The Tanks are Coming!

My uncle, Emanuel J. Sorenson, was a missionary in Ethiopia and Jamaica before and after World War II. Once a week there will be story that provides a glimpse of what missionary life was like for his family, as related by his daughter and my cousin, Jane Spear.

A hush fell over the classroom. Miss Moyer, teacher for the thirty students in grades four to six, had the two new students stand. “This is Shirley Sorenson in fourth grade and Jane Sorenson in sixth grade,” she announced.

After a short silence, there was a ripple of exclamation. For the first time in my life I can remember the overwhelming feeling of being in a classroom with such a multitude. Oh for the days when my teachers had been my mother and father and later the private teacher, Mae Matthews, who had come from Kansas to teach the American children and head the Ethiopian Girls’ School in Kabana. That year will never be forgotten, nor the next year in Redfield, South Dakota, when I was in seventh grade with not more than ten students. My father, during this time, was attending the University and writing his Masters Thesis on Ethiopia. Shirley, Mother, and I followed him as he was also employed as a college professor. We acclimated from the 9,000-foot elevation of Africa, with its lush beauty, to the plains of Nebraska. Having many aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents made it bearable, and soon we had our own circle of friends.

Read more at Adventist Perspective.