Page 225 - The Diary of A. H. W. Behrens

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1912
in Bethanie, ate with Sister Christine and when necessary stayed in Bethanie for a couple of days.
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During the night at 2 o’clock of 4 April 1943
I am sitting in the chair and am coughing thick phlegm, almost every night for a full hour and I pray and recite psalms and hymns and thank my Father in heaven that I can still see and hear and still have a good memory at 89 years. If your eyes are clear as glass, what a gift this is!! How grateful can I be!!! May our good God and Lord mercifully grant me this until my end. Amen. Amen.
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When Director Harms returned from India I received a letter from him that he would be at Beckett on such and such a day and if we had not returned by then they would take my house from me and the mission farm Losperfontein from the congregation as arable and grazing land.
I wrote him a letter which he then also received at Beckett on that day that he would achieve nothing by threatening us, the congregation could do without that farm. But if he were to come to Bethanie as a father and bishop of the congregation and would talk kindly and would also make some concessions, everything could change for the better. He did not come, took the farm from the congregation and appointed cousin Georg Behrens to catch all livestock that came onto the farm, took away the arable land and now everything was a lot worse than previously. Cousin Georg soon found that this work harmed him and discontinued it.