After spending almost four happy years with a very special nanny in Bolivia, a Swedish-born boy moved halfway across the world with his family, to Spain. Forty-five years later, the desire to reconnect with the woman who loved him as her own overwhelmed him, and he thus traveled across the world to see her.
Pastor Juanito Jonsson was born in Lycksele, Sweden, in 1973. Today, he lives in the southern Spanish town of Fuengirola, Málaga, with his wife and their three sons aged 23, 19, and 9.
The son of Swedish missionaries, Jonsson moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia, with his parents and two siblings when he was just 6 months old. His father worked in churches in the mountains and his mother, a nurse, gave vaccines to people in need. Since Jonsson’s siblings were in school, his parents hired Ana, who was a nanny they knew through the Swedish missionary community.
“Before [Ana] came into our family she was very sick,” Jonsson told The Epoch Times. “She had lost her husband in a labor accident, she had two daughters, 4 and 1 year old, and everyone said she was going to die of her sickness. No one gave her hope to live. She was presented with the option to give her daughters away in adoption, so that was what she did.”
Yet after surrendering her daughters to Swedish adoptive families, Ana recovered. Tragically, she had no legal rights to her children. When she accepted the job as a nanny to Jonsson between 1973 and 1976, she loved him like her own.
“She gave me all the love she had for her daughters, and I received it,” Jonsson said.
In 1979, Jonsson’s family moved to Sweden and then a few years later to Spain. While in Spain, Jonsson met his wife and has lived there since.
‘Something Was Missing’
While attending a conference in Peru in 2017, Jonsson had the impulse to revisit his old home in Bolivia.“I had two or three days free and I thought to myself, Peru is too near Bolivia to not go back to Cochabamba,” he said. “I took an airplane ... [then] a bus nine hours through the mountains, and then I reached Cochabamba.”
Jonsson rented a room in the Swedish mission where his older brother had attended school, and even found the house his father built where Ana had raised him. He befriended the new owners and relived old memories over breakfast.
“That opened up something in my soul because it was like something was missing,” Jonsson said. “Something happened in 2017: a need to reconnect and find Ana.”
However, due to the pandemic his trip to reunite with his nanny was delayed.
At the beginning of this year, with the help of his mother who had a contact, Jonsson found out that Ana was 79 years old, still alive, and living as a candle seller in the small town of Yacuíba, on the Bolivian border with Argentina.
‘Ana, My Ana’
At 7 a.m. on April 26, Jonsson arrived in Yacuíba. Daniel met him at the bus terminal and surprised him with the news that Ana lived just two blocks away. Jonsson was moments away from the reunion he had dreamed of.Jonsson also recalled one of the first things Ana asked him: “Are you serving God?” because she was a strong believer.
“I said, ‘Yes, I’m a pastor and I serve God,’ and she raised her hands up to Heaven and said, ‘Thank God ... I’ve been praying that you would serve God all my life,’” Jonsson added.
Ana invited Jonsson into her simple home for breakfast, Jonsson presented her with a photo album that had pictures of himself and his siblings as children, his parents, and his family today.
He also gifted her some money collected from family toward home repairs. Ana, who shares her home with Daniel, his wife, and their two kids, was overcome with emotion.
‘A Miracle’
Daniel then took Jonsson and his three other companions on a tour of the town. Afterward, they returned to Ana’s home and took her out for dinner in a good local restaurant, where they shared memories.“We talked more into the night, then I walked with her, hand-in-hand, to the bus terminal,” Jonsson said.
Reflecting on his reunion with Ana, Jonsson shared: "She’s 79 years old, she sometimes struggles with her lungs ... she also has some problems with her sight, but she’s very strong, she’s very independent ... I never thought that she would be so bright in her mind.
“She has been praying for me all her life; meeting me was a miracle for her.”
“From 60 followers I had more than 20,000, and many millions of views, the video went viral on TikTok,” he said. “When I came home to Spain and reached Málaga, people started to call me from Bolivian television ... it was a little crazy!”
‘An Urge in My Soul’
Jonsson has been working in churches since the age of 19 and is currently a pastor at a Christian church founded by his father. His church has an orphanage in Nigeria, and he also helps 140 families in need with food banks and other resources. Despite having roots in Bolivia, Jonsson never had the need to visit South America until 2017.
“Even though I lived in my European bubble ... I was always proud and had a strong identity from my roots in Cochabamba,” Jonsson said. “Whoever would ask, ‘Where do you come from?’ I would say, ‘I’m from Sweden, but I was raised in Bolivia.’ That has always been part of me.”
Juanito is not even his given name; it is a Spanish-speaking diminutive of “Juan,” or “John” in English. His real name is the Swedish equivalent, Yohannes, yet Juanito claims “almost no one in Spain knows my real Swedish name.”
Looking back on his reunion with Ana, Jonsson is grateful he had the chance to honor his beloved former nanny for the love and care that enriched his childhood.
