“Certain cares trouble me.  Just now I laid them all at the feet of our heavenly Father.  Now I do not worry more about anything.  He surely will arrange everything.  I will tell you, my brother, what it was.  But for the time, keep it to yourself.  I cannot take my daughter to America now, since she is so weak.  Here in our homeland she will get well sooner.  My beloved grandchild I need not take there, since he has enough here to live on.  Now when my daughter takes this estate over, she needs a manager.  It is hard to find one that would not cheat her.  Then I thought, why does she need a manager, if she still has a father young enough, and who knows how to run a farm in Europe?”

“Oh, Stephen!” Filina was astonished.

“But, you know, there is a great hindrance.  My farm is deeded to me.  My brother-in-law I can settle with, and thus that would not hinder me.  But my beloved wife was born in America.  Will she want to leave her home and go to a foreign land?  I would not like to constrain her in anything.  I will first have to write to her about all that has happened, and if I see from her answer that it would not be too great a sacrifice for her, I will go for her.  I will then sell the farm and deposit the money, because I would not want to add to this estate.  It is big enough for us to make a living, and I could earn, as a manager, bread for myself and my wife, and she could rest; she has worked enough.”

“Day and night will I ask the Lord Jesus about it,” said Filina, “that He will lead your wife to agree, because round about us is only darkness.  No one cares for these souls.  They do not know the Lord Jesus.  I have not been able to imagine how we could live here when the boy would leave us.  But you could take his place.”

“That hardly, Peter.  The Lord Jesus has in Palko a faithful servant.  That measure of the Holy Spirit that this child has, I do not have.  But instead I have experiences with my Lord.  The last ten years of suffering united me very closely to Him who saves.  I know your sorrows.  Considering the situation, I long to be the witness of God’s grace here in my homeland, where there is no one else.  That also draws me here to my beautiful homeland.  Therefore I hope that my Agnes will agree that we shall come, and it will happen after all as your father used to say to the people; ’When Stephen shall have made some money beyond the sea and comes back again, we shall live together.’  Now there is no more all of us, only we two.  And if the Lord grants me to come again, do you know what is the first thing that I will do?”

“I do not.”

“I will rebuild our hut.  It shall lay waste no longer.  I will prepare it for Petrik.  You shall raise him and give him the ground and the fields.  So if he lives, we can take care of him together.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sometimes the days pass as quickly as a thought, and the weeks like a dream.  In the following weeks which just flew by, Bacha Filina took Palko to his home.  He became acquainted with his family.  Just then Juriga’s son and daughter-in-law came from America, and Lesina had to find a place to move to.  They all rejoiced in Palko.  His mother and grandmother could hardly stop caressing him.  Old Juriga had a good cry when the boy hugged him.