Helen Roseveare was an English missionary to Congo/ Zaire. This lady* was hardcore.

Helen was a well educated girl. Throughout her life, she has challenged preconceived notions throughout her life. She went against the grain and trained to become a doctor at Cambridge, which was not typical of a women. After sailing to the Congo to engage in missionary work, she encountered many discouraging times as a single woman on the mission field, often misunderstood and isolated by both the indigenous and fellow missionary populations.

Despite these setbacks, she pressed on, focusing on the incredible medical need she found there. She was a trailblazer, opening training centers to educate African nurses to serve their home communities. Her vision was that there women would receive Bible training as well as medical training, returning to their villages to handle routine cases, offer preventative medicine, and participate in evangelism.

She remained in Africa for over twenty years. Her tireless efforts resulted in 5 outlying medical centers, and each center serviced 10-15 smaller rural hospitals. She endured the struggle for independence in her host nation in the 1960’s, suffering greatly along the way. After retiring from the field, she continued traveling and writing, challenging others to the missionary endeavor.

Here are some quotes for Helen:

“If you think you have come to the mission field because you are a little better than others, or as the cream of your church, or because of your medical degree, or for the service you can render the African church, or even for the souls you may see saved, you will fail.  Remember, the Lord has only one purpose ultimately for each one of us, to make us more like Jesus.  He is interested in your relationships with Himself.  Let Him take you and mould you as He will; all the rest will take its rightful place.”

(After being attacked by a rebel soldier, she wrote this)

He (God) understood not only my desperate misery but also my awakened desires and mixed up horror of emotional trauma. I knew that Philippians 4:19, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus,” was true on all levels, not just on a hyper-spiritual shelf where I had tried to relegate it….He was actually offering me the inestimable privilege of sharing in some little way in the fellowship of His sufferings.

(Upon retirement from the mission field, she reflected on her time of serve and wrote this)

I suddenly knew with every fibre [sic] of my being that these twenty years had been worth while, very, very worth while, utterly worth while, with no room left for regrets or recrimination.  I have looked back and tried “to count the cost,” but I find it all swallowed up in privilege. The cost suddenly seems very small and transient in the greatness and permanence of the privilege

Now that I have given up everything else—I have found it to be the only way really to know Christ and to experience the mighty power that brought him back to life again, and to find out what it means to suffer and to die with him.

*women are awesome

Information comes from the Evangelical Dictionary for World Missions