Anena Christensen served in a mission in India, 1926-1939. For that period, she was the only ELS representative in a foreign mission field. She managed the Girls’ Boarding School in Amber, India where sixty children were under her care. In a 1931 letter, she reported that her work consisted of “teaching ten classes daily, seven of which are for forty-five minute periods, and three for half-hour periods. That, together with managing the school and looking after the girls, together with my language study (classes were taught in the Tamil language), keeps me busy.” In that same letter she noted that, before proper screening was installed in her house, “snakes, scorpions and centipedes haunt the place.”
When she returned from India in 1939, she gave a small wooden elephant to her friend, Nettie. Nettie died in 1963 and the elephant was awarded to her first grandson. It has become a family souvenir, a small reminder of Grandma and a testimony to Anena Christensen’s mission service in a foreign land on behalf of our church.
World missionaries leave their homes, families and the comforts of American life to bring the Gospel to faraway places. We honor and thank them for their service to the Savior!
What Paul wrote about the loving recognition of those who lead/serve in the Church applies today: “Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you . . . Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work (I Thessalonians 5).”
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