My father came to the US from Norway in the early 1890's at age 17. He did what good immigrants do. He went to work and he got himself educated, both. I'm not sure about all his jobs but i do know that he worked on a great lakes steam, piano factory. He went to the auto academy in Ill and carried on at the U of M. He got his theological degree in 1908 or 1909. At that point he had a career choice to make. Should he take over a parish in MN or should he go to china as a missionary. He chose China. He arrived ther ein 1909, learned to language and go trained and aculturated ot the chinese envrionment. My mother, in Normay, wanted to be a missionary. Her true aspiration was to be amissionary in Africa. But she couldn't get a postion so at age 30, after nurses training, she received a call to be amedical missionary in Trodhgem Missionary society in Norway. She went to China and was assigned to work at a hostpiat in Yeeyung, a river town. (about a days boat ride up the yangze river from youhna). She learned the language very well, after one year her language test involved reading in chinese and tranlating to english, translating from norwegian to english and norwegian to chinese. My mother spoke very good english, norwegian, and chinese. She scored 100% on the language test after only 1 year. She did get 2 questions wrong. "What are the two major rivers in a certain provence" no one told her she needed to learn geography as well.
In 1912 my mother wrote to her sister Gertrude, in the letter she said that we have summer vacation on a summer mountain resort about 1 days boat trip and 1/2 day train ride to the north. Someone told me that there were a number of ammerican missionsary there, including some that were from Norway. i would enjoy meeting them.
Circumstantually, my father had completed his training and was vacationing at the same place as my mother. They had no conatact with each other for alomst 10 years but they had gone to the same school and church in a little town called nesse on the island of bumleh 1/2 day boat trip south of Bergen.
The next letter, is a letter on very ornate paper writien to the missionary society in Norway. The letter stated that my mother would b eleaving her psotion to marry my father. They were married on Gingung in 1913. Thereafter my father too a call to start a new mission station in the city of Stayping about 3hrs north of Gigung (train).