February 27, 2000

Written by: Thelma (Tammy) Elaine Erikson Rudstrom

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1924. I married Billy Rudstrom in 1943. We have four children; three boys and one girl and one grandchild. In 1948, at a time of extreme despair God stirred in my heart and I knew I would find the solution to our need by turning to the Bible that had been collecting dust since I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church seven years before.

Jesus became a reality in my life as I read God’s Word. He answered the first question I needed to know and He showed me He wanted to heal our children. We had three boys at the time. Our oldest was four and our youngest a few months old.

The first two boys suffered much and it was a painful trial. When our third child began to suffer is when God revealed Himself to me personally through His Son, Jesus. I gave my all to Jesus at that time and believed Him not only for the physical healing of our children but also for my entire family’s wholeness. I had a hunger for God’s Word that began that morning and that has never left me.

I had not been attending church but I attended the following Sunday. The glory of the Lord shined all around as I received communion at the altar. To my knowledge no one saw it but me. I was overcome by God’s love and wept uncontrollably for as long as His glory and His love, so overwhelming, was upon me.

I brought our children up in the love and admonition of the Lord and led them all four to receive Jesus as Lord and Baptizer of the Holy Spirit. I witnessed to family members, neighbors and to everyone as I believed God led me. I taught Sunday School classes (pre-school through fourth grade). I also taught a women’s Bible study group at our church.

God led me to organize a group within the church to mend clothing for children with special needs who lived at the State School and Hospital at Cambridge, Minnesota. And later to also organize a group to personally minister God’s love in action with the word and prayer regularly to individual long-term residents at the same school and hospital. And eventually, in another church in Minneapolis, I began to teach the special needs individuals of our church.

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Everything God has led me to do to occupy until He comes I can truthfully say has magnified Him in my life. I have grown in Him in proportion to my obedience to His calling. Whatever I have given back to Him in talents, time or strength, financially or materially has been exceedingly rewarding. I want all heaven and earth to know that it is impossible to give without receiving much more in return from our Heavenly Father. I am so blessed.

God is always faithful in His promised rewards. I give because His love compels me to give, not for rewards. Giving is the heart of God. It is God in me that has inspired this vessel to give where He has directed me to give and I have been so blessed to be a co-giver with God and His face shining upon my life is my reward. To know I have pleased Him is my reward.

The trials of our lives have caused me to continually seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Though all of our four children and our grandchild also, were afflicted with a life threatening disease, four of them not expected to live at birth, they are all living today, not without trials, not without struggles but with faith in God that always prevails making them more than conquerors through Christ Jesus who strengthens them.

Twice through the years we believed it necessary to place our second child, David, away from home. Once at the Cambridge State School and Hospital and later we brought him home by faith and God was faithful to provide his needs. After a certain length of time, due to a physical, mental and emotional set back , it was necessary again to place him away from home.

This time David lived in a home for four residents who all required around the clock supervision provided by the state at Fergus Falls, Minnesota, not far from where we were living after Billy retired. A divorce occurred in Billy’s and my life following David’s set back but we remarried a little over a year later.

When we first placed David away from home, we also placed our oldest child, Dennis, in Minnesota’s Owatonna State School for a few years as he had special needs also. Their needs were not the same therefore they were placed in two separate schools over a hundred miles from each other. We visited them alternately every other week.

These were major decisions that were made with much faithful prayer before God. In each case God blessed them both in ways that continually assured me that God was directing our paths.

Now we are again continually assured of His direction in our lives for David to be living at home with us. This is his home. And Billy and I are so blessed by David’s response to love. He has become very affectionate with us. As I mentioned, David’s needs require that he have around the clock supervision. This is the right timing for us as David’s parents to give David our all for God’s healing power through love to take place.

Again, our rewards are exceedingly above what we could have ever imagined. We are making up for all the years of separation from him and it is more rewarding then I can find words to describe. Billy and I are greatly blessed as we see the evidence of God’s love healing our David before our very eyes. We are all being healed through this, God’s will in our lives.

Our daughter, Barb lives just two miles from us and has been working her way through college courses at the University of New Mexico, Alamogordo Branch. Our other two sons, Dennis, Roger and his wife, Marie, their son, Roger Paul (our grandson) all live in Minneapolis and in suburban Andover.

Our firstborn, Dennis, just retired this month from the Main Post Office in Minneapolis. He also put in his resignation as a part time Security Agent at the International Airport where he has been working at a second job for many years. He is not one to retire. He is very ambitious and has many aspirations to excel in life.

In seeking a job closer to home, he applied for a job that required him to have a physical. This physical brought a bad report that he has diabetes and a damaged liver. Though I am thankful for the physical and for the doctors and for their help, I know of and believe in a better report. I know God has provided us divine health, restoration, provision, protection and prosperity through His dear Son, Jesus, who He sent to be our Savior from death, hell and the grave.

I know we are healed, whole and complete in Him, already. I know we are more than conquerors through Christ who strengthens us. Therefore I declare Dennis healed in Jesus Name. I believe God has called our whole family as laborers in the vast harvest that is about to occur on a worldwide scale. As God’s wholeness is manifesting through our lives in measures of love, it is evident that His love is healing us all progressively.

I also have another ministry, a gift from the Lord that I needed to share with others. I began playing violin at seven years old and was told I had talent. My mother washed and ironed for a few of the students at the University of Minnesota to pay for my lessons. I loved the violin but I quit playing in 11^th grade for various reasons and did not play again for 40 years. After my children had grown more independent, I bought a violin and began to play.

In 1992 I knew I must play to glorify the Lord with all that was within me. I auditioned at the church we were attending in Alamogordo, New Mexico (where we have lived for the past nine years - the first two years were during the winter months only). I was accepted and played for all their services for five years, until May, 1998.

After that I have continued to play at churches, Christian women’s groups, at Alamogordo Full Gospel Businessmen’s meetings and at the local rest homes. I love praising God and prophesying with my violin to those in need, (I Chronicles 25:1-3). I am now scheduled to be interviewed and play on Prime Time TV, Light of the Southwest, on Good Friday, April 21, 2000, 7PM CST.

I believe the Holy Spirit will take over for me so He will bless and meet the need of all the listeners as I am interviewed and as I play my violin.. I have asked the Holy Spirit to speak through me, that I will speak boldly as I ought to speak, that the words I speak will be as the oracles of God to glorify Him and that I will be a true representative of Him.

Tammy Rudstrom

February 27, 2000

E-mail: tammyrudstrom@netscape.com