Danielle Johannessen (Nesse) Resignation Letter From the Norwegian Missionary Association (October 7, 1912)
For many years we Nesses in the U.S. have wondered whether Hans Nesse and Danielle Johannessen, (nearest neighbors and childhood schoolmates in Norway) who encountered each other in China and were married in 1913, met in China fortuitously or purposefully. Hans left Norway for the U.S. at age 17 and after his education went to China in 1909 as a missionary representing the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America. Danielle trained as a nurse in Norway and went to China in 1908 as a medical missionary representing the Norske Misjonsselskap of Stavamger, Norway. We sent an email to The Norwegian Lutheran Mission in Oslo Norway asking about DanielleJohannessen and received a copy of her October 12, 1912 resignation letter from her assignment at the Norwegian Mission Hospital in Yiyang, Hunan, China. The letter, translated below, answers the question of how they met in China and were married.
October 12, 1912
To: The Executive Steering Committee of the Norwegian Missionary Association
I am hereby requesting the honorable Executive Steering Committee for permission to resign from my position in the service of the Norwegian Missionary Association until and through July 1913.
As you already know through the widely trusted Pastor Arne Urvedt, well known to the Executive Steering Committee, I have become engaged to Pastor. H. M. Nesse of another church’s mission in Honan.
I am hoping that the honorable Executive Steering committee will be agreeable to my request that I be released from my service here at the time specified above.
I should let you know further that Pastor Nesse and I are childhood friends. Our parents were nearest neighbors home at Nesse. We are the same age. We played together when little, went to school and to confirmation class together etc. When we were eighteen years old we left our homes at the same time and made our way to the broader world. Little did we imagine at that time that twelve years later we should meet again as missionaries in China. In addition to what was a genuine friendship from childhood and early youth we have both found it to be God’s will that we hereafter shall share life’s sorrows and joys.
It is after long and serious thought that I venture to take the serious step to resign from the Association’s service which I love so dearly and which had the confidence in me to send me abroad in the Association’s service.
When I had the joy to go to China as a representative of the Norwegian Missionary Association little did I think that a few years later I would ever resign from the Association’s service.
Mission work has given me a rich opportunity to grow and I now hope to extend my horizons in a newly opened mission station (Suiping, Hans’ station) where so far no women have visited mission meetings.
Finally I would like to be permitted to express my deep felt thanks to the honorable Executive Committee for the honor and happiness I have had to be a worker in the Norwegian Missionary Society.
With warmest greetings,
Danielle Johannessen
Yiyang Mission Station 7 October 1912