Unconventional Faith

By R. C. Linthicum and Sue Wier

Everyone at some point has encountered great pain in their lives, but a single heart-wrenching experience when I was a rebellious eighteen-year-old shook me to the core. It not only changed the course of my life but continues to touch the hearts of those who hear the story today.
In this book, you will read about my true life experiences on and off the mission field. You will stand alongside me as I work with Mother Teresa in India. You will witness the miracles I experience first-hand in the Middle East and learn from my encounter with demons in the darkest corners of Africa.
Come along with me on this journey as we explore what unconventional faith looks like. I will challenge you to take risks, move beyond your past mistakes, and develop a more authentic relationship with God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666791013

R. C. Linthicum

R. C. Linthicum has served in fifteen countries as a missionary. He has a BA in Christian leadership and MDiv from Azusa Pacific University and is a certified chaplain. He has worked with Mother Teresa in India, World Vision in South America, and at several YWAM bases around the world. In the United States, he has ministered in Los Angeles at two churches as a youth pastor and worked at two community centers.

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Introduction

Have you ever felt beaten down by life and wanted to give up? I have. Three years ago, I was diagnosed with kidney cancer and went through a successful surgery. But because of complications during the operation, I had to have a second surgery to install a pacemaker and defibrillator. Then within a couple of months both my dad and my Uncle Les, who were my mentors, died. My world seemed to be crashing down around me, and depression began to suck the life out of me.

It was during this time of recovery that I was reminded by God to remain thankful. I began to think about the many times that the Lord faithfully protected and helped me in the past. I started writing how Jesus guided and trained me over the years as a missionary, and thus this book was born. The more I wrote, the better I felt. It was in writing about God’s faithfulness that I began to see his direction over my life.

I am a pastor’s son who rebelled against religion and the church. As a teenager, I wanted nothing to do with my parents’ religion. By the early 1980s, I became heavily involved in drugs and alcohol. Eventually, I became a local drug dealer in the suburbs of Detroit. In my senior year of high school, things were so bad that my father could not leave me alone at home when he went on an overseas mission trip. So, he took me along to keep me out of trouble. It was during this trip to Calcutta, India, while working alongside Mother Teresa, that my life changed forever.

From that point onward, I have followed a different path. In the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken, he talks about finding two trails in the woods. One is the main path which most people take in life and the other is a smaller, less traveled path, which he chooses. This guides his life in a totally different direction. Like Robert Frost, taking this less traveled road has given me a unique life experience unfamiliar to most Americans.

In 1983, I felt called by God into missions and ministry. Since then, I have had the privilege of traveling to twenty-five countries and working in fifteen as an overseas missionary. Along the way, my relationship with God deepened as I found myself in situations where I had no other choice but to depend on him. I hope that you find these stories about my adventures inspirational, entertaining, and educational. By the end of this book, my wish is that you would discover that what God did for me he can do for you as well.

Chapter 1

Creating a Ripple, the Mother Teresa Story

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.

—Mother Teresa

Why am I Here, Lord?

A thick yellow haze hung over the city like a storm cloud as our mission group landed in Calcutta, India. Stepping off the plane, the stench of urine was overwhelming. As we went through customs, the airport police and customs agents wanted a bribe to allow us entry into their country. After we got past that first hurdle, we exited the airport terminal and were inundated by hundreds of beggars. Within minutes I had a migraine from the air pollution and constant noise.

Before I knew what was happening, a young boy forcefully grabbed my suitcase and tried to pull it out of my hand. I turned around and loudly shouted, No! He looked at me angrily and cursed at me, then spat in my face. I was stunned—no one had ever spat in my face before! Back home that would have been grounds for a fistfight. But the boy looked like he was around ten years old; as a result, I wasn’t sure what to do. I just stood there in shock and wiped the glob of slimy spit away from my face with my forearm.

Quite rapidly, it became a free-for-all as gangs of Indian untouchable poor grabbed the mission team’s luggage and tried to walk away with our suitcases. Immediately our group leader, Don, told us to gather all the suitcases together and form a tight circle of bodies around the luggage. The mission team of sixteen surrounded the suitcases while Don disappeared into the crowd to haggle for the six taxicabs needed to take us to the hotel. As we stood in a circle around the luggage to prevent it from being stolen, it reminded me of stories of the American West where the pioneers would circle their wagons for protection at night.

Soon we were shoving our way through the crowds to get to the taxis. Looking out the taxi window, I saw a young beggar boy push his disfigured, burned face up against the partially rolled down glass. The young boy had no nose left whatsoever, and loose, burnt skin hung down from his cheeks and chin. My first reaction was to jump back in utter horror. I told the boy, I don’t have any money to give you, which was the truth. He too cursed at me and spat through the opening of the window, hitting me on the side of my face.

I sat stone-faced in the taxicab in a state of shock as we drove down street after street filled with Indian untouchables living on the sidewalks. The sights and smells were disturbing. Once we arrived at the hotel, my father and I did not want to leave the relative safety of our hotel room, but Don came pounding on our door. He wanted us to get out onto the streets as soon as possible to overcome our feelings of culture shock and prepare us for the main mission work still ahead.

The following day after breakfast, our team left the hotel and headed toward Mother Teresa’s convent. On our way, we saw a large group of adults and children gathered around a broken water main. They were washing their clothes, taking baths, using the toilet, and drinking from water gushing out of the broken pipe and collecting in a dirty pool alongside the busy road. As we walked along the sidewalk, we had to step over numerous sleeping bodies.

I was later told that the number of people who live on the streets of Calcutta was equal to the total population of Chicago, Illinois. The untouchables, or Dalits as they are formally called, are the lowest caste in Indian society. These are the poorest of the poor, many of whom live in shanties or makeshift houses of cardboard. Others simply have a large blanket or plastic sheet tied to a fence or wall, making a tent-like dwelling on the sidewalk. In some places the entire street is filled with these dirty, overcrowded, makeshift dwellings.

When we entered the convent, I recall it being dark and gloomy, generally bare of furniture or decorations except for crosses on the walls, portraits of Jesus, and statues of Mary. One of the nuns welcomed us and escorted us to a small balcony. She told us that Mother Teresa had just returned from a long trip the night before and wanted to know if our group still wanted to meet her in person. The group responded with a resounding Yes! As we waited, I remember sitting quietly on the balcony listening to the city traffic roll by outside the gates of the convent.

Biblical Breakthrough

A few minutes later, a little old lady wearing a blue and white habit came walking through the balcony’s double doors. As the group stood up to greet her, I was surprised at how tiny this woman was, but instantly I felt a presence in her that was larger than life. She greeted us personally and shook our hands. The room was completely silent as we waited in anticipation for her to speak.

Her voice was quiet and soft, but her words shook me to the core. She asked the group a very simple question, Do you love Jesus? We responded in unison saying, Yes! She replied by saying, That is good! But do you love Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor? Then Mother Teresa explained that there are many kinds of poverty, but that she considered the USA the poorest country in the world, not because there is a poverty of money but because there is a greater poverty of having too much money. When you have too much money, she said, you never really have to learn to trust in Jesus.

With her voice barely above a whisper, she told us that it was indeed important for us to do what we were doing on this mission trip because we were getting in touch with the poor, and only by serving the poor would we understand what it meant to be a servant of Jesus. We stood there awestruck by her simple words. She looked deeply into our eyes and said, But this trip will end soon, and you will go back home to the USA. What will you do when you return? Will you go back to the old way of life, or will you come out of this experience changed forever? Then, looking down at the ground, this woman of God slowly shook her head, declaring, Poor rich people—your wealth has consumed you!

The Orphanage Experience

For the first week in India, I worked with my dad at an orphanage run by Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Charity. We played with the children and helped the sisters in any way that we could. What I really enjoyed was helping feed lunch to hundreds of people. The gates would open and the untouchables, many with families, would come one-by-one past the serving table with their bowls outstretched. As we filled the bowls, they smiled and thanked us profusely. What struck me was how patiently everyone waited in line for the food compared to the mayhem at the airport.

My father had been an orphan himself. He was sent to an orphanage in Philadelphia at the age of eight after his father died, so this experience was emotional for him. Many old memories came flooding to the surface. On the first day, as we left to walk back to the hotel, some of the children ran up to the large iron gate and pleaded for us to stay as they pressed their little faces between the bars. Later, my dad told me with tears in his eyes that he remembered doing the same thing as a child when his mother walked away leaving him at the orphanage. For the first time in my life, my father opened up to me about the pain he had experienced. The time we spent in Calcutta was a genuine bonding experience for us.

Prem Dan: Recovery Hospital and Hospice

The Sisters of Charity run many different ministries. One of those projects is the Prem Dan Recovery Hospital and Hospice for untouchables who are recuperating from serious injuries or illnesses. From the outside, the hospital looked like a regular, colonial-style English building. It had long, dimly-lit hallways, with several large sleeping areas that were filled wall-to-wall with cots. The nuns moved about quickly, taking care of the patients. With smiles, gentle touches, and kind words, compassion and love seemed to radiate out of them.

The sisters gave me the unpleasant job of washing the men. At first, I felt embarrassed to be washing a grown man but soon the warm smiles and pleasant words of those I bathed started to change my heart. I discovered something that I never understood before—when you help others, you help yourself, and when you bless others, you get blessed. After ministering at Prem Dan for two weeks, I was asked by the mission leader to accompany Mother Teresa to Kalighat, the Home of the Destitute Dying, and to photograph the event.

Kalighat: The Home of the Destitute Dying

The next day, I rode with Mother Teresa in a van through the dirty, crowded streets of Calcutta.