This week we talk with Phil Schwab, a fourth-generation missionary. He shares with us about growing up in Japan. He shares how he appreciates the Asain culture that was all around him. After completing his bachelor's degree he went back to Asain, to Taiwan for 23 years to plant churches. He then goes to Hong Kong, for four years to help teams get started in China. He then moved to Harbin, China better known as "Ice City" for ten years. He shares with us about the place he liked best. He then returns to the United States to minister to foreign diplomats in Washington, D.C. You don't want to miss this podcast.
Transcription:
00:04
Welcome to Changing The Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too! Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:18
Good morning, everybody. We're here in our brand new studios in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. We're here with our engineer, Luke Cagno. If Luke weren't here, this thing wouldn't come off. We have a special guest today that we're going to introduce in a minute. But I want to take a minute before we start and remind you of why we're doing these podcasts. Every week, we try to interview one of what we think are the luckiest people in the world. Now, the luckiest people in the world are those people who have pretty much-taken control of their lives; they live them under their own rules, based on their own purpose and what they want to accomplish. When they do this, it allows them to live the way they want to live. They live more exciting and more fascinating lives. So we're showcasing somebody every week with a hope that maybe those of you who are struggling to find where that is for you. You'll find a role model here. And again, the name of our show is Changing The Rules. One of the things that we find is that the people who are the luckiest people in the world deal well with rules. You know, we're filled with rules, right? Our whole life. When we're born, our parents give us rules. Then the church gives us rules. Then the schools give us rules. And before you know it, we have all these rules that are trying to determine what it is that we do. It was Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, that came up and said, 'if you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your own life'. So there's a time when we have to sift and sort through these rules and decide which ones are going to be important and which ones are going to be the guiding principles for us. We have a young man here, I emphasize young, who has been all over the world, and who has certainly find out found out what's important to him. I want to introduce Phil Schwab. I met Phil actually in a swimming pool, believe it or not, and Phil is a fourth-generation missionary. So Phil, say hi to everybody. Tell us a little bit about being a fourth-generation missionary.
Phil Schwab02:34
Hello, everybody. My grandfather was an elder in the Presbyterian Church and taught a men's Bible class and did ministry for many, many years. Then my father after being in the Navy, just four years, he went to Japan with my mom. By then I was I was around. So the four of us, my younger brother, and I, and my mom and dad went to Japan in 1948. So I grew up there.
Ray Loewe03:03
So you were kind of preordained with where your life was going to go early, weren't you? You had you had a lot of direction.
Phil Schwab03:04
Yeah, that's right.
Ray Loewe03:04
Tell me a little bit about your early life in Japan. I think one of the things that you mentioned during our pre interview was that missionaries were very welcome to Japan after the end of the Second World War. So tell us a little bit about that, too.
Phil Schwab03:32
Well, the atmosphere in Japan had changed a lot after they lost the war to America. And it's like they were thinking, hey, you know, maybe the American God is stronger than the Emperor and all of our worship of Shinto and everything like that. So General MacArthur said to have made a request that 1000 missionaries come to Japan because the doors are wide open. So I think that's what you're referring to. A lot of people that were in the military, and fighting the Japanese, they had a heart to go and reach their enemies with the gospel. So that's my dad. That's what Dad and Mom did.
Ray Loewe04:22
So you were dragged along at this point, you're not old enough to make your own decisions, right? At age three. You were actually born in the United States?
Phil Schwab04:31
Yes.
Ray Loewe04:32
You're a US citizen that was born at a Naval Hospital. You moved to Japan. So I think obviously, Japanese is one of the languages that you speak.
Phil Schwab04:43
Well, I picked it up as a kid. I was three and for two or three years in the neighborhood, I played with Japanese kids. Then I taught English later when I was in high school, and it ended up that my students, who were university students, they taught me more Japanese and I taught English. Because I had to explain a lot in Japanese. So I picked up kind of a little grasp of Japanese, which I still have, but it's very informal and conversational.
Ray Loewe05:11
I bet you can get along pretty well over there if you have to. So the first 10 years, or maybe a little longer of your life, was living in Japan. One of the things that you mentioned is that you learn to love the Asian culture.
Phil Schwab05:29
Yeah, well, it's almost like wherever you grow up, you tend to appreciate your surroundings and so forth. Here I was, most of my time with Japanese people riding Japanese trains to go to school, it was an American school we went to, so I grew up knowing English. But surrounded by Japanese, and of course, Japanese are very serious people. Kissinger once said that the Japanese are people that have no sense of humor. It's a very serious society. So I almost grew up being very serious, but I somehow overcame. I appreciate having grown up in Asia.
Ray Loewe06:11
So this set a structure for where you're going to go in your life. We talked briefly about your choice of college and where you went to college. So what formulated all that?
Phil Schwab06:28
I was having to make a choice, of course, and I was offered a full scholarship to a liberal arts college. At the same time, I felt I should start preparing for the ministry because that was what was on my heart. I wanted to be maybe going back to Asia or somewhere. So I chose to go to a Bible college where I graduated with a bachelor's degree with a Bible major. That's where I met my wife, actually. Okay. My wife is a missionaries kid, too. Her parents were missionaries of Bolivia. I was talking to her this morning and she said, [well, actually, we're both third generation. And then our daughter is a missionary in England working with young people.] So she was saying, 'I'm a fourth-generation too!.
Ray Loewe07:17
So we need to get her in here. We'll get the whole South American approach later. So you're done with college now? How did you decide what you want to do? How did you formulate your plans? Where did you go?
Phil Schwab07:32
Well, I actually went on to graduate school, a seminary graduate level. When I was there, I met a lot of Chinese that were overseas students. My roommate for a couple years was from Hong Kong. We got along very well. I don't know as long as time went on, I thought, Man, I, I relate well to these Asians. And if possible, I like to go back to Asia.
Ray Loewe08:00
And you did.
Phil Schwab08:01
I did. We did.
Ray Loewe08:02
So where did you go now? You were married by this time and everything. So where did you wind up? And? Where did you wind up? Let's start there.
Phil Schwab08:11
We wound up in Taiwan. I was interested in a ministry with Chinese people. So we wound up in Taiwan with a daughter, three months old, and starting language study in Taiwan. So we studied Taiwanese full time for two years, part-time for two years, and got going on that Asian language. And then later, 10 years later, we studied Mandarin as well and spent two more years. Anyway, that was our start. We had to learn culture and language.
Ray Loewe08:48
So we have you down with four languages. We have some Japanese, and then Taiwanese, and then Cantonese,
Phil Schwab08:57
Actually Taiwanese, and only two sentences of Cantonese, and Mandarin. I like to tell friends you know, I've been in Asia so long now my English have some problems.
Ray Loewe09:09
We have English too. So when somebody becomes a minister or a missionary, what's the process? I mean, you just don't go to a foreign country and say, 'Here I am. I'm a missionary'. Do you get a sponsor? How do you do that? What what happens here?
Phil Schwab09:30
No matter what, how you go out, who you're with, you have churches behind you; whether you're with the denomination or you're in a big program with the denomination. In our case, our mission is interdenominational, which means that we have churches, from different connections that supported us. So you've got the church, sending you out basically; but, then you need to go through an organization that can lead you, and train you, and also accept you in the first place. Well, actually the church is fun to you. But the organization has work going on in that country. So they have a program going. So you come there, and they help you get the language and then get into ministry. So it's a combination of the church and the sending organization.
Ray Loewe10:26
So here you are in Taiwan now, what was your primary mission once you got to Taiwan? And what were your responsibilities?
Phil Schwab10:37
Well, twofold. I for a number of years, we were in what we call "church planting", which means starting new churches, and Taiwan, which is only 2%. Christian, today, maybe a tiny bit more, but there's a need for as we looked at it a need for churches. So we did that. Then toward the latter time, latter part of my time there, they elected me as field chairman. So I was responsible for about 60 people for a few years. Those are the two things I did.
Ray Loewe11:12
Then you were in Taiwan for 23 years. What caused you to go on next? Because next was Hong Kong.
Phil Schwab11:19
It was. The year was 1996. Our organization realized that there were a lot of openings in China at that time. I mean, China was wide open. It just happened to be really wide open at that time for people coming in to do medical work, educational work, other kinds of social work, working with tribal, poor, tribal people, all kinds of things. So our mission asked me to be kind of the point person, and the good place to be a point person was Hong Kong. I was trying to help teams get started in China. That's what I was doing for four years after we left Taiwan.
Ray Loewe12:07
Let's go back to these two places that you've been. When you look at your experience in Taiwan, is there any particularly thing that stands out as a memory, or a tragedy, or a benefit, or anything that you want to talk about?
Phil Schwab12:26
Well, you mentioned a tragedy. That's because I've shared with you we did face a tragedy.
Ray Loewe12:33
I cheated on that one a little bit.
Phil Schwab12:34
Our son Brian was 15. He was in the American School. He was a freshman in high school and doing very well in English. Of course, it was Americans school. But also, he was one of the best students in Chinese. He took Chinese as a foreign language. Just a regular kid, you know, he liked soccer and so forth. He was in a dormitory because we were living three hours away from the school. His dorm dad planned an outing, a camp out by a river. Some of the dads were there, and some of the teachers, and so the guys were swimming at one stage along the way. The people in charge didn't have any safety equipment, just plain old, what he called life preservers, and all that kind of stuff. Because this is like 30, 32 years ago. So, unfortunately, Brian jumped into this river along with some other guys. It had been raining for three weeks and the river was very swollen. Somehow he, he got swept away, and we were too far away to actually rescue him. We lost him and didn't find his body really for a week. This is a big thing, not only for us, but for all his friends, and colleagues that we've had there in Taiwan.
Ray Loewe14:17
You took a tragedy and you're doing some good things about it. I know you have a campaign here to improve safety equipment, to make sure that that doesn't happen again. This an extension of your being a missionary, I think to a large extent. So anything else you want to say, that unfortunately, you have this in your life?
Phil Schwab14:41
Yeah. Excuse me. We have a daughter and a son. Brian and then Beth Ann was two and a half years older. If I could focus on the main thing that I faced in this situation was being able to forgive the school and the people that planned this thing. And basically, faulty planning, allowed this to happen, allowed the accident to happen. So I had a challenge with this. Just a simple word forgiveness, being able to forgive the school and it all happened internally. No, they didn't know I was struggling with this. But one guy was on the staff of the school said you should sue the school. And I just very simply said to him, you know, the Bible says Christians don't sue Christians. And it was a Christian school. And it was not intentional. But nevertheless, this was a struggle for me. I told God at one point, I said, I feel very bitter and very hateful here. But if you can change me, I'm willing to be changed. One day, as I was out walking, I realized that I had been changed by God. I never had any problem with the bitterness and the hatred and all of that for the next 32 years till today. And it was a miracle.
Ray Loewe16:10
So let's take a different approach here and go back because one of the things that we've found about all of the luckiest people in the world is one of the mindsets that they have is, is the fact that they work real hard to find their sense of purpose. I think yours might have been a little easier, because it was kind of you were born into it, to some extent. So what is your sense of purpose in life?
Phil Schwab16:35
When I met you at the swimming pool, you asked me the same question. It kind of shocked me, I don't have people just saying, what's the purpose of your life? You know, the first time I met you, you know? I said I'll tell you, I'm a minister. The Catechism says, the purpose of mankind is to love God and enjoy him forever. That's the purpose of my life.
Ray Loewe16:58
It's helped you make decisions along the way as to where you want to go, how you treated your son's death, and everything. It's interesting exploring lucky people for a long time. It's amazing how many people have no sense of purpose or can't define what their sense of purpose is. So when you can do this, and when you can get a handle on it, it certainly allows you to live your life in a more fulfilling way. Let's go on here because there's more to your life than we've had so far. We're in Hong Kong, and now we're going over to China. Where did you live in China and tell us a little bit about the China experience?
Phil Schwab17:42
If you look at a map of China, and I like to call it the New England of China because China sticks up just the way the United States does. So we lived in a city called Harbin, H-A-R-B-I-N. A lot of people call it "Ice City", because it's below freezing almost half of the year. They have this big Ice Festival there every year. It's very famous. This is a long story, but this is where we ended up. We felt like people were interested in learning English, they were interested in medical teams, various social services we could provide. So a team of us, five couples, ended up in Harbin. I was there with part of that team for almost 10 years. And I liked it. You could ask the question: 'You've lived in all these places? Which place did you like best?' Well, I liked China best because the people, at least in that area, more disconnected from Beijing, the big cities. They weren't spoiled, like people we've been with other kinds of Chinese that were kind of wealthy and kind of first worldy. This area, they were just wondering why we had come all this way and all that stuff. They were very easy to get to know and so we established friendships that have lasted till today. In fact, I'm on a Zoom meeting once or twice a month right now with some of the guys we got to know there. I call one pastor there about once a month to and have a long conversation with him. So here I am. We left there in 2008. And here I am, all these years down the road. These are friendships that really meant a lot to us. These are people that appreciated our being there. It doesn't seem like any of the Hong Kong or Taiwan really necessarily appreciated our being there. Oh, another American big deal. But this that was the attitude of these people. So we just right from the word "go", we established close relationships and they were very good. They reached out to us. They were very open. So that was our favorite place to be.
Ray Loewe20:03
It's interesting you're still in touch. Yeah. 13, 14 years since you've been away?
Phil Schwab20:10
About 14 years. Yeah.
Ray Loewe20:12
So continuing with your life, you now came back to the United States, right? So you're in of all places, Washington, DC, that had to be a big letdown for you after all of these other places, right?
Phil Schwab20:27
In some ways it was, but in other ways, depends on what you mean, right? But we were invited, we were actually on loan to another organization, from our organization, to work in Washington, DC. And this organization's purpose was to minister to leaders in Washington, DC; so on the hill and in the Pentagon, and then also foreign diplomats. That's why we were asked to come, is with our background. And overseas for all these years, they asked us to join a team, a small team, to do various projects to help these diplomats to adjust in some ways. Also, if they were interested in studying the Bible. That's what we were really excited about doing that with them. But we were there for almost 10 years before we retired to our fourth country. My wife calls it Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And we love it. It's like country, we've been in all these cities. Now we're in the countryside, and we love it.
Ray Loewe21:40
Let's talk for a minute about being retired because retired by a lot of people's definition is you sleep late in the morning, you go play golf, you do crazy things like that. You're far from being retired. So what is it that you're doing now? And where are you? Where are you headed in the future?
Phil Schwab21:58
Well, I tell people, I'm retired but not tired. I was eager to, well, actually, my wife was worried about our moving here that I go get in my rocking chair. I wouldn't really know what to do with myself. But early on, we came to know the proportion of refugees here to the population is one of the very highest in all of America. So we ended up joining a team of people that were already working with forming welcoming teams for the refugees. We're starting a church that's trilingual. Actually, whatever is said in English is translated into Arabic and sometimes into Russian. This is moving along. But we're also developing welcoming teams that help families get settled, find jobs, learn to drive, all of these different things, that get the kids in school and all of that. I've taught a couple, a new family. They came with three kids, beautiful family from Syria. But what happened was the husband was ganged up on back in Syria. They hopped on him, took him away, and didn't give him anything to drink for two days. When they gave him something to drink, they brought this big cup of what looked like water, but it was actually Clorox. He drank enough down to really ruin his system going down. The US government is really interested in bringing in some people who have serious physical conditions, and we have the facilities here to help people like that. So anyway, that's, that's his background. I've enjoyed teaching the husband and wife English, but in this case, I had to start with ABCs and helping them write their alphabet. So that's pretty basic. But the kids, this son, who's in fifth grade now, or I think he's in seventh grade now, he picked it up in about six months. He was quite fluent in six months. He would sit down with us, this couple that was just on the basics, and he would help us interpret and so that's one of the things I enjoy doing very much. There's other practical things like I've already said that we help in developing these welcoming teams.
Ray Loewe24:46
I could carry this on forever, but unfortunately, we're near the end of our time over here. I think our listeners are going to very easily see why you're one of the luckiest people in the world, in spite of the tragedy in your life. Because you found a way to deal with all of these things in a way that not necessarily make you happy but make you fulfilled. The track that you've been on is just absolutely fascinating, from China to Japan, or Japan, I guess to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When you start driving a horse and buggy over here, then we'll know you're in your next level of your career. Do you have any final comments that you want to add before we sign off?
Phil Schwab25:39
That's a good one, that's hard to do. I think every day, all the problems you face you accept as coming from, we say coming through the hands of a loving God is how I look at it. So we can accept whatever happens and deal with it because he realized that it comes through that grid and we can survive.
Ray Loewe26:03
Well, Phil Schwab, thanks for being a guest on Changing The Rules. Thanks for being one of the luckiest people in the world. At thanks for being you. Luke, why don't you sign us off?
26:21
Thank you for listening to Changing The Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.