Jim Crawford sensed a calling to missionary work in Ethiopia long before he met his Ethiopian wife Destaye at North Central University or founded Team Serve, Intl.


The first meeting
The Crawfords lived in Northeast Minneapolis between trips to Africa before returning to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as full-time missionaries in August 2006.

In May 2004, Jim was doing a neighborhood prayer walk at 1 a.m. when he met a man named Carey Carlson.

“I said to him, ‘Man, it’s cold out here. I wish I were in Africa,’” Jim Crawford explained.

“Where?” Carlson replied.

“Ethiopia,” Crawford said.

“I was in Ethiopia when I was a kid,” Carlson said.

He went on to explain that his parents Ralph and Jean Larson (now Jean Carlson) served as missionaries in Ambo, Ethiopia, until Ralph was murdered by a thief while riding a motorcycle in 1951. After Ralph Larson was killed, Carey and his mother (who was pregnant with the couple’s daughter Sarah) returned to the U.S.


The second meeting
Fast forward about one year to the summer of 2005. Destaye Crawford was filling in for her sister at a speaking engagement at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

She was in line for lunch and wearing an Ethiopian gown when a woman named Sue Johnson asked her where the dress was from. The woman’s husband, Dan Johnson, and Destaye both answered, “Ethiopia,” at the same time.

To Destaye’s surprise, the couple and Dan’s parents, Maynard and Thelma Johnson, began speaking to her in Amharic, the native language of Ethiopia.

As it turns out, Maynard and Thelma Johnson served as missionaries to Ambo from 1951 to 1972. Dan Johnson was also born there.

As the couples continued discussing their experiences, Jim later mentioned that he had met Carey Carlson a year earlier. Dan Johnson called his father and confirmed that Ralph and Jean Larson had a son named Carey.

“I’d heard about Ralph … but never even knew that he had a family,” Dan Johnson said.

“It was really like a mind-blowing puzzle coming together,” Destaye Crawford said.

Maynard and Thelma Johnson had attended Bethel Seminary with Ralph and Jean Larson (Carlson) during the time Carey Carlson was born. The Johnsons were excited to be reunited and serve with the Larsons when they arrived in Ethiopia in 1951. But upon their arrival, they learned of Ralph’s murder and that they had left the U.S. the same day Jean and Carey had left Ethiopia to come home.

“We moved into the very place they had been living,” Maynard Johnson said. “What little furniture was there was what Jean and Ralph had left. It was a shock.”

Maynard and Thelma Johnson even had a daughter who died at age 6 while in Ethiopia who is buried next to Ralph Larson.

For 54 years, they had wondered what happened to Jean and Carey Carlson once they left Ambo, Ethiopia. Because of Jim Crawford’s chance meeting in 2004, the Johnsons had to wonder no longer.

Once the dots were connected, the Johnsons, Crawfords and Carlsons decided to have a reunion meeting in August 2005 in the Twin Cities.

“As you look back, you just marvel at the way the Lord works things out,” said Maynard Johnson, who now lives in Florida with his wife.

“God’s workings are so interesting and so unexpected,” Jean (Larson) Carlson said. “I was so happy when [the reunion] happened because it had been so many years. It was precious.”

Since the 2005 reunion, the Johnsons have kept in regular contact with Jean Carlson, who now lives in Cloquet, Minn. The reunion also sparked an interest for Dan and Sue Johnson to return to Ethiopia, which they plan to do this summer.

“The whole thing started out with what God can do with the right person at the right time in the right place,” Jim Crawford said.


ACTION POINT:
Team Serve, Intl., runs a prayer house/church plant and partners with a school in Ethiopia. Opportunities for short-term mission trips or teaching positions exist. To learn more about the Crawford’s ministry in Ethiopia, contact Jim Crawford by e-mail at jim@goteamserve.org or by phone at (612) 408-1699. To read more about Team Serve, Intl., visit www.goteamserve.org.

Team Serve, Intl., can also be reached by mail at P.O. Box 18778, Minneapolis, MN, 55418.