Brethorst, Leona von

Author & Composer

BRETHORST, Leona von, b Smoky Mountains, E Tennessee, USA 1923. One of 11 children raised in poverty, on Sundays in summertime she walked 3 miles to the nearest Full Gospel Ch, the journey being impossible in winter. In the 1940s war years she worked in Detroit and her faith faded; it rekindled when her seriously ill toddler was healed in answer to prayer. But her new-found commitment cost her her marriage. As a single mum doing ‘odd jobs’ she was often depressed, but although not a musician she discovered her gift of composition and wrote several dozen songs, one of which (arising from the loneliness of seeing her children move away) has travelled the world since the mid-1970s. She introduced it to the Calvary Fellowship at Long Beach, California, where she still belongs in retirement. It expresses her firm belief that ‘thanksgiving is the key to experiencing the joy of the Lord’. No.182.