My early childhood was spend in Africa, Vietnam, Portuguese Timor, Australia, and on furlough in the USA. Sometime I will add some stories from those days that might be fun for you to read to your children.
At 9 years old, my parents moved to the USA, first to Philadelphia, then to Minneapolis area. In PA I had a year and a half to see what it was like to live in a lower class apt. We had two bedrooms, but not far away was the intriguing Penny Pack Creek and park. Many happy hours were spent there.
We moved to a Christian communal setting which I loved. There was always someone to spend time with, children, grownups or grandmas. There was always plenty of housework to do, if certain grownups found us idly at play. Dusting was a priority for Hilda Ketona. The banisters never needed dusting, however, because I, along with some of the other children slid down them from top to bottom several time an hour. But that is where Hilda usually found me. I think she carried a dust rag around in her pockets, because I was sent to do the hall way wanes coating or the floors or worse, the steps. The wanes coating and the floors could be done with running slides down the slippery halls, and actually be fun, but the steps were not my cup of tea.
My father found a nice house in St Louis Park and we moved in after two wildly fun years at Daystar, the communal living house. This family house was far more quiet and sedate, but the cozy settledness of family and more predictable work schedules were welcome. After high school I applied to Bethany school of missions and loved my years there. This was the same place my mother had first been sent out as a single woman missionary to Portuguese Guinea in west Africa. There is a building there named after her and her two sisters, Bergh Hall, since they were in the first group of missionaries to be sent out by Bethany.
All these places and peoples were formative in my life. The last was where I met my husband, Jim Towner. His mother was the daughter of early Swedish missionaries to the bush areas of Alaska, and his father got up searching for gold. His liked to say that he found real gold in Alaska, it was his wife! So Jim had an interesting childhood, growing up in Nome Alaska, then moving to the Kenai peninsula in his teens. He volunteered for military service and was sent to Germany then came to MN to Bethany where we met on an evangelistic drama team.
After school we went off to Mexico as missionaries, then Spain. Six kids, and 23 years later we have moved back to MN/ And here I am trying to figure out how to live the USA lifestyle and not go crazy in the process. How do you all do it and keep your joy intact?
