Last Lessons#74 – TEXAS

“He said to them, ‘It is nor for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.’”  Acts 1:7 

As the Jensens (with Barbie) headed to the United States, we had no idea of God’s timing for the lessons we needed before being positioned as a part of God’s plan for spreading his Word world-wide.   

Two days before we were to leave Okinawa, Bod slipped a disc in his back and had to be evacuated on a stretcher to San Antonio, Texas, where he would be in Brooke Army Hospital.  I left Okinawa with four teen-age girls and flew to the Presidio in California, picked up a car that we had ordered, and drove from northern California to San Antonio.  It took us three days because none of the girls were old enough to drive.  But by God’s grace we made it, bought a house, and moved – all while Bob was hospitalized.  God has to stretch women to act independently sometimes. 

After Bob healed, he finished his time in the Army and retired with 26 years active duty.  That’s been helpful to me in my old age as I live on pensions.  When Bob retired from the Army, he began working for the State of Texas as the Superintendent of the San Antonio State Chest Hospital.  Again, God’s timing is perfect since he would have a patient later who was to influence our lives almost more than anyone! 

In Texas, our family also grew.  We brought in another foster daughter.  Margie was a sweet sixteen-year-old whose parents were Mexican.  She too came to faith in Christ by God’s grace.  She is the only one in her large family to finish high school. She still lives in San Antonio.  

The other addition to our family was Bob’s father.  He came to live with us after Bob’s mother died and he was alone living in northern Minnesota.  He was a very interesting man who had immigrated from Norway when he was seventeen years old.  I say he was an interesting man because he had made his way by homesteading in Minnesota that took grit.  He knew how to work and taught his two sons how to work as farmers and fishermen.  He also got an education and eventually became the County Agent for Agriculture.  But he was also interesting, in that he was a hard-headed Norwegian who had a number of physical ailments and chewed tobacco!  Bob’s father (Grandpa) lived with us for eight years and it was not always easy for him nor for us.  He had grown up as a Lutheran who had been baptized as a teenager in Norway, but he was afraid of dying without confessing his sins and taking communion.  God gave me the privilege of reading the Bible to him every night as I put him to bed and at age 81 he put his faith in Christ alone for his salvation.   

God taught me so much through Grandpa.  Mostly I had to learn patience.  Patience is still hard for me and I am still learning to wait on God’s timing for many things.  

In San Antonio, we joined a loving Lutheran church, and I was asked to teach Sunday School because I had been a missionary.  Honestly, even though I read the Bible every day, I really did not know how to teach the Bible. But I taught my own children’s class because I wanted to make sure they understood the doctrine of election which I did know from my own upbringing in the Presbyterian Church.  I wanted my children to know that being elected, they could not lose their salvation.   

My heart was still to teach people to know God so I began teaching Genesis to a small group in my home, made up of church women and a few friends.  One of those friends changed my life.  Brenda asked me if I would like to read some material she had on the Book of Genesis.  I told her that I had several commentaries that I used so I didn’t need any more.  The next week she brought the material anyway.  It was her copy of the notes and questions written by A. Wetherell Johnson for Bible Study Fellowship (BSF).  Looking at the notes and her scribbled answers to questions, I was not interested.  She asked me each week if I had read the material and finally, I knew I needed to at least read some of it. When I started to read, I could not stop.  I did not pay attention to the questions, and I did not look up the references, but I read straight through the notes – mesmerized!  I had never read anything that spoke more clearly to me what I knew was the truth.  When I asked Brenda how I could get this material, she said that the only way was to teach a BSF class.  What I did not know was that women in San Antonio had been praying for a teacher for a BSF class for several years and they thought maybe I was the answer to their prayers.  After much prayer and discussion with my family, I agreed to go to California to be taught by Miss Johnson how to teach the Bible. 

What I didn’t know was that decision would direct my life for the next twenty-seven years.  God planned to help me know him more fully through Bible study, then show me how to teach the Bible, and then use me to teach others how to teach the Bible.  I had no vision for anything at that time, all I knew was that God was giving me my heart’s desire – to know him and to help others know him.