Hardship did not keep former missionary from her calling
Oct 29, 2007

By Teri Baker
The Senior Source

She was lost alone in the jungle overnight, went to places no white woman had been before and fought her way across roaring creeks. In a dress. She braved swaying bridges of rotting vines where one misstep would send her plunging hundreds of feet below. No shrinking violet is she. Charlotte Driediger was a missionary.

It was not something her parents ever expected her to be. "I did not grow up in a Christian home," the Marysville woman explains, "so I never was taught anything about God or Jesus. But when I was eight, a little friend told me about Jesus and how He wants to take us to heaven to be with Him when we die."

She was intrigued. Her father told her to forget about it. Life went on.

The little girl born in Paradise, Ore. nearly 89 years ago had moved to Eastern Washington when she was six, and at age 10 would move to the rugged Peace River area of Northern Alberta, Canada. Her world was filled with school, chores and reading.

As a young teen, she read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and says, "I was struck by the personal relationship Uncle Tom and Eva had with the Lord. I just couldn't figure out how it happened, so I just prayed that God would lead me in the footsteps of His Son."

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Soon after, Charlotte went away to high school in Sexmith, Alberta because her local school only went to the eighth grade. It was while living with a Christian family and working for room and board that she says her prayer was answered.

"One day while I was washing windows, the lady asked me if I was saved," Charlotte says. "I knelt down by that pail of water and asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior, and that's when the personal relationship with God that I longed for began. I was baptized in a lake, and they were singing 'Where He Leads Me I Will Follow.' That's when I promised the Lord I would go anywhere He wanted."

Despite parental objections, Charlotte was determined to "stick with Jesus." Back home she read missionary stories to her siblings, and at 18 left her father's dairy farm to attend Peace River Bible Institute. To support herself she cooked, cleaned and did laundry for a family, cooked breakfast at the Bible school, and during harvest season, cooked for the threshers. In her last year at PRBI she applied to a mission and was told she had to get some experience.

"Another woman and I went way north to hold church services and vacation Bible schools," she says. "We lived in a little Lady Bug trailer and in the winter had to walk everywhere. It was 60 below and we were 40 miles into the wilderness and couldn't find work to buy winter clothes."

A year later, the mission invited her to Toronto. She got as far as a Christian conference in Edmonton, where she says, "I had no more money and no idea how I was going to get to the mission. Then an older man came up to me and just handed me a (train) ticket to Toronto and a berth for the first night."

In Toronto she was back in the kitchen to earn her keep until time to leave for Africa. She spent two months in Brazil waiting for a small plane to take her to Liberia, where she and two other missionaries walked 32 miles through the jungle to get to the mission station where Charlotte would teach at a boarding school for boys.

She adjusted to the heat, but the diet of okra, eggplant and rice left her anemic for years to come. She lived in a sun-dried brick hut with a thatched roof and slept on uneven boards with a single blanket and mosquito nets. She taught during the week, and on weekends made long, treacherous journeys on foot to outlying villages to tell the people about Jesus.

NEW BRIDE
One day in 1945 the station buzzed with news that a white man was coming. Ed Brigfield of Seattle came to join the work, and two years later the woman, who thought she would never marry, became his bride. In 1949, while the couple was on furlough in the states, their daughter, Karen, was born.

"I was so excited when I went to Liberia the first time," she says. "Going back from my first furlough I knew there was a price to pay."

Return from the second furlough brought a heavier price. Karen would have to go to a boarding school for missionary children and could only come home at Christmas and the occasional weekend. Her parents could visit for two weeks at a time twice a year.

Charlotte says, "Sending my daughter off to boarding school was the hardest thing I ever had to do."

Believing that God wanted her at the mission, Charlotte went back and taught the older boys how to design a building. Ed taught them to make bricks, door frames, etc. so the boys could earn a living, rather than spend their lives aimlessly in the bush. Some students became pilots, others worked in clinics. One became a university professor, another a chaplain.

Ever practical and compassionate, Charlotte and Ed designed a town for 350 people with leprosy. "They had to come and build houses," she says, "with everyone doing as much as they could." Together, the lepers and the Brigfields built streets, a church, a school and a clinic. They also made small farms and planted short palms the people could reach so they could make their own oil and sell it.

When parents resisted sending children to school, Charlotte told them, "No school, no medicine." Parents became so proud of the school that they sold oil and bought new books for the students. "It was wonderful," Charlotte says. "They found help for leprosy, and they found the Lord. They were also healed as new medicines came out."

Eventually, the Brigfields left to join Sudan Interior Mission and were sent to Kafanchan, Nigeria. Instead of jungle, they were now in the midst of bustling cities with roads and trains.

Charlotte oversaw seven schools, Ed pastored an English speaking church and the couple started an evening Bible school for English speakers. Three years later they transferred to Jos, a much larger city, where Ed operated a huge bookstore. Charlotte was in charge of a large school several miles away. Karen was back home, and the couple also took in two girls while a hostel was being built.

When Karen reached tenth grade, the Brigfield's reluctantly took her to America to finish high school. A year later, they came home for good. "We were missionaries, but we were parents first," Charlotte says. "We ended up having a great relationship and I'm very close to my daughter yet."

Charlotte became activities director for the senior community at King's Garden, now Crista, and Ed became a chaplain. They became foster parents to two 16-year-old girls who are still a big part of Charlotte's life, and also took in foreign college students. Eventually, the Brigfield's sold their Lynnwood home, bought a six-plex apartment building and started a mom and pop cleaning service.

They later moved to Warm Beach Senior Community, where Charlotte volunteered in the ceramic shop and was active in the hiking club. She reached out to single mothers and street kids and became part of a group at Camano Chapel that had a prison ministry.

Charlotte also took care of Ed, who had become terribly ill. "We were going to have an early celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary," she says softly, "but we had a memorial service instead."

She returned to Canada to be near her family until a few months ago when she moved to Grandview Village Retirement Home. She was delighted to find that her fellow residents were raising money to adopt a child in a third world country.

She says she still misses the children in Africa and the mission and the missionaries. "We were so much like a family," she says. "I saw so much misery and suffering and lostness there. It is hard to find people at home who have that depth of feeling for those people the way missionaries who have been there have."

Charlotte is still active in church. She does not push her faith on her neighbors, but if asked, will shares stories of her work in Africa and possibly lend them a copy of the memoirs she wrote for family and friends detailing her experiences there. She is currently researching her own family history and has discovered that her great grandmother was related to Abraham Lincoln.

As for her future, Charlotte says, "I'm almost 90, so I'm working on taking care of some health problems and settling in and asking the Lord what to do next."

Spoken like a true missionary.