talking about the work programme though.

He explained to me that The Way Corps in the U.S.A. was not up to an acceptable standard, and that the problem did not lie-in the teaching end of the Word as much as in the work programme. The term that he used was that it had "lost its vitality". My mind was still digesting our conversations of the day before and putting them in perspective with things that I already knew, and here he was going further. His clearness of thought and sharpness amazed me. I knew he was very weak physically, but his mind was still very sharp. He told me how he had tried to have the programme trimmed back and reinstitute the work programme as it had been at the times of the early Corps. In his opinion he considered that he had failed. The academics were de-emphasized, but the work programme never really rose to the level that he knew it would have to reach. He told me how he had tried to talk to Don and Howard about the men at the campuses who were called "Work Coordinators", but again all he got were "facts". I remember him saying: "Son, I am so tired of facts. This Ministry was built on God and His Word. It was a Ministry of faith. But, no more. Now we need facts -- facts -- facts. Facts should be to support faith, not kill it."

His great concern was that we were turning out Corps who did not know how to work nor how to believe. He said that he knew before he got to Gartmore that the work programme here would be alive, and that seeing it had proven it to him.

I did not for one moment think that a period of only a few months at a new Corps location would qualify for successfully implementing anything, much less something as important as a major portion of The Way Corps like the work programme. I knew, however, what Doctor was talking about from the years that I had traveled with him I had gotten a great understanding of his heart about how the work side of The Way Corps should go, and what he was seeing was that I was applying what he had taught me.

He said that what he did not know was how to get it going properly at the other campuses. His phrase was, "Without a vital work programme you don't have a Way Corps." He told me how Ermal and Harry had been so good at bringing out the best in each person whom they worked with, and how their thinking, their enthusiasm and love had permeated the early days at Headquarters.

He commented on George Jess and others, but said that the real drive had come from the full Board of Trustees. He talked about men like Tom Mausolf and others who still looked to bring out the best in each person whom they worked with, but how basically that kind of thinking had gone out of the Ministry. At best the work programme was keeping people busy and getting things done. He felt that the reason we were not blessed in our work efforts like we should be was that we had forsaken the principles of the Word and only wanted work done and not people built.

He talked how Emporia was dying, and that it was dying because of the work programme. Not only was there not enough work, but the leaders were convinced that they were busy and working to the maximum.

He talked at great length about how the leadership of the Corps was turning into a group of administrators and not spiritual men and women, and how the effects were more and more becoming visible in the spirituality of the Corps. The way that he put it was that there was basically no one in the leadership of The Way Corps who could be trusted spiritually. His comments were that Don was playing favourites with those who could administrate and "not rock the boat". He pointed out how those who had the best spiritual potential were either bypassed in selection or made to forfeit their spiritual abilities in favour of administrative ones; they were ground down.

He almost cried, and he did have tears in his voice, when he talked about how he had tried to show with his life how to lead the Corps and how easily his teaching had been erased from the lives of his students, "my men" as he called them. He talked how in the later years he had tried so hard to influence things the other way, but that there had been almost no notice taken and basically his efforts had been wasted. He said he almost felt like they had laughed at him for how he tried to train the Corps.

He said he knew that behind his back men were being told things like, "That is just Dad's way of doing things, his personality." It really hurt him that what he had taken so long to build and develop had been undercut so quickly, and that basically not one of the men responsible for the leadership of the Corps had stood up and fought for what he had poured out his life for.

He talked about Tom Jenkinson and how at Gunnison where perhaps the greatest potential for work outside Headquarters existed, the work was so dead that it did not qualify for Way Corps standards. Many times over the years that I traveled with Dr. Wierwille I had seen him get spiritually irritated with men who sat at their desks and did not get out and work with the Corps. As he talked, he again brought up the fact that our top leaders for the Corps were not getting involved with the daily handling of the work and actually getting out and working with the Corps. He kept emphasizing that it isn't possible to lead from behind, that all true leaders lead from the front. In fact, he kept talking about it at great length. Finally, he said something like: "Well, son, we aren't getting anything solved by sitting here. I see the trees3 so we might as well head home."

As we reached the paved roadway, he brought up the topic I had raised with him on a previous visit to Europe by saying: "I know that you must have been hurt in your heart by all the things that you told me once about how Vince and the others had handled the Ministry. I never responded to you, did I?"

In fact he never had. He was referring to a conversation that he and I had had sitting in an hotel room in Caen, France. I had felt it was the culmination of an order that he had given me when he first talked to me about going to Europe to put the things of the Ministry right. He had told me to get to the bottom of what had gone wrong with the Ministry and then, when I thought I knew what had caused it, to get back to him and tell him. A very brief summary of what I told him follows:

When I was first preparing to go to Europe, and in the earlier stages of being in Europe, I had felt that the breach between the leadership and Way Corps of Europe and the leadership at International Headquarters had been fostered in and from Europe. This was the generally accepted view at Headquarters and among the men of the Ministry at the time, and I believe that it still is today.

The theories had developed to the point that it was (and in some circles, still is) felt that the vast majority of the blame was to be laid at the feet of Robert Wilkinson. I had listened out all the information at Headquarters, and when I first came to Europe I found Robert to fit perfectly into the role that had been cast for him.

He was standoffish and did not really show a drive to want to move the Ministry and to push himself to better the people of God. It appeared that he had holed up at home and generally let the Ministry deteriorate. The spirituality of The Way Corps and leaders in Britain was cold. Things were just not moving nor developing as they should have for an area with so many Corps. I had, however, decided to try to go into the situation with an open mind and try to evaluate it clearly.

When we first got to Europe, Barbara and I were supposed to immediately follow through on the acquisition of a Way Corps training centre. The groundwork for all this had been laid by Bo Reahard, Vince Finnegan and Jim Peterson. Supposedly there were to be easily had work permits available in Switzerland since I was a clergyman. In theory the logistics of the legal planning and the funding had all been worked out and all that we had to do was follow through, report back and then start. As it turned out nothing could have been further from the truth.

The entire negotiations had been dishonestly handled from the side of the firm we had engaged as well as from our side. Jim Peterson had placed our Ministry in a position that would have spelled almost certain massive legal problems. Had things progressed, the probable outcome would have been for our Ministry to have found itself in a position that would have required suing a Swiss canton, or forfeiting the use of our location, or both.

As far as I can remember from the conversations at the time, no one had ever sued a canton. If I am wrong it was that no one had ever sued a Swiss canton and won. Either way, it excited our legal advisers. They were excited at being a part of what might turn out to be the first potentially successful suit against a canton. One of their men told me that there were large multinational companies just waiting for someone to win in a suit so that they could profit from it. One phrase that I remember distinctly from the conversations was spoken regarding Jim Peterson, "If he successfully engineered a winning suit he could write his own ticket."

I asked Nicole Könz, who had been part of all the meetings both before and after my arrival, how much of all this had come up at previous meetings. She assured me that intentions had been clear and that she had wondered herself why International Headquarters would want to get itself into a situation that would only lead to legal problems and which would not only cost us potentially millions (the figure quoted me at one point was five million U.S. dollars) but exclude us from using the Corps location during the proceedings.

It also came out during the early stages that it would not be feasible to take the money from the various countries and use it to buy the property. To do so would have violated the laws of the various countries involved. This, it turned out, had been communicated to International Headquarters, but it had been dismissed.

At any rate, I kept pursuing these matters and tried to see them clearly, but did not report them until the time when Dr. Wierwille came to visit for the first time after I had come to Europe. When he and I began to talk it all out, a number of decisions were made that changed the course of things.

We dropped the idea of attempting to open a Way Corps training location in Switzerland at all. It might have been possible under different conditions, but the waters were already so muddied that it did not seem worth the risk. My family and I moved to England. The starting of a Way Corps was put off until we could work through details and get the support of the believers behind the project. It was quite obvious from the start that there were many of the top people in the Ministry in Europe who were not at all convinced about starting a European Corps, or at least in starting one that would have any American input or control. In fact there were very strong anti-American and anti-Headquarters sentiments that had cut quite deeply into the household throughout Europe.

Also, at Dr. Wierwille's recommendation, we changed the Ministry year for Europe from one that paralleled the year in the U.S.A. to one that began and ended at the New Year period.

After we had moved to England it became quite apparent that Robert and Barbara Wilkinson were of such a mind that they were not going to actively help, at least not with goodwill. This all came about while I was on an itinerary, and in fact it was during that itinerary that Dr. Wierwille first had a stroke.

To interject something here after Dr. Wierwille's visit he must have communicated the gist of the Peterson/Swiss affair back at Headquarters because I got a seven-page letter from Jim. In it he challenged basically everything that I had uncovered. I did not know what to do about the letter, whether to answer it or not, so I called Dr. Wierwille who was at Rome City, and asked him what to do. What he told me to do was to write Jim back and simply way that I would be at Headquarters in the spring to meet with Dr. Wierwille and the Board of Trustees and would be glad to discuss the situation at that time with all the above present. He told me not to get into writing back and forth with Jim because he would trick me.

It was also during that phone call that he told me that he had felt spiritually for some time that Jim had been working behind our backs to do the Ministry harm and himself, Jim, good and that he had said so, but no one really believed him. He told me that I was the first one who had come along and been able to "sniff out" what was going on.

After all was said and done things finished up quite differently. Very shortly after I sent my note to Jim Peterson, and without the meetings taking place, he decided to tender his resignation. I never followed it any further, but it was an interesting turn of events. I have since reflected, wondering how much of our troubles in other areas that he was involved in have come out of similar set-ups of his.

Picking back up, I called in to talk to Doctor about Robert and the situation that was developing and could not get through to him. I was only told that he was gone and could not be reached. When I tried to call back again he still was not there, so I went through to Howard. Howard told me that he had had a stroke and that he was not well. I got his permission to come on the next available flight and went to see Dr. Wierwille.

I found him physically weak but mentally sharp. I had been told not to talk to him about things of the Ministry, but that was all he wanted to talk about. I remember when I told him about Robert that he got tears in his eyes and said, "How could I have been so wrong?"

As a result of meetings that were held during that visit (but which did not include Dr. Wierwille) two notable changes were made. The first was that Vince Finnegan would replace Bo Reahard as the head of International Outreach and the second was that I would become the Country coordinator for the United Kingdom, replacing Robert Wilkinson.

I began working the Ministry in the United Kingdom and found it hard to believe the state of affairs. Almost every aspect of the Ministry was in neglect. The spiritual, the administrative, the financial and the communications were all in a dreadful state. The work required to put things into good order was far more than anyone would have suspected, I believe. Personally, it staggered me.

I began to work with Vince and I was very blessed to be working with him. During the summer of 1983 we started working together officially, and I looked forward to great things. However, within three months I was really left wondering as to what was going on at Headquarters, and in particular with International Outreach. I talked over a number of things with Vince that were of major importance. More than once things that were of great import were buried. Major topics that we discussed were neglected. I kept thinking that it was the new change in the department and that it would disappear, but it did not. Instead, things got worse.

Within six months I personally experienced what had happened to kill the Ministry in Europe. It was systematically killed from International Headquarters. I was so hurt and discouraged that the Ministry which I loved was being handled this way that I was physically sick and so hurt I almost could not go on. I knew that if this had happened to others who did not know the Ministry like I did, then they would feel like folding like I felt like doing. It was no wonder to me that they did not care for the things of the Ministry. If Headquarters and its representatives did not, why should they? Often we (the International Outreach leadership on the field) were left to bear the risks of this blatant neglect.

I suppose that it was my naïvely that had kept me from listening to things that I had been told over the months that I had been in Europe, or perhaps it was the great respect that I had held for the Ministry and those at the Root. At any rate, since I now had been on the receiving end I became much more prone to listen and to evaluate what I heard from a perspective of learning instead of rejection.

As I began to listen instead of fight what I had been hearing since coming to Europe, things began to fit for me that had never fit before. Things like: How is it that the same symptoms appear in multiple countries which operate independently of each other? Why is it that people who have successfully moved God's Word, and some of them in more than one country, seen to grind to a halt more or less all at once and in the same way? How could Robert Wilkinson have killed the work in all of Europe when the countries operated independently of each other? How could the enthusiasm of and for The Way Corps be so effectively destroyed or undermined throughout all the various countries off Europe at virtually the same time?

These and many other questions began to melt for me but raised new and greater questions. I traced out now how the WOW programme had been killed, how Robert Wilkinson had been intentionally set up to look as if he were the villain responsible for the demise of the Ministry so as to hide the activities of personnel at Headquarters (as I saw what had happened I could well understand why he would not stand with me when I got to England and why he would be reluctant to get involved in the Ministry further) and many more things that stunned and deeply hurt me.

I outlined for Doctor that night in Caen, France, many of the things that I had heard and had evaluated, specific point by specific point, like how the WOW programme in Europe was killed, how great needs were reported and then buried, etc. We sat for a number of hours and talked it all through. Though that night we discussed many things relevant to the Ministry, he never did address himself to the majority of the points that I had raised nor did he propose any solutions, which I had hoped he would do. From that point onward he only mentioned our conversation to me once and then only to deal with what I felt was one minor point.

This is what he was referring to, our conversation in Caen, France. He continued: "Well, I saw it so much bigger than you ever did. He4 was only one. Our finest men, men I had poured out my life for and who really loved God, have been systematically destroyed. Today there aren't many left standing for the truth. It's like a tree. It takes so long to nurture and grow, but it can be killed so quickly. What I never would have expected was for Howard to be the first I just never would have believed it."

He paused for a while. I knew his heart was very heavy. In fact I wondered why he was telling me so much of this. "So many of the things that I have tried have gone so wrong. Like this Bill Maize thing at Emporia. Years ago I had Bill to teach the Corps. I thought it would be good learning for them, good exposure, and that they could grow. I knew that all that Carnegie stuff was basically selfish, basically greedy. But, I felt it could be good for some of our Corps kids, but I always had to watch over Bill. He never really developed it on the Word, he was never really honest with the stuff.

"Now we have our Corps man in Emporia full time to teach the stuff. As far as I am concerned he is way off the ball spiritually, but that isn't the worst part. We have gone so far off balance that Carnegie is more important than the work programme. I just know spiritually that there are people who come into the Corps to be able to get the Carnegie stuff and they put up with the rest. Spiritually the whole thing stinks, son."

About then we got back into the archway and again began talking about the campus and the grounds. When we got closer to the house he asked where we could go to get a cup of coffee without having to go upstairs, and I told him that my apartment would be the easiest. As I put the kettle on and made the coffee he told me that the only two men whom he felt still had maintained their spirituality were Craig and me. But, he said, I was the only one who had come close to recognizing what had been going on in the Ministry, Craig had not. He also said that unless things changed neither Craig nor I would last much longer and if we did it wouldn't make much difference anyway.

He told me that he had hoped before he came that after we talked I would be able to wrap up things in Europe and go back to Headquarters. He felt that if Craig and I could work together then there was a possibility of the Ministry not dying or not becoming a denomination.

He also told me that the devastation that had been manifested in the Ministry in Europe was only the beginning, that within a short matter off time it would be repeated in many places and in worse ways, in fact it had already started.

He told me that he had talked to the Board of Trustees about my coming back to Headquarters and handling The Way Corps and International Outreach, in hopes that I would be back in a few months and could "get in the fight". I realized then that this was perhaps why he had told me so much about the Corps in our talks that morning.

I did not have the heart at that time to tell him that I had already determined that Europe would be my last assignment, that I had decided to make this a success and then step out when I was not useful here any more or could no longer endure what I had been seeing and been subjected to. We had talked over the past few years about the problems that he had been discussing with me, but I could not see a way to keep going with things going wrong so fast and from the top down.

Following his visit, after our talk in France, I had really reached the point of desperation. He had not given me the answers I felt I needed and I was very frustrated. I already knew at that time that what I had seen had been known to the Board of Trustees over the years. I could not understand how the mistreatment of the Ministry could have gone on right under the noses of the men responsible and it not be detected. It appeared more and more that the root of the problem led back to or was known by the Board of Trustees, which was a hard pill to swallow. I kept putting off the possibility that it could be true. Then, in May of 1984, it became apparent to me that there could have been no other way that the Ministry could have been so ruined.

I submitted my resignation during that period of time because I had nowhere else to turn and did not want to act as a representative off anything that was so harmful in the name of the God Whom I loved. I did not have anywhere else to go to at the time. I was not really interested in leaving; the only alternative that I could think of was to go be near Doctor and perhaps work with his dogs.

The initial response to my resignation was to have Don come over and talk to me. I felt within myself that would not do and in the end Don and Howard ended up coming over together for a day to see me and talk things over.

I outlined for them about half of what I had talked over with Doctor. The results were mixed in my opinion. I got the room to move that was needed for Europe and Howard was put back over International Outreach. These were the positive results. What appalled me were comments that Don made during the time we were together. I felt worse about the Ministry after the visit than I had before, in so many ways. Prior to their visit I had known that they had been aware of the vast majority of the things that I spoke of. During our talks it became clear that they not only knew but, and this was especially true of Don, they were really not interested in cleaning up but in covering up.

My decision to remain was sparked not by the results of the meetings we had but by a short note that Dr. Wierwille sent along with them. I knew from what he said that I could not leave and have him live; he would have died. I stayed because I knew it would have meant his death if I left. Don and Howard offered me other positions if Europe was no longer appealing. I felt that since I was staying in the employ of the Ministry perhaps I could repay, in part, the moral debt that I knew International owed to the believers of Europe for the hurt that had been done over the past years if I would continue to give my heart and my life.

Many of the statements that were made during those hours were so stunning to me that I still reel at the thought of them. To fully understand my heart it would require a lengthy explanation. Basically it boils down that if there was any man hurt by Dr. Wierwille during those years I qualified. In living so closely I had borne the brunt of many of the frustrations that he felt in trying to transfer first the leadership of the Ministry to two new Trustees and then to a new President. I had seen firsthand how hard he worked to keep the Ministry on an even keel, often lashing out at those closest to him, and very often that was Barbara (when she was along), but most often it was me, when things went wrong.