My Dad -- Part 4

My father first met my mother, Margaret, at the beginning of 1935 when he was 27 and she was 17. About a year earlier, she had accepted an invitation from her friend Iris to attend a service at the People's Church in Toronto, and she trusted Jesus as her Savior that night. A few months later, she and another friend decided to go and check out the nearby Sunday school they had heard about. They were warmly welcomed, and my mother was assigned to the teenage girls' class where Cecil Hodgson was the teacher. There were some mischief-makers in that class who loved to give the teacher a hard time, and one Sunday a girl named Florence asked him very deliberately, "Mr. Hodgson, don't you think Miss English is pretty?" (I wish I had been a little fly on the wall!)

Here she is around that time!

I remember once my father told us about his first impressions of my mother. She had been attending his Sunday school class, and one day she went to him and asked him when the church prayer meeting was held. And he said to himself, "That's the kind of question a girl should be asking!"

But lots of changes were going on. My mother began teaching a Sunday school class herself, my father was away at times in the city, and so they saw each other only infrequently at church. Then one day my mother and her friend Gladys met my father and his friend Fred on the street and stopped to chat awhile. My father invited the girls to go with him and Fred to the next meeting of the mission organization he was considering joining, and so they agreed and went in Fred's car -- the men in the front, and the girls in the back. Not really a date!

Time passed, and my father did indeed join that mission organization, planning to leave for Africa. In the book she made for her grandchildren, my mother wrote: "By this time, I knew he had an interest in me that I didn't feel I could return, and although I had thoughts of the mission field, they were at that time vague, not concrete. I was far from ready, and any thoughts I did have didn't include Grandpa!"

Here's a little story I love, because it tells so much about each of my parents! Soon after this, my father invited my mother to have supper with him at the Stoodleigh Restaurant downtown. This was a special event, because eating out was not an everyday thing then. She met him there, but after the usual greetings, he told her he was sorry but he could not take her to supper because he had nothing in his pocket! She knew she had enough money to pay for supper, but after a few quick thoughts decided it would not be the thing to do, so she did not offer. They walked round and round in the ample space in the nearby Union Station and finally went home! And it was just as she expected! Everyone wanted to know what she had for supper! But somehow, the incident made her think more highly of my father, not less. It was not until much later that she found out that he had money when he invited her, but a sudden need had come up at the Mission headquarters, and he felt the Lord wanted him to give what he had.

In her little book for the grandchildren, my mother wrote: "Later, one rainy evening, Grandpa walked home with me. We stopped by the lamppost in front of my house, and under a dripping umbrella, Grandpa asked me to marry him. And Grandma said, 'No.'"

(Oh, how I loved to hear my mother tell us these stories when we were sitting around the supper table so many years ago!)

(To be continued...)

My Dad -- Part 3

As far back as I can remember, my father had to be careful about his health. Any little cold quickly became a deep bronchitis, and I remember that he often had what he called "hard indigestion." These problems were not new, and even as a young man, his health was fragile. Now that my Dad was planning to be a missionary, his family and friends were greatly concerned about how terrible this would be for his health. He had a promising career as an architect, and many of them just could not see any human wisdom at all in leaving North America to go far away to die young of a terrible disease in a foreign country! I'm sure there were many attempts to talk him out of it! (Believe it or not, in his late 20s he was considered to be a little too old to be going as a foreign missionary!)

And my Dad, being the kind of man he was, expected God to give him a verse in his normal everyday Bible reading that would answer that concern and give him clear guidance, and he was not disappointed! This is what he wrote:

"After study and preparation, I considered the advisability of seeking, at my age, a field of service which might be easier on the health than West Africa. I was reading at the time in Jeremiah where the children of Israel were commanded by the Lord to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, but they sought a way of escape into Egypt. The Lord spoke to them, saying that the sword that they feared in Babylon would take them in Egypt. I said, "Yes, Lord," and set my face steadfastly toward Liberia."

Early in 1941, my Dad was ready to set sail for Liberia. It had been 10 years since Meryl had been born, and she was being cared for by her grandparents, Madeleine's mother and father. It must have been very, very hard to leave her and go so far away, all alone, with very little ability to communicate -- no telephones, no email, none of the immediacy we expect now. I remember meeting Meryl's grandmother when I was a little girl, and I don't remember much about her except that she was elderly and very busy whenever I saw her. But I think about how terribly hard it must have been for her to lose her daughter so young, and I hope that having Meryl was a comfort to her. Meryl's grandparents will forever have my respect for the way they raised their little granddaughter to love and adore her father who had gone so far away.

What had my father been doing in the 10 years between Madeleine's death and the day he got on that ship?

For one thing, he was working. He had completed his 4-year course in architectural drafting and was immediately employed as a draftsman, work he loved. He also began studying at Toronto Baptist Seminary in preparation for going to Africa as a missionary.

I have just one picture to show you today, and that is of my father and his bicycle with the specially made sidecar container on the back. He wanted to win others in his profession to Christ, and so he cycled through Ontario visiting architects' offices, witnessing and leaving "tracts" that he had made. They were emery sticks for sharpening drafting pencils, and he had carefully printed a Scripture verse on one side.My father became a Christian when he was a teenager. He listened as his cousin, Ted, talked to his brothers about the Lord. Then one day he stopped to listen to some men who were preaching on the street corner. After the sermon, one of them asked if he had trusted Jesus as his Savior. My father knew that he believed in Jesus, but he was not sure he was saved, so that man showed him God's promise in the Bible that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but has everlasting life. From then on, he was sure of his salvation.

A few years ago, my mother wrote a special book for her grandchildren in which she tells so many interesting things about her life and my father's, so I am depending heavily on that for writing about my Dad today. Here's something she added to this part of the story:
"Someone has said that opportunities do not come with their ultimate value stamped upon them. That servant of the Lord, whoever he was, didn't know that the teenage boy to whom he was speaking that day would one day be a missionary to Africa."

My father also didn't know the end result of those little emery boards that he rode so many, many miles on his special bicycle to personally deliver...

Then in 1935, he met my mother!

(To be continued...)

My Dad -- Part 2

(When he was in his 80s, my father wrote a short biography of his life -- 5 pages, double-spaced, typed on the typewriter by my mother. I will include some quotes from that so you will have it straight from him.)

Now, to continue...

My father and Madeleine had been married for about a year and a half, and they were expecting a baby. On January 27th, Meryl was born! She was beautiful and healthy, but Madeleine became very, very ill. I cannot begin to imagine what this must have been like for my father who was still such a very young man. All those many years later, he wrote just two short sentences, "[The] pastor was called and together we stood at the bedside as that dear one was committed to the keeping of Him Who sits upon the throne. She gave me a little daughter, but she herself went to be with the Lord."

There are four generations in this picture...William (my father's grandfather), Meryl (my sister), Cecil (my father), and Clarence (my father's father)

My father was an architectural draftsman; in fact, an office building for which he drew the plans stood for years in downtown Toronto and might still be there. He did beautiful printing and drawing.
Madeleine was buried early in February, and when Valentine's Day came, my Dad made this card for his little daughter...
Here he is with Meryl quite a few years later...

When I was growing up, I rarely heard my father speak about Madeleine. I do remember one time, though. When he first thought about being a foreign missionary, it seems that it was either marriage or missionary, not both. Many missionary societies at that time were not sending women to foreign countries because of the serious health risks from malaria and other illnesses. He told us about hearing a missionary speaker at a meeting he attended with Madeleine before they were married. After it was over, she said, "My, your heart was beating loudly tonight!" Deep down, he knew that God wanted him to be a missionary, but he told us, "I allowed my heart to beat in another direction." And so he married Madeleine.

He added this to his little biography:
"Standing in a bitter February blizzard, I saw the casket lowered into the grave - finally convinced that God had called me to be a missionary."

One little sentence sums up how my father chose to live --
"We stood at the bedside as that dear one was committed to the keeping of Him Who sits upon the throne."
...to the keeping of Him Who sits upon the throne.
My father committed everything to His keeping.

It is amazing to see how God weaves our lives together faithfully to make the sad and the happy into something that brings honor and glory to His name!
How thankful I am that His weaving brought me my sister Meryl and all her family!


(To be continued tomorrow...)

My Dad -- Part 1

Today would have been my father's 101st birthday, so this week I am remembering him, and while I'm doing that, I am going to share a little bit of his life with you, too.

The older I get, the more clearly I see what an unusual and amazing man he was!

These are my grandparents who died before I was born...

Charlotte and Clarence Hodgson

Their third son was my father, Cecil, who was born on December 8, 1907.
Clare and Frank were older, and Norman and Arthur were younger, so my Dad was right in the middle. However, Norman died before he was a year old.

I don't know much about my father's growing up years, and I don't have any pictures of when he was a boy. I wonder about that sometimes. What was his home like? I'm sure there were some very lively times with so many boys in the house! And from what I saw when they all were older, they must have been a very intelligent and opinionated bunch of teenagers!

My father accepted Jesus as His Savior as a young man. He never did anything by halves. It was all or nothing, and this decision meant his all. He wrote, "Shortly after the Lord saved me, I dedicated myself, as I thought, to the ministry, but I did not think that God had called me to be a missionary." He heard many stirring speakers who urged him to take the good news about Jesus to another part of the world, but he needed more than to be told by others what to do. He did not believe that God had called him to be a missionary.

Soon after that, in 1929 when my Dad was 21 years old, he married a lovely Christian girl...Cecil and Madeleine Hodgson
He looks so happy!

(To be continued tomorrow...)

One More In Heaven...

Yesterday we got the sad/glad news that my brother-in-law, Nori, went home to heaven early in the morning. He is the husband of my older sister, Meryl. Here he is in 1949 before he married my sister...

And here is a more recent picture of him.

Nori has not been very well for quite a while now, but this last illness was unexpected, and so this is a shock for everyone.

For most of my life, I have lived far away from Meryl and her family, but the times we have visited each other briefly have always been happy ones. I remember Nori as a quiet faithful man with a wonderful sense of humor. I loved to hear him tell a story, because his whole face sparkled with fun! He loved his family, and he loved the Lord.

December 8 would be my father's 101st birthday if he were still with us. He was the first of my immediate family circle to get to heaven, and now Nori has joined him. I'm so thankful that God blessed both of them with a very short trip from here to there.

My posts this coming week are going to be about my Dad in honor of his birthday,
so you will hear more about Meryl very soon!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 07/26/2008

My father relaxing at the end of a hard day

This picture holds quite a few memories for me...

There is the front door of the living room in our home in Liberia. It was a screen door, and the flies outside considered it a nasty contraption contrived by humans to ruin their day. It had a spring on it, so it slammed whenever anyone went in or out. (I can still hear that slam so clearly!) There was also an inside wooden door which we almost never closed in the daytime just to allow a little more flow of air through the house.

I can see that old uneven cement floor which my mother gazed at ruefully when people were coming to visit. It was poured in two layers. The mixture for the first layer was made with less-than-normal cement and lots of pebbles to save money. On top of that, there was a very thin cement-rich layer. The builder was sure this would provide a beautiful smooth floor for the least amount of money. It did... for awhile... until that smooth top layer wore off in spots leaving rough porous brown patches interspersed with shiny dirty-green spots of the remaining top coat. It was a killer on the knees when scrubbing it, too!

There is the "Big Chair" which matched the Settee and Small Chair and Gray Table. It had wonderful wide arms for resting a book or writing a letter. My father loved to lie down on the settee for a few minutes after lunch and supper. He would take one of the back cushions and prop it against one of the arm rests to make a wedge for his back and head. Then he would lie down, put one leg up on the back of the settee, and there he would snooze. "Fifteen minutes is all I need, Margaret!" he would say, and he would be up and out the door again to get back to work.

On the wall is the paint-by-number picture of horses which Gord painted as a kid. The matching one must be on another wall somewhere! Totally unused to the many toys and such that are everywhere here, we thought that picture set was just amazing and waited anxiously to see the finished product!

And the kerosene lamp... We did not have electricity for more than a few hours at night, and many times not at all, so when the little generator was off, we each had a lamp that we took with us wherever we wanted to go in the house. My dad made two matching lamps like this, one for Carol-Ann and one for me, to sit on the little mantel in our bedroom or be used throughout the house during the evening. He took old metal pressure lanterns and cut the bases off to provide the kerosene reservoirs. Then he soldered on a bracket for holding the chimney and three brass-colored legs on the sides of each lamp. Since we sometimes wanted a light behind a chair for reading, he made wooden holders for the lamps. The wooden stands had 3 legs just the right distance apart to match the legs on the lamps, and in the top of each of those wooden legs was a small beveled hole. The legs on the lamps fit into those holes and held the lamps safe and secure. What a genius!
I am proud to say I have my lamp right now sitting on a shelf in my dining room!

A lot of memories in one little picture!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/12/2008

This is my dad getting a drink at "The Filter."

When we were growing up, the thing always at the top of my mother's subconscious was making sure we had enough water to drink. All our water had to be boiled to purify it, and that was a HUGE JOB. We had a wood stove, and there were always large pots of water on it being watched so they could be timed boiling for 20 minutes. The boiled water was then dumped into large covered white enamel pails. From there it was used either in cooking or in keeping The Filter full. The Filter had a chalk-like "candle" (that's what my dad always called it, anyway) through which the water we put in the top passed through to get to the bottom of The Filter. This did not purify the water at all but just helped to take out the smoky flavor it had after boiling on the wood stove. I would have to say that keeping up with the boiled water was one of my mother's biggest responsibilities for her family.

(I think every bit of furniture we had was made by my father. Check out that perfect made-to-measure filter stand with the handy-dandy little shelf for the glass!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/08/2008

One more picture of my Mum and Dad.
A little celebration of 40 years as missionaries in Liberia.

This was taken in the living room/dining room of the house where I grew up. No caterer, no music, no balloons. No rich food, fancy cake, or flowery speeches.
Just a little handmade sign -- "40 YEARS" -- and the love of friends and family.

If you could zoom in on the picture, you would see whitewashed mud walls, a cement floor with the surface long worn off, a ceiling with big watermarks from the tropical downpours, and insects everywhere (no getting rid of them!).

Don't store up your treasures on earth. Instead, store them up in heaven where moth and rust won't destroy them and where thieves can't break in and steal... because your heart will be where your treasure is. (Matt. 6:20-21)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/07/2008

My Mum and Dad many years ago.
They were sitting on a little red bench on the cement front porch of our house. I love this picture because they were enjoying the moment so much and were paying no attention to the camera.

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 04/26/2008

Me and my Dad

Crossing the ocean on a freighter ship at any age can be pretty exciting,

but especially when you are four years old!