Missionsvennen

The processional cross of Øyestad congregation

Øyestad church is an old parish in the Arendal Municipality of Norway. Wikipedia tells me it was built around 1200 A.D. In 1797, my third great grandfather Hans Jacob Grøgaard was installed as the parish priest there. While there, he worked with the rector to introduce compulsory smallpox vaccination.

I visited the parish in 2023 and was shown around by the sexton. He showed us the processional cross, a recent creation, and told of its story. His neighbor was plowing his field and came across a massive stump under the soil. The stump was apparently about 2,000 years old. The sexton asked if he could use the stump in woodwork, and was allowed to. He carved the wood into the processional cross, and the wood had naturally gone black during its years underground. So this cross is not even painted or stained, just naturally black.

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Hans Jakob Grøgaard Krog was born in Flekkefjord, Norway. After having obtained his master’s degree, he took up the study of theology but discontinued this, however, and became a teacher in Christiania and later in Trondhjem. Rev. J.A. Ottesen had often written in Norwegian papers concerning the scarcity of clergymen among Norwegians in America, and this led Krog to take up the study of theology anew. In 1872 he emigrated to America and was ordained into the ministry in 1874. His first call took him to Minneapolis, but a year later found him in Menominee, Wis., where he remained until 1890, when the Church Council elected him to a professorship at Luther College, where he remained for six years. He taught Norwegian, Religion, Latin, and French, besides taking, together with his wife, a very active part in the church work in and about Decorah. Rev. Krog was intensely interested in mission work, especially in the seamen’s mission. In 1902 he resigned his pastorate, which he had held at Ossian since 1896, in order to devote all his time to the mission work. In this capacity he labored unselfishly to the last. In the death of Rev. Krog the cause of Christian education has lost one of its warmest friends and supporters and one whose labors and influence have promoted and strengthened the highest and best elements in the field of education.

Hans Jakob Grøgaard Krog

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