Edward Carl Dicke

1. 12/2/1927 Ijuhy, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

 

Spouse/Family

Wife: Phyllis Adell (nee Krause), b. 8/20/1928 Morristown, Minnesota USA

1. 2/5/1954 Minneapolis, Minnesota USA

Children: Mark Charles (1954), Jeanne Margaret (1956), Martin Phillip (1958),

Kay Ellen (Rehbein) (1959)

 

Dates of Service Field Call Assignment

1954-75 Papua New Guinea Business Manager, Missions

 

Biographical Summary

Though both Edward (known as Ed) and Phyllis (nee Krause) Dicke were raised in Minnesota, Ed spent the first four years of his life in Brazil.  His father was a Lutheran pastor and his parents served as missionaries for many years, setting the stage for his own work later on.  Phyllis, valedictorian of her class at Morristown High School in 1946, trained at the Kahler School of Nursing (affiliated with the Mayo Clinic) in Rochester, MN, and graduated as a Registered Nurse in 1950.  Meanwhile, Ed served in the armed forces in South Dakota, Germany and Fort Bragg, NC, from 1946-49 before beginning higher education.

 

Upon receiving an honorable discharge, Ed enrolled at Bethany Lutheran College, Mankato, MN, but was recalled for another year of military service during the Korean War (1950-51).  In 1952, while enrolled at the University of Minnesota, tragedy struck his family when both of his parents as well as his youngest brother and sister were killed when their car was struck by a train.  At the time, Ed’s mother Edith (nee Klinkenberg) was President of the Minnesota District of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League.  Ed finished his studies at the University of Minnesota, School of Business Administration, graduating with a BBA degree in 1953.

 

Shortly after his graduation, Ed received an appointment from the Board for Mission Services to be the Business Manager for the relatively new mission in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG).  He attended mission school in St. Louis in fall of 1953, and he and Phyllis were married in February 1954.  After a six-week trip across the Pacific on an American freighter, the two arrived together in PNG in June 1954 to begin their work.  Their son Mark was born on December 27th at their home in Irelya, with Elinor Burce, wife of missionary Willard Burce, acting as nurse.

 

As Business Manager, Ed was to oversee the administrative workings of the mission in PNG.  He made sure missionaries’ basic needs were met, coordinating the movement of supplies, arranging travel and so forth.  Although the Dickes were not the first missionaries to arrive in PNG, most of the area in which the LCMS missionaries worked was completely undeveloped when they got there.  Roads were few and far between, and all the Enga people (the ethnic clans of the area) were subsistence farmers who relied on their gardens for all their nutritional needs and the forests for materials to cover their bodies and for building shelters to protect them from the elements.  They had no knowledge of the world outside their immediate clan areas.

 

Ed writes of the Enga, “Their knowledge and skills for processing fibers for covering or protecting their bodies from the elements was limited.  Their skills and their range of available tools were extremely limited, to say the least.  The Enga people had no quarries with stones suitable for making axe heads, so they had to trade with other clans for this essential raw material.  They had no experience in the art of pottery.  Availability of containers for carrying water or liquids from place to place was limited to various types of small gourds which they cut at the neck, dried, and then poked out the seeds with a stick. A suitable leaf from a shrub served as a cork.  The process of producing any type of fiber started with women who stripped fibers from the inside of bark from certain types of trees and then twisted or spun it by means of a rolling action by the heels of their hands over their knees.  By this action they were able to produce small quantities of fibers for weaving net bags, or slings, for carrying babies over their backs and for bringing home sweet potatoes or other produce from their gardens, or hauling young pigs from one place to another, or to cradle their babies and hang them over a post while working in their gardens.  The net bag was a universal handy carrying tool whenever anything needed moving.  The net bag was the universal carrier and it was just understood by all, that women were the carriers…it could be said that women were the semi-trucks on the highways of New Guinea.

 

“Basket weaving was an unknown art in the Enga regions.  Simple knives, which could generally be very sharp, but inefficient, were crafted by men from short lengths of bamboo.  Cloth as we know it was totally foreign to the Enga people.  Cooking pots and utensils were not part of the program for the Enga wife and mother.  Iron or steel, or metal of any type or nature, was totally unknown.

 

“Anthropologists and historians have found no evidence of a ‘Bronze Age experience’ in the Highlands, or any other part of Papua New Guinea for that matter.  Yet, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, expatriate mining interests discovered huge deposits of copper in the Bougainville region on some islands off the coast of New Guinea which was there since the Creation, but was never recognized as anything of value by the local people.  The necessary skills and technology just did not exist.

 

“Nor had they ever heard of God, the Creator, or of his Son, Jesus Christ, which is why we were out there.  The WORD was of paramount importance to us, and we also felt compelled to share Him and God the Father with them, and proclaim Him as the source of the Creation.

 

“In addition to teaching THE core truth of the Word of God and the Second Article, Ed and others were among the early group of missionaries who felt a need to also help the Enga people recognize and understand the First Article and to achieve a higher standard of living, to empower them to improve the lot for their families and to enable the church to provide the most basic needs of the indigenous evangelists and leaders of their developing church through application of some of the basic principles of this First Article.

 

“Economic Development was not an entirely new concept.  The Australian government, under a mandate from the United Nations, had been given the responsibility to prepare the people of Papua New Guinea for independence as early as possible.  The local Australian representatives recognized the American missionaries as a possible resource.

 

“Since there were no local suppliers, or even little stores in the Wabag area, we had our own supply connections with Australian exporters.  Knowing about this, we were approached from time to time by the Australian Administration to act as local agents for the supply of requisitioned equipment for use in road building.  The desired equipment was spades with steel blades, large quantities of spades, as many as 12 gross at a time.  Even as they had earlier learned with axes, the Enga people recognized the advantage of spades with steel blades over their traditional wooden digging sticks.”

 

At the time the Dickes began their ministry in PNG, even the most basic supplies for the mission from the outside world had to be delivered by air, and then brought from the airstrips to their destination by human carriers.  There were several small airstrips, constructed by people with digging sticks, spades and wheelbarrows, but not much in the way of roads.  The Australian governing administration for the entire Enga Province had one “jeep,” actually a British Land Rover, for their use in the exercise of governing the entire province.  New Guinea Lutheran Mission had just acquired their own first vehicle to transport, occasionally people, but usually basic, urgently needed supplies.  This Jeep was made possible by a grant from the Minnesota District LWML, a project promoted by Ed’s mother, Mrs. E. A. Dicke, just prior to her untimely death.

 

Slowly advances were made.  During all this time, besides taking care of their own family’s needs, Phyllis served as hostess to many people who came through the area.  The Dickes lived near the airstrip so that Ed could coordinate with pilots coming in, and many missionaries and visitors stayed with the Dickes when they arrived at the airstrip for one reason or another.  Phyllis cooked a lot of extra meals and “stretched” many others when guests arrived unexpectedly!  All four of the Dicke children attended Highland Lutheran School in PNG for elementary school and then went on to high school at Luther College in Melbourne, Australia, which meant months of separation for children and parents.

 

Two major events occurred in the mission in 1964, after the Dickes had been in PNG ten years.  One was the expansion of mission work to the Ipili-speaking people in Enga Province.  More than twenty trained Enga evangelists and teachers were sent out to share the Good News of Christ with the Ipili people.  Ed was asked to keep contact and offer support to these national workers for a few months until a new missionary arrived to oversee the work full-time.  Evangelists, and any expatriate missionaries (such as Ed) who assisted them, had to walk everywhere they went.  Ed visited villages and mission stations, held services and Bible studies, and assisted national evangelists in their work.

 

The second major event was the formation of WASO Ltd., a small corporation consisting of Enga farmers (gardeners) who were beginning to learn a few basic principles of Western business practices.  The formation of WASO was an indication, along with medical and educational work, that the missionaries in PNG were concerned about the “total person” of those to whom they witnessed.  And as more people became Christians, the New Guineans wanted to improve their economic life in order to better support the work of the church.  The mission in PNG had from the beginning operated small trading and marketing centers and had taught the Enga people how to sell their goods at market.  Now the people were interested in coming together to trade with the wider world.

 

The objective of WASO was as follows: “Individuals, groups and communities, who through Waso Ltd., enjoy a greater measure of freedom from ignorance, poverty and disease, will thereby have the means and the will to support the programs of their congregations, including a vigorous evangelistic outreach to the world.”

 

Members of WASO Ltd. planted coffee and certain vegetables that could be flown to markets in other communities and the employees were taught basic business principles and bookkeeping.  WASO eventually closed as a business enterprise after about twenty years, but the people it served were able to gain knowledge of business practices and to work toward greater economic development.  Ed was heavily involved in the workings of WASO from its inception until the Dickes’ departure from the mission field.

 

Ed writes, “In 1965, during our second furlough, at the encouragement of scholars like Jim Mayer and Bill Danker, the Dicke family lived in student housing at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the kids got their first real taste of life in the U.S. – like TV and Halloween, and the Twins and the Vikings, even though they were attending school and living in Wisconsin.  The family was in Wisconsin so that Dad could enroll in the International Cooperative Training Center to attend classes with about 35 students from developing countries around the world who were enrolled in the AID program (a federal program for economic development in developing nations around the world).  It was an opportunity to rub elbows and exchange thoughts and ideas through two semesters with thirty-some leaders from around the world, primarily from new countries with emerging economies.  And I learned all the appropriate slogans and phrases, such as, ‘Give a hungry man a fish and he will live for a day…teach him how to fish and he will never be hungry!’  And I still buy into that today!  It is a responsible response to the under-developed nations of the earth.”

 

When the Dickes returned to the United States in 1974, their two oldest children Mark and Jeanne were already in college; Marty and Kay would graduate from high school in the U.S.  Ed studied for a year at the University of Minnesota to become re-acquainted with the workings of the business world in the U.S.  For the next twenty years, Ed served first as an accountant for a construction company and then as Finance Director for a large social service organization.  Phyllis returned to the occupation in which she was trained and worked as a nurse for those twenty years.  She retired in 1993, Ed in 1994.  They have been active in the Lutheran Laymen’s League and until recently worked closely with Partners in Mission (now Lutheran Inter-City Network Coalition), which is a coalition of suburban congregations bringing Christ to inner-city neighborhoods.

 

Phase 2 Information

 

Biggest missiological issue faced?

Ed was always concerned that the people of PNG be aware of and encouraged in their potential to do God’s work – to spread the Gospel, support church leaders, and live Christian lives.  The development of WASO and the agricultural work Ed helped facilitate among the people of Enga Province was his and other missionaries’ response to this concern.  This type of work was a vital part of the development of the church in PNG, for with greater economic development the people of the area could support their own church leaders and evangelists.

 

Most significant contribution during missionary service?

Though called as business manager, Ed served as an evangelist like all the missionaries in PNG, and he was able to contribute to the mission through his willingness to share his faith and Christ’s love whenever possible.  He took a more proactive stance than most laymen, especially with his people living in the Wapenamanda area and through his work with the Ipili people.  The latter effort was especially satisfying for him.

 

Phyllis’ cheerfulness and hard work as hostess for many who lived in or visited Enga Province was an invaluable asset for the mission.

 

Connection to today’s mission?

The Gutnius (Good News) Lutheran Church (GLC) of Papua New Guinea became an LCMS partner church in 1971 and remains so today.  LCMS reports that the Gutnius Lutheran Church has over 138,500 members in more than 700 congregations, along with 224 national pastors, 700 evangelists, 700-800 lay preachers and 1,040 teachers.  Although certain kinds of mission alliances continue, no evangelistic missionaries from LCMS remain in PNG.  The Dickes are part of the Papua New Guinea Mission Society, created by former missionaries to PNG and seeking to enhance the relationship between LCMS and the GLC through prayer and support as well as by sending former missionaries for periods of work with the GLC.

 

The Dickes brought their zeal for mission back with them to the United States and have been working to share the love of Christ in the inner city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, particularly in the Phillips neighborhood.

 

Phase 3 Information

 

Inspiration for entering foreign missions?

Ed writes, “We, who are Christians, all grow up in the Church with the frequent reminder to share the Gospel, i.e., the Good News of God’s Plan for all people….This is a message I learnt early in life as a kid growing up in a family of former missionaries to Brazil.”

 

Ed was almost four years old when his family returned from Brazil to the United States, and his father was frequently asked to preach at outdoor Mission Festivals at various churches during the summer.  He recalls sitting with his brother (who became a pastor in churches around the Midwest) on pews made out of planks in tree groves or cow pastures, listening to the message and singing hymns – “more shouting than singing” – “Here am I, Send me send me!!”

 

Nonetheless, when Ed was young he wanted to be a farmer.  He was fascinated by animals, especially horses, and cared for as many animals as his family and neighbors would give him responsibility for.  His idea of being a farmer did not exactly pan out, but the skills he learned came in very handy during the Dickes’ time in PNG.  He recalls raising 50 baby chicks in a box in the middle of the kitchen, which “long-suffering” Phyllis had to avoid all day as she cooked for the family and for guests passing through.

 

But it was perhaps those mission festivals and shouting out the words “Here am I, send me, send me!” that sparked Ed’s interest and made mission work plausible and intriguing to him.

 

Quotation by/about or brief story:

• The Dickes’ children grew up alongside the children of Papua New Guinea and truly became part of the Enga culture in many ways.  They retain an affection for the people of PNG and an abiding interest in mission work.  Jeanne, trained as a deaconess, continues to work for Bethesda Lutheran Homes as the Parish Ministry Consultant for the state of Minnesota.  Kay was featured in the June 1986 Lutheran Witness when she visited PNG as part of an international music ministry team along with her cousin Julie Burce.  The people of Enga Province told them, “You were born here and now you have come back.”

 

• Ed received wonderful help and companionship from an Enga man named Yonge Wetea who was his friend and helper for some of his time in PNG.  Ed can remember a time when the jeep he was driving stalled and he had to get out to look under the hood.  Yonge was with him.  Ed removed a couple of washers and a nut from the engine and then stood up to get a screwdriver, when he realized there were many more heads than his under the hood peering at the engine inside!  It wasn’t every day that a jeep stopped with its hood open in the middle of the road, and several men had come to see what was happening.  Ed told them, “Don’t touch any of this stuff” (meaning the washers and so forth), “what would I do if it got lost?”  One of the men replied, in Pidgin English, “Get another one.”  Yonge immediately confronted the man and said, “You guys don’t know nothing.  You think he just picks all this stuff off a tree or finds it in a cave.  Now let me tell you, back in ‘Merica, they have rocks in the ground which they have to dig out and burn in a fire.  Some of this melts and runs out and they call it iron.  Then they heat this again and shape it and mold it and with much hard work, they end up with a jeep.  Now if you lose any of these screws, we will have to send a letter to Australia and ask them to send a new one and this will take a very long time.”

 

Ed felt proud of himself that he had been able to make Yonge aware of the process of creating metal objects over the course of many conversations they’d had around the kitchen stove in the evenings.  However, another time when they were watching the steam from the tea kettle and Ed “got eloquent” on water vapor and the process of evaporation that created clouds and then rain over the mountains, one of his colleagues listened patiently and then responded, “That’s all fine, however, I still think God sends the rain.”  Ed writes, “How could I argue with that?”

 

• Ed tells the story of the Lutheran mission’s first vehicle: “Going back to when I was enrolled in Mission School, funds from the LWML [for a Jeep for the mission] were already in hand and soon forwarded to Synod’s mission office by the good ladies from Minnesota, but remained in Synod’s bank accounts in St. Louis, because, as one of the mission executives told me, ‘A jeep would be of no value to anyone out there since there are no roads in that part of New Guinea and there are not likely to be any for a long, long time.’

 

“As one of the executives said, ‘These ladies mean well, but they’ve never set foot in New Guinea, as I have, and they have no idea of what could be useful out there.  Anyway we want our missionaries to accept, and to live as nearly as possible to the standard of the people they are trying to serve, i.e. reach with the Gospel.  It is better for our missionaries to walk and converse and witness to folks along the road than to wave at the people as they drive by in motorized vehicles.  We found in India, for example, that vehicles can be a terrible barrier or hindrance to communication and many of the most successful missionaries out there have abandoned their vehicles in favor of walking with their people.’  Unfortunately he had not kept abreast of the dynamic changes taking place in the Enga Sub-District.

 

“The Australian government, under a Trusteeship arrangement with the United Nations, was ultimately responsible for governing this remote corner of the world, but they did not pour excessive amounts of Australian taxpayers’ money into this little corner of the world.  So the Lutheran mission among the Enga people was already into its sixth year when all of our missionaries still walked, because there were very few vehicular roads and even fewer bridges – there were only ‘goat tracks,’ up and down the mountain ridges, as one of our good Australian friends, Dorothea Freund, called them, in her lovely little autobiography, with the title I Will Uphold You, which she wrote with the assistance of her husband, Rev. A.P.H. Freund, who was the first Lutheran missionary among the Enga and served briefly as a mentor to Bill Burce and Otto Hintze as they began the work for Missouri among the Enga.

 

“And, back in St. Louis, as a new recruit with all my newly acquired knowledge from Mission School, it all seemed pretty reasonable to me that this is how it should be.  And, anyway, as the mission executive stated, ‘We have found in places like India, that the local citizens resent watching the foreigner roll through town while he (the citizen) has to continue to walk.’  He had me at least partially convinced.  And so the money stayed in the St. Louis bank account.

 

“Perhaps, I assume, by God’s grace, while Phyllis and I, enroute to PNG,  took our frustrating, slow boat rides up and down the many rivers in south Texas which flow into the Gulf of Mexico, and docked six times, to take on supplies and freight for some new oil fields in Australia, before entering the Panama Canal, enroute to Australia and New Guinea, there was a battle of letters between St. Louis and New Guinea, because when we finally arrived at Wabag, seven weeks after leaving New Orleans, we were met at the Wabag airstrip by Aussie layman Don Jeffers, the mission sawmiller, and he was driving THE Jeep, i.e. the Australian Army Land Rover, a gift from the Minnesota District LWML, and the very first four-wheeled vehicle owned by the New Guinea Lutheran Mission – Missouri Synod.  God does at times work in mysterious ways!”

 

“POSTSCRIPT 1: It was this vehicle, which was affectionately dubbed the ‘Red Roach’ many years later, when it refused to die and was relegated to duty as a service vehicle and a loaner at the Mission Workshop and someone painted it a ‘fire-truck red’….It was actually this vehicle which happened to be the subject of a previous story about Yonge Wetea and the metal engine parts….you do make them, don’t you??  And for all we know it might still be serving the Lord in 2009 out there in Engaland…if it only had a brain and a voice box, it would have a few stories to tell!!”

 

“POSTSCRIPT 2: If one was searching for an appropriate title for all of the above, or if a person was ambitious enough to expand on the subject, and perhaps give the whole story an appropriate title, he might possibly choose from among the following:

 

FROM STONE TO STEEL, or,

 

FROM WOODEN DIGGING STICKS TO STEEL SPADES, or,

 

FROM GOURDS TO METAL WATER BUCKETS, or,

 

FROM BILUMS TO SEMI-TRUCKS, or

 

FROM TAMBARAN* TO JESUS CHRIST, or, simply,

 

GOD WAS IN CHRIST RECONCILING THE WORLD UNTO HIMSELF.

 

*Tambaran is the Neo-Melanesian (Pidgin English) term for one’s deceased ancestors, who, unlike Jesus Christ, are frequently up to no good!”