The lives of missionaries rarely follow a straight and leisurely line.
Kärcher and his wife personally and, in response to their invitation, worked on Chuuk for several years as teacher and Bible translator..
The author, professor of ethnology, knew Wilhelm F.
With the outbreak of the Second WorldWar, 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).
In the 1930s, they travel to Chuuk in Micronesia, a group of the Caroline Islands in the former German South Seas.
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.
Sometimes, though, they get caught between the front lines of world politics.
Missionaries see these experiences as life-fulfilling.
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.
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.
The lives of missionaries rarely follow a straight and leisurely line
