In the summer of 1966, my Dad and Mom, my younger brother, Robert “Bobby”, and I moved from Bogota, Colombia to Camrose, Alberta. I turned eight years old that October. My three older sisters, Agnes, Alice, and Anita, were launching their lives from Camrose. During one year missionary furlough and three year leave of absence from Colombia, Dad taught at Canadian Lutheran Bible Institute, 1966-70.
A deep memory of Pastor and Mrs. Aasen(AH-sen) comes from Dad and Mom taking Bobby and me, perhaps in 1967, to visit the Aasens in their small room at Bethany Nursing Home. In our neighborhood, Bethany was a short walk up the driveway from the Camrose Lutheran College Cafeteria.
As a boy, I learned respectful addressing of parents, pastors, teachers, doctors, and others in authority. Honoring all elders, we spoke their titles and last names. I only recently learned Pastor Aasen’s first name: Anders, and Mrs. Aasen’s first name: Marith (MAH-rit).
Pastor and Mrs. Aasen were determined Christians. Their example encourages equipping the Lord’s people for lifelong walking in Christ, caring for aging loved ones, and sharing the eternal Good News. Having pastorally served the Word of the Lord thirty-five years in Minnesota and twenty-three years on the West Coast, the Aasens retired in 1957 to chaplaincy work at Bethany in Camrose. By 1968, Mrs. Aasen was bedbound. Pastor Aasen made fresh fruit and vegetable juices for his dear wife. He tenderly fed her food and drink for her body along with the Bread of Life and the Living Water of the Holy Spirit. Even as Mrs. Aasen’s mind and body were wasting away, her inner person was being renewed in the Lord day by day.
To our heavenly Father, Dad and Mom prayerfully commended Mrs. Aasen. She finally died April 5th, 1968. Such commending may help us daily rededicate ourselves to following Jesus. Being filled with His Spirit for our walking for Him, we may look forward to the certain hope of the resurrection of the body unto life everlasting in the coming New Earth. Like the Aasens, we may trust in the Holy Tri-Une God offering all people saving faith in Christ Jesus. We may learn to love rightly from the eternal self-giving love of God the Father sending God the Son, embodied, truly en-fleshed, for us, in the unity of God the Holy Spirit, for our sake!
I prepared to walk thirty miles, in May of 1968, for the sake of the Miles for Millions march, held for the first time in Camrose. Two schoolmates, Grade Four fellow hockey players, Kendall and Reg, agreed to walk with me. We each had signed up sponsors pledging a penny, nickel, dime, better yet, a quarter a mile. A quarter bought a whole gallon of gasoline! We three boys committed to hiking the full thirty miles mapped out in and around Camrose. On that brisk, sunny, Saturday in May, we marched to the glory of Our Father in Heaven and to make contributions for the sake of starving millions. We prevented getting blisters on our feet and took food and drink breaks at check points. We concluded our honorable walk at 9:15 p.m.
That same May, Pastor Aasen had also signed up sponsors for his walking in the Miles for Millions march. Jumping to their own conclusion that “old Pastor Aasen” would not be capable of walking more than five miles, some businessmen grandly decided to pledge him not coins, but several dollars a mile! Little did they know Pastor Aasen.
Little did these businessmen know that Pastor Aasen kept in fine shape walking from Bethany around our neighborhood as well as downtown including to Messiah Lutheran Church. Little did they realize that “old Pastor Aasen”, into his nineties, enjoyed challenging the Camrose Lutheran College Boys Football Team to pushups–jovially outdoing a number of them!
That Saturday, in May of 1968, Pastor Aasen got up, shaved, breakfasted, checked in, and officially started his own walking in the Camrose Miles for Millions march. Pastor Aasen marched in fine form, I was told, to the twelve-mile checkpoint, Charlie Killam School, for a quick lunch and then to go on. Word of this quickly spread downtown.
The grand businessmen rushed over to persuade “old Pastor Aasen” to stop! Pastor Aasen told them he was eager to walk all thirty miles, being certainly capable of so doing. Yet, Pastor Aasen did see their dismay in their figuring how many more of their dollars this would cost them. They had judged him wrongly in their grandiose pledges, foolishly assuming he would barely make it five miles. So, Pastor Aasen reluctantly, yet graciously, then agreed to bow out of the Miles for Millons march. He firmly told his grandiose sponsors: “For your sake!”
I remember Dad and Mom talking with Pastor Aasen about home mission planting. Perhaps Aasen or another pastor was planting a church in a California town controlled by an evil man. This bad boss blatantly rejected Jesus Christ. Yet, the mission pastor shared daily and freely the true Gospel of Christ Jesus choosing to lay down His life, for our sake, and on the third day rise, bodily resurrected, to ascend and intercede, for our sake! He invites us to receive His grace and truth for our following Him in inviting others to walk with and for Him.
But, the hostile big boss ordered his crew to go, each Sunday morning, to the property next door to where the mission church services were held. During the congregation’s service hour, the crew carried out their orders to make lots of noise, raucously pounding hammers and shouting obscenities to intimidate the followers of Our Lord Jesus the Christ.
The pastor kept reaching out a number of weeks to people in the neighborhood. Pastor may have asked the big boss more than once to please stop sending his crew over to make such an ugly commotion next door to the where the mission gathered on Sunday mornings.
One Sunday morning, during the service, the crew’s cacophony was extremely offensive. Leading the believers in Christ, the pastor earnestly prayed with a clear voice to Our Lord to please stop the big boss from disrupting the services. Suddenly, the crew stopped their loud commotion. The big boss had just unexpectedly died!
The mission congregants bore witness that the sudden death of this hard-hearted, Christ-hating, big boss occurred during the time the pastor had been praying, not that the man die, but that Our Lord Jesus please stop him and his crew from disrupting the church services. Of this event’s recounting, people were cut to the heart, the gift of true repentance was received by a good number, and there was a real turning to walk in following Our Lord Jesus.
I am reminded of the mission planting and prayers of the Apostle Paul proclaiming Our holy and merciful Lord abounding in steadfast love for our sake. Our Lord Jesus invites all people to walk in His Spirit in following Him through His Word. We need to receive gladly and proclaim humbly the One, True, Living God revealed clearly in Christ Jesus for our sake!
Pastor Aasen was out walking, likely to church, on a bitter winter day, possibly the deep freeze of January 1970, before Dad and Mom, with Bobby and me, returned to the Colombia mission. The four of us, in our white 1964 Dodge Dart saw him in his black overcoat striding straightforwardly. Dad stopped the car for us to offer Pastor Aasen a ride. He good-naturedly declined; yet he saw our concern for him. So, Pastor Aasen graciously got in the back seat with Bobby and me, accepting our offer of the ride, cheerfully and firmly telling us, “For your sake!”