AMO, AMAS, AMAT, AMAMUS, AMATIS, AMANT!

LESSONS OF A MISSIONARY JEREMY VERNON (RGS 1965-1972)

young man. At the time I suddenly felt a great peace and offered him the few dollars in my pocket, and he glanced to my beloved Timex, which I duly gave him.

My wife and I had some brushes with death travelling during those years especially in Colombia and Peru.

I spent many years studying the Bible, both in the western world and in Asia, and learning – through drama, visiting orphanages, schools, TV shows, radio programmes, and Bible studies one-to-one or in small groups – how to present the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ to millions of people over a 35-year period.

business in one sense.

This was the time of my life I loved the most – seeing how friendly and precious regular Chinese were at the time and how they all wanted to be your friend, have their photo taken with me, ‘My friend hold camera, ok?’ Some of you reading may have been there and know what I mean!

Anyone who has gone through Latin for six years, truly has the fortitude to face many difficulties in life! Coupled with rigorous summer Cadet Corps training on Dartmoor, where unimaginably painful blisters grew out of your heels on the 16-mile trek carrying a 30kg backpack, and you begged your leader to ‘please let me in the jeep and bring me back to civilisation!’ ‘No chance my boy!’

I am very thankful for all that I learned at RGS. Many teachers influenced my life, primarily Mr Harrald, Mr Noble, Mr Scrase, Mr Sims, (‘The bigger they are the harder they fall’), Mr Dawson, Mr Westall and Mr Ballance.

Unusually for an RGS graduate perhaps, I became a Pastor and a Missionary, working in over 20 countries from the age of 19.

The Spanish I learned under Mr Gutridge helped me enormously in South America – I lived in the Andes countries for about five years – and later (Portuguese) Brazil. I lived there with my first wife and my children primarily grew up there before we moved to the States.

Of course, such a life in my 20’s 30’s and 40’s and 50’s was exciting in those decades between 1975 and 2010.

By the time I was 35 years old, I had become a Headteacher at a mission school in Rio de Janeiro and later in São Paulo, and it was a fruitful and fulfilling time.

I was robbed at gunpoint on a crowded bus in Rio with a silver pistol pressed to my temple by a very sweaty and nervous

Finally, after a four-year stint in India, the prime of life found me entering China, where we spent 10 years as Pastors and English Teachers in a huge city of 14 million wonderful Chinese people.

Before arriving in this communist country, we received two months of training from other missionaries about how to live there without being arrested, deported, or having your visas cancelled. We learned about the culture, how to conduct ourselves, dress and how to recognise when our phone was bugged, how to send and receive encrypted emails and how to recognise government agents posing as friends. So, we learned before we entered it was going to be a serious

I mainly taught English to Chinese business people and university graduates at a high level. One multi-national recruited me to go to the South China Sea and teach on oil rigs. I had to pass a seven-day safety course covering various life-or-death scenarios which could occur on an oil rig, including a very realistically simulated helicopter crash from which I barely escaped myself! I was the only foreigner vetted and allowed to teach there.

Our house in China was always full of friends, students and businesspeople, some of whom have gone on to follow Jesus Christ in China. I can only be thankful for this gift of life and experience. I learned Mandarin to about level five (out of eight) for speaking and listening. We never were arrested, although I am sure the authorities knew of us!

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don’t lean to our own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths”. Proverbs 3:4-5 (the Bible).

Emily, Shenzhen, early 2001