Welcome back everyone!
We barely had time to get adjusted to our communal family at the Big House, and it was time to pack up again. We were going on the next tree planting job and would be gone for three weeks. So much for leaving the tipi life behind, we would soon be out camping in tents, with a team of 15 people, in the mountains.
We had a 200 mile drive ahead of us, partly on windy roads through the forest and hills. On arriving we had to get straight to work setting up the camp. The men were in charge of the tents and us ladies had to get organized to cook dinner. And, not to forget, we had our small babies to take care of, in between all of this action.
This time my friend and I had decided, to make it a priority during the week, to drive into town to the laundry mat. We usually had loads of dirty diapers and the children’s clothes. Though camping with babies wasn’t easy, we were young mothers, and we just took everything in stride.
When the men returned at the end of each hard day on the hills, we gathered in song and prayer before the dinner. We would sit around the campfire and listen to the men tell their stories of the day. Despite any troubles or trials they had; they considered it to be lessons that Jesus was teaching them, about endurance and learning to be thankful for everything.
He started talking about his past, and how much he had missed having his father around to take care of the family. He was beginning to realize that the deficiencies in his character, were because he had grown up alone, with no one to turn to who understood him.
Actually, that was one of the first things he had confided in me, when we first met three years before. He poured out his heart, to me again that evening, saying how thankful he was, that I always loved him, and hadn’t given up on him.
He said the reason, that he appreciated so much living at the ranch, was that there were other men teaching him basic things about life.
Before I share some of Thomas’ letter to his mother, I will give you a brief account of her life.
Nadja was born in Berlin in 1926. Her mother was a young nanny to a wealthy family. Her father, was an Egyptian man, working in Berlin as a journalist. They never married, and he was only around a couple of years, before he returned to Cairo. Besides school, she began studying dance when she was a young girl. Then came the war, she was 14, when it started in 1940. Though she and her mother survived the horrors of the war in Berlin, she still managed to study drama during that time. In her documents she has noted that her graduation diploma from the school of theatre, had been destroyed in the bombings. She was able to get new copies, and acquired a job as a dancer, at the Ludwigspalast in 1949. There she met her future husband, Eduard van Dooren, who had also grown up in Berlin. He was the arranger and composer at the theater. She was in her early twenties, and he was 16 years older than her.
He wrote;
“Dear family, All of our love and prayers are with you, we hope that the love of Jesus, would flow into your hearts through this letter. Our Father in heaven, has blessed us so richly, that we can do nothing else, but pass on this fullness of life to you.
Link to the song "Behold what manner of Love" / written in 1972
https://youtu.be/ojHxW3zMGyU
