When Jane and Archer Torrey came to the U.S. for furlough last year, they did not expect to return home to Korea with a new Jesus Abbey Website on the Internet. Nor could they have expected to see me again after twenty five years. They had plans to get Archer a new hip replacement and translate their best selling books into English for publication in the States. Of course, they had children, grandchildren, extended family and good old friends to visit. Many churches, groups and speaking engagements filled their calendar days. They rested up in their peaceful home in quaint Charlotte Court House, Virginia, where I visited twice this year. Our reunion was an immediate sense of yesterday, 1972, when I had made my first trek up to the Jesus Abbey in Kangwondo, Korea. Jane and Archer shared with me pictures and stories from Jesus Abbey, of the years that had passed and what it is like to live there today. Their recollections glorified the Lord’s handiwork and their steadfast faith.
As the Torreys shared some amazing stories from the years gone by, I realized I was witnessing a
celebration. Jane and Archer are God’s servants and years of fruitful labor evidenced their relationship with Him. The Jesus Abbey ministry had fully blossomed, rooted in its original humble beginnings but
far beyond the Torreys’ expectations. Throughout the days of my visit during the summer, every worldly wish I possessed melted away because Jesus was present and in control of everything and He was being glorified. I know it must exist elsewhere but I had not yet found that same experience since Jesus Abbey and now I was experiencing it again visiting with Archer and Jane. I asked Archer about his life and he replied in two words, "complete obedience." Later that evening, without warning Jesus surprised me, as I heard myself propose the building of a website to spread the work God had given the Torreys and to glorify Jesus. I was never more prepared to see this through and never more ill equipped to accomplish it. However, our prayers were not about my abilities but about Jesus’ power. We prayed for His will to be done. We asked that Jesus would come and build a beautiful website that would glorify Him.
As a youth, I visited Jesus Abbey as often as I could. Every high school vacation allowable, I would take my backpack and travel on railcars and buses for half a day to this remote mountain valley. Isolated but never alone, at Jesus Abbey I enjoyed the fellowship, the work I could assist in, the sense of community, the beautiful surroundings and closeness to God I desired. However, as a young teenager, I never fully took in all the adult Christian work going on at the Abbey, as my days centered around the bells that rang for service, prayer and food. I was not aware that it started in 1965 with an original plan to live in community with no more than a dozen people.
Archer had written a curriculum for the theological school called The Three Laboratories of the Christian Life for which he had won a prize in England. The three laboratories were, first, the Christian’s relationship to God, second, the Christian’s relationship to his fellow Christians and third, the Christian’s relationship to the world. Archer was ordained into the Episcopal priesthood and had parishes in Darien, Georgia and at St. John’s in Athol, Massachusetts before the call to return to the Orient and reestablish the Anglican Seminary after the Korean War. In seminary, Archer and Jane tried to teach receiving the Holy Spirit, living in Christian community and sharing God’s treasures with the non-Christian world but in vain. Then they both realized God was telling to them to go out and build a farm with a community of Christians and have the laboratory they had talked about in seminary. Archer answered Jane’s concerns about such a remote locale and why they should live in community? "If we live together with people of like mind, sharing work, our goods, and our prayers, we can make a great big fire for the Lord."
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