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    Ripples felt across the world

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    This may have been the most followed US election in India. Of course in Jharkhand there are so many other greater concerns that most of the people didn't know the results but they all seem to have a sense of who Trump and Hilary are. There are of course extreme right wing Hindus who have made him into a god. But for most people I think it is a bit bewildering to many that the nation that represents democracy in the world (debatable, I know) is possibly poised to change that (remains to be seen). The Hindustani is not perhaps the best representation of newspapers, but is one you can read.
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     "Don of a New Age" Don means mafia thug here.. But Bollywood has managed to make that somehow into a heroic figure by casting India's beloved SRK movie star in a series entitled "Don" Who knows maybe we will learn to love this Star-wanna-be. I doubt it. I'm sure those who voted him in will quickly be disillusioned if it is no longer in his best interest to appease their sway.

    Meanwhile what is really stirring India up is a sudden announcement that all 500 and 1000 rupee notes were no longer valid. ATMs were shut down and people are expected to go to the back to trade in what ever you have (I have 3 thousands and 1 five hundred. Value is about $15 and 7.5) Only apparently gas stations were permitted to accept the old currency and so there were long lines. I thought there would be long lines in the banks also, but I guess they are closed. The point is to get all the black market currency out. So apparently temples are being filled with donations in the millions of these large notes as people try to ditch their dirty money.. 
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    Meanwhile my time here has been most productive and enjoyable. Remarkably a young woman named Unupama from Delhi University came to do research at the GTC. She is from Chattisghar, an Oraon and learned German because the church where she grew up had a library of books that the German missionaries had left. She is going to study the impact of the German Missionaries on Language and Literature. We had so much to talk about. 

    Last night I was invited to be the chief guest at the sports award ceremony at the Gossner Theological College (sadly I didn't take my camera). I told them the story that my kids love about Olympic winners. That the difference between first and second place is no bigger than a hair width. We make a big deal of the winner, they become famous. But everyone after them become unknown. By a nose a man becomes the most famous man in the world and every one else is "koan hai". Luckily, as people in the light we don't have to live like that. Everyone is known and recognized for their achievements by God, and we must honor all as God honors them.
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    The staff of the HRDC guesthouse where I stay have been busy working since there is a conference going on of Mennonite partners in India. They've been having to cook for and clean after about 60+ people. I made a comment to Sucheema about how everyone is working so hard (maybe about 10 staff members). She replied with her contagious smile, "But we are all working doing our part. As long as we work together it is a good thing."  It made me think that if they feel the ripples of our angst and disunity in the US all the way over here, wouldn't it be nice to have the ripple roll back. From the heartland of India, the original peoples, may the lessons of unity, hard work and team work be followed. 
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    My next adventure is 4 days in Lohardaga, a village further into the interior of Jharkhand. It is where our ancestors once lived for 20 years. I don't know what I will find, but it is remarkable the kinds of things that I've learned.

    For instance at breakfast one of the men at the conference came up to me and told me his whole family tree. Five generations going back to Hanukh Lakra the third ordained pastor among the people of this region. He has pictures and stories to share with me. What a valuable connection.  

    It only makes me recognize that I am just an instrument. God is leading me and guiding me in this process. I don't know who will cross my path, I don't know what I need to know until it simply crosses my path. I must confess I feel a most inadequate vessel.  If only I was younger with more energy, and more equipped to ask the right questions and how to dig deeper, but as I see that my ancestors only had their zeal and their determination to go by that I also, led by the same Spirit, just push on forward and I can only say it's an amazing adventure.

    I am praying that people in the US recognize their own potential to be the change they want to see, that we can leave this season of truly atrocious hate-mongering and slander and flow into a season of reflection, reexamination, renunciation, repentance, rejuvenation, restoration and refreshing. The people here just finished singing: "let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."  Let it ripple out!

    Note: After a few days I see that there have been a lot of hat mongering demonstrations as well as people raising their voices to make it know that there is plenty still not right in the USA. We cannot assume that the march of hate will just stop over night, but don't let it weaken your resolve to go higher!
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    Greetings From Jharkhand

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    For those of you who are not on Facebook I will add what I can to this post. It isn't the best day for me to write about my first week, because I am utterly exhausted from a a long and delightful day traveling to Chaibassa. Today I am in Jamshedpur, the huge industrial city named after the first Tata industrialist. Quite a big contrast, and another day full of activities, as the church of 50 years here dedicates its new church. To say the least I am running on a thread of energy. However, I am taking advantage of the better internet here. Luckily in Ranchi It has been easy to load pictures onto Facebook and to write emails, but I couldn't even get my blog to open until now. So to take yo will share just a few photos for now. If you can get onto my Facebook page you will see so much more

    NOV 2 Mission Day, celebrating the past and continuing the good work that was started. What is remarkable is how self sufficient they are. Yes support is helpful from outside, but they do not want to start anything they themselves cannot sustain.
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    Into the interior, hills and jungle where the Adivasi are majority, among them many Christia. Adivasi
    Not much more time. But here are pictures of Chaibassa where Ferdinand and Doris Hahn lived for a year or two.
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    Part Two of Heritage Trip

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            To travel to India twice in one year is a remarkable opportunity. This spring I traveled with my father, a cousin and sister-in-law and now in the fall I will be going again on my own. I’ve sandwiched other trips in between as part of my research. In particular two weeks in July to Germany and London. Everything else throughout the year has been the far less glamorous task of writing. It has been difficult to set aside my community work and other interests to focus on writing. I’m hoping to finish up the Biography of Ferdinand Hahn, my great great grandfather, so that I can go on to write a novel based on the life of his wife, Doris. 

    I visited Ranchi, Jharkhand and the surrounding areas, for the first time, the place where my grandmother and great grandmother were born, where Ferdinand and Doris lived much of their lives as Gossner Missionaries. It was good to see the fruit of my ancestor’s labors: the church, the town council, the seminary, the schools, the hospitals, the grammar books, even some of the trees that had been planted in their time. I enjoyed sitting in the lobby of the guest house, to attempt to read the local Hindi Newspapers, only to be interrupted by a stream of people, mostly Adivasi Christians, who kindly carried on cheerful conversation, greeting me with smiles, “Yesu Sahay!” (Praise to Jesus) and a shake of the hand.  

    I look forward to hearing these joyful songs of greetings again:
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    It has been rewarding learning about the scope of my great great grandfather’s influence in his forty-two years of his work in this part of India. Even more rewarding has been how the work and the spirit in which the work had been done is carried on by a vibrant, self-sustaining church of committed Adivasi Christians. Those aware of their history are grateful for the legacy passed on to them by my great-great grandfather, my para-dada as they taught me to say in Hindi.
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    While I had grown up in India I had never been among the Adivasi. Their hospitality and cultural expressions of kindness were poured out on us. Everywhere we were greeted with flowers and song or dance in the Sarda, Kurukh or Munda languages. After the song we would be sprinkled with water from a Sal-tree branch dipped in water. Then a woman would come with a lota (bowl) and tali (plate). Each one of us would extend our hands over the plate as water was poured over them. Then another woman would come and dry our hands with a towel. In the Adivasi villages it used to be a feet washing ceremony, but with the introduction of shoes, it has turned into a hand washing ceremony for guests. In many cases a piece of cloth would also be given to us as special visitors. This would be either a traditional tribal cloth, usually white with red needlework, or a wool shawl. I ended up returning with a full suite case full of these lovely gifts. I noticed in one home they had a trunk full of cloth, expressly for the purpose of having gifts to bestow on visitors. Likely many of these cloths would circulate around the community.

    The song and the dance was another central feature of their culture. I have recently met someone in Madison, Wisconsin, who is from Ranchi and wondered why his neighbors sang songs together at least twice every day. He could not distinguish that they were different songs, due to the common rhythm and tonality of the music. I noticed that the hymns sung in the church on Sunday were actually common German hymn tunes, but the way they were sung I felt they sounded more like the Adivasi traditional songs than a melody composed by Brahms or Sibelius.

    When I heard the singing in the church I imagined some German missionary of old standing before the congregation swinging in the air trying to maintain, in vain, the European rhythm and the three-part harmony. Actually I read that the Adivasi have a particularly keen ear for western music and in those days would present quite remarkable choral concerts for visiting western dignitaries. But today, having made old German hymns their own, they delight in singing their Adivasi bhajans (hymns written in local dialects) and songs.

    The Ranchi Christ Church is a remarkable building that was built in 1855. It is a tall cathedral in red clay. Today there are five services held every Sunday that are almost all full to overflowing. The interior is designed much like it was by the Germans 150 years ago. The old chandelier that once held candles is in disuse. The preacher’s pulpit, common to the old Lutheran churches, is high above the congregational seats. Where the choir now sits used to be where the missionaries sat and the large cloth punka (fan) is still strung above, though also in disuse.  The wooden church pews seated 700 congregants.

    It was in this church where Ferdinand and Doris were married on December 8, 1871. Twenty-five years later, their oldest daughter, my great grandmother, Louise Nottrott, would also be married there. My grandmother, Marie Feierabend married twenty-five years later on the same date, but in the United States. As much as she tried, she could not make it to Ranchi to have the wedding there. A few months later she arrived in Orissa, just south of Ranchi, to start her missionary life with her husband Herman. So twenty-five years after that, when my parents were to be married, they had a lot of pressure to make the wedding date December 8th, but my dad had to start Medical School in St Louis and they didn’t want to wait, so they got married in October in Wisconsin.  In honor of this family tradition I will see what kind of celebration I can have while I am there to commemorate December 8th in the big Red Church.

    There are many important commemorative dates that will be celebrated while I am there visiting this time. Mission Day is an opportunity for the Adivasi church to recognize its roots and to celebrate the spirit that continues to inspire the work that the early missionaries started. As I blog about my travels I plan to describe more about these various celebrations. The anniversary of the 1908 Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, a core legislation that favored Adivasi rights. The anniversary of the creation of the state of Jharkhand and birthday of Birsa Munda, the great Adivasi freedom fighter, who Ferdinand knew. The anniversary of the Bethesda School and the Church newspaper all having started in the times of Doris and Ferdinand.

    My writing project shifted focus over this past year. Initially I set out only to write a novel about a missionary woman, based on the life of my great great grandmother, Doris Hahn. During my trip to India this last spring I recognized that a biography about her husband, Ferdinand Hahn, would be of interest to the people in India who were impacted by him. I discovered I had two stories that I wanted to write. A biography would feature the legacy that I share with the Adivasi Christians of India who I never had been acquainted with before this year. The story of the woman behind the man then can be a compelling sequel.

    As I continue to blog about my travels and adventures in writing, there is yet another story to tell about those who benefited from Ferdinand and Doris Hahn’s legacy. This of course would include their direct descendants. Over the past few years I have had the great privilege to meet several distant cousins. In fact, one of the trips this year was to New Orleans to meet the descendants of Louis Voss, Doris’ brother. I was struck by the fact that some of these newly discovered distant cousins had actually met the relatives that I have only read about in my research. At the very least they knew the generation that followed Doris and Ferdinand. They had grown up with family stories and documents that had over the span of time and geography disappeared from my immediate family’s memory.

    Doris (nee Voss) and Ferdinand Hahn were German missionaries to British India from 1868-1915. I found it interesting that these various distant cousins knew stories of India either direct stories from family who had lived there or through stories from the circular family letters. The circular letter would travel to family living around the world; each member of the family would add news and send the letter on to the next family member. Intriguing details about India, such as snakes in the bathroom or the little water cup they carried with them always, were mysterious abstractions to those who had no connection to India.
    On the other hand, my immediate family—my father, mother and siblings—had a connection to India but not any memory of those first generation of missionaries to India.  My father, now 91 years old, had spent most of his life also as a missionary in India. He continued following the missionary heritage, as did his mother and grandmother, all descending from Doris and Ferdinand.

    We grew up with a connection to India and missions, but we knew nothing of Doris and Ferdinand Hahn, even though Ferdinand was buried where we went to school in the foothills of the Himalayas. Making the connection with this past helps us understand a little better the importance of India, missions, and Germany in shaping our individual identity.

    My family was not alone in benefiting from this missionary legacy. What I had found out through research was further confirmed when I visited the place where Ferdinand Hahn had devoted his life’s work that had impacted the Adivasi’s of Chotanagpur. The Adivasi are the indigenous people of India that make up about 8 percent of the population. Most reside in the north east part of India. One region in particular just south of the Ganges and west of Kolkatta is what was once called Chotanagpur. The region now includes the newly formed state of Jharkhand and parts of West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. The Adivasi have over several centuries been marginalized and discriminated against. Their unique culture set them outside of India’s stratified social structure. Despite attempts to repress and remove them from their ancestral lands, the cultural identity of the Adivasi has remained strong. Nearly half of them have adopted Christianity or continue with their Sarna religion that believes in one God and a spirit world. Ferdinand Hahn is one of a handful of German-speaking missionaries who are known for helping the people preserve their language, cultural identity, and rights to their land.

    I now have one more month before I leave for my second trip to Ranchi. I look forward to visiting the Gossner Theological College that is building a Research and Resource Center for Adivasi Studies that is dedicated to Ferdinand Hahn. I enjoyed last time being part of several interesting discussions about the impact Ferdinand Hahn had on Adivasi and Christian culture and history. I will enjoy continuing in that discourse with ministers, professors, teachers, social workers, advocates, and ordinary people. 

    I will be staying again at the Guest House of the Human Resource Development Center (HRDC). I only hope that somehow I will have the opportunity to write in this environment. Here in the US it is very difficult to get a real sense of the life and culture there.  Even though Ranchi (and the other towns in the surrounding area) is now a bustling metropolis, one can get a sense of the place. To see the palm trees that surround the compound that were planted a hundred years ago by the missionaries, or to feel the warm breeze of the changing season from winter to summer, or to smell the sweet sour smell of a stagnant pond or the waft of a spicy curry being cooked over a charcoal fire. Some things have not changed over the past century.
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    Rock of Ages: Remembering Doris

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    In this picture Doris Hahn is about 61 years, about 4 years before she died.

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    This will be the 99th anniversary year of Doris' death. She died on August 19th and was buried in a tree laden cemetery on the side of a hill in the Hartz mountains overlooking the town of Hasserode, near Wernigerode.

    ​It was a bitter final year of her life. Her daughter died six months before her and her son-in-law died before that.  We know that a deaconess nurse was caring for ailing missionaries in a missionary house somewhere in this little valley.  There is no record of where this house might have been, but likely it was near the church at the bottom of the hill below the cemetery. 
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    sWhile I am focusing on writing the biography of her husband (who had died in India seven years earlier), I never forget about Doris and her story.  There was no one left to maintain her grave. Just as the grave of her husband has been left forgotten. I am writing to revive their memory, not just for sentimental reasons. The lessons of their lives, both in Germany and India, in war and in peace, in sickness and in health, in life and death, speaks to the resilliance of faith and a greater good, higher vision.

    ​She must have missed her home and church back in India. What memories had she stored in her heart. As I was browsing through pictures of my past year's travels, I found this video taken in Ranchi. The hymn is Rock of Ages and was likely sung in Hindi at the time Doris left Ranchi in 1915.  The women standing off to the left side of this video are standing where Doris would have stood.  I looked up the words for the German version of the song, and thought they would be words that ran through her mind as she passed out of this world into the next:

                            Now as I still live in the light
                            When my eyes in death takes flight
                            When through gloomy valley go
                            When I stand before the throne
                            Rock of Ages set me free
                            Hid eternally in Thee.
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    As I write the stories of these faithful ancestors. I long to bring the light of their life out of hiding. They cared not for glory, but in sharing their glory, and the glory of their God, I am continuously inspired and encouraged. I think of their stamina, their strength, their love, their sense of justice, their perseverance, unfailing hope, and perpetual joy.
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    Day 15: leaving Germany

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    It seems appropriate to see St Matthews before leaving. This is where it all began. This was where Ferdinand was commissioned to go to India in 1868. Doris went to marry him three years later. Three generations between me and them were also missionaries in India.
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    Day 14: More Research in Berlin

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    The Hahn Family tree. It is such an honor that these family relics are now being passed on to me

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    Here is the spot, at the end of the street, where my great great grandmother was born and grew up.

    Among the scores of new documents pertaining to the family was this picture of Kuhlenstrasse in Uetersen. This photo must be after 1896 when the family sold the family house and saddlemaking store, because some of the houses have changed. 
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    Marianne Wagner-Renecke was such a wonderful help in understanding some of the history of the Hahn family. She is the person who transcribed Doris' diary, from which another cousin, Ilsa Nottrott Peetz translated to English. So I am eternally grateful to her for being the instrument through which I received this inspiration to seek out my heritage. Beyond that she was a great encouragement to me for the writing of the books about Ferdinand, Doris, and possibly other members of the Hahn/Voss family.

    Her father was the son of Marie (nee Hahn) Wagner. Who was very close to Doris. In fact they died within months of each other and buried in the same cemetery, also with husband Paul Wagner,  in Hassegerode (near Wernigerode). 
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    Marianne has a stone from the house Ferdinand was born in Ketzin, and a stone from his grave in Mussoorie, India.

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    I also spend some more time with Helga Ottow.  While she is not a blood relation I feel we are both tied together in the Gossner family.  

    Gossner was the well known Pietist Evangelical*  pastor of the Bethlehem church. Now only a frame of the building near Check Point Charlie commemorates the church. It was a church known for receiving refugees from other countries. The words on the base are: "Hope for those with hope." While Gossner was there in early 1800s, people from all walks of life attended his services.  He taught much about the necessity for faith to be evident in actions. He was able, through the help of his parishioners to start the Elizabeth Hospital and many schools.  Also the Mission Society and training school that made possible for humble artisans, like my great great grandfather Ferdinand, to go out as missionaries.

    The Gossner legacy is mine in so many ways. There are family connections, but I also have a spiritual relationship with the teachings of Gossner and the impact of those teachings in the world. For example, the Confessional Church during WWII also based much of its thinking on the teachings of Gossner. 


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    * Note: "Evangelicalism (from the Greek euangelion, “good news” or “Gospel”) emerged out of disparate movements that swept through Protestant churches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first, and in many ways the most influential, was the Pietist Movement of the seventeenth century in Germany, a reform movement within Lutheranism which focused on the conversion and regeneration of the “inner man” and the belief that such an experience was necessary for salvation"
    rom.    http://www.astudyofdenominations.com/movements/evangelicalism/​