Joe Lindsoe

Found...but, Not Lost: the Story of Joe Lindsoe and His Sister, Mari Bjerland

During the meal on the porch of their log cabin home nestled on the wooded sloping shores of Smith Mountain Lake, Betty gently nudged her husband and said "why don't you share with the folks the phone call you got the other day?" "Should I?" he responded. Urged to explain, Joe and his wife, Betty, told a story to some close friends. It was a birthday luncheon for one of the guests. The appetizer was goat milk cheese and thin Norwegian bread. Joe Lindsoe wasn't lost when the telephone jangled that morning but he discovered he had been found by a sister he didn't know he had. His sister, Mari, was born after Joe had moved to America and neither knew of the other. But Mari had a feeling there was lost family which she wrote of to a Norwegian television show. The show researched the family and eventually located Joe. Now a Norwegian television host wanted Joe to meet his lost sister on the air."Oh Joe!" one guest said, "You've got to write that story."