Catching up with Eddie Ogan, author of “The Rich Family in Church” – Part 3

 

Part 3
Whatever Happened to the Rich Little Poor Girl?
Catching up with Eddie Ogan, author of “The Rich Family in Church”
by Kimberly Claassen

In 1961, Eddie had those first five children at home—seven years and younger—when she took three days off for a church conference. She was unsuspecting when she picked up a booklet listing the 40 or so missionaries within their church district. The divine nudging took her by surprise.

“I felt that the Lord spoke to me and said He wanted me to write to all these missionaries,” Eddie says. “Immediately, I told the Lord, ‘I couldn’t do that. I haven’t even been to Bible school.’ These were missionaries. They’re just two steps under God. The Lord then said, ‘They don’t need your theology. They need your sense of humor.’”

With five children, Eddie had plenty of material. Her first letter brought a response from a family in India.

“They wrote back and said that when they’d gone to India, there was this elderly missionary in his seventies,” Eddie explains. “He was retiring and going home. They asked him, as new missionaries on the field, what to do. They were so disappointed because the only thing he said to them was, ‘Find something to laugh about every day, and you’ll be successful. If you don’t, India will kill you.’

“They thought this was stupid advice. He’d been there 40-plus years, and they thought he would have some great words of wisdom. They said then that the longer they were there, they realized it was actually the best advice anyone had ever given them: to find something to laugh about every day. That’s what my letters are supposed to be for. To make people laugh.”

Reaching back into her childhood—or grabbing material from her present-day mothering—Eddie wrote at the beginning of each month. One missionary told her, “The only thing that has kept me going all these years is your false teeth letter.”

Missionary children around the world came to know her as Aunt Eddie, though they’d never met her. The 40 missionaries on Eddie’s original list sent her letters on to other missionaries. The list grew. Missionaries retired, and children grew up but asked to remain on her list. New missionaries replaced the retiring missionaries. The list grew.

The first year, Eddie hand-wrote each letter. The next year, 1962, she moved to a duplicating process using heavy ink carbon paper. It was slow but—since it was faster than handwriting—an improvement.

In 1963, Eddie was ready to take up her church’s offer of using its mimeograph machine. They loaned her the stencils. She cut out the letter at home, then took it to the church office to print.

With each letter, Eddie enclosed a small surprise: stamps, Kool-Aid, or gum; whatever she found that month that fit inside the envelope. They’re “like a box of Cracker Jack,” one missionary said. “There’s a prize in every envelope.”

No More Letters

Those letters ended in 1979 when a new secretary and a new pastor entered the church office, and the office equipment was restricted to church use.

“We [took the letter] to the print shop,” Eddie says. “It was just plain more money than we could squeeze out of our budget. There was no way we could pay. I bawled for a couple of days and then thought, ‘Well, maybe that time is through.’”

In the meantime, Eddie and Phil had adopted several more children and begun foster parenting.

“I was raised with so much love and affection that I felt sorry for the ones that didn’t have it,” Eddie says. When the youngest of their seven children entered kindergarten, “I was home all alone,” she says. “I knew we couldn’t afford to adopt more kids. The house was empty, and I thought I had a lot of love to give.”

Children from age 17 down to infancy stayed under their roof; four foster children were ultimately adopted into the Ogan family. By the time Phil and Eddie let their foster parent license expire in 2002, 77 children had stayed with them.

Busy with her children and foster children, Eddie had one more reason to think her letter-writing days were over. In 1979 she found out she had cancer. For the second time. The first time, in 1965, resulted in a hysterectomy. This time Eddie had an inoperable brain tumor.

“I’ll go home, and take care of my kids,” she told the doctor. “If it’s the Lord’s time for me to die, I’ll die. If not, I’ll live.” Two months later, the tumor was gone.

In 1984 the battle broke out in the new territory. A malignant growth in her kidney ruptured the organ; cancer spread through her system. This kind of cancer had to be surgically removed—and that was impossible.

“The doctor told us, ‘If there are any dreams, you need to do it now,’” Eddie says. “We had always dreamed that when my husband retired, we’d move to eastern Washington and build a log cabin in the mountains on a creek.”

Phil quit his job, and the family, including several foster children, moved to a spot on Clugston Creek in the Gillette Mountains of eastern Washington. They built their log cabin.

Eddie’s new pastor was worried about her as she became thinner and thinner. “He didn’t know I had cancer,” Eddie says. “When people know you have cancer, they don’t act normal. They think you’re dying, so they hardly talk to you normally. So I didn’t tell anyone. We knew that when it got a little further along, we would call the welfare office and say they’d need to find another home for our current foster children.”

They moved into their cabin on a Sunday in September 1985 and went to church that evening. “The pastor preached a sermon explaining that no one knows how long they have to live,” Eddie says. “The doctor may say you have only a year to live—you may still be around in 20 years. The pastor wanted people who were willing to dedicate the rest of their lives to God, no matter how long they had to live.

“I rushed up to the altar where I told the Lord I might have three months left. ‘I’ll do whatever You want me to do, whatever time I have left of life is yours. I want to give it totally to You.’ “

Now at age 72, Eddie Ogan has no problem telling people her age nor the fact that, at her height of 6 feet, she weighs 238 pounds. She’s healthy and thankful for it. “The Lord has given me the strength I need for whatever I do,” she says. “Every day I have is a gift from Him.”

Back in the Saddle Again

In 1988, Eddie headed out on her second missionary trip—a month-long circuit to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and China. She kept running into missionaries who knew only her signature. “They’d gasp and say, ‘I thought you’d died 10 years ago!’ Eddie says. They begged her to start writing again.

Then Dave Ellis, the child of missionaries and now a missionary himself came to Eddie’s town for a conference. Upon meeting Eddie, he added his plea.

“I was just telling my wife how we always waited for Aunt Eddie’s letters to come,” he told her. “When you sent gum, we’d chew it until it was out of flavor, then keep the wrapper to sniff.” If only their daughters had an Aunt Eddie, as well, he pined.

“Aunt Eddie made us feel special and wanted, and we felt we knew her although we had never met her,” he said.

He urged her to begin writing again. “After all, receiving letters from home is part of what being a missionary is.”

Eddie wrote a letter the following month and hasn’t quit since. Her letters carry the addresses of 200 missionaries and missionary kids.

Sharing the Wealth

In 1946, as a widow and three young daughters stared at the money they had earned for the poor family scattered across their own floor, silence entered the usually chatty home.

What redeemed this story for Eddie and her sisters in 1946 continues to redeem readers today. The young family, newly poor while holding the most money they’d ever seen, trudged to church the next week. A missionary visiting from Africa told of poor people who needed the church’s help. When the pastor decided to take a special offering, this family smiled for the first time in a week and promptly deposited the envelope with $87 into the offering plate.

The missionary was delighted. The offering of a little more than $100 was much more than he expected from this small church. His words, “You must have a rich family in this church!” may have brought a pleased—or perhaps confused—smile to the faces of the congregation that day. But for one small family, they were words of life.

“Though the minister had said we were poor, the missionary said that we were rich,” Eddie tells. “We believed the missionary.”

So now Eddie and Phil live as the rich family they are: Social Security meets their needs. Any other money they bring in, they turn around and send out again. The $1,000 for cleaning the grounds and bathrooms at fairs and rodeos buys copies of The Book of Hope, distributed to children and youth worldwide. Eddie’s job of agricultural surveys contributes to projects such as shoes for orphans in Siberia, material to make rag dolls for orphans in Japan, and postage for her monthly letter.

Because that letter will continue to go out.

“Unless the Lord tells me to quit writing, I’m not going to quit writing now,” Eddie says. “I quit for the wrong reason, to begin with. I didn’t pray about it. I just quit. I expect to write every month until I’m dead or have Alzheimer’s. I firmly believe with all my heart that the Lord will provide whatever I need.”

Update

Here is an update on the Ogans as of October 2012. Eddie is nearly 80 years old and looking forward to her 60th wedding anniversary in 2014.

Wrap Up

So, to wrap up this three-part story of Eddie Ogan and their family, she never knew she was poor until the pastor brought the “Poor Family” Easter Offering of $87. to her home.

A week later her Mom and siblings donated the entire amount to a missionary appeal for sacrificial giving by the rich people in the small congregation to fund a new roof in Africa at a cost of $100.

The offering came in slightly over $100 so the Ogans concluded that they were the rich people of the church.

They have testified many times in many ways that they have been rich all their lives.

They certainly seem rich to me.  What do you think?

One More Update

Eddie Ogan still has a Facebook Page but the last update on her Timeline is September 2015. The update consists of two pictures – one of

the Ogan family in 1971 and the other a current (in 2015) Profile photo. Here they are.

My Thoughts

I think this story is a great story. I wish we had a full biography of such an extraordinary ordinary family. This is also a very important story. It has proved its value and its impact over and over as it has multiplied around the internet. I envy the Ogan family and I wish I had lived more richly as they lived. Don’t you, too? Don’t we all? There is still time for you and for me to live more richly. Let’s really do it.

Please leave a Comment below. It’s easy and will add value to this series.

Etc.

Please use the Share Buttons and/or email the post link(s) below directly to your friends. This story is so good it just has to go viral. Will you do your part?

Thanks. I appreciate it. – Dick S

Links to Posts in the Three Post Series

First Post: The Rich Family of Eddie Ogan In Church Part 1 of 3 Parts https://dickstannard.com/2023/03/27/the-rich-family-in-church/

Second Post: Catching up with Eddie Ogan, author “The Rich Family in Church” – Part 2 of 3 https://dickstannard.com/2023/03/29/catching-up-with-eddie-ogan/

Final Post : Catching up with Eddie Ogan, author of “The Rich Family in Church” – Part 3 https://dickstannard.com/2023/03/31/catching-up-with-eddie-ogan-part-3/