Communications Blog
by Eileen Hodgetts
July 4, 2010

Thought for today:  Psalm 139: 8,9
“If I rise on the wings of the dawn; if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. “

My daughter was born on the 4th of July, in a hospital in the south of England, and as I looked at this tiny new British citizen I had no idea that she would never celebrate another birthday on British soil, that she would, in fact, become an American citizen, that she would go all the way through school and college in the United States and would settle in a small town in Ohio. I knew nothing about the US and had absolutely no intention of going there. When someone said to me “the 4th of July is something in America , isn’t it?” I just said, “Well, I’ll never need to know that.” I had my heart set on going back to South Africa .

So what happened? By the time Suzie was 6 months old, Graham had signed a contract for us to go to the USA for a year. That was 1970 and we are still here!. And my 4th of July baby has never ever had to go to school or work on her birthday, and has always had fireworks in her honor. What a bonus!

All I knew about America was what I had learned from Doris Day, Rock Hudson romantic comedies, or John Wayne cowboy sagas, and then, just before we came here I saw Midnight Cowboy. What a shock. Now I didn’t know what to expect. But we came. Pittsburgh welcomed us with open arms. We found a church, we found Christ! And eventually we found Christ Church . Thank you America for being such a great place to raise a family. Thank you for allowing free enterprise. Thank you for encouraging freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Thank you for taking our family and making it what it is today. And thanks be to God who inspired the Founding Fathers to break free and establish such a great nation.