Ingrid Trobisch Youngdale:
On My Way Home

Old Moshi
Blessed is the Dawn

“To live is to be slowly born.”
~Antoine de St. Exupery~

Mt. Kilimanjaro towers over the East African highlands of Tanzania . No wonder the Africans like to call this mighty mountain The Throne of God or The Shining Mountain. Like a taciturn giant, it stands as an ever-present witness to all that lives and moves in its domain. I was born on the slopes of this mountain in the small settlement named Kidea, formerly known as Old Moshi. My parents insisted it was one of the most beautiful spots on the face of the earth.

Word spread quickly of my arrival at that early morning hour of February 17, 1926 . Even before dawn a chorus of rejoicing women of the local Chagga people came to sing for my mother, welcoming me into their midst. Their melodious, rhythmic chanting surrounded the mission house and filled it with a special air of joy.

Awakened by the unusual sounds, my four-year-old brother Paul tottered out of the boys’ room, rubbing his eyes in wonder.

“But it’s only a little bit morning,” he told his father.

“You’re right, son, your new little sister didn’t even wait till the new day arrived. Have a look at who I’m holding in my arms.” Carefully he stooped down to Paul’s level and let him peer at the sleeping baby wrapped in a warm blanket. The entire bundle fit perfectly into the crook of his father’s strong arm.

“Your life won’t ever be the same again with a sister around! Let’s not wake your little brother John yet, but you and I can go to the veranda and show the baby to our visitors.”

Proudly, father and son walked out into the African dawn. The chanting women danced with joy. As the sun slowly rose into view, The Shining Mountain made its majestic appearance through the morning clouds.

I am convinced that at this moment the close bond that I have shared with my father over a lifetime was formed. In my mind I see him holding me up and saying, “Look, my daughter, at this wonder-filled world you have entered. It is amazing and it is yours for the taking. Go for it!”

Five days later I was baptized at the Old Moshi chapel. My parents and their friends, Pastor and Mrs. John Steimer, placed me symbolically in the safe arms of Christ. Pastor Steimer pronounced, with a loving twinkle in his eyes, the baptismal promise he had chosen: “God will command His angels to protect you wherever you go” (Psalm 91:11). He gave us a small angel picture with text in Swedish illustrating this verse which has accompanied me on my way home. I am afraid I have kept those angels frightfully busy.

If I am asked about the validity of infant baptism, I can only reply the same way my eight-year-old niece did when asked this question, “All I know is that my parents put me in the arms of Jesus, and he hasn’t dropped me yet.”

I was named Ingrid after my father’s grandmother and Johanna after my father’s mother. All of my grandparents have come from Sweden . Ingrid comes from the Scandinavian and means daughter of the king or hero’s daughter. Johanna, which is the feminine form of John, means God is gracious. My family name, Hult, is the same as the English word, holt, which means a safe place, a wood. English authors speak of a rabbit’s holt. Astrid Lindgren’s mother, the popular Swedish children’s author, also had the maiden name and came from the same region as my grandfather Hult.

I realize now that the names that were so lovingly chosen for me at birth have become life-long callings. They have challenged me in unexpected ways. To be the daughter of a king and a hero has not just made me feel special, but has also meant long stretches of loneliness in my life, of missing my peers, and of not daring to admit fear. Without the amazing gift of God’s grace, many times I would not have had the strength to go on. As my family and the readers of my books can attest, my search for a safe place in this world has become a lifelong quest.

My mother said I was a good traveler. I was just three weeks old when on March 7, 1926 , we embarked on a ship in the port city of Mombasa which would take us through the Red Sea , the Suez Canal , the Mediterranean , and up the Atlantic coast to Bremerhaven , Germany . It was time for my parents to go home on leave. My father had already been in Africa for more than seven years, and my mother for five.

Why should I not be a good traveler when my mother and father were always close by and I had my safe place? My mother had carefully lined a rectangular wicker basket and placed a firm kapok mattress in it. This was not only my place those first months of life, but was also the first bed for my younger siblings. It had a place of honor on the dresser in my parent’s room. When it was no longer needed for the baby of the family, it served as a laundry basket for the fresh sheets dried on the clothesline on our Ozarkian homestead.

I was not my parents’ first-born daughter. The little grave of baby Ruth Eleanor lies on another slope of the Shining Mountain at Machame station where my parents served when they first came to Tanzania . As a family we celebrated Ruth’s birth and death on July 11. It was the only time I recall, as a child, seeing tears in my mother’s eyes. She looked at the little green vase filled with fresh flowers on the kitchen cabinet and told me that this vase had been given to her at Ruth’s funeral. I used to hold the vase in my hands, this symbol of my sister, and try to imagine how she would have looked and what it would have been like to have an older sister. But hearing about her also made heaven more real. I knew that when the time came, she would be there ready to welcome her parents and siblings.

It seems fitting to weave a story of the birth and life of another little girl into my life’s tapestry here. In 1998, I visited Sweden as the guest of Annette Fogelquist. Her father, John Steimer, had baptized me. Annette, who had spent happy years on the mission station close to ours on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, was as dear to me as an elder sister. Life can have a strange way of filling the deep yearnings of our heart when we least expect it to happen. As we sat together in her cozy red summer cabin, Annette told me this story:

My husband and I were sent to South Africa by the Swedish Missionary Society. We were very happy there and God gave us five children. My husband’s work as a builder was sorely needed. However, when we came home on furlough for a well-deserved rest, he was killed by a careless motorcyclist. My husband was standing in front of the church hall where he was to give a lecture when the motorcyclist, speeding and not able to make the curve, caught my husband’s coat in his handlebars and dragged him to his death.

Annette, in her early thirties, and with five small children, studied church music, practicing early in the morning while her children were sleeping. As a single parent she became an organist and choir director and also a hostess for missionaries on furlough. She reminded me of Katherine Hepburn—the way she dressed and wore her hair. She sparkled with energy and joy.

Her oldest son, Sven, became a pastor, and with his wife accepted a call to Tanzania to be missionaries. While there, they made a trip to the Kilimanjaro area where his grandparents had been pioneer missionaries together with my parents. Sven wanted to find the grave of his mother’s little sister who had also been called Ruth, just like my sister. Annette showed me a picture of her sister, a beautiful little girl of three who one day had become very ill. After a few hours of suffering, Ruth had died and had been buried close to the chapel her father had built. Annette continued her story:

Sven saw an ancient-looking woman seated on the steps of the chapel and spoke to her in Swahili. ‘Can you show me the cemetery and take me to the grave of baby Ruth Steimer?’ he asked without much hope that the woman could help him.

Her wrinkled face lit up in disbelief when he told her who he was. ‘Come with me,’ she said and unhesitatingly led him to the spot where a worn wooden cross was still standing with the name of Ruth Steimer. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘because I was the Ayah (nursemaid) for little Ruth. When your grandparents came and told us the story of Jesus, I didn’t know what to think. But when I saw the white man and his wife weeping just like we weep when we lose a child, I knew they were real. That is when I listened and became a believer.’

For sixty years the Ayah had faithfully tended the little grave. Annette showed me a part of the cross that Sven had brought home to her. He had carved her sister’s name and the dates of her birth and death on it. We wept together, and then I reminded her that today there is a healthy, strong church in Tanzania where our parents pioneered and laid their precious daughters to rest. In fact, with 2,300,000 members, this is the largest Lutheran Church in Africa .

As a child, I relived my birth many times in my dreams. Even as an adolescent I often had the same dream with a glorious sense of freedom and light at the end. I dreamt I was in a very small place that I had entered through the keyhole in my father’s desk in my parents’ bedroom. Somehow I struggled free, but then I was falling, falling. I heard and felt the rushing of a waterfall. I saw this waterfall gushing forth into a canyon, and I had an indescribable feeling of joy. I was free, and at the same time I was sheltered. It’s no wonder I was drawn to prenatal and perinatal psychology in later years and enjoyed a lively dialogue with obstetricians and childbirth educators worldwide. Whether acknowledged or not, our birth stories form a deep, primordial imprint on our lives.

Twice I was able to visit my birthplace. The first time my mother was with me, so she could show me the very room where I was born in the Bruno Gutmann Home. Bruno Gutmann was a pioneer German missionary who came to Chaggaland in 1902. He was able to record the history and customs of the Chagga people as no other. In his missionary activity Gutmann came into contact with the three primal ties of clan, neighborhood, and age. He felt strongly that these were the points of contact for evangelization as well as developing and establishing Christian congregations. This was the way to reach the whole family and the whole clan with the gospel, rather than just individuals.[i]

That visit was in 1961, and the sturdy building was being used as a birth clinic for Chagga women. It was another 35 years before I could return with two of my sons and show them. The birth clinic was still there. The nurse-midwife took us through and showed us the delivery room. I congratulated the African mother who had just given birth in the same room where my mother had given birth seventy years earlier.

“The family is the best landing place for the gospel,” both my father and my husband fervently believed. In fact, this was their passion and the joy of their ministry.

“What is your passion?” I often ask my family and friends. I’ve found that passion and compassion are related. Africa , the land of my birth, the place where my father is buried and where four of my children were born, is the continent of both my passion and my compassion. That is why I cannot tell my story without relating it to this land and people that I love. I suffer when I sense a certain lack of curiosity on the part of even fellow Christians to hear the story of what has happened and is happening in this great continent.

The promise and the blessing of my birth morning have left a gilded imprint on every new morning in my life. I close this chapter with the words I have used and sung since childhood as I greet the new day and thank God for the miracle of new beginnings:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
They are new every morning,
Great is thy faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23

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