Anna Hagen and her harps bring peace and grace to people’s lives, and for more than five years the young musician has developed her business, which will fund her college education.

Born in Canberra, Australia, where her parents were self-supporting missionaries, the 18-year-old has been homeschooled in Goshen for 11 years after stops in Minnesota and Missouri, and admits that “God put us in exactly the right location.”

Hagen’s parents have played a huge role in their only child’s life. Her father, David, is a research engineer who works for a company out of Chicago, and her mother, Cathy, is her business manager as well as a talented watercolorist.

Soon after moving to Goshen, David took his daughter, then 8, to the front of an orchestra concert at Goshen College and showed her the different instruments. Anna pointed to a harp and said, “I want to play that one.”

The Hagens went to Suzann Young-David, a harp teacher and professor from Elkhart, who said, “if she’s serious, she’ll play piano. She needs to know piano for her to make music theory.”

Anna’s parents told her, “All right, if you play piano for a year and stick to it, and we don’t have to nag you, or tell you to take lessons or to practice — if you do it on your own initiative — we will think about getting you a harp,” she said. “So a year later, I said ‘OK, can I have a harp now?’”

“My father bought me the best harp he could. It was only 25 pounds. It was very light for a harp, and that’s one of the reasons I started performing so much in public, because I had a portable instrument. So it was my father who got me my instrument, and my mother who got me my gigs.”

Cathy was 41 when Anna was born, and said she knew that to plan for her daughter’s future that she could either get a job, “or help her create this business, and let her pay her own way through college. This is a no-brainer for me, because I figure it’s better to give her the life skills and the bragging rights. So that’s part of the adventure for us.”

Anna and Cathy recently visited Greenleaf Health Campus in Elkhart, where Anna first played her small harp Maewyn in a wandering minstrel fashion for Alzheimer’s patients, then played different harps in a larger group setting for adult residents.

Hagen was awarded the Wickersham Grant in 2011 by the American Harp Society for her work in therapeutic settings, and regularly plays in local assisted living settings in addition to other engagements. “When I first started playing in Alzheimer’s units, I would always ask people’s names, and often people could not tell me their name, but then I would start playing a hymn — ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘Jesus Loves Me’ — and they could sing all the words. They knew every verse. And that has been an incredible experience,” she said.

Hagen said she loves playing senior facilities but if she had a choice she’d “probably listen to only Bach.”

She says playing for seniors has helped her stretch as a musician. “My grandmother is the activities director at a senior care facility in Missouri, so she had me there when I was 6 and 7, and I was real comfortable with seniors, but then I started playing at senior homes when I was about 12, and I called up Grandma and said ‘What do I play?’ and she said, ‘Oh honey, play those golden oldies.’”

Hagen looks forward to playing the harp for her entire life, but says “it’s not going to be my primary income,” as wants to do missionary work and creative writing, which she calls her passion.

She says she knew early on that she would play the harp in heaven, “so I thought I’d better get an early start. The reason I play the harp now is because the verse in the Psalms that says ‘Praise the lord with the harp and lyre,’ and I get to praise God all the time, when I practice, when I perform, and that’s the goal of my life — to give glory to Jesus.”