Our family affectionately called Norma Kummerer “Ms. Norma.” We still call Gene Kummerer “Mr. Gene.” We first met this sweet couple in 2007 when we attended an Assemblies of God church in Wilmington. After quick introductions in the parking lot, we went inside and were surprised to hear the pastor acknowledge them as retired foreign missionaries who had been on the mission field since 1970 working in Burkina Faso, Togo, and Belgium. I was delighted to know this about them and we became fast friends.
One day Ms. Norma called me to ask where I did my grocery shopping and where she could find a certain item. I was taken aback as she told me how everything was different and she had been away from America for so long that she felt more African than American. We laughed about that, but this humility and honesty drew me to her. I noticed her conscious, prayerful, intentional desire to influence the people God had put in her life and point them to Jesus in very practical ways. She embodied the “one anothers” that the Bible teaches us so well.
Norma and I shared our lives together. Even though she functioned as a mentor, she never stopped being a friend who shared her life with me. I was a young mom, and she came alongside me and stayed for the long haul. She taught me how to train my babies to sleep through the night, how to potty train patiently, how to have time with Jesus with my toddlers running around, and how to train my 10-month-old to sit with me and look at books.
She started a parenting class using Ted Tripp’s Shepherding a Child’s Heart because she knew it would benefit young parents like me. She taught me not to be frazzled about going on trips with young children, and she accompanied us and showed me how. She taught me how to make time to garden even if it was just potted flowers in my apartment, how to pick fresh fruit and make jam, how to can and freeze, how to have conversations with the children about their hearts, how to manage housework and be content with just one family income because motherhood was worth the investment. And so much more.
She shared her home, time, and talents with us and even invited us to get to know her children so we could share her joy of grandchildren and great-grands. She shaped and impacted me in every single area of my life.
So, what kind of a person is behind such a big life? A simple faith-filled woman who loved God, her husband, her children. and all the people across the globe that the Lord brought into her life. In her mother’s eulogy, Ms. Norma’s daughter, Joy, wrote, “Mother’s favorite verse, the one she lived by, is Proverbs 3:5-6: ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path.’ That is how our mother lived her life, always admonishing others to trust Him with all her heart. Over the decades of her life, she endured poverty, lost a child, contracted multiple diseases commonly found in West Africa, suffered a home robbery, and experienced bullet fire just outside their home during a military coup. More recent challenges included age-related ailments, falls, and head injuries. Through it all, with Dad by her side, she held on to her Savior and trusted in His perfect will for her life and that of her family.”
Ms. Norma trusted in God and lived joyfully because she knew that God would not fail her. Every card or gift that she wrote to me or my children had Proverbs 3:5-6 in it. She was determined to enjoy life as a result by giving her whole heart to whatever she was doing. Whether it was learning a new recipe or making the same sandwich for lunch again, there was a heart of gratitude behind how she did what she did that made being around her so much fun. She loved Jesus, and that was seen in how she made time to talk to little children with deep respect, sacrifice her comfort for the sake of the gospel, pray for the unity of the church, fast on behalf of struggling marriages, and even write a new university curriculum for the furtherance of the gospel.
As it says in Hebrews 11, “Time would fail” to tell about every way she walked before me as a hero who lit my path with truth and hope, laughter and patience, loving all around her so well—while somehow living a quiet life, minding her own affairs, and bringing glory to God alongside her beloved husband. This past September, Ms. Norma went home to be with the Savior she dearly loved. We miss her dearly, but her legacy is etched on our hearts.
