The Promise Box

By Anna Alden-Tirrill

In this new adventure, Annie's family once again moves from one European country to another for her dad's job with NASA. After being an Exchange Professor at Paisley University in Scotland, he has now taken a teaching position at the University of Munich in Germany. The family settles in Bavaria in the little town of Oberammergau, and Annie and her mom start seeking out the history of the area to continue to expand Annie's homeschool history lessons. While Christmas shopping in the village for some local handicrafts, Annie finds an interesting locked box that may solve a seventy-three-year-old mystery and link her to more of her birth relatives. She and her family stumble upon a previously lost secret diary narrating some heart-wrenching details of family and social issues in the history of Oberammergau and the bravery and courage of the villagers during WW II, as well as exposing several historic relics that Annie and her family are determined to investigate. The plot takes several unusual twists that include a historic godly king and his generous gifts intended to help the village that are later used to save the lives of many people and thwart a terrible disaster. Annie learns some hard history lessons and then participates in a serious modern-day caper that separates myth from truth and prevents a possible future problem with people in Germany and worldwide. In this book, Annie learns the importance of Commitment-to God, family, and friends-and perseverance in following God and His Word.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Alden-Tirrill
• Release date: Oct 28, 2014

Book preview

Introduction

Image No. 2

Meet Annie

My name is Annie. I’m thirteen years old. I’m an only child. Mom and Dad say I’m special because they adopted me. They chose ME out of all of the other kids they could have adopted. Wow! I guess that does make me special.

There are also a few other things that make me special. First is that I’m homeschooled. I love all of the field trips we take and all of the adventures. Most of all, I’ve learned that learning is fun and exciting. And I also enjoy getting together with other homeschooled kids.

Another thing I think makes me special—or maybe unique—is that I love hats. I think they’re fun to wear, and also practical. They shade my face from the sun. I like my freckles, but I have enough already!

Up until recently, Dad taught Astronomy at the local college. He also worked at an observatory—a planetarium—where he searched for stars. Sometimes at night, he’d take me there and we’d look together. Now he’s an exchange professor that takes us all around the world.

Dad calls me his sun-kissed girl. That’s because I have freckles. He gave me the nickname of Sunny. It always makes me smile when he calls me that.

We pray about everything and ask God to help us. From the time I was little, Mom, Dad, and I have eaten breakfast together every morning, and afterward we have what we call Talk-up. That’s when one of us reads from the Bible, and then we talk-it-up and see how we can make it a part of our everyday life.

Dad says the Bible is our manual for life, so that whenever we want to know how to behave, we can find the answer in the Bible. Together we wrote some family rules to use as guidelines for how to live.

Be kind

Say your prayers,

Be an example

Fulfill your commitments

Listen

Work hard

Tell the truth

Have courage

Laugh

Live

Love

Expect a miracle

I sure didn’t know that my normal life was about to change. All of our lives were going to change in ways that we’d never imagined. There was a fun and exciting adventure just around the corner.

Join Annie as she learns a lot about the meaning of commitment—to God, to family, to friends, and to one’s values and cherished beliefs.

Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust Him, and He will help you.

(Psalm 37:5 NLT)

Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.

(Proverbs 16:3 NLT)

Guidance means I can count on God. Commitment means God can count on me. Because God is faithful, He can be trusted fully to completely carry out His commitments to us in Christ.

1

Image No. 3

Fun in Germany

Well, I’m starting to unpack yet again. We’ve moved four times in the last couple of years to accommodate Dad’s career. If I weren’t being homeschooled, I think my head would be swimming by now. At least I’m not trying to get used to a new school and new school friends each time, along with acclimating to a new area. I’m thirteen years old and in the eighth grade, and the traveling around is more exciting than upsetting—my life is full of fun adventure.

Our new home is in a quaint guesthouse—Gast haus in German or Zimmer frei meaning room for rent. It’s called Hotel Alte Post, right in the middle of the small village of Oberammergau in southern Germany.

We moved to this village in an area called Bavaria, because Dad participates in a teacher exchange program. He’s now teaching Astronomy at the University of Munich, called Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München or LMU that was founded in 1472. Wow! That was a long time ago—twenty years before Christopher Columbus traveled to America.

Dad’s replacing a German professor who is teaching at the college where Dad taught back in the U.S. He’s also working at the Bavarian Public Observatory in Munich like he did at the American observatory back home.

We moved here after living in Scotland for several months while Dad was teaching there at Paisley University. We had quite an adventure while we were there and I wrote it all down in my diary along with the lessons I learned. You can read about it in My Timeless Locket—The Miracle of Freedom.

Before that, we lived in Nice, France on the Riviera. This brought with it another exciting adventure for me involving corporate espionage that you can read about in My Riviera Connection—The Miracle of Truth.

And before that, we lived in Paris for several months while Dad was teaching at the Sorbonne University. That was quite an adventure for me, too, while we were in Paris, and I wrote all that down so you can read about it in My Paris Connection—The Miracle of Friendship.

While it’s been pretty quiet since we got here just a month ago, if everything runs true to form, there will likely never be a dull moment. When Dad announced we were moving again, he warned us not to expect too much—that little Oberammergau itself was just a village where the university’s guest residence was located due to its proximity to Munich, just northeast of the village.

Our guesthouse is really lovely and has a rustic feel. It’s like a Bed and Breakfast in the U.S. B&Bs have always been popular in Europe, and now some places also use that term here. Like many other guesthouses in the village, it has paintings on the outside walls, called frescos—Lüftlmalerei. It makes the whole town very charming and seems like an outdoor art gallery, and there’s so much history here.

Our guesthouse technically isn’t a real B&B because we can have all of our meals here, not just breakfast. The rooms and suites are spacious. It couldn’t be warmer or more attractive.

The interior seems to blend the best of antique legacy with modernism. They have a carved wood mantled fireplace in all the double-size bedrooms like Mom and Dad’s. I have a smaller bedroom, but it has a four-poster bed with a beautiful embroidered canopy.

The guesthouse is really historic and beautiful, dating back many centuries with large rooms and high ceilings. But it’s also modern with WIFI computer hook-ups available in each guest room. All in all, it’s really homey and comfortable.

All the rooms are cozy with new insulated windows, but they have the original shutters on the outside with window boxes of flowers underneath. When the windows are open, their lovely aroma permeates the entire inn.

Our private bathroom is lovely and modern with a mirrored wall, graceful chrome faucets, and a power shower, paired with an old-fashioned claw-foot tub. It even has a fancy chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

I’ve been homeschooled ever since the seventh grade. Sometimes, I feel like I should pinch myself to see if my life is really real. I’ve been having so much fun since being homeschooled that I wonder how kids who go to regular schools can even stand it. But my Mom and Dad are so special, not just any kid would be able to learn the things I’ve been able to.

One of the best things is the terrific field trips Mom and I take. Who could ask for more? It’s like living the history books, not just reading them. I love it! Each trip is an adventure.

I’m learning a lot while having so much fun. It’s so cool to get school credit for doing fun things. Mom makes sure that each time we visit a place, we have a special lesson about it.

I learned about French history and culture when we lived in France, and then about Scottish history and culture in Scotland, and now I’m starting to learn about German history and culture, and I also picked up some of the language from each of these different countries.

So far here, we’ve just driven around Oberammergau and Munich. Mom said eventually we’ll get to all of the major towns and cities in Germany. She told me that Germany is a country characterized by variety.

Trendy and modern Berlin can seem a world away from the more traditional and conservative Munich. The gleaming skyscrapers of Frankfurt form a stark contrast to quaint Heidelberg. And if bustling and fast-paced Hamburg becomes too much, we can always retreat to the peaceful and picturesque Middle Rhine River region.

It’s different from the feel of the U.S., being so historic and old world, but it’s also diverse from any of the other places in Europe that we lived. There’s something here for everyone.

Perhaps this range of variety isn’t too surprising for a nation that only came into being in the mid-nineteenth century and spent nearly half of the following century split in two—East and West Germany. But now there’s only ONE Germany and we can hardly wait to see ALL of it, but in due time, I guess. Mostly, I can hardly wait to visit the Black Forest in the southwest corner of Germany.

This first month here in Oberammergau has been a real eye-opener for all of us. I’m adopted, and I’ve known that ever since I was little, but I only found out recently who my birth parents were. And it turns out they were from right here.

My birth parents were Sarah and Samuel. Sarah was originally from Berlin and Samuel was from this very village. His family had lived here for many generations and some of them still do.

Sarah and Samuel