Our Stories
A Hero�s Welcome
By Abigail Short | posted 02/01/2007
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7 NIV)
My grandma Kaethe (pronounced like “Katie”) was born on August 26, 1915, to ethnic German Mennonites in the Ukraine. By the time she was five, her family had buried two younger siblings. She suffered through a severe famine before graduating high school. As a teacher in the Russian school system, she was continually forced to hide her Christian faith, and she lost her father, grandfather and fiancé to the secret police because of that same faith.
In 1943, at the age of 28, Kaethe and the rest of her family walked away from their home with nothing more than they could carry and followed the German army’s retreat. They spent two years in Poland before the Russian occupation forced them to flee again, this time to Germany. When the Russians gained control of East Berlin and threatened to deport the Mennonites back to Russia, Kaethe’s brother-in-law engineered a daring escape to West Berlin, where they stayed in the relative safety of a refugee camp run by the UNRRA and Mennonite relief workers.
Finally in 1947, Paraguay granted land to the Mennonite refugees for permanent resettlement. Thousands set out by ship to their new home in the Chaco region of eastern Paraguay, a densely forested wilderness from which they literally had to carve out their existence. One day while walking to the schoolhouse (she was always a teacher wherever she went), Kaethe’s efforts to avoid a coconut-throwing monkey landed her facedown in the jungle mud. She thought she had fallen as far from the prosperity of her childhood home as it was possible to fall.
But her life would take one more dramatic turn. She fell in love with a missionary who was serving a short-term assignment in the new colony. They married in 1949 and he took her back to his home in Kansas. There she raised a family, helped him run his business and earned her Master’s degree for the third time (the records from the Russian and German universities having been long since lost). She taught college for 17 years and continued her career as a public speaker and fundraiser for many years thereafter.
No one would have accused my grandma of being an optimist — but neither would anyone suggest that she was a complainer. In fact, if she heard someone complaining, she would sit him down and tell him her story until he could regain his perspective. She never lost her sense of humor, self-confidence or outspokenness. I’m sure she must have resented the suffering in her life more than once, but her faith was refined and proved in that fire, and it literally sustained her when all other hope was gone.
Kaethe was never famous. She scrimped and saved her whole life but never became rich — at least not by American standards. She never wrote a book or built a monument or even owned anything that someone outside her friends and family would care to have. But her love and her faith made a lasting impression on everyone she ever met.
On January 14, 2007, Kaethe went to sleep after a quiet breakfast and awoke in the arms of her Savior, and all of Heaven received her with a hero’s welcome.
Abigail can be reached at abigail@daughteroflight.com.
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“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7 NIV)
My grandma Kaethe (pronounced like “Katie”) was born on August 26, 1915, to ethnic German Mennonites in the Ukraine. By the time she was five, her family had buried two younger siblings. She suffered through a severe famine before graduating high school. As a teacher in the Russian school system, she was continually forced to hide her Christian faith, and she lost her father, grandfather and fiancé to the secret police because of that same faith. In 1943, at the age of 28, Kaethe and the rest of her family walked away from their home with nothing more than they could carry and followed the German army’s retreat. They spent two years in Poland before the Russian occupation forced them to flee again, this time to Germany. When the Russians gained control of East Berlin and threatened to deport the Mennonites back to Russia, Kaethe’s brother-in-law engineered a daring escape to West Berlin, where they stayed in the relative safety of a refugee camp run by the UNRRA and Mennonite relief workers. Finally in 1947, Paraguay granted land to the Mennonite refugees for permanent resettlement. Thousands set out by ship to their new home in the Chaco region of eastern Paraguay, a densely forested wilderness from which they literally had to carve out their existence. One day while walking to the schoolhouse (she was always a teacher wherever she went), Kaethe’s efforts to avoid a coconut-throwing monkey landed her facedown in the jungle mud. She thought she had fallen as far from the prosperity of her childhood home as it was possible to fall. But her life would take one more dramatic turn. She fell in love with a missionary who was serving a short-term assignment in the new colony. They married in 1949 and he took her back to his home in Kansas. There she raised a family, helped him run his business and earned her Master’s degree for the third time (the records from the Russian and German universities having been long since lost). She taught college for 17 years and continued her career as a public speaker and fundraiser for many years thereafter. No one would have accused my grandma of being an optimist — but neither would anyone suggest that she was a complainer. In fact, if she heard someone complaining, she would sit him down and tell him her story until he could regain his perspective. She never lost her sense of humor, self-confidence or outspokenness. I’m sure she must have resented the suffering in her life more than once, but her faith was refined and proved in that fire, and it literally sustained her when all other hope was gone. Kaethe was never famous. She scrimped and saved her whole life but never became rich — at least not by American standards. She never wrote a book or built a monument or even owned anything that someone outside her friends and family would care to have. But her love and her faith made a lasting impression on everyone she ever met. On January 14, 2007, Kaethe went to sleep after a quiet breakfast and awoke in the arms of her Savior, and all of Heaven received her with a hero’s welcome. Abigail can be reached at abigail@daughteroflight.com. |
