Minnesota Annual Conference

Brent Olson, Episcopal Report, Minnesota Annual Conference 2011

During the Minnesota Annual Conference, Bishop Dyck is normally presented with a gift from the Episcopacy Committee.  Last year she received a gift card to a bookstore that expired in 24 hours! 

This year, however, she was given a different type of gift.  This year, she received a commitment to save lives from malaria.  Brent Olson from First UMC Ortonville was chosen to speak for the committee, but his words were not the stereotypical call to action.  As a grandfather to three, beautiful Ethiopian children, who could have faced malaria, his desire to end deaths from this disease is quite distinct.

Brent’s daughter and son-in-law initially had adopted two children from Ethiopia.  Six months before they traveled to Ethiopia to get the children, their picture was already on Brent’s refrigerator.  He fell in love with them from the picture alone, but international adoption is complicated.  Shortly before his daughter and her husband traveled to Ethiopia to bring the children home an unknown relative claimed them.  Their adoption of these two children was abruptly ended.  Brent and his wife tried to find a way to help support the children monetarily, but they were not allowed.   

“Those children are just gone from our lives forever.  When you’re talking about deaths from malaria, this is who you’re talking about.  This is exactly who you’re talking about – children under the age of five in places like Ethiopia, Sudan, the Congo.  These children are out of my life – I don’t know where they are, I can’t contact them, take care of them, protect them, so I admit I became involved in the Imagine No Malaria campaign under false pretenses.  I cannot save these children unless together we save them all.”

Brent’s stirring call to action reminded the conference attendees “in the end, this campaign in Minnesota isn’t about saving 180,000 lives.  It is about saving one life, one unique, valuable, wonderful life.

One hundred and eighty thousand times.”