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Christmas 1975, Ben Gamber walked into a post office in Mombasa Kenya and deposited what would be his final letter home.
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Growing up my family never talked about Ben, his death or much about their time as Mennonite Missionaries in Ethiopia.
I heard about this mysterious final letter in the fall of 2017.
The idea that 42 years later Ben's letter could still be out there and perhaps shed some light
on the circumstances surrounding his death motivated me to start asking questions.
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I quickly discovered there was way more to the story than I ever imagined.
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To better understand the bigger picture I dove into family history starting in
the 18th century when the first Mennonites arrived in the states escaping
religious persecution and looking for better land to farm.
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A big question I had was 'what on earth were my grandparents thinking'
when they signed up to be missionaries in a foreign country in the days
before they could google 'living in Ethiopia, do's and don'ts.'
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I soon became obsessed with the last Ethiopian King, Haile Selassie and the Christian evangelical
movement of the mid twentieth century. I traveled across America and to East Africa
interviewing Americans and Ethiopians to get both sides of the story.
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Through these conversations I discovered that my family had lived through one of the most significant political and social revolutions of our time, an upheaval so massive that generations were lost through violence and diaspora.
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In the making of this film I have grown to better understand how the politics of our time deeply affect us. Governments and leaders can ignite or suffocate us, it does matter what we believe in and who we give power to.
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One of the most interesting groups I got to know were the Gamber kids boarding school classmates.
These former missionary kids are now all in their 60s to mid 70s , the memories of their childhoods are both fantastical and heartbreaking.
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Perhaps when we discuss the sacrifices that missionary families make we should put extra special attention on the kids.
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I started this project looking for one letter and one guy's story and in the search I found over 40+ years of correspondences and became
much closer to my mother and her surviving brothers Tim and Jim.
In almost every letter I read, my mother and her brothers reference Bedeno, the tiny town where my grandparents were stationed
and where the kids returned home during Christmas and summer breaks.
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When the Gambers miss Ethiopia, they are missing Bedeno.
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