Mission hospital dedicated to caring for mothers The first missionaries sent to Africa by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS), made Wembo Nyama their home base in what was then a colony of Belgium, “Congo Belge.” In each mission station it founded, the MECS sent a missionary director and a women’s work director, usually a...
Missionary to China for forty-eight years Nora Lambuth, daughter of Rev. J. W. Lambuth and Mary McClellan Lambuth, was born in 1863 while her parents, who were missionaries in Shanghai, China, with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, were home on furlough in Mississippi. She was born in a log cabin on her grandfather J.R. Lambuth’s...
Founders of Ganta Methodist Mission Station in Liberia Dr. George Way Harley and Winifred Frances Jewell Harley, a botanist, founded and served the Ganta mission station in Nimba County, Liberia, from 1925 to 1960. Dr. Harley was a prolific and dedicated man whose interests could not be confined to one profession. An article in World...
Teacher, nurse, & administrator who spent more than 50 years ministering to lepers in India Mary Reed was born in 1854 in Lowell, Ohio, to Wesley W. Reed and Sarah Ann (Henderson) Reed. After graduation from Ohio Central Normal School in Worthington, Ohio, she began a teaching career. When she was 30, she applied to join...
Medical Work and Care for Orphans, Quéssua Mission, Angola Martha Drummer was born in 1871 in Barnesville, Georgia, the third of eight children in her family. Her father, a Methodist preacher, died of typhoid fever when Martha was 15. Mrs. Drummer moved the family to Griffen, Georgia, where the children had access to public education....
The first annual meeting of the Poland and Danzig Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church South (MECS), forerunner of the present-day UMC in Poland, was held on August 24–27, 1922 in Warsaw. Formally launched the year before, the mission was the result of outreach and humanitarian work after World War I. The mission included congregations,...
Pioneering Missionary to Mongolia Helen Sheperd was a Global Ministries missionary nurse from 1992 to 2015, specializing in hospice ministries, first in Korea, and from 2002 through her retirement in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where she also founded the Mongolia Mission Initiative that developed into a network of congregations and social programs. A native of Ann Arbor,...
Faithful Missionaries Jerri and Bill Savuto represent a pattern of United Methodist missionary service common in the late 20th and early 21st century: long years spent in a variety of places, with occasional time outs. Jerri was a registered nursed and Bill an educator and electronics technician. Their longest service was at Maua Methodist Hospital...
Medical Missionary to Korea In 1890 the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society sent Dr. Rosetta Sherwood Hall to Korea as a medical missionary. Ms. Hall became an educator as well when she began teaching a blind girl a form of Braille. She founded the Pyongyang School for the Deaf and Blind in 1909. Joining with a...
Pioneering medical missionary in Zimbabwe Samuel Gurney was a pioneer Methodist medical missionary in Zimbabwe. He was born at Long Branch, New Jersey. After receiving his education for ministry at the New York Missionary Training School and Drew Theological Seminary, he was ordained in 1891 in the New York East Conference of the Methodist Episcopal...
