The Moratorium on Missions

My parents once served as missionaries in the Central Pacific. My father was the Chief Missionary there, and head of the Protestant Church. But during their term of office, the global Moratorium on Missions was declared. A moratorium is an official suspension. My father, then, received and accepted a call to a Church in South Africa. In South Africa, the broader Church had endorsed the Moratorium, while my parents had witnessed its early effects in the field: on Churches, on works of mercy, on missionaries themselves. In fact, post-Moratorium, the Protestant Church re-elected my father as head of the Church, then sent a delegation to speak to him. This caught him completely by surprise. Most people never knew about this great ... call it incongruity in my parents' personal history.