27 Reasons Why We Don't Have to be Afraid

About the Book

Twenty-seven Reasons Why We Dont Have to Be Afraid, a book which began as a collection of radio scripts, is an account of my spiritual journey. My own beginning was in Montreal, Canada, where I was born on March 13, 1926, to Emma Landry and Louis Nadeau, as their first child.  I was later joined by two sisters and (much later) by a brother.  My father worked as a ministerial intern for a Protestant denomination, (Seventh-day Adventist) a fact which made us part of a small, much maligned minority in the profoundly Catholic culture of French Canada.  

When I was five our family (which now included my sister Iris) moved back to New Brunswick to live near my mothers people, the Landrys, an old Acadian family living near the city of Moncton.  Grandpa and Grandma Landry had left the Catholic church when my mother was a small child.  Because of this defection they had had to leave their ancestral village of Saint Marys and had moved with their large family, to Tankville, a small community on the railway line which cut across the lower edge of the Landry property. The big rambling Norman farm house of Alex and Marie Landry overlooked the wide acres of their dairy farm.

Grandpa and Grandma had only three grades of education, but having become Protestant, they had learned to read the Bible, and every morning around nine oclock Grandpa would gather his family in the big kitchen where he would read a psalm, then invite us all to kneel in prayer.  By the time I knew him Grandpa was quite deaf, so few people had conversations with him, but he lived his religion, being known throughout the community for his honest dealings and hard work.

When I was six our family moved to the isolated community of Shawbrook, where we lived in a ramshackle wooden house on a hundred wild acres in the middle of a  spruce forest.  By this time Papa had left the ministry.  (Today we would say he suffered from burnout)  But that didnt mean he had left his faith. I dont think I ever knew anyone who walked with God so consistently as Papa did.  Whether he was chopping wood in the forest or working on road construction during the short summers or delivering bread in town for the local bakery, he always talked lovingly of God.  He  spoke of Him so naturally that it was obvious to everyone that he and God were friends.

Once I was grown and had left home the main thing I took with me was a steadfast certainty that the Bible was true, and a belief, not only that God was real, but that He was good enough to be trusted.

The first big test of my faith came when I entered graduate school and had to listen to my professors snide remarks against religion.  Or what was even worse, to feel the agnostic attitude toward all religion, but especially toward Christianity.  It was more  an indefinable spirit  rather than any thing that was said, a sense that Christianity or anything supernatural was all a joke, certainly nothing that an educated person would take seriously.  

I remember especially one occasion when I had a talk with one of my literature professors, a witty, sardonic man.  I cant remember now any exact words that were said, but I came away from the encounter shaken to the core.  My husband and I went camping on Lake Michigan that weekend, and I remember walking along the shore for hours thinking through my whole belief system.  I never seriously considered giving up my faith.  I did know, however, that I might have to hold on to it even though I had no empirical evidence for some things.  I decided to study and wait and hold fast.

In 1961 my husband and I and our two young sons moved to the island of Guam where we worked as teachers, first for our church mission and later for the Government  at the University of Guam where I taught English as a second language. Up until this time I had always worked

About the Author

Olivine Bohner taught English as a Second Language at the University of Guam for 18 years and at La Sierra University, Riverside, California, for 10 years. She has written three books: The Long, Long Trial, Into the Blizzard, and Demon of Padeng. She is now retired and lives with her husband in Banning, California.