From missionary work to local church leadership, here are three examples of women who made a significant ministry impact.
Missionary Work in India and China
Years ago, in Calcutta, India, an English mother and her daughter accepted the advent message. The young woman had been an active member of the Government House social set, a friend of Lady Curzon, wife of the viceroy. Lord Curzon was the highest officer of the Empire in India, ruler over nearly four hundred million. In a little time, “Miss J” was out doing missionary work, selling our books. It created no little talk and discussion in the official and social circles with which she had been associated. When I met her forty years later in London, Miss J told me: “Yes, Lady Curzon entered the lists in my behalf and defended me for keeping the Sabbath. She talked about it with everyone—with officials, with the clergy, with canons and archdeacons and bishops. She was a real missionary in arguing that the seventh day is the right Sabbath and that I was doing right in keeping it.”
Two of our young women missionaries in China—one succeeding the other—gave altogether about two years of service in the household of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, China’s leader, assisting Madame Chiang. In those days the educational officials of China earnestly asked our mission to lend them the services of one of the faculty of our China Training Institute to help in shaping a school that the generalissimo was starting, hoping to use somewhat the same methods of combining intellectual and industrial training that they had seen in use in our college. The request was granted, and I think Professor PE Quimby, of our staff, spent a year or more with their special school.
WA Spicer
Australasian Record, August 25, 1947
Lady Evangelist Leads Church on Ocean Island
Ten adults and nine children comprise the company of Adventists who meet together on the tiny phosphate island of Banaba—known as Ocean Island—just east-south-east of Nauru. And they are led by a woman.
Mrs Tekoieta Tebana, using an old copy of JL Shuler’s Helps for Bible Study, is currently conducting an evangelistic campaign with half the island’s population attending regularly. Under Mrs Tebana’s leadership, the Sabbath school enrolment has grown to 41, and of the 16 Dorcas ladies, 10 are non-Adventists.
Pastor Bwebwe Tabuariki first set up a permanent church on the island 30 years ago, although Pastor JT Howse had previously made frequent calls at the island in the Fetu-Ao.
“The little building still stands on the shores of Home Bay,” says Kiribati and Tuvalu Mission president Bill Blundell. “The inside is well kept, but the ladies need help to give the outside a facelift and also erect a small hall where they could run Sabbath school, Dorcas and public meetings.”
Once the administrative capital of the old Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Banaba is now largely deserted since the closure of the phosphate mine in 1979.
“We thank the Lord for the faithful witness of these members who are mostly women,” says Pastor Blundell.
Uncredited
South Pacific Record and Adventist World Survey, February 28, 1987
