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| Marvin L. Goodman, Jr. |
It has been some time since I have seen many of you. Nancy and I now live in Colorado Springs where I am president of a missionary organization called Entrust, formerly BEE Biblical Education by Extension. Following the passing of my father on April 11th, I have been reflecting on the rich legacy he left behind.
I feel a certain symmetry in hearing of my father’s death while overseas on the mission field at a staff conference . . . just as my parents heard of the deaths of their parents. It is mind boggling to me that yesterday morning Nancy and I left Budapest Hungary and that same evening were here in, Winona Lake, Indiana for the visitation and now this morning at this service with you. I realize I have a privilege neither of my missionary parents ever had . . . attending their parent’s memorial service. The reality, for my sister Anne and my brother Paul (as well as for my cousin Carol, also an MK from Brazil) we received the news of the death of each of our grandparents by a tersely worded telegram which took two weeks to arrive with the final leg on a bicycle.
Email, Skype and Vonage make this a different day; perhaps we are the richer for it in some ways, but all the poorer for the loss of pioneers like my father. The church around the world stands on the shoulders of people like my father. We have received so many tributes from people saying how Dad’s ministry touched their lives.
My parents’ first trip to Africa was measured in weeks and months rather than the relatively few hours it takes today. They traveled by ship to Europe, down the coast of Africa and finally by riverboat into the very heart of Africa.
Dad hand crafted every piece of furniture for our home overlooking the village of N’Zoro in the Central African Republic. He devised a hydraulic pumping system to supply water up the hill to our house (rather than have it carried one bucket at a time). Once for a family vacation trip to a faraway river, I remember him cutting bamboo poles and shaping nails into fishhooks so I could catch my first fish. I watched him do electrical wiring, plumbing, harvest kapok pods for the stuffing in sofa cushions Mom made, do repairs on our pickup and a thousand other things that would have gone undone unless he figured out how to do them. Yet I remember just staring at him in puzzlement when after retiring to the US, he said to me, “I have no idea how to care and maintain a house here.” “Really, Dad?”
My father graduated Cum Laude from Berkeley, and if I’d been blessed with his mind I’m sure I would have paraded it shamelessly at every opportunity, but he did not. Dad did not aspire to the limelight, but he did not hesitate to serve as a leader. When pressed into service as field superintendent, I remember how he would have traded that city of Bangui posting in a minute to camp out in the jungles introducing pygmies to a savior who loved them. There is much that could be said, perhaps needs to be said, about my father’s accomplishments. He was a career missionary where few have lasted an entire career. But instead of telling you about Marvin Lester Goodman, Jr. I will tell you about my Dad, and what this son respects most about him.
My father loved us well and I owe so much to him. My youngest sister, Suzan, once startled me by observing I was the one of us four most likely to clash with Dad because I was most like him. Of course I was the last to see it, but she was right. When I was younger it seemed to me he affected an artificial humility. Over time I came to realize he was just painfully conscious of his own failings.
As an adult, I came to realize I still longed for the affirmation he found most difficult to give his son. A counselor and friend pressed me to talk with him about it. On the way to a hardware store I somehow told my father how at times I wondered why he could not bring himself to affirm me and tell me he loved me. To my surprise, he agreed. “Mom always tried to get me to do that more. I guess my own father never did” he said and then told me he was sorry. After that he went out of his way to affirm me and tell me he loved me. That is what I honor my father for. At that conversation he was about my age now. He was determined to remain clay on the potter’s wheel, malleable in the Master’s hand.
After retirement he began to work at Kmart. Big and strong, they had him lifting and loading things he should not have been at his age. I was so relieved when he was asked to be the Pastor to Seniors. Then Mom started to deteriorate. I learned more from my father about what it means to love in those years than in all the years before. Mom had been the one with the servant’s heart who did whatever any of us needed. In this cruel turnabout, Mom could never again do what she did best, and she gradually became trapped in a Parkinson’s prison. The love of Dad’s life slowly deserted him, but her body remained.
Once when Nancy and I visited, Mom smiled and even laughed with us. In private, my Dad told me, she didn’t do that for him anymore. The small residue of emotion she could still muster was reserved for extraordinary moments like seeing people at church or our visit. He had lost her, but still he cared for her. Food in, food out. He cared for her. It is one thing to love that sweet little thing in a short little tennis skirt (one of my favorite pictures of my Mom when they were dating). Quite another to love the rag doll body with heart and mind locked away deep inside her.
Clay in the master’s hand. As if God had said:
“I know you want to go minister to pygmies but I need you to lead the mission field.”
“I know it makes you uncomfortable because you never saw you own father do it, but I need you to affirm your son.”
“I know you would rather see the USA in your Chevrolet, but I need you to be nursemaid to your wife.”
And he did it with grace, dignity and love. Those, for me, were some of his crowning achievements.
Read Dad's obituary here.
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| Mom, Dad and David |
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| Mom in her tennis skirt |
