Steve Hawthorne is Bert and Colleen’s nephew, the eldest son of Bert’s sister, Jane. He is a medical doctor who, with his wife, Mary, has served in Bolivia with SIM for about forty years. Here is his reflection about his aunt and uncle:
Gilbert mentions in Love So Amazing that for a time Lars and Elisabeth (Elliot) Gren would visit Bert and Colleen in Trujillo for three weeks each February. In 2008 Mary and I joined these two couples after a teaching invitation with HCJB in Quito, Ecuador. I read aloud to the group a funny story by P. G. Wodehouse called Something Fresh. Bert was in his recliner and would laugh so contagiously that it was impossible to keep reading. I was reminded of a line from J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings: “The sound of that laugh had been gay and merry. Yet in the wizard’s face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.”
Colleen writes: “There have been days when I thought Bert would just plain burst with joy.” Certainly Bert carried the weight of his care for all the churches he had started throughout the jungle and mountains of Peru. He helped to bear the burdens of countless people who poured out their woes to his listening ears. Yet he had a vivid awareness of being God’s co-worker in extending the Kingdom, and this gave him that sense of joy that drew me and so many others to him. I went to see Uncle Bert and Aunt Colleen in Peru seven times between 1988 and 2011 to seek counsel and encouragement in my own missionary career. They came twice to see us in Bolivia. We shared many trips and conversations together. But the image that shines most clearly is that one of him laughing fit to bust, his eyes squinted closed in tiny crescents as happens with my mother also, radiating to all in that room the love and joy of the Holy Spirit that filled him. From Steve Hawthorne, nephew, SIM missionary serving in Bolivia
To read more of their exciting story, preorder Love So Amazing: The Missionary Biography of Bert and Colleen Elliot. You’ll be glad you did.