Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Autumn 2013 | Page 46
profile
Worth the Wait
by Liuan Chen Huska ’09
After 56 years, this alumnus and his wife
fulfill his lifetime goal—returning home.
When he left home in 1950,
Clement “Bud” Kroeker ’56, M.A. ’58 had
two goals: receive training as a printer and
publisher, and return soon to his home in
the former Belgian Congo. “That was my
place to be. Those were my people,” he
says.
The son of pioneer missionaries, Bud
recalls biking alone as a boy through
Africa’s huge open spaces, with his dog
a few hills away giving chase to small
animals. Not surprisingly, when he left
the country to study in the United States,
he remembers feeling “fenced in.” He
studied writing and biblical literature at
Wheaton, where he also met and married
Charlotte Woollett Kroeker ’58.
The couple moved to Belgium in 1959 with
hopes of returning to Congo from there.
Political upheaval, however, thwarted their
plans. Instead, they started a publishing
house in Belgium, Editeurs de Littérature
Biblique, now called BLF, Bibles and
Literature in French.
welcomed in more than 40 countries of
the French-speaking world. “The reaction
was contagious and Christians, when they
had quality literature to offer, began losing
their fear of being ridiculed,” says Char,
who majored in Christian education at
Wheaton. With Char’s training, BLF also
translated, edited, and illustrated Sunday
school materials.
In 1998, Bud and Char retired from
publishing work and set out for Congo,
but were again blocked from entering due
to another erupting war. Finally in 2006,
Bud seized the opportunity to return to
Congo as an elections observer, but it
wasn’t until 2010 that he could return to
the Kikwit region where he grew up. “I
found an active church, but people lived
in misery and extreme poverty,” Bud says.
After establishing connections with church
leaders and several of the original missions
in the area, Bud helped found Congo Open
Heart with the goal of rebuilding missions
in the area and encouraging local groups
to work together. The organization’s needs
are basic, such as a scale to weigh babies,
a medicine fridge for the health center “that
would not qualify for that name anywhere
else,” and funds to help pay for a truck for
transport and shipping. The couple prays
that through Congo Open Heart, local
pastors and schoolteachers will step up
to leadership roles in the difficult work of
rebuilding.
Bud visits Congo regularly, where now
in his homeland the people call him
Tata Kikesa—which translated is Daddy
Courage.
“We discovered that from Belgium we
could reach further into the world with
literature than if we were in Africa,” Bud
says. Since there was very little Christian
publishing in Europe at that time, the
French New Testaments, tracts, and
Christian books they publ