Stories of Kindness from Around the World

She was in her late 70s when I met her and no longer physically fit. She was hard of hearing, very opinionated, and spoke broken English very loudly. Plus, she was seldom interested in listening. Instead, she talked almost non-stop. 

She had very few friends and had no family anymore, except for a son she last heard from in 1986. 

Somehow the winds of fate blew her into my life. I was a young bachelor at the time and, once a year, I used to go to the coast for a holiday. My 10 hour journey passed near the little country town where she lived all by herself. Whenever I felt sorry for her I would pick her up – along with her mountains of luggage – take her to the coast for ten days or so, and then bring her home again. And every year I promised myself that would be the last time!

She wore me out. She was just too intense. Strangely, though, that over the years something unexpected happened. She quietly became a friend. 

At the same time her life’s story gradually emerged to form a picture. It was a mosaic of memories that emerged during hundreds of kilometers of driving. The story of her life is too long to tell here, but one day I hope to document, in full, her incredible stories.

When she was a 15 year old girl she was trapped in Dresden when it was fire-bombed during World War II. She had four incredibly miraculous escapes from death. She lived through the harsh times under Russian occupation. She struggled as a single mother in a faraway country after the war, making ends meet despite all the odds. She learning to drive for the first time in her late sixties. She was always battling to survive; never giving up! 

One day, on one of our trips, I told her about my grandmother’s beautiful old piano which had become worn out and unplayable. There and then she insisted I drive her to the next big town where she made me stop so she could transfer several thousand dollars into my account. This was to pay for a full restoration. 

“Your grandmother’s piano must sing again!” she insisted. “You can repay me as and when you can. And if I die, consider it a gift.” 

I repaid her in less than a year and she really did make that old piano sing again - which it continues to do to this very day. 

One year I passed through her town unexpectedly. I didn’t really have time to stop but the car just turned off the road by itself. Not finding her at home, I started asking around. It wasn’t hard to find out where she was. Everyone knew the eccentric old German lady who lived in the small cottage at the north end of town. 

I found her in a coma following a stroke. She did not recognize me, but I felt obliged to at least spend a little time with her. It felt silly to speak when she showed no response, so I just read to her in my best school German from her Bible. I chose the passages which she had most heavily underlined. When I came to Revelation 3:12 it said, “Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God.” At that her eyes suddenly opened and she started breathing very hard. Her blue eyes bored into my face for a long time, until the light gradually went out of them again. 

She never woke up after that. Two days later she left a world in which she had never truly felt at home. 

In her house there was almost nothing that I would have wanted except a lovely oil painting of a shepherd with his sheep. I once asked her where it came from. She said her father had brought it back with him from Siberia when he was an intelligence officer in the War. One day friends of mine who handled her estate visited me and brought along a large object wrapped in a blanket. It was the painting! 

The shepherd and his sheep have been on the wall above my grandmother's piano ever since. 

I’m sharing this story because she has been on my mind tonight. And because I just realized something I have always missed until now. She told me how, after the war was over she was wandering the streets, a young girl all alone. She was slowly starving and, on the third day, she prayed to God in desperation and told Him that if she did not find food or a job the next day she would take her own life. 

The next morning she walked into a business and was offered a job in Namibia. 

When she told me this she looked at me intensely and pointed with her finger as she slowly and emphatically said, “That’s when I knew that God had a purpose for my life!” 

I think the thing that I have missed until now is a simple lesson: sometimes God allows us to go through hard times so that we can be absolutely certain He exists and that He has a purpose for our lives. She had more setbacks and disappointments in her life, than almost anyone I’ve ever known, but it did not make her bitter; it did not shake her belief in the essential goodness of mankind, or her hope in the future. 

I wanted the world to know her story, and that I was well-pleased to be her friend. I wanted to write her name on the walls of the world so that it would not be forgotten. 

Her name was Anneliese Ihnken and she was 80 years old.