GROWING UP IN CEYLON

We traveled to Kandy on January 10, 1956, the day before the new school year began. We had traveled the road from Colombo to Kandy  many times during our earlier stay in Ceylon.  Familiar landmarks brought back memories.  The book-shaped mountain was called Bible Rock. Photo by Devika Fernando, https://kcchristinatime4love.wordpress.com/tag/bible-rock/ As we drove uphill to Kadugannawa, the scenery over the hills made my heart beat faster.  We were going back home, though we did not know where we would live. The Kadugannawa Pass cat through a rock along the winding road.    Our last home in Kandy before we left in May 1953 was "The Retreat", Piachaud Gardens.  Mrs. Lilian Piachaud had promised to save the annex for us if we returned to Ceylon within one year. As our return was delayed by the rebuilding of the Ebeneser, she had rented the place to a piano teacher instead. May 1953 at "The Retreat" Piachaud Gar...

I woke up early in the morning to silence. The engines were shut down. I began to hear other sounds through the porthole, and a faint light of dawn seeped in. I got up and went out on the deck. Our sea journey was over. We had stopped.   I watched as the first light of dawn changed colors and the bright sun rose behind the palms on the shore. We were just outside Colombo harbor. I heard a familiar sound among the trees. The sound rose stronger as the sun rays reached the treetops. The crows cawing had woken me. The sound was familiar from our earlier years in Ceylon. The journey from Helsinki to Colombo on the transformed minesweeper had taken seventy-eight days. A pilot arrived and guided Ebeneser into the harbor. Our white boat looked tiny among the massive cargo and passenger ships. The blue and white Finnish flag waved in the aft and attracted curiosity among the crew of the other vessels.  Soon the most curious came to visit. This was just what...

We stopped in Aden to get fuel and water for the longest stretch of the entire journey, as we were to cross the Indian Ocean to Ceylon.  Soon after we left Aden and reached the open sea, a fierce storm blew up.  I stood on the deck, fascinated by the storm. Sometimes the waves crashed over the railing just a few feet from where I stood. The lightning lit up the dark sky where the clouds chased each other. Occasionally a star glanced at me before the clouds hid the star again. The sea was furious, but I was not afraid. Questions began to arise within me. The sea kept its secrets down in the depths. Would the stars tell their secrets to the one who asked? The wind whipped up the waves up to high mountains. Our vessel was like a piece of driftwood among the high waves. Would we ever arrive at our destination? If the sea devoured us - would this trip have had any significance? No one else was out on the deck, except the crew members taking down a...

I could spend hours on the deck just looking at the ocean. For days at a time, there was no land in sight. The water was not only one shade of blue. Sometimes it was dark blue. At other times it was a transparent blue that let me see all the tropical fish in multiple colors swimming close to our ship. When storm clouds rose above us, the sea was nearly black. After sunset stars lit up the sky and millions of little reflections of light filled the water around us. My oldest brother, Toivo, explained that all those tiny bits of light were phosphorus. Just like the small shapes of stars and moons and of a cross we received in Sunday school to hang on the wall by our bed. Just as numbers on an alarm clock could be seen when it was dark, the phosphorus in the ocean can be seen only at night. We stayed for a short time in Port Said and then continued through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea. The tropical heat began to feel oppressive. The men came to the dinner ta...

There are as many ways to experience a journey  as there are people involved in that journey. As a ten-year-old girl on this journey, there wasn't much I had to do. I could play with the six-year-old Antti Tuomikoski,  or just watch the changing scenery whenever there was land in sight.  We had a few hours of lessons when the ship was not rocking too much and the temporary teacher was not seasick.  I was to study my fourth-grade books as the new school year in Finland began while we were out at sea. I had no responsibilities for  planning the route, for checking equipment, checking fuel and water usage, food supplies, recording distance, time or speed. Dad, Toimi Yrjola, center.  His brother Aarne Yrjola. to his left, the Captain.  First Mate Paavo Kauppinen to dad's right .  Paavo Kauppinen recorded the details I was unaware of.  He gave this detailed list to my brother Samu...

Leaving Finland when I was ten years old I knew that the money in my piggy bank was useless to carry with me on the long journey to the next country or countries I might travel to. I had plenty of Finnish marks and pennies – more than I had ever owned before. What should I do with them? I never thought of taking them to a bank. There wasn’t enough to make the long walk to the bank worth it. I wasn’t even thinking in such terms.   The summer was hot. There was a summer ice cream seller within a few minutes walking distance from our home. I loved ice cream and used to look longingly toward the kiosk each time mom sent me on different errands that led past it.  I seldom had any money to spend on myself. I remembered family stories from 1949, our last year in Kunming, China. The paper money there lost all its value overnight. We even had small souvenirs in our home created out of real money that suddenly was worthless.  Small beautifully pleated hand-...

My mother, Anna Wallenius, had grown up with her grandparents in Gesterby, Sibbo,  a few miles east of Helsinki.  Nobody explained to her why she could not live with her own parents who  moved to Helsinki in 1906 when she was barely a year old.  Only when she was sixteen, she moved to live with her own family. She then decided that if she ever had children, she would never leave them in the care of others for extended periods. Anna, second from left, when her parents visited Sibbo. Anna far left, one year after moving to live with her family. In her marriage vows, she promised to accompany her husband wherever he went - but not without her children. Nine years earlier she was forced to face this choice.  She had to decide whether to travel to the troubled country of China with her husband and kids or leave the children with relatives and travel with her husband. The children went with her. She had to make many difficult decisions ...

The vision that dad had had for many years was being fulfilled.  It was his highest desire to bring a whole group of people with the same vision and eagerness to take the message of the Savior of the world to other countries.  This time he did not have to travel alone as he had done in November 1929.  He was only twenty years old when he went to China.  In 1935, after six months in Finland, he brought ten new missionaries to China. Within three years four of them died tragically of typhoid and dysentery.  Dad also fell ill with typhoid in 1937 at the time his firstborn son Usko was a few days old.  Two Finnish lady colleagues just had died of typhoid in the same hospital.  The doctors gave Mom no hope of dad's recovery.  Suddenly he sat up from his deathbed and asked for a pencil and some paper.  He designed a ship that he could use as a floating mission station.  There he would train futur...