A collection of the books written by Doris Stensland.
“My great grandfather Ole Overseth worked on the railroad to get money with the goal of claiming some land. He made his application at Vermillion in April 1872 for a homestead in Norway Township,” she said. “The part of Norway where my ancestors came from was full of trees. But they came to this land that was empty with no trees. They’d get seedlings from the river banks and plant windbreaks in rows.” Doris became curious about her great grandparents after looking at the Norwegian language hymnal of her great grandmother, Johannes Overseth. In the front of the hymnal, she had written her name and a reference to Philippians 3:20, which reads: “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” For a woman who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, traversed half a continent, endured the hardscrabble life of the prairie, and traded her Norwegian citizenship for American citizenship, Johannes’ brief reference to scripture bears witness to a Christian’s true citizenship has nothing to do with nationality and that the ultimate reward is not an earthly one. Much of Doris’ writing is grounded in her Norwegian heritage, her Christian faith and her decades on the farm. An example in Our Words Are Blossoms is this excerpt of free verse from “Grandpa’s Barn” where she compares the barn to the Biblical ark:
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September 2021 | www.agemedia.pub | The Farming Families Magazine
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