Armenia
Excerpt of private letter from S. Bodil Biørn.
God's grace and peace.
May the Lord give you and all dear Norwegian friends a blessed year! Sincere thanks for all the prayers and for all the love. It is always a pleasure to hear from home and notice all the friends' faithful prayers and love and warm interest in the Lord's work in Musch. It hurts me so much that I will not be able to write home more often this year either. Correspondence with Frankfurt, the schools, all the work with the sick and much more requires a lot of time and a lot of work. May the Lord send v. Dobbelers or another male missionary to Musch next fall; so that I could let go of the management and responsibility of the station, then I should be very grateful and then I could totally devote myself to the sick and poor. Methinks I am only doing half of everything, as it is now, but the Lord knows, he will arrange everything according to his wise will.
The school and the assembly building are soon complete, then everything becomes easier, because I have to look after and arrange the work and the accounts. But it is thought of building an orphanage this spring, but I have written that they must send us one who can oversee the construction work, since I cannot or will not be responsible for it all. Now we shall see how it turns out, we are currently working to get a building permit and transfer the property to Mr. v. Dobbelers name.
You can believe we have got a big solid and pretty building. The assembly room upstairs is big bright and beautiful, the school rooms downstairs, there are 4 rooms for school and then there is one upstairs for the two teachers Margarid and Maritza, a bright cozy little room. Praised be to the Lord who helped us to complete the work, if the Lord had not built the house, everything would be in vain. You cannot believe how many hardships we have on the part of the government; they stopped the work time and again, and there were two officers who were overseeing and who constantly came and looked. We had to give them a proper "backschich" gratuity otherwise it would have been impossible to get moving. Day by day the Lord helped.
The school is progressing well, it is one of my sun rays in the cold dark Musch. There have been many expenses for wood, handicrafts and furnishing of the teachers' room, etc., and there are still many things missing, but so far, the Lord has helped and provided what we needed. There are now 108 students, but we could accommodate many more if we wanted to, but the two teachers cannot oversee more, and we cannot afford to hire a third. If God provides funds, I will hire another one next school year. Pray that the Lord will bless all the young people and that He will fill the assembly hall every Sunday and every Thursday with many searching souls and fill our Armenian pastor and all of us with his holy spirit so that we may become warm and zealous witnesses for Jesus.
We had no joyful Christmas party this year. We were looking forward to it for so long, and on December 24th. we also celebrated with a lovely party with all the children and our teachers and aides and some invited in the new assembly hall; but at night Baron Arsen, our teacher at the boys' home, became so ill, and he died already on the morning of the 26th, which was a great, great sorrow and a great loss to us all. He had a cold in November, but was up again and healthy, but not strong. Then he got a new cold, froze terribly, and had such a shortness of breath. The last night when Rupen and I stayed up with him, we had to constantly help him and change positions. Poor man, he suffered a lot, but was so patient. Baron Arsen was always so helpful and kind to me, and he was one of our most capable teachers and loved his work
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