Another surprise gift!

My sister was going through some old picture albums the other day and came across a letter our Mother wrote to friends and family on November 20th...1954! It was a summary of their trip from Nashville to San Francisco to get on a boat loaded with just eleven passengers, lumber and supplies that was headed to Japan. The first notes of the journey that took them to Korea where they would remain missionaries for over 30 years.

Reading the five page typed letter brought a massive amount of emotions in me to the surface. I can't imagine how my mom felt with her husband and 4 kids, getting in a car driving all the way across the country, to get on a boat that really wasn't a passenger boat, and set sail to a foreign land that only a year earlier had massive amounts of armies fighting in the very area that they were to set up their mission.

I guess what was amazing is what she wrote. Fear was not in her writing.

"I believe I forgot to say there were three Catholic nuns, one single man, one expectant mother (she was also a registered nurse) and our family of six which made up the eleven. Along with the seasickness was one storm after another hitting the outskirts of the two or three typhoons. Only two days of the fifteen were we able to be out on deck which confined us to small quarters and nothing to do but read. We did enough reading for a long time. Haskell (my dad) taught several of the crew and a steward from Porta Rica whom I believe will never be Catholic again. He had competition from the nuns as they would try to undo what Haskell had taught them, but the steward defied them and came both Sundays to services that Haskell held on board ship."

"Our days were made up of meals, naps, and trying to stay on our feet. Our nights were made up of consoling the children and trying to keep on our bunks. Evenings we had a Bible lesson, prayer and songs while the other passengers played cards. There was one thing that gave the children an outlet. A mate found an owl on board ship when we were too far out to sea to let it make the shore."

"On the fourteenth day the weather was beautiful, we got out on the deck, and then sighted land about 3:30. One cannot say what a thrill that was! We got into port too late to come ashore, so we put down anchor, staying out about fifty miles from dock until morning. On November 2 we docked in Yokohoma."

Mom and dad and the first four kids of our clan made it into Korea a month or so later. About 35 years of establishing orphanages, widows homes, churches, elementary through high schools, and a college that now is a University...I couldn't be more proud of coming from a heritage of believers in Jesus who walked the walk instead of just talking the talk. And this letter...what a blessing to read that from my mom's view.