Snap Shot - Memories Found by clbcommunications

My visitor's name was Solveig, and she and I had already purchased tickets to travel to Cameroon, Africa, in January 2011. Until this Friday night in August 2010, 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 e-mail—trusting that we would be compatible traveling companions. (After a weekend of chatting and hanging out together we had no worries.)

Solveig Nelson spent five years as a missionary nurse in Cameroon in the 1960s and currently volunteers in the Lutheran Brethren International Mission office in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. This is the mission organization that sent my grandparents, Berge and Herborg Revne, to Africa in the early 1900s. Knowing I would be interested, Solveig brought some documents from my grandparents' file. Around midnight, after she had gone to bed, I decided to simply glance at the curious little 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 when I found articles from 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.

After reading this, I asked my mom about these memoirs intended for me, as one of the three grandchildren. 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.

Returning to the Friday night in August... I began sifting through fascinating documents, for example, Grandpa's letters describing how he scoped out a mission territory. And then at the very bottom of the pile, I found it: a 24-page typed document that my grandpa had dictated shortly before his death in 1963. In the very early hours of August 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 [Ann'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 enjoy it together someday in heaven.

Ann Rupnow is the granddaughter of Berge and Herborg Revne, pioneer CLB missionaries in Africa. She recently traveled to the area where her grandparents worked and visited with people who knew her grandparents.