Love Finds You in Nazareth, Pennsylvania

by Melanie Dobson

  Beside her, Elias took Catharine’s hand as the Count prayed. When Christian didn’t reach for her hand, Susanna rubbed her fingers together. Even if her husband didn’t love her, their marriage was blessed as holy, to work together as a couple to fulfill the greatest commission of all—to take the Gospel into all the world.

  “In the name of Jesus Christ, our Head, Bridegroom, and Elder,” the Count announced. “And in the name of our dear Father in heaven, we bring you honorably together and commission you to the colony called Pennsylvania.”

  The bell tolled above them. Trumpets blared in the courtyard below. One of the married women stepped forward and placed a new haube over Susanna’s hair, a white cap with blue ribbons, to set her apart as a married sister.

  Catharine’s parents gathered around Catharine and Elias to offer their congratulations. Another married sister kissed Susanna’s cheeks, saying how blessed she was. And in the midst of the kissing cheeks and shaking hands, Susanna glanced across the room to search for her new husband. She found him near the doors, shaking the hand of one of the other newly married brothers, and she longed for a simple word from his lips. He didn’t have to call her “beloved” or even “wife”; she would be content with just a kind word from a brother.

  As she watched, Christian turned and searched until he found her face in the crowd. The clamor around her seemed to silence, and though he stood far from her, in that moment it seemed as if they were alone.

  His hat against his chest, Christian slowly nodded to her. Then his broad frame disappeared out the door.

  Chapter One

  August 1754

  Candlelight flickered in Bethlehem’s windows to welcome the weary travelers to their new home. Even though Christian’s legs were worn from the days of walking from the harbor in New York to Pennsylvania, the lights invigorated him as he hurried up the hill with five of his brothers. If it weren’t almost midnight, he might bypass Bethlehem all together and continue onto Nazareth, but they must stop and rest before continuing their journey in the daylight.

  Signs on the sprawling stone houses announced which choir resided inside. There was a stone house for sisters who made up the Single Sisters Choir and an identical building for the brothers who remained single. There was a house for widows and one for the boys and the girls and another for the married sisters.

  Christian pounded on the iron knocker of the residence of the married brothers, and the man who answered it introduced himself as Abraham, the laborer of their choir.

  “Come in.” Abraham waved them out of the night air and into the dining room. The windows of the house were open, and a small fire burned in the hearth. “We’ve been up petitioning the Lord on your behalf.”

  Abraham swung a kettle away from the fire and ladled hot coffee into mugs to fight off the night’s chill. Footsteps pounded above them, and moments later, their married brothers, clad in nightclothes, poured into the room to greet them.

  David Kunz jogged toward Christian, his long brown hair draped over his shoulders without a ribbon to tie it. He slapped Christian on the back. “I never thought I’d see you out in the wilderness.”

  Christian laughed at his old friend. “I’ve only come because you have need of me.”

  “We have need of twenty men like you.”

  Christian took a sip of the bitter coffee. David was a blacksmith by trade, but he was much more talented at playing an organ than he was with a hammer and anvil. “I’ve never known you to need another.”

  “We all need each other in Pennsylvania.” David glanced toward the door. “I heard you were bringing a bride with you.”

  Bride?

  The word tumbled in Christian’s mind. He’d been married for three months now, but he still felt like a single brother.

  David cocked his head. “Where is this fine and perhaps slightly mad woman who agreed to marry you?”

  “She—” He hesitated. “Susanna and the other women traveled through Philadelphia to rest for a few days.”

  “Ah…but you never rest, do you?”

  Christian shrugged his shoulders. “We had plenty of time for rest on the ship.”

  “When we were on the ship, Marie and I counted the days until we could finally arrive in Bethlehem, just so we could be alone.” David winked at Christian as he drew out the word “alone.”

  Christian didn’t return his friend’s grin. Instead, he held out his hands near the fire, even though he wasn’t cold.

  How he had wanted to be like David, anxious to be alone with his bride. He couldn’t tell his old friend, though, that he dreaded the appointed time for him and Susanna to be alone. Nor could he tell his friend that he hadn’t taken the opportunity to speak with Susanna on their long journey across the ocean.

  He didn’t know what to say to her, but he had watched her from afar to make sure she was safe. He couldn’t tell her exact hair color under her haube, not without staring at her, but he thought it was a honey brown. And she had a gentle smile that seemed to calm the fire in Catharine’s spirit and the other sisters around her.

  None of the newly married couples had private quarters on the ship, and no cabin had been set aside for weekly visits. The married brothers stayed together in a large room, just as they had when they were single, and the married sisters ate and rested and worshipped together as well. Christian was married in the eyes of the church, but nothing else had changed.

  Elias stepped up beside them. “Are you talking about Christian’s wife?”

  “I was trying to, but the man won’t tell me a thing about her.”

  “Her name is Susanna Fritsche,” Elias told David.

  “Is she handsome?”

  “Of course,” Christian interrupted before Elias replied on his behalf.

  Elias rolled his eyes. “I think he is a bit frightened of her.”

  “Plenty of things frighten me, my friend, but I am not afraid of my wife.”

  “Of course not.” Elias slapped his back, and the other men joined in his laughter.

  “I’ve been married nine years now,” David told him. “And I’m still a bit afraid of Marie.”

  “You are a wise man,” Abraham said.

  “And what of your wife?” David asked Elias.

  “Ahh,” the man sighed—and then he began quoting Song of Solomon. “She is the ‘fairest among women.’”

  David elbowed the man. “And her faults?”

  “Catharine has no faults.”

  Christian choked on his coffee, but with David’s laughter, no one seemed to notice.

  “Well, then, you are blessed above all of us,” David said.

  Elias took a long sip of his coffee. “Indeed.”

  Christian stepped back from the fire, away from the laughter of the men, as Elias told them about the day he asked the elders for Catharine’s hand and how the lot had concurred with his choice. And how he had worried as he awaited her decision.

  “And then she said she would marry me,” Elias explained to the others. “The elders said it was what she desired as well.”

  Christian cringed at the man’s words. Surely Catharine had to question the lot.

  As the Brethren peppered Elias with questions, Christian moved to the other side of the room. Nailed onto the hewn logs of the wall was a large map of the colony. Christian examined it for a moment until he found Bethlehem, and then he traced his finger north to Nazareth.

  Nazareth was only ten miles away, and beyond that was the wilderness of the Pennsylvania Colony. The Brethren’s scouts had sent back long reports as they visited different Indian nations, trying to determine the needs of the Indian men and women and how the Brethren could share the good news about Jesus’s love and forgiveness with them. Christian had read every report given to him, multiple times. Even though he’d never actually met an Indian, God had called him to tell the friendly and savage Indians alike about their Savior. The desire to answer this call had beckoned him forth for months, all the way to Pennsylvania.

>   David joined his side and clamped his hand on Christian’s shoulder, glancing at the map. “Are you ready to go on another journey so soon?”

  Christian nodded. “If the elders permit it, I will leave in the morning.”

  “After your wife arrives, of course.”

  Christian wanted to discuss his mission, not his wife. “Have you been out to visit the Indian villages?”

  David shook his head. “The elders keep me quite busy here at the blacksmith shop and playing doctor when necessary.”

  “I’ve heard so many stories,” Christian continued. “I wonder what the Indians are really like.”

  A long pause followed his words, and then a voice boomed behind him. “They are very much like you.”

  Christian spun and found himself looking up at the face of an Indian man a half foot above him. Unlike David, the man’s coal-black hair was pulled back with a tie, but his nightdress was the same as the other men. Instead of the stark white skin of the others, his skin was the yellowish-brown color of sand. He seemed older than Christian’s twenty-seven years, though Christian wasn’t certain about the man’s age.

  “I don’t know.” David responded with another laugh. “Christian doesn’t look a bit like you.”

  “He is probably very glad of that.”

  “Brother Christian, this is our dear brother Samuel. He comes to us from the Delaware nation.” He waved his hand toward Samuel. “Christian comes to us from the ship Irene.”

  Christian studied the Indian with a bit of awe. In the weeks they’d spent on the ocean, he’d prepared himself to meet a native, but he hadn’t expected to meet one tonight, nor had he anticipated meeting an Indian who spoke English so well.

  The Indian man seemed amused by his trepidation. “Most white men can’t stop talking.”

  “Oh, Christian has plenty to say.” David looked over at him in expectation, but when Christian still didn’t reply, David added, “The night air has captured his tongue.”

  Samuel’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Or maybe someone gave him beer instead of coffee.”

  “I apologize—” Christian set his mug on a table. “This is unexpected.”

  “Samuel and several other Indians joined our community last winter,” David explained. “They have honored us with their gifts and their presence.”

  Christian nodded. He had traveled many miles to share the good news with the Indians, but for a moment, he wondered if Samuel had ever been a warrior…if he had ever scalped a white man.

  When Samuel turned to walk back up the stairs, Christian felt like he had failed the man. He reached for his mug of coffee on the table and took another long sip.

  David gestured toward the stairs. “The Savior will teach you how to love our Indian friends.”

  “I am here to teach them the truth.”

  “You can’t just tell them,” David explained. “You have to show them God’s grace before you share the truth of salvation.”

  Christian winced. “It is the truth that burns within me.”

  “I pray God will teach you how to love the Indians.” David paused. “And I pray he will teach you how to love your bride as well.”

  “I don’t know what you mean—” Christian started to protest, but David silenced him with a wave.

  Christian leaned back against the table.

  Even as he coveted David’s prayers, he knew he could never love Susanna Fritsche Boehler. Not when his heart longed for another.

  Chapter Two

  Twelve sisters rested on the mats and blankets spread across the weathered floor of the log church halfway between Philadelphia and Bethlehem, at a marshy place named Falkner’s Swamp. Cool rain stole through the cracks in the walls and roof, misting Susanna’s blanket and nightdress. Even with the wool blanket covering her shift, she shivered in the darkness.

  “They should have split us into groups,” Catharine whispered into Susanna’s ear, “so we could all sleep in someone’s home.”

  “We wouldn’t be in homes. We’d be sleeping outside.”

  “We might be drier if we were in tents.”

  Her eyes closed, Susanna pulled the damp blanket up to her neck. Her body ached, and even though she desperately wanted sleep, it eluded her. The trip to America had been an arduous one for all of them. After four weeks of travel across Europe, they embarked on a ship in Holland, and for the next two months, they’d weathered storms and treacherous waves across the Atlantic until they’d finally anchored in the New York Harbor.

  While they were on the Irene, Susanna had battled fierce headaches and nausea, but she thought her sickness was from the rolling waves. Once she got off that boat and onto solid ground, she’d assumed both the pain and nausea would disappear—but three days had passed and her sickness still clung to her like her damp clothes, reminding her of her weakness when she so wanted to be strong.

  On the ship, she’d dreamed of the comforts of a featherbed, of hills to roam, of sunny skies and warm fires and roasted meat. Instead of resting or wandering in New York, though, they’d been whisked away from the shipyard on a wagon and bumped along for a good day to Philadelphia. Then they’d spent two nights on the floor of an inn before they started to Bethlehem.

  While Susanna had yet to sleep in a bed, the sisters ate roasted pheasant in the village tonight for dinner. But instead of being satisfied with the food, her stomach still rumbled.

  Catharine inched closer to her. “They should have let us go with Christian and Elias to Bethlehem.”

  “The men walked the entire way.”

  Catharine sniffed. “I would have walked.”

  “I wish I could have walked.” But even if Susanna had wanted to go, her body wouldn’t have allowed her to walk that far, not yet. She needed a few days’ rest and some ginger tea and she would feel better again.

  In Philadelphia, members of the Lutheran church had given them bags full of tea, coffee, chocolate, and spices for the celebration her congregation called a love feast. Tomorrow night they would celebrate what the Lord had done for them. A new home. A new mission. And most of all, that their Savior had brought them safely across the seas and land. He had provided a safe journey for them and friends to welcome them when they arrived.

  Catharine pushed her wet blanket away from her. “I’m going to freeze.”

  “It’s August,” Susanna said with a sigh. “None of us are going to freeze.”

  One of the older sisters called to them from across the building. “And none of us will sleep, either, if you two don’t stop talking.”

  Catharine ignored the woman. “If Elias were here, he would find me a warm and much drier place to sleep.”

  “If your husband were here,” the woman said, “he would be sleeping outside with the rest of our men.”

  Catharine was silent for a moment, and in the silence, Susanna wondered what it would be like to long for Christian like Catharine longed for Elias. The farther they traveled, the more Susanna dreaded being alone with Christian Boehler. Even though he’d talked at length with the brothers on their journey, he’d made no attempt to be with her.

  How was it that her husband had no desire to know the woman he’d married? She hardly expected that he would want to know her in a biblical way on the ship, but she thought he would at least ask where her family had come from before they joined the other families at Hernnhut on the Count’s estate. She hoped he would wonder what pleasured her heart and what made her sad.

  Long ago, her father’s eyes sparked with adoration and desire whenever her mother walked into the room. They would hold hands and whisper late at night when they thought Susanna was asleep. They never seemed to stop talking or debating, but even when their voices were raised, Susanna knew they loved each other.

  While she’d always wanted a marriage like her parents, she could learn to be satisfied with a husband who admired her even in the smallest way. What troubled her heart the most was that Christian didn’t care enough to ask basic questions.

 
; Tears dampened Susanna’s cheeks, and she wiped them on the wet blanket. Many of the sisters told her how blessed she was to be chosen for a man like Christian, but right now her marriage felt more like a curse than a blessing.

  Catharine elbowed her. “When we get to Bethlehem, we’ll be able to sleep with our husbands.”

  “Catharine”—she hissed—“don’t talk about that.”

  “Well, we will.” Catharine paused. “And you and Christian will be able to sleep together every night on your mission.”

  Susanna rolled over. None of the women were quite as blissful about their match as Catharine. But her friend—and the other women—had to know that Christian had no desire to be with his new bride. After three months of traveling in such close quarters, it was no secret which husbands and wives had desired to marry and which had not.

  The laboress at Marienborn had clearly explained that the women were marrying messengers of the Gospel and a messenger’s first calling was to follow God, not please his wife. She assured Susanna and the other women, though, that what God had brought together, He would make complete.

  Even as Catharine continued talking about her husband, Susanna hummed softly to herself until she drifted to sleep.

  Instead of dreaming about Christian or their journey ahead to the wilderness, Susanna dreamed about sweet rolls and hot coffee and featherbeds. When they arrived in Bethlehem tomorrow night, she prayed she would be well enough to celebrate their homecoming with the others.

  Gray mantled the summer sky as two wagons filled with sisters clattered through the forest. The brothers walked beside the horses or trailed behind them, and Susanna stared into the cloak of branches and vines that surrounded all of them.

  She hadn’t slept well in the wet garret of the church last night, and instead of a cool morning to travel, the temperature climbed higher by the minute until the heat sucked out the little energy that remained in her body. As they rode toward Bethlehem, she struggled to keep her eyes open.

  The wooden wheels hit another rut and tossed her around like the ship had while on the waves. She clutched the side board, pain shooting through her nerves as her body shook.