Grace Ellen Hooper Haug

"The most important thing in life is to be honest with yourself."

Grace touched many lives during her 83 years because her entire life and trust was in her God and in helping others. She was a prolific letter writer, sharing words of encouragement and counseling. Grace was also a nurse and was willing to labor long and hard for others' physical well-being. She worked in Arizona courts as a translator for Spanish speakers, to ensure they would be treated fairly. She had a natural affinity for languages, learning Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek, enabling her to read the Bible in the languages in which it was written. Grace felt each translation gave a different feeling and beauty to the words she loved so much. One of her daughters recalls in her youth walking by their mother's bedroom and seeing tears as she read her Bible and prayed. Grace likened helping and praying for others as one who was steering a boat from one side of a river to the other; you would want to take as many with you in the boat as you could.

Grace was born in Managua, Nicaragua in 1912, to missionary parents, Walter and Anna Hooper. She grew up in Central America and spoke Spanish before she learned English. At age 14 she moved to the United States, living in Michigan and then Arizona. Later, Grace went to Biola College in California. This photograph of her was taken there in 1938 when she was 26 years old. That year she married Melvin Haug, and they spent their honeymoon ministering in migrant labor camps. They lived in the Tucson and Phoenix area of Arizona and raised five daughters. Together, Grace and Melvin ministered for 54 years in churches throughout Arizona, California, Idaho and Oregon. Grace left a legacy of 5 daughters, 14 grandchildren, and 30 great-grandchildren.

Her calm, elegant demeanor created an atmosphere of serenity around her. Grace's favorite and often-quoted Bible verses were Jeremiah 33:3: "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not" and Isaiah 30:15, "l, in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." Her daughters remember her knowledge of the Scriptures equaling that of the greatest Bible scholars. But with all her wisdom and knowledge, she instructed her granddaughter, Debbi: "The most important thing in life is to be honest with yourself."

Another of her granddaughters, Rachel, wrote the following poem on Mother's Day 1996, one day before Grace passed away in Manna Choice, Pennsylvania, at the home of her oldest daughter, Ruth Anne Mincks and Ruth's husband, Stan: "To wise for this world."