Elizabeth Fedde

Elisabeth Fedde ( born December 25, 1850 in Feda near Flekkefjord in Vest -Agder, Norway, † February 25, 1921 in Norway) was a Norwegian Lutheran Deaconess, which in the U.S., the Norwegian Relief Society to better diaconal support of the Norwegian- American immigrant community founded. In the English-speaking world it is also written Elizabeth Fedde.

Biography

Elizabeth Fedde was designed to deaconess at Lovisenberg - Deaconess House under the supervision of Mother Katinka Guldberg. Katinka Guldberg in turn had received her training at the Motherhouse Theodor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth in Germany.

Elisabeth Fedde spent much of her early career in Troms, where they had to work under harsh and primitive conditions. On her 23rd birthday sister Elizabeth received a letter from her brother Gabriel Fedde, who aroused the ambition in her to set up an auxiliary device for Norwegian seamen in New York City. She traveled three months later in the direction of the United States of America and arrived on April 9, 1883 at there.

Sister Elizabeth began her work with the foundation of the Norwegian Relief Society on April 19 of that year. The foundation service was held by Pastor Mortensen; Gabriel Fedde helped him. First, the Relief Society was in a boarding house with three small rooms that were rented for $ 9 a month. The house was numbered 109 Williams Street and was located near the Seamen's Church. Sister Elizabeth took great pains with visits to the sick and needy, often they wrote their experiences with it in a diary.

1885 Fedde opened a deaconess house to train other women who should help her with her ​​service. Originally the home of a hospital with nine beds; later it became the Lutheran Medical Center of Brooklyn. After they had spent some years in New York, she followed a request of Lutheran Christians in Minnesota to come to them and there to do their job. She reached Minneapolis in 1888, taught there in the following year Deaconess the Lutheran Home and Hospital of the Lutheran Free Church and helped in the planning of a third hospital in Chicago.

Exhausted from their work in America returned sister Elizabeth finally in November 1895 Norway back to Ola Sletteb, an admirer, whom she had left in order to fulfill their missionary work. She married him shortly after their return. Elisabeth Fedde died on 25 February 1921. Accordingly, their commemoration in the calendar of saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada February 25.