The clue actually arrived on Friday with my weekend visitor, but I didn’t discover it for more than 24 hours. My visitor’s name is Solveig, and she and I recently purchased tickets to travel to Cameroon, Africa, in January. Until Friday night, however, Solveig and I had never actually met. Mutual friends, knowing of our individual wishes to visit Cameroon, connected us, and we began to make plans by phone and email – trusting that we would be compatible travel companions. (After a weekend of chatting and hanging out together we have no worries.) Solveig spent five years as a missionary nurse in Cameroon in the 1960s and currently volunteers in the Minnesota mission office of the same synod (Lutheran Brethren) that sent my grandparents to Africa in the early 1900s. Well…Solveig brought some documents from my grandparents’ mission office file, and around midnight last night, after she had gone to bed, I decided to simply glance at the small, curious stack of papers, before calling it a day. An hour and a half later I was wide awake and in total awe of God’s workings.
Before I tell you why, however, I need to take you back to early May. Shortly before my call to write was solidified, I found articles that were published in November 1963 – about one month after my grandfather died. One of these articles, talking about my grandpa’s last months, said:
“But even if he was confined to his bed…he was not ready to quit working. He asked if he could not get some help to write his memoirs of his life in Africa for the benefit of his grandchildren and other young people. Therefore the Board of Foreign Missions provided him with a stenographer to whom he dictated many interesting experiences from his long life in Africa. Thus, as long as there was any strength left, he continued to be a tireless worker in the interest of our African mission and for the salvation of precious souls.”
I remember being so excited to read this in May that I couldn’t wait to ask my mom where the memoirs he intended for me, one of his three grandchildren, were located. Sadly, she told me that Dad and she had never seen them; in fact they understood the planned dictation hadn’t really materialized or at least had not resulted in memoirs, as expected.
Okay, back to last night...
I began sifting through fascinating documents - letters written by Grandpa discussing his scoping out of a mission territory, for example. And then at the very bottom of the pile, I found it: a 24-page typed document that Berge Revne, my grandpa, had dictated shortly before his death in 1963. In the very early hours of this morning – Aug. 15, 2010 – I began reading a message from my grandpa, and this is how it begins:
“Not long ago I received a letter concerning my granddaughter. One Sunday during her Sunday school class, Jeannie [this is my - Annie’s - sister] was asked to tell about my work in Africa. She said she was sorry she hadn’t taken more time to sit down and have me tell her about my work in detail. But, it was I who was sorry for my own negligence. More children should know about the different fields and the work that goes forth on them. It is this thought that prompted the idea of writing in detail on our work in Africa.
I would like to dedicate these missionary stories to my grandchildren and other young people who are interested enough to read it.”
Oh Grandpa... I’m finally reading the document you left for me! Though I’m no longer considered a young person (except by my mom), your words are not too late to read and share. I will help spread the stories of God’s faithfulness to you, and to me, and we will discuss together someday in heaven.
I will close today by emphasizing that I know that no one intended to keep this document from us. It was of course assumed we had a copy. Solveig was shocked to learn I had never seen or read it. So why does it show up now, and through a person I had never met face to face until Friday, and one who just happened to pull it and some other documents out of a file cabinet and bring along with her this weekend? I can only imagine, but with a fair amount of certainty, that today is the very day it is meant to be shared. It’s no coincidence that I’m writing about it here, and it’s no coincidence you are reading it. I hope you choose to return here, for the stories I will post from my grandpa’s new-found memoirs. And thank you to each who has already visited! This is a partnership, dear family and friends. I would not want to travel this journey without you. Thank you for all the encouragement.
Always,
Annie
I am so glad you wrote about this demonstration of God's power.
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