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Will and Colene Norton

by Will Norton, Jr.

One afternoon in late 1947 when I was almost six years old, I walked under the orange trees behind our house at the Tandala mission and approached the back door.

Mother and Dad were standing together watching a small Congolese man who wore only a pair of shorts. He had scars all over his back and was acting out a story while he told it. He fell on the ground and then lay very still before jumping to his feet and continuing the narrative.

Davidi was a pastor of at least two churches in remote villages, and he was telling that he had finished one Sunday service early in the morning and was winding his way along a path between giant ant hills, walking to another village for the next service.

Suddenly he heard a roar, and he looked over his shoulder expecting to see a Sabena DC-3. Instead, a leopard was flying through the air at him.

He turned, and before he took his first step, he cried out, “Tata, bosana ngai te.” “Father, don’t forget me.”

He planted his foot and the leopard hit him, sinking her teeth into his shoulder and her claws into his back, tucking her tail between his legs and taking three giant leaps with him before landing flat on the ground.

The leopard’s teeth were in his shoulder, and she was breathing on his neck, and Davidi lay very still.

He did not know how long he lay there, but he could feel the heat of the sun as it moved higher in the sky. Finally, the leopard pulled her teeth out of his shoulder and pulled her claws out of his back. But Davidi could hear her breathing as she stood nearby watching.

He did not move. Finally, when he felt sure the leopard had left, he began to try to move his toes and his fingers. When he was sure that nothing was broken, he jumped to his feet and ran as fast as he could to the village.

He was covered with blood, and he called for the elders of the village. They came quickly, and he told them how Nzambe had saved him from a mother leopard. He told them that he had called on God before he took his first step, and his God guided him so that the leopard bit into his shoulder rather than his neck.

The elders were amazed.

No one meets a leopard and lives.

My parents were moved by Davidi’s thankfulness for God’s direction. Similarly, my brothers and I have been inspired by Mother and Dad’s thankfulness, despite deep tragedies. My brothers and I saw the reality of the Holy Spirit in our parents’ lives and in the lives of their missionary friends and colleagues.

*****

Mother raised us boys and went to work so that the family would have steady income because Dad always was the last one paid at Trinity, and his pay often was several months late.

I cannot remember a morning when Mother was not up before 6 a.m., and she never was in bed until at least 10 pm. She would cook dinner in the morning; work all day in an office in Palatine; and drive to Evanston and back, two or three times a week to complete a B.A. degree at National College of Education. She had a degree from what was then Columbia Bible College, but it had not been accredited when she attended. She needed a degree from an accredited school in order to get a teaching certificate. After getting a teaching position, she completed an M.A. from the National Louis University before her school sent her back several years later to get special preparation to be the district's specialist for perceptually challenged students. In the fall of 1963 she became one of the first in Illinois to teach those with learning disabilities.

When asked by her principal why she was so effective with these students, she said, “Because they know I love them.”

We children knew she loved us, too.

*****

When Mother was young, nobody in her family was a believer. She told us that she looked up at the stars in the dark Buckhead, South Carolina, night as she walked on the sandy road in front of the family farmhouse, and she knew there had to be a God. She asked the Lord to help her understand, and she found the Savior and gave her life to Him.

*****

She was a southerner.

Her ancestors had helped to establish New Bern, NC, in 1710, long before the American Revolution. But for her, home was wherever her Lord told her to live. She lived in Congo, Illinois, Nigeria, Mississippi, North Carolina and Oklahoma.

We considered her a brilliant organizer and manager. When she met you, she knew you. She knew your character and your talents, but you usually did not realize it, and she would do everything she could to help you know Jesus or to know him better.

*****

Dad was more distant, but when he was away, he wrote heartwarming, inspiring letters that he signed and often penned II Corinthians 2:14 at the bottom of the page.

During the last three decades I truly got to know him. He and I had many great times together.

In February 1985, we were being driven from Kano, Nigeria, to Jos in the Plateau state. Dr. Yusufu Turaki, then principal of Jos/ECWA Theological Seminary, pulled into the yard of several village chapels along the way, honking the car horn to get attention.

Each time a young man would come out. When he would see Dad, he would begin to run and shout, “Baba is back. Baba is back.” They had named Dad “Baba” and Mother “MaMa.”

Later, on that same trip, Dad spoke to the Free Church missionaries at their annual conference at Tandala, the mission station where our family lived during the 1940s.

We visited the house where I lived as a boy, and we stood for a long time at the grave of Timothy Lambie Norton who lived only a few days in August 1949.

During the conference Dad spoke from Luke 24. He told us that once you meet the risen Lord, you cannot be silent.

Dad and Mother, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, had met the risen Christ. He was real to them. And they never were silent about it.

*****

That focus on telling others about Jesus was enriched by Dad’s Scandinavian heritage.

In 1999 we spent a day at Wittenberg, visiting Martin Luther's home and the Castle Church where Luther tacked his 95 theses on the door. Our group stood with bowed heads as Dad read from Romans 1, "the just shall live by faith."

The next night, we had dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel in Oslo, Norway, with a member of the Norwegian parliament; the managing editor of the Aftenposten; the executive director of the Nobel Peace Prize; and Francis Sejersted, the distinguished history professor at the University of Oslo who was chair of the selection committee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The managing editor and the member of Parliament bragged about Norway's commitment to freedom of expression. They said Norway and Poland are the only nations, like the United States, that have a guarantee of freedom of expression in their constitutions.

As they droned on, Dad was becoming restless. Finally, he cleared his throat. Please excuse me, he said. I'm just a guest here, but I should tell you that you have not always allowed freedom of expression. You persecuted Hans Neilson Hauge, arrested him many times and tortured him. He was so frail when he was released from prison that he died a few years later. Then, after several years, you passed a constitution with guarantees of freedom of expression and freedom of religion.

The member of parliament and the managing editor sneered in contempt and flatly denied what Dad had said. Finally, Professor Sejersted broke in, "Gentlemen, our friend is correct. We did not always provide freedom of expression.”

Hauge had been the leader of a revival of faith in Scandinavia during the early 1700s, and the Lutheran State church had tried to stop the movement. As a result, believers gathered throughout Scandinavia to pray. When some of them came to the U.S., they formed the Mission Covenant, the Swedish Baptists and the Evangelical Free Church.

In Dad's studies, he had learned of the control of the Lutheran State Church in Scandinavia, and he was a big believer in freedom of expression.

As a young missionary in Congo, Dad had sent letters to the governor of the Ubangi territory, protesting the beating of our Congolese ministers by Roman Catholic priests or the burning of our village chapels.

Belgium was among the colonial powers that signed an agreement in Berlin in 1885, promising freedom of religion in territories occupied by European colonists. This was not freedom of religion. And again, Dad spoke up.

*****

In 1982, when Dad was the first principal of Jos/ECWA Theological Seminary, he and Mother traveled to what was then Zaire. They made their way to the Tandala mission station. They visited with Ndeki at his hut. He had been the capita at Tandala, but now he was an old man. He wanted to show Mother and Dad that he had saved their photographs and letters. But some young boys had stolen his sandúku, where he had kept his belongings.

“I’m so sorry,” Mother said. “We would give you one of our suitcases, but we need them to travel.”

“Oh, white lady Norton, it’s ok. Sooner or later everybody has to give up his sandúku.”

During a quiet moment, Dad led Mom across the palm lane, down a grassy path to the mission cemetery where Timothy Lambie Norton is buried. Timmy lived only two days in August 1949.

In tears, Mother and Dad stood arm-in-arm, talking to their Lord and thanking Him for Timmy and for the privilege of serving Him.

For my brothers and me that grave symbolized Mother and Dad’s commitment to Jesus.

*****

I have not had the kind of courageous and forgiving faith Mother and Dad had, crossing the Atlantic during World War II on a freighter carrying high octane airplane fuel, traveling a maximum speed of nine knots an hour along sea lanes laced with German mines and patrolled by U-boats.

So many times I wish I had their willingness to serve, suffer without complaining and forgive. Indeed, in family devotions Dad often would thank the Lord for the privilege of suffering for Him. What examples they have been, and how they have encouraged us despite our thinking that suffering is not right.

*****

The verse Dad referenced at the bottom of so many of his letters had come to mean a great deal to me: “… thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.”

Baba and MaMa will not be back. However, they have “spread the aroma of the knowledge of our Lord everywhere.”

 

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