"My friend Miss Ellen Giebel"
written by Susan (Ah-shin) Tseng June, 2013
(edited by me 3-6-2015)
- A Testimony Showing God Is In Control
We met Miss Giebel about 53 years ago through a pastor whom we had known for a long time. Miss Giebel was looking for an apartment to rent on a short term. She found it hard to find a decent place for her budget. The pastor came to talk to my husband about it because he knew we had another which was next to the one we were living in. The house was actually for sale. The pastor suggested to my husband since the market was kind of slow we might as well rent it out for 4 months. My husband agreed. Ms. Giebel was so happy that she moved in right away. However, the house was sold a month later out of blue. The buyer was eager to occupy the house immediately and we had no choice but to let the transaction go through as scheduled.
As such, my husband had his construction company employee work day and night for one and a half week to remodel the room on the 3rd floor of our house to accommodate Ms. Geibel. She was very touched for what my husband had done for her. At the time, my children were all very young, so they became frequent intruders in Giebel's living space. Ms. Giebel had them read the Bible and told them religious stories. Since I was very shy, I had never spoke to Ms. Giebel till 3 days before she was homebound for the States. I cooked some rice noodle soup (米粉汤) and asked my kids to bring to her one bowl of it. Ms. Giebel was exceedingly pleased because she had been only eating ice cream from across the street for 3 days in a roll. The next day I cooked curry chicken and invited her over for dinner. The following day Ms. Giebel was leaving for US. My whole family sent her off at the airport and my husband gave her a "red envelope" (红包) that had NT$1000. On our return trip home, the pastor told us that Ms. Giebel had only NT$300 with her. She asked him to sell her old camera for NT$1000, but he could not do it. God provides. Ms. Giebel got exactly what she needed.
Ms. Giebel returned to Hualien when her one year furlough came to an end. She rented a house in town somewhere, but she did not quite liked it. Naturally we welcomed her back to live in her old quarters on the 3rd floor. A similar scenario occurred again. A few months later my husband decided to move us to a beautiful country-look area called Mei-lun美崙 (beautiful hill) on the other side of town. Since Ms. Giebel had quickly became almost a member of our family, she opted to move with us even though our new house in Mei-lun was just a small wooden two-story house. We heard confirming comments from our country folk that the American lady is just like a member of our family; when we move, she moves. Grace was just born and she essentially became Ms. Giebel's adopted daughter. Mei-lun was an undeveloped area, but it had beautiful scenery with the mountain on one side and the ocean on the other side. Still some folk could not understood why we left behind a big house in the busy center of town to settle in a rural primitive countryside. Ms. Giebel lived and ate with us for 15 years. In 1978, my family emigrated to California. As Grace grew up speaking English to Ms. Giebel, she was the only one that had no language issue in the States. When Ms. Giebel returned to the States on furlough, she always asked if spoke only English to Grace. Ms. Giebel lived in Massachusetts after she retired from her missionary work in Taiwan. We talked on the phone every week and she used to visit us in Moraga, CA once a year till a few years ago she experienced some travelling difficulties. I sent her frozen fried rice noodle (炒米粉) from time to time because I know she liked it.
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