The Early Years
Hessett Farm - Three Miles West, One Mile South
The gate in the barbed wire fence was open, and the empty hayrack was hitched to a stomping, very impatient team of horses. The driver jumped aboard in time to grab the reins while two seven-year-olds watching in excitement begged, “Can we come?” The answer was a swift and emphatic, “No!” Knowing a runaway was imminent and almost unavoidable, the team was steered directly towards a willow-woven binder shed a hundred yards away. The result? Two horsehead-shaped holes in the fragile shed and two subdued, stunned animals.
This happened at Hessett farm, fondly named after a spot in England. The hayrack driver was my Dad, and the seven-year-olds were my twin sister, Marion, and me. Here on Hessett Farm, west of Lloydminster, my life began. At the time, my mother was gravely ill in the hospital, and Grandpa Thompson, a baker from England, lived with us. Times were tough, but for the most part, my twin and I were blissfully unaware of it. We had enough to eat, a wholesome farm life, were taught to say please and thank you, and had the Bible read to us. Honesty was expected. We even said a mealtime grace, but one which came after the meal. For us, it went speedily like this, “Thank God for my good dinner. Amen. May I go, please?”
School Days – In one Room
For eight years, we had the fun of attending a one-room school, Westminster Park, located a mile and a half from our farm on Highway 16. On winter mornings, we walked there on a hard-crusted, three-foot layer of snow and came home in the afternoon on skis we had carried with us in the morning. Spring and Fall were more manageable because we rode our pony to school.
Our mother passed away in 1938. Seven years later, while we were still living on the farm, Dad married Elizabeth Payne, one of our housekeepers who had cared for us. After his marriage, there were many changes in our lives, but we had always understood we would finish high school after grade school. The farm was sold, and our family moved to Lloydminster. One of my high school memories involves a grade nine French class. It was not at all to my liking, so I gave it up, a decision I later came to regret.
Saskatoon, Lamont, and a Thailand Connection
It was decided Marion and I would do well during high school if we went our separate ways for a time. Marion went to stay with relatives in Surrey, BC, and I went to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It was, as one could imagine, a real learning curve for both of us. I took grades ten and eleven at Saskatoon’s City Park Collegiate. Between the two years, I worked at the hospital in Lamont, Alberta, scrubbing stairs, mending hospital linens, and cleaning the nursing director’s private room.
Fortunately, I was in Lamont while Paul and Priscilla Johnson were at the local Alliance church, doing home service, before going to Thailand as overseas workers. They were a delightful couple and a real blessing to me. Later, while in Thailand, they were shot, and their three children were orphaned. 1
Prairie High
Our stepmother was a godly woman, and mainly due to her influence Marion and I went to Prairie Bible Institute. We found Prairie to be neither dull nor suffocating. There were about one thousand students at the time, and I found the courses and programs to be very beneficial. It was there I prayed with Mrs. Waldock, one of the faculty, and became a child of God. At Prairie, I also learned the value of quiet time with the Lord first thing in the morning, developing this discipline as a lifelong habit. Great emphasis was placed on the Scripture, and I remember having a metal ring with Bible verses attached for easy carrying and memorization.
My sister and I both finished high school there and also took two years of Bible college. Then, due to financial restraints, we returned to Salmon Arm, BC, where our folks were then residing. In Salmon Arm, we both took hospital jobs, but Marion eventually became a legal secretary, working in Salmon Arm, Vernon, and Calgary.
White Uniforms and Caps with a Black Band
Nurse’s training was on my radar, becoming a reality when I completed the three-year nursing program at the Yorkton General Hospital in Saskatchewan. Naturally, after those years of sparse finances, a position with a good salary was necessary, so I found myself at the Vernon Jubilee Hospital, where I worked on the surgical floor for two years. At the time, Roy and Connie Batchelor were planting the Vernon Alliance Church. My sister, a nurse friend, and I were part of the church youth group and profited so much from the Batchelor’s godly influence. It was a delightful and satisfying time of my life at the church and at the hospital, but I became restless. I felt spending the rest of my life making money, buying all the stuff I wanted, and just enjoying life would be a worthless way to live.
CBC Two Years and a Dilemma
I went on a bus vacation to Washington State and did much thinking on the way home. I decided to hand in my resignation at the hospital, giving the required one-month notice and applying to Canadian Bible College (CBC). It was late in the Fall, and college should have begun, but 1956 was the year CBC in Regina moved to a new campus, and the building was delayed a month. I was accepted and got there right on time.
CBC was wonderful for me. Rev. W.M. McArthur was president, and Rev. M. Downey and Rev. A. Martin were on faculty along with Rev. K. Kincheloe, his wife, and Miss Ione Anderson. What a group of educated and dedicated leaders they were! We students could not help being influenced for the good. I was given a year’s credit for my studies at Prairie, so I graduated in 1958 after two years of study.
During those CBC years, great emphasis was placed on overseas ministry, but I felt much too inadequate for that. However, the Lord used various ways to point in that direction. One day, on the way out of chapel, I met Rev. Martin at the door. He made just one statement, and it stuck! “It would be nice if some of our nurses got to the mission field.”
Despite the clear statement, I found myself uncertain of what to do next. During the summer, I worked at three summer camps, Whitewood Beach, Crowsnest, and Echo Lake in the Qu’appelle Valley, but still lacked direction for the future. I then worked nine months at the Indian Hospital (now the All Nations Healing Hospital) in Fort Qu’appelle during the same period when Dr. Arnold and Marylou Cook started the Alliance church there. My friend, Adeline Mohninger (nee Yuzek), worked at the same hospital, and we were able to give some support to the Cooks.
I had heard about the beautiful Peace River country for some time, so I applied for a job at the Grand Prairie hospital and was accepted but found myself without peace. “Okay, Lord,” I said and cancelled my application for the Grand Prairie job and applied to New York Alliance Headquarters for overseas ministry. As a result of this decision, I felt I was going in the right direction for the first time in months.
A Bouquet of Glads
Once I started the application process for overseas ministry, an interview with Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) authorities was mandatory. The week it was scheduled in Regina, there was a special train fare, so transportation from Vernon was easy. When I arrived, Rev. Downey was at the station to meet someone else, so I immediately got a ride to the college.
If you can imagine, a room was offered with Dr. and Marylou Cook in the men’s dorm! It was all very proper since the Cooks had a private suite due to Dr. Cook’s position as dean of men. Mid-morning the next day, I faced Dr. L.L. King and Rev. Alvin Martin. They asked the inevitable questions; how would you react if your housemate left shoes in the middle of the floor day after day? Who wrote the book of Acts? What about boyfriends? My reply to the latter question was, “I guess I didn’t love any of them.”
Shortly after my return to Vernon, application papers for overseas service arrived. I sat for hours answering pages and pages of questions. Some left me amused like this one, “what would you rather do, design a birdhouse, calculate the cost of building a birdhouse, or build a birdhouse?” For me, it was definitely the latter.
After completing the whole bundle and applying open (I did not state a preference to be sent to any particular place), I sent the application off to New York. Not long after, I received my acceptance as an international worker in Mali, West Africa.
Mali! Where would Mali be? Yes, it is the Mali of 2013 headlines, but it was pretty much unknown in 1960 even though many people had heard of Timbuktu. Many might have thought Timbuktu was a fictional location, but it is an actual town located in Mali.
I left for New York in 1960, where I met the Loyal Bowmans, Roy and Cathy Solvig, and Arlene Miller, all headed for Africa. We left New York harbour for a beautiful six-day cruise on the New Amsterdam. Our destination was Harve, France. One very happy incident occurred just before leaving New York harbour. A steward came to my stateroom and set down on the floor a vase containing a huge bouquet of gladioli, saying, “These are for you.” They were from the alumni of my nursing school in Yorkton, Saskatchewan!
On Missionary Service
Calvin’s Cathedral and The Salvation Army
Our plans were to study French in Paris but, since Mali had just become independent from France, it seemed wise for us to be sent instead to Switzerland. We settled in beautiful Geneva, studying at the Shultz School of Languages, the University of Geneva, and Berlitz language school. This was the time I wished I had stuck with high school French! I stayed for half the year at The Salvation Army guesthouse overlooking Lac Geneve, right next door to Calvin’s Cathedral. My roommate was Corinne Horn, who had flown to France to meet us. After six months, wanting to improve our French ability, we arranged to stay with local families. I was in the delightful home of the Barbey’s whose grown daughter was no longer at home, so I took her place and her room while being duly spoiled with cookies and language encouragement.
Mamou, Driver Ants, and Measles
Africa! My first stop was a year at the missionary kid school at Mamou, Guinea, where I was the school nurse. It was a beautiful setting with mango trees, palm trees, and delightful kids. Two things stand out in my mind from those days at Mamou. Shortly after my arrival, I went on a hike with some of the children into the surrounding hills, and we ran into driver ants, a truly electrifying experience. The second significant event was a measles epidemic where I saw wave after wave of kids become incredibly ill with high fevers. This was an era of no immunization and no e-mail; some parents were about a thousand miles away. The Lord was good, and no child died. Rosalys Tyler and Prudence Gerber cared for patients in the daytime, and I worked nights. After this detour year, I flew to Mali, my intended destination.
The Inbetweens
Every four years was a home assignment. On my first furlough, I took midwifery at the University of Edmonton, and on ensuing furloughs, I worked several months at various hospitals to keep my nursing current.
Home assignments also afforded much travel. I went on tour in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Washington State, Canada’s B.C. lower mainland, and up and down in Alberta.
Back in Mali, my terms were varied. One year I was the school nurse at Ivory Coast Academy, and several years I was stationed at the men and women’s Bible School at N’torosso. There was a stint at Yorosso, working with the Larry Wrights, whose ministry I greatly admired. During that time, I drove up to women’s conferences in the Sangha district towards the Sahara Desert and Timbuktu. Sun, sand and scorpions; it was a wonderful experience.
Mali, Mangoes, and Migraines
The teen girls’ school in Baramba was my first station in the country of Mali. Constructed of mud brick, my house was comfortable, and the surrounding trees yielded up an abundance of tropical fruit like mangoes, papaya, guavas, limes, lemons, and grapefruit. At Baramba, I was immediately thrown into the medical scene when a woman at the front fence held a convulsing baby in her arms, something I had never seen before. Besides medical and maternity concerns, however, language study, six hours a day, was required.
Some medical situations were very frustrating such as the night a man on a motorbike drove up to my north window. He was so anxious he left the motor running. “If you would just turn that motor off,” I shouted, “I could hear you.” He turned it off and told me his wife, from a village eight kilometres distant, was hemorrhaging. I knew her story but had not seen her myself. She had hepatitis and recently had delivered a stillborn baby at our mission clinic; the next day, she went home on the back of a bike.
I quickly got my trusty fishing tackle box with supplies and the car ready. The husband was in the passenger seat, and his friend was following us on the motorbike. I knew the road, but it was often hidden by hood-high grass. Suddenly I hit a foot-high stump on the right side of the road. The impact shot my passenger forward, and he hit the windshield (no seat belts in those days!). The windshield stayed intact, but the centre of the steering wheel flew out; the wipers went on, and the wheel jerked out of my hands, causing my arm to hit the door. The tire rim was bent enough to expose the inner tube, but the tire was not flat. I could not go on, so I gave them some oral meds and returned home. The woman passed away later in the town hospital, a sad ending indeed. Is it surprising, therefore I had migraines from time to time?
Fortunately, there were happy and rewarding times at the school. The girls were a delight to teach. Many were illiterate when they came, but they left after the first year able to read. Each girl had her own Bible, and following three years, she knew much of the Bible and math, geography, and knitting skills. Some of these girls became leaders in Mali’s women’s ministries.
N’torosso
I have no idea where the name of the village N’torosso originated; a loose translation would be “my trouble home.” The meaning had no connection with what N’torosso meant to those of us who lived there, including those in the men’s Bible school. At N’torosso, I spent several terms involved in teaching, classroom, and district church work, along with much medical, clinic, and maternity involvement. During this time, Joan Sylvester (nee Foster) and I did a series of women’s classes in district towns, ending up with parties, headscarf gifts, and coffee served with milk and much sugar.
The Bako Era – Enter Doris
Doris Bruckner was one of the teachers at the N’torosso school previously mentioned. She hailed from France, was fluent in English, German, French, and Bambara, and was both a nurse and a visionary. She became curious about a part of Mali little known to us, a region between Mali’s two big rivers, the Niger and a branch of it called the Bani. This region, Bako (Ba means river and ko means back of), is a fertile area with six hundred villages that are home to numerous ethnic groups, including the Fulani, Bobo, Bambara, Tureg, Dogon, etc. This Bako region was my destiny.
Mud and Mud
You cannot travel or work in Bako without giving careful attention to roads. The wagon trails are winding and signless; in the rainy season, the Africans describe them as “mud and mud.” When the roads are a foot deep in fine-as-flour dust in the dry season, they earn the label “graves.”
Our first forage into the area was an eye-opener. Women and children had never seen white people before, so they were terrified. They would drop their loads, scream, and run. Over the months, they came to understand we had come to help. When Doris and I, and other teams with Africans and two other nurses, Veronika Volland and Gabi Wolterstorff, visited villages, we were greeted warmly.
Eventually, a mud-brick house and dispensary were built at Kalan, where Pierre Dembele and another gifted nurse, Olive Gifford, took care of the medical work. I was on home assignment at the time. Bob and Myrtle Overstreet also built a house and station at Katiena in 1983-84. Daniel Thera, a Malian lawyer and military officer who loved the Lord, was a tremendous help in getting the land. What a time it was!
A Team in Trouble
One day the Overstreets and I were at N’torosso on business. Our friend, Joan, the nurse there, cared for a newborn baby whose mother had died. A couple in Bako wanted to adopt the baby, so we left for Bako in two vehicles, a Toyota truck and Joan’s smaller Peugeot. Shortly after leaving the main paved road, the truck went down in the mud. All winching, digging, and pushing failed, and so did the battery! What to do now? Remember, we had a baby on board. Finally, the decision was made; Bob and Joan, with the baby, left in the smaller vehicle to get to Kalan, home of the future parents. They then continued on to Katiena for jumper cables and African help. It was dark by then, and they had fifty kilometres to go.
Meanwhile, Myrtle and I stayed with the truck. We knew we would be waiting a while, maybe overnight! I planned to sleep on the baggage rack on top of the car, and Myrtle was going to sleep in the front seat, but first, we needed a cup of coffee. We did not have a thermos, but there was a dead tree close by being burnt for charcoal. We confiscated a few nice coals, set our tin can of water on it, and enjoyed our Nescafe!
I was about to climb up to my perch when lights appeared on the horizon; our travellers were back. The truck was excavated, and we were on our way, but about an hour down the road, the truck decided it had had enough; abruptly, the engine died. The rest of the night the Africans were lying on a tarp and blanket on the ground. Joan and I were in her car and the Overstreets in theirs. We dozed and dodged mosquitoes. At daylight, Bob repaired the problem. Bless the Lord for good mechanics!
Progress at Turtle Speed
Famorila, a market crossroads, was pinpointed as a good location for a mission station. A storage building went up first; it would also be used for a dispensary.
Water was a must, so a well was hand-dug. Then a clinic building was erected with much African help. It became my first residence before being used for treating patients. My living room was the consultation room, and my bedroom was the future pharmacy.
As soon as possible, I moved to the almost completed duplex, only to move back to the secure clinic building after finding my curtains blowing parallel to the ceiling in a storm and water pouring onto my dresser from the unfinished windows. I was by this time quite adept at moving since I had done so nearly a dozen times throughout my career. I like setting up a house, so moving was not too onerous, just lots of work! Doris, bless her, made arrangements for a new deep well to be drilled at the station. We had clear, pure, and soft water in abundance and indoor plumbing in the clinic and house.
JESUS Film on Mud Walls
Gradually work was established for the Kingdom. My good German nurse friend, Veronika Volland, came to Bako and settled into the other half of the duplex. What a treat to have another nurse close by. Besides caring for numerous patients (on market days, we could treat over one hundred patients), we did prenatal checks and immunizations. By this time, three male nurses had joined us and were living with their families adjacent to the station.
We could not forget surrounding villages which had no knowledge of Jesus. Teams were organized, and visits were made with African pastors, clinic nurses, medicines, and the JESUS film. The latter was projected onto a smooth mud wall in the town centre. I had the fun of running the projector and driving the 4 x 4 Toyota truck.
Katiena station, with the Overstreets’ ministry expertise, was the logical location for numerous camps for kids, youth, and women. To this day, Myrtle and I laugh at our experiment with dish soap, blowing bubbles in their living room in preparation for the kids’ participation. They loved camp and were taught how to wash hands and have hearts made clean by Jesus’ forgiveness. Many children responded to the Gospel.
Teaching the Good News, literacy, health, and the Ten Commandments was our challenge and our privilege.
The Ongoing Saga
Three young men went to Bible school and three teen girls to the girls’ school at Baramba. Male nurses had further education, and some learned to drive the clinic ambulances, which were really just Toyota trucks. Churches, where our African colleagues did the preaching and teaching, were built at five different locations. A beautiful maternity building was created thanks to the vision of nurse Olive Gifford and her parents, along with lots of African labour. There was no more need to deliver babies in cornfields, bathhouses, and amid wagons on market day! This maternity facility is still staffed by African midwives who have had government training. In 2013, Bako had five medical clinics, not just one.
Calgary, Canada, and a Twin Sister
At the beginning of my foray into international work, I had a special verse, Psalm 121:8 (NKJV), “The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth and even forevermore.” 2 He has done just that in all the numerous comings and goings of thirty-four years; He continues to be faithful to His Word.
I finished overseas service in 1993 and came home to live in a comfortable condo with my sister—my dedicated assistant all these years, taking care of letters, income tax, driver’s permits, my nursing registration, and giving financial support as well. My hat is off to all the parents, brothers, sisters, and families of international workers. They don’t get much acclaim but will surely share the reward.
One other wee detail, did you wonder what happened to the travelling baby we took from N’torosso to Bako? He grew up and recently got married!
This is an excerpt from the book, On Mission Volume 2. Download your free copy today.
- Their story is written in the Jaffray Collection, Please Leave Your Shoes at the Door
- Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.