I’ve been very bad about getting anything blogged in so long.  Not sure what keeps getting in the way.  I have lots of stuff to sort of catch my friends up on but I wanted to stop and share this while it is fresh. 

My oldest is off again.  This time he is headed to China for a month.  He leaves June 30 and arrives back August 2^nd.  He will be traveling with China Service Ventures.  http://www.csventures.org/ He will be teaching at the vocational school.  His job will be working with teachers of English who have little or no experience speaking English with native speakers of the language.  He is very excited about this opportunity. 

When we were at my in-laws Sunday for Father’s Day we were sharing about Jacob’s upcoming trip.  Well this morning my son got this really great email from his grandmother.  The email is copied below. 

I just find it so neat and wonderful to see how God directs us along paths we are not even aware of.  We were aware of family that had served in central Africa when Jacob headed to Africa last year.  But we had never heard about a family connection to China until just now.  And then when you consider the size of China to see that Jacob will be traveling to the same area seems so miraculous. 

I was just so excited about all of this that I had to share. 

__________________ Jacob’s Email ________________________

When your parents were here on Sunday I saw the plans for your upcoming trip to China and just wanted to let you know a little about family history that relates to that. I don't know if you were ever told, but when Loren's father graduated from Luther Seminary in the mid 1920's, it was his intent to go to China as a missionary with the Lutheran church. He and grandma Mathre were practically packed when the mission field was closed to new persons....mostly because of the danger from the war there. At the same time, my mother was hoping to get her nursing degree and join her uncle in China, a medical missionary. At any rate, the reason that I bring this up, is that the area that you are going to, Henan was once called Honan province. My mother was planning on being a nurse in the Sinyang hospital where Dr Oliver Distad served with that same Lutheran mission.  Uncle Oliver left his practice in Williston North Dakota and took his wife, Clara and 2 sons, Merril and Harold to Sinyang, a city on the Peiking (Beijing)-Hankow railway, about 200 miles north of Hankow, which at the time had about 100,000 inhabitants. I don't know what the city is called today. He was to supervise the construction of a new 150 bed hospital in Sinyang at the urging of General Chin, whose life he had saved at one time. He served that hospital as well as one at Siangyang, Hupeh and Kloshan, Honan. Evidently the church was making in roads in the area and one of Oliver's letters spoke of 9,000 of General Feng's troops being baptized. A quote from one of his letters said. “Our sole aim with these hospitals is to aid the mission work, by having evangelists in the hospitals, who instruct each and every patient in the Christian doctrine. Patients act as a drawing card for mission work, for when a person has been there and goes out perfectly well, by what he considers a supernatural miracle, they never cease to talk for and bring others in contact with the Christian faith. “The mission started a school in Kikungshan, which was a resort area for the Chinese and was here that he built his summer home. If you wanted to read up on the school, there is a book, "The Rooster Crows Again" which is a history of the mission as remembered by the students of that school. Most of these people became leaders in the church in this country on return and many lived in the St Olaf area, a heavy sponsor of the mission in China. I know that the ELCA has the archives for this mission in the archives at Luther Seminary. Oliver died on June 23, 1921 of typhoid fever while working an epidemic there. Within the next few years the communists under Chiang ki shek defeated General Chin's troops in the Sinyang area and it became very dangerous for our missionaries there. The school remained until 1949 and was burned during the next war, so doubt even ruins of it exist as it is a popular resort area and I'm sure the land was redeveloped. Oliver was buried there...but I don't know where....most likely in Kikungshan. None of us have ever gotten to that area so I find it interesting that you should be the first from the family to return to that part of the world. Harold and Merrill returned to the states with their mother for college prior to the First World War when China was completely closed to foreigners. Hope you have a good and safe trip. Grandma Mathre

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Joan Mathre