EDR growing up

Next May 26th (1953), I will be 80 years old. I can look back a long way! When I arrived my parents did not know that their little one would live so long.

Imagine a ball being thrown up in a high curve and finally falling back to earth, not a lifeless ball, but a living one with eyes, ears and limbs, starting out on the journey of life. This traveler encountered many things and had many experiences throughout this long stretch of time. Often, she would have had to despair, if a higher power had not pushed her, like the ball, forward through childhood and teenage years, when I had much to learn, then through my time at home when I served my family. Then when I was a wife and mother and finally a grandmother. There is still much to learn.

School years

In May 1881, when I was eight-years-old, my parents returned to their Russian homeland after 12 years of missionary service in Sumatra. They wanted to put their children into schools and, after two years of recuperating, to return to their post again. However, they did not go back because the Gnadenfeld church, that had sent my father out, elected him as their leading minister, an office that he administered faithfully until his death in 1915.

We children spoke neither German nor Russian, only Batak, although our parents had spoken German to us. Right from the beginning there was much to learn.

In the village of Pordenau there was, at that time, a small boarding school for girls run by my uncle and aunt (Abram and Helene Dyck). I attended this school for four years.

The other girls were from rich families. I certainly was an able pupil, there was no lack there. However, I soon felt the great difference between the rich and the poor. Whereas I had just the barest essentials, they had lots of clothes and could change dresses and shoes to their heart’s content. And they had jewelry as well. I became aware that the houseparents and other people esteemed these girls more highly than me because, as I had heard said, I had poor parents. Why were my parents ``poor people” while my mother’s sisters and brothers counted among the rich and had land and drove around in beautiful carriages? They had become rich because their wheat was loaded on ships in Berdyansk and sent to other countries where it brought a good price. Meanwhile, my dear parents had served for 12 years on the mission field. I saw that my mother was often made painfully aware of the great differences and she always overcame it with love. Naturally, she was grateful when, for example, they presented her with a large sack of wheat flour instead of decorative lamps that her brothers and sisters gave to each other one Christmas.

My father, as a minister and missionary preacher with a large family, never became rich, but we learned to get along with little and each child aspired to a profession. We all earned a good livelihood until the First World War and the Russian Revolution made everyone poor.

Evangeline’s brothers and sisters

There were nine in our family: four boys and five girls. Seven were born in Pakantan and the two youngest in Gnadenfeld, Russia.

My older sister, Elisabeth, who was named after our grandmother, was also called Elektra after the ship on which she was born. The captain wished this. He was happy about her birth and counted it as a sign of good luck for the ship. Elisabeth grew up to become a very gifted young lady and a mother of ten children. In the 1920’s, four of her sons (Herman, Dietrich, Frank and Arthur) and two of her daughters (Agneta and Evangeline) came to North America. These are the dear people who helped me and my granddaughter, Valentine, to come to Canada and who have shown us many kindnesses.

Heinrich was my oldest brother. I think of him with deep affection because he was always a loving son and remained a faithful helper in their old age and sickness. He became a teacher and preacher and lived an exemplary life. He was a faithful worker in God’s harvest field and was a friend to Tatars, Russians and gypsies. He was liked by all. In 1938, when he was 70, as the last minister of the Gnadenfeld church, he was sent into exile to Siberia. He never came back and we have no news of him except that a Russian who did return is supposed to have seen him in Kolyma (north of the Arctic circle).

My second brother, David, a missionary to Muslims, died of malaria in Siantar, near Penjabungan, Sumatra in 1926. His wife Maria also died there of malaria. Their three daughters, Paula, Lydia and Maria lived in Java. Lydia married a Scotsman and is Mrs. William Leslie. Their children are Alastair, Morag, David and Ian. During the Second World War, they were put in a Japanese concentration camp in Java where they suffered many hardships. After their release, Lydia went with her children to stay with her mother-in-law in Scotland. Afterwards the Leslies moved to Australia. Pasula and Maria also settled in Australia.

My sister Maria was willing to stay single and to remain at home to help her aging parents. She cared for them until their death. After that she helped her married sisters and brothers, especially Anna, when she got cancer. She also helped the family of our youngest brother, Herman (the father of Charlotte, Otto and Waldemar in Ontario), when he was exiled to Siberia in 1938 and never returned.

Margarete married the rich landowner, Heinrich Klassen. Widowed in 1923, she emigrated in the 1920’s with her children: David, Nicklas, Constantine, Victor, Margarete and Irene to Ontario, Canada. Her three oldest daughters Agnes, Maria and Anna were then already married.

My fourth sister, Anna, died of breast cancer in May 1925. Because her husband, Salomon Ediger, was a minister, he was exiled to Siberia in 1934 for five years. He had to help lay the second line of the Trans-Siberian Railroad near Lake Baikal. After his return he lived only one year. Their children were sent to Siberia in 1941.

Then there was my third brother, Johannes (Hans), and his wife Warja and their children Wadim and Olga. They were exiled from Crimea to Kazakhstan in 1941, when the German army invaded our homeland.

Life at home

I was a good student and I enjoyed school, particularly last year with teacher Abraham Braun in Gnadenfeld. I would have liked to continue going to school, but two young brothers had to be looked after and my dear  mother needed me. In my free time at home I did some writing and arithmetic. My father gave me the assignments. I liked to help my younger brothers and sisters with their lessons. There were also many stockings to mend. Like the other village children, we wore wooden shoes with which one could slide along so well on the ice.

Evenings were enjoyable as we sat around the table together, busy with various tasks. One of us read aloud from a book that Father had brought from the library. One of these books was called, “Pathways of Suffering in the 18th Century”. It had been imported from abroad by Janzen’s Bookstore. It had been placed inside a cover with another name, for it was banned in Russia at that time. It was about the czarist government’s persecution of the Sundists, an evangelical Christian group. Who would have known then that the peaceful Mennonites, too, would one day suffer in a similar way and that we, who were reading about it, would also experience suffering and be driven far away from our homes and from one another. However, at that time when I was young, there was peace in the land and I lived at home, obeyed my parents and tried to please them.

Baptism

On May 24th, 1888, a few days before my 15th birthday, I was baptized in the Gnadenfeld church, together with a group of others. My father, the leading minister of the church, baptized us.

As my baptismal verse I received Isaiash 41:10,

 “Fear not, for I am with you, be not dismayed, for I am your God, I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.” 

I did not know then that these holy words would accompany me so faithfully, as they have done in all my need until my advanced age. A blessed verse for a weak woman who had her life to live.

My heart was full of sincere desire to live faithfully for the Lord, to love good and hate evil. My prayer at that time was:

Thy way, not mine, O Lord,

However dark it be!

Lead me by thine own hand,

Choose out the path for me.

Smooth let it be or rough,

It will be still the best;

Winding or straight, it leads

Right onward to thy rest.

I dare not choose my lot,

I would not, if I might,

Choose thou for me, my God,

So shall I walk aright.

The kingdom that I seek

Is thine, so let the way

That leads to it be thine,

Else I must surely stray.

Take thou my cup, and it

With joy or sorrow fill,

As best to thee may seem,

Choose my good and ill.

Not mine, not mine the choice

In things or great or small,

Be thou my guide, my strength,

My wisdom and my all.  (H. Bonar, 1857)

Thus I found my way in life, for I received much grace and strength from the Lord. Twice I had the opportunity to marry a rich man, but because I had already given my word to someone else, I declined and remained faithful to a poor man and kept my conscience clear. Years later these men were also poor.