INTRODUCTION

My earliest and fondest memories during summertime, was to visit my father’s relatives.  After a six hour bus and train ride from our village to my grandmother’s home, upon arrival, I would run past everyone into the house, hurry up the long, steep stairway leading to the second floor, open the door and run into my grandmother’s apartment — right into her arms: ”Here I am!”  The cookies and milk were always ready. After a little chat came my favorite moment: She placed me on her lap and, at my eager bidding, began telling stories from her life and from the big, black Book always lying open on her table. A vivid storyteller, everything came to life through my grandmother’s words as the characters of the Bible walked out of the pages through her stories and became real people in real life! I sat spellbound as hours passed, not realizing then that through her vivid talent, the Living Word of God was being established in my heart.  It became my guide at 20 when I began seeking truth after a few years of self-declared atheist.

BERNTINE’S EARLY YEARS

To the human eye, there was nothing impressive or outstanding about Berntine Kjeldaas. Born in 1867 in Røra, a village in the Viking fjord (ocean inlet) near the city of Trondheim, she did, however, distinguish herself as one of the very few women of her day who attended college.  While there,  she encountered a spiritual awakening through the Pietist movement of lay revivalist and community transformer, Hans Nielsen Hauge. She came to faith in the living, resurrected Jesus Christ, and the Bible became her guide to life!

After college, Berntine returned home, and was ready to begin teaching in the local school she had attended as a child.  But her old  school Master had other thoughts. Peter Kjeldaas, still Headmaster and bachelor, was 20 years her senior.  He had also experienced a personal spiritual renewal; he had embraced a living faith in Christ through the Danish revivalist, N.S. F. Grundtvig, who impacted the more educated and cultured layers of society with a call back to living, personal, practical Biblical faith.  He was ready for a wife, had fallen in love with Berntine, and asked her to marry him.

In 1890, Peter and Berntine married.  They had nine children over a period of 18 years, my father Torvald being the youngest. Together, they experienced some very busy, happy years while raising their children, managing the family farm, while she carried out the duties of  the school and community leader’s wife.  The underlying strength in their marriage was their personal Christian faith and deep love and devotion to each other.  Musically talented, everybody sang and played various instruments—their home was always filled with the happy sound of music.

WIDOWHOOD

Then, a few days before Christmas 1913, tragedy struck. My grandfather suddenly died of a heart attack while waiting on the train at the nearby town on his way home, his backpack heavy with gifts and  goodies for his family’s Christmas celebration. Joyous anticipation suddenly turned to grief.  Berntine was left with five children under the age of fourteen still at home. Managing life alone and caring for her children’s needs was strenuous, but she worked the farm for 10 years before she decided to sell it.  With the proceeds, she moved into the center of a larger town, Stjørdal.  There, she built a multi-family home from which she started a small business selling milk from the farmers to her neighbors and students of the nearby elementary school. This enabled her to continue following her children’s growth into adulthood and see them married with families of their own. Her focus was hard work, a frugal lifestyle, and her trust in her Heavenly Father’s loving care and provision.

Then World War II broke out. The German war machine invaded Norway and took leadership.  Five years of horrific terror ensued. A strong resistance movement arose among the Norwegians who refused to buckle under the Nazi leadership. This resulted in several being captured and killed, or deported to concentration camps in Norway or Germany.  A couple of members of my family secretly collaborated with the resistance,  but none lost their lives, although one uncle was imprisoned and sent to labor camp.  I attribute that to God’s protection over them, thanks to my grandmother’s prayers.

My parents, Torvald and Signe, married the year before the war and moved into one of the apartments in Berntine’s spacious two story building. My aunt, Borghild lived with her husband in the other apartment, with Grandma in two rooms upstairs, sufficient for her.

WORLD WAR II

In the beginning years of the war when Hitler’s “final solution” was not yet public, Grandmother would come downstairs from her apartment, telling my aunt, “Borghild, please listen to me. Something terrible is about to happen to the Jewish people – I read it in the Bible — we must pray for them and help them!” Brushing it aside as just talk of an old woman, no one listened to her pleas. But my grandmother kept interceding, although, to my knowledge, she never during her lifetime met a Jew!

Before the war, approx. 300 Jews lived in the city of Trondheim, most of them well respected, prosperous merchants. As the war progressed, secret messages came back from Norwegians detained in concentration camps in Germany: “The Jews are being exterminated— get them out of the city as quickly as possible before they are rounded up and deported to the death camps!” Members of the resistance movement took immediate action. They secretly transported some of the Jews individually to checkpoints near the Swedish border where they were hid till they were a group to be walked across the mountains into freedom. (Sweden was neutral during the war). The farmers in the area helped by providing food and skis during the winter to make it easier to cross the mountains. A number of Jews in Trondheim who had not been arrested by the Germans were rescued from the fate of Hitler’s death chambers, due to the courage of a handful of Norwegians who risked their lives—and my grandmother’s prayers!

Right after the war, Norway was devastated, but worse than that was the public realization of the gruesome fate of the Jews of Europe. Berntine, however, was not despondent. She would come downstairs and say to the family, “Don’t worry,­ God will use this to bring the Jews back to their land. He will give them back their country!” Again, no one listened, it simply didn’t make sense.  That did not deter her—she kept on praying and interceding for the Jews and their homeland which God was going to give back to them. In 1948, three years after the war, Israel became an independent country—the Jews began returning to their ancient land!

PNEUMONIA AND MIRACULOUS HEALING

I was born in February, 1945 three months before the war ended, the third war-child of my parents. After five years of German occupation there was very little food, and everything was either destroyed or depleted. At nine months old, I contracted double pneumonia. There were no antibiotics, not even an aspirin to help reduce the fever. I ended up in a coma for twelve days; my limbs were turning blue, my lungs filling with fluid. When the family doctor arrived, he took my father aside and explained that I would surely die during the night; he could hear the “death rattle” in my breathing. If I were to survive, I would certainly be severely brain damaged. He would come early next morning to fill out the death certificate and remove me.

My grandmother came downstairs to find the nurse and my parents standing helplessly around my cradle. Had they prayed for healing, she inquired. No, not really, it was not customary. Berntine then lifted her youngest granddaughter out of the cradle, held me toward heaven and prayed, “Father, Ragnhild belongs to You, so You can take her home. But if You let her live, I’ll commit her life to Your purposes!”  Then she asked the nurse if there was anything else that could be done for me. The nurse nodded, as she remembered one remedy, although dangerous for the heart. She filled one bucket with very hot water, and one with ice cold, then she dipped me alternately into the buckets. Circulation gradually came back into my limbs. They wrapped me in a warm blanket and laid me back into the cradle.

The next morning when the doctor arrived to check on me, I was awake, alert, cooing in the cradle. I was completely healed with no signs of mucus in my lungs! My grandmother’s plea before the Father’s throne had effectuated a true, medical miracle! Puzzled, the doctor mumbled, “The Real Physician has been here before me, I have nothing to do.” He left empty handed!  During my childhood I enjoyed a very special relationship with my grandmother, realizing now in retrospect that she gave me special attention also as part of fulfilling her promise to God to guide me in His ways.

INTERCESSION

After the war, Berntine was part of a group of women who established the first local chapter of intercession for Den Norske lsraelsmisjon. I remember well as a little girl holding her hand as we walked to the one of the homes where the meetings were alternately held. Opening the door, I would see a handful of stern looking elderly ladies gathered. They first spoke on issues of concern regarding Israel – of which I remember nothing. Then they kneeled and folded their calloused hands. There were furrows between their knuckles as a result of years of clenched hands lifted up to heaven in petition for the needs of others.  They began interceding and crying out to God for Israel and the Jewish people.  I recall the aroma in the room: a mixture of mothballs, fresh coffee and hot, newly baked Norwegian pastries, mixed with something entirely different— the awesome fragrance of the presence of God! It was my first exposure to true intercession, the kind that changes nations and effectuates God’s purposes in people’s lives! I did not know then that a tremendously rich heritage was being imparted into my life, from which I have benefited greatly in the decades since then.

MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

My grandmother died when I was fourteen, which was a great loss for me and the family.  I wandered away from my childhood faith, found the 1960’s a seemingly glittering world beckoning with fascinating philosophies and secular humanism.  I fully embraced it, and at sixteen declared myself an atheist. However, four years later that bubble burst when I was drawn into occultism and encountered a dark, very different spiritual world—far from the power of God’s Kingdom and my grandmother’s faith!

At twenty, while in college, I finally “woke up“ and decided to give God a chance by reading the Bible, which brought me face to face with the risen Jesus Christ.  I embraced Him which forever changed the course of my own planned future. I immediately knew that it was primarily my grandmother’s cumulative prayers which had precipitated the intervention of the Holy Spirit Who h caused me to commit myself to Christ and His Kingdom! I had come “home”, life returned to the Word which for years had been as boring as a phone book. Bible study became an exciting journey again as I identified with the men and women of old who embraced God’s Kingdom in faith.

A deep desire grew in me to visit Israel, but I avoided taking a group tour, waiting for the right timing when I would experience Israel as an insider through people of the land.  That took place in 1983, 18 years later.  In 1997, I visited Israel, again. I met the leader of a Messianic group from among the 15,000 Ethiopian Jews who six years prior had been rescued from Ethiopian genocide.  They had been given a spiritual home in the facilities of the Den Norske Israelsmisjon in Tel Aviv. Watching the jet black Africans and the white, blond Norwegians embrace in love, I knew my grandmother’s prayers were part of this—bringing believers together as one Body, with one Faith!

R.K.’S CORNER

We trust you and your family are doing well  while enduring the many adjustments to life under the restrictions of the Corona virus.  At times, being absorbed in taking care of the many concerns on the home front, I find myself losing sight of concern for those we serve in the nations who encounter far more restrictions and challenges in their daily lives than we can imagine.
Yet, when we connect on Skype, or via other media, they testify with thanks to God for provision and protection.  Psalm 91 is one of the favorite scriptures we recite to each other … it is a reminder that our destiny and future are in His hands! He is the Lord of history, He enacts His purposes tangibly through generations!
This is a testimony of how the Lord often calls an individual from one ethnic group to embrace His purposes and goals for another.  Often His tool is that individual’s prayers.  My own grandmother, Berntine Kjeldaas, who was also instrumental in my salvation and call to the nations, was one of them.  A Norwegian Viking has nothing in common with an Israeli Jew, but my grandmother received a supernatural, prophetic revelation of God’s heart and purposes for Israel and the Jewish people, and faithfully carried that burden by intercession throughout her life.

Would you consider taking up the banner of prayer for our Harvesters and help support them financially?  You can find their many powerful and exciting testimonies on this website!