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• Mother and Father Followed Their Call and Left me in an Orphanage

  2022. Ulrika Norburg.

  Konferens

  Around the turn of the century in 1900, the commitment to convert the “unsaved” was great among Sweden's Christians within both the Church of Sweden and the Free Church. It was not only a Swedish issue, but a global one, that involved most Western countries and churches. The churches' conferences and meetings contained sermons that demonstrated the need to "go out into the world". It was about the mission to convert those who have not heard of the Christian message, and the need for missionaries who could travel to all corners of the earth to missionize. Through prophecies and addresses, the calling assignment could go to anyone who was present at these meetings, which also meant that even parents with smaller children could get the calling assignment to travel the world.From the end of the 19th century, the Swedish Missionary Association, called SMF, sent missionaries to several parts of the world. For most of the missionaries, it was not possible to take their children to the mission field. To solve this problem, SMF chose to establish two orphanages at the local level: the orphanages Drott and Granås (1918-1964). The purpose of the orphanage was to receive the children of its own missionaries while the parents traveled to the mission fields in Congo, China, East Turkestan, and India. During their activities, the orphanages came to receive about 200 children that spent part or all of their upbringing in these homes while the parents were mainly on the mission field, with the exception of shorter stays in Sweden.Leaving their children behind was not a unique phenomenon. There are many examples of the abandonment of children during the same time period when the notion of the best interests of the child was highlighted and discussed. For example, visually impaired children, children with disabilities, mentally retarded and malnourished children were increasingly separated from their parents to be left in government and philanthropist movements / homes / institutions / orphanages / schools from the mid-19th century until the 1960s. In the case of missionaries, however, the reasons for separating their children from home were a consequence of following their calling. It expected more important assignments than just being responsible for its family. In that respect, the reasons for the abandonment and division of the family need to be considered rather unique.This presentation is about the intersection of the mission to become a missionary and the mission to be a parent: the mission to walk on God's calling and to practice parenthood at a distance, from the other side of the world. The presentation is based on the association's material on missions and the orphanage's material, such as minutes and correspondence between the children and the parents in the field.

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