On my recent Orient missions trip, I had a 9-day stop-over in Denver, Colorado. This visit to Denver was a wonderful blessing because it culminated into a diamond ring for me!!! The roots of my incredible love story date back several decades.

I was a furloughed missionary in 1957, and was sent to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to speak at an EFC missions conference. Once I located the church, I asked for directions to the parsonage where I was to have supper that evening. I asked a soot-covered workman who was fixing the furnace for directions. He kindly directed me to the parsonage next door. I asked him, "And who are YOU? " "Oh, I'm the janitor here," he replied.

That evening when the pastor joined the family for supper, I was surprised to find that the janitor was Pastor Vern Olson--"fix anything kind of guy"! When we crossed paths later at EFC National Conferences in the '60s, we'd laugh when I'd address him as "The Janitor!"

This year in late spring, having lost track of him for several decades, I got a surprising phone call. "This is the janitor calling," Pastor Olson stated when I answered the phone. This time he wasn't laughing. He was devastated and overwhelmed with loneliness after losing his beloved wife last winter. He'd been looking through the EFC missions prayer guide for old friends in ministry to share his grief and loneliness. When he phoned his old Trinity schoolmates, the Roger Anderson family, he found they were struggling with a severe medical challenge and decided not to burden them with his problems. He asked them about me as someone to unload on, for I'd worked together with the Andersons for many years in Hong Kong. They encouraged him to call me, and so he did.

I sympathized, remembering my dad's loneliness in the same situation. I prayed with him over the phone and told him to call me again if he needed someone to talk to. I also made it clear to him that I was not interested in marriage. He agreed saying he just needed someone to talk to during his grief.

Our phone calls continued. The more I came to know this transparent Godly man from the hours on the phone, the more I admired his qualities. It was uncanny how much common ground we shared. We shared the same life goals, standards, life patterns and habits. We had the same Swedish heritage and were both from the Evangelical Free Church denomination. We grew up under the influence of a daily family altar, as well as on dairy farms in Wisconsin and Nebraska.

Vern and I attended the same schools and knew the same people. He was on the Trinity Divinity School faculty when I was a student there, but we never crossed paths. We share the same passion for personal evangelism and church planting. God has used him to plant 45 new Evangelical Free Churches while he was teaching at Trinity! I soon discovered that this former farm boy taught in four universities, four colleges and four seminaries around the world while also pasturing in churches!

As a young missionary, I told God I wished to serve Him with all the strength and energy of my youth. I did not want to be encumbered with family. I could marry after retirement, but not before. However, retirement blessings and Chinese ministry brought such contentment that I was no longer interested in marriage. I declined marriage opportunities since retirement and I planned to stay put until my death.

I consented to meet Dr. Olson when he came to the October missions celebration at Crystal Free, Minneapolis because my life wasn't mine to control. I also emphasized to him that I was so content where I was that even God would have to do something very drastic if He wished to move me away from my home before I died! In Wisconsin I had my family, my home church and friends, and a Chinese ministry in the Twin Cities.

At that time I thought my life had been so unique that there would be no man alive who could really understand where I'd been. After growing up on our farm, I'd had 44 years in Hong Kong doing student work, church planting, and personal evangelism. I also spent the last 35 years teaching at Evangel Seminary.

When I learned that one of the seminaries where Vern had taught was Evangel Seminary in Hong Kong, it blew my mind! Unknown to me, he had come as a short-term teacher to Evangel Seminary in 1996, just after I left Evangel for arthritis treatment and Mandarin study in China! Having taught my Chinese students in my school, he would know and understand first hand, my last 35 years of ministry there! Could all this be just a coincidence? This relationship was beginning to look more and more like a "God thing." If God had really engineered these circumstances, I couldn't wiggle out of this relationship so easily. I pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind, unwilling to face them. I also did not dare to discourage his phone calls, which had grown to an hour or more each morning and evening! After so many hours of phone calls for days, weeks and months, we'd really came to know and understand each other inwardly. I counted this as "ministry" to help one of God's old warriors! But to him it grew to mean much more.

When Vern proposed to me over the phone (we still hadn't seen each other for at least 30 years!), I told him that I respected him and admired all I knew of him, but I was not emotionally involved! "But I know some missionary gals who really want to get married. Let me introduce you to some of them." I'll never forget his reply, "No, I want you, and I'll wait for you as long as it takes!" Eventually he won! I couldn't ignore the mounting evidence that God was bringing us together. I became convinced this would be an "arranged marriage"--arranged by God!

Vern and I were pledged to each other before my Orient trip. I wanted to see my former students in Hong Kong and hear what God was doing in their lives. If they heard that I was soon to get married, that's all they'd want to talk about! So we kept our plans a secret. Aside from my pastor and his wife, no one else had even an inkling of our plans! On my way home from this Orient missions trip, I could spend nine days in Denver with Vern and his family. We planned to have an official engagement, complete with diamond ring, and then I would go home to share the news with my family and home church. Finally, I would send one email and all Hong Kong would know our "news of the century"! Such was our plan.

There are about 8,000 Chinese in the metro Denver area. Pastor Vern Olson was instrumental in starting the Chinese Free Church of Denver, now pastored by a couple of my former Evangel Seminary students. What an opportunity this will be to minister together to Denver Chinese, as a team as God opens doors!

It seems my whole life has been a series of miracles. This new move is frosting on the cake. Little did I realize when I chose to give God my best years, that he would reward me with a retirement beyond my wildest dreams--including a wonderful, godly husband, that I hadn't even prayed for. While I had the joy of serving Him in Hong Kong, someone else was going through labor pains, giving me a ready-made family of five children and 18 grandchildren, all of whom love the Lord! I anticipate growing to know them. I'm overwhelmed with blessings. As Hebrews 11:6 states, "Surely, GOD IS A REWARDER of those who diligently seek Him."

(Doris Ekblad spent three childhood years in Inner Mongolia where her parents were missionaries to the Chinese. At the age of five, she knew God was calling her to return as a missionary to the Chinese. When her Mom died there of meningitis before she turned six, her Dad shipped her and her seven-year-old brother home to the States alone by ship, while he stayed on because "There aren't enough people here to tell them about Jesus." This confirmed the burden already in her heart. She said to herself, "You don't know it now, Dad, but some day I'll come back to help you." She never got away from that vision. Officially, she retired in 1997, after serving 44 years in Hong Kong. But with much joy, her ministry to Chinese continues wherever she is.)