Helen Roseveare tells her story of grappling to find happiness when the will of God is difficult.
I had arrived at Ibambi, in the Belgian Congo, one Tuesday in March 1953.
Jack and Jessie Scholes were the leaders of our mission – HAM, the Heart of Africa Mission, which later became Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ (WEC).
HAM was responsible for the preaching of the gospel in a region in north-east Belgian Congo that was about the size of the UK. Ibambi was the village at its heart, where the Scholes led the ministry in a Bible school and the Cripps, working with a national team, ran a printing press. The village was in the outskirts of the great Ituri forest – and so was hot and humid all the year round.
Building a medical centre
Initially, I had a room in the home of the Scholes, and from there I was asked to build up a medical service for the half a million people we served. I was given a small three-roomed building from where I could make a start. Tom-tom drums beat out the message: ‘Our doctor has arrived!’ Then people, mostly women carrying babies and accompanied by small children, began to arrive – in droves. It seemed an impossible task.
Almost at once it was obvious that I must train a team of willing helpers. All manner of people came – be they patients, builders or students! The work grew at an extraordinary pace, until in 18 months the first group of eight lads was ready to sit the government’s exam to become medical auxiliaries. We were all excited – and rather proud of our new homemade uniforms!
My newly qualified assistants were keen enough to learn, but their knowledge was so limited that everything they did needed supervision! And I had to spend so much time looking up things in my few books that I had brought with me – all university textbooks, and none with an emphasis on tropical medicine! It was all very frustrating.
Meet the committee
Then one day a lad came across from the Scholes’ house to ask me to go over there and meet with a committee of missionaries. I arrived there, unprepared for what was to come, and probably full of pride at what we had so far achieved.
I was met by Mrs Jessie Scholes, who told me the committee of leaders were busy. She invited me into her room to wait for them to be ready to call me in, and then told me briefly what they wanted to suggest to me.
‘The medical work is growing so fast,’ she explained, ‘that we all fear that it will swamp everything else here at Ibambi. And so the committee want to send you some 11 miles up the road to base your medical work at Nebobongo.’ This was a small clearing in the forest, where Edith Moules had started the leprosy work of WEC some years before. There was still a ‘camp’ for the sufferers of leprosy, a small orphanage for the children of these leprosy sufferers, two brick-built homes for the missionaries involved in the care of patients and children … but nothing much else. The clearing was largely overgrown, and a feeling of discouragement was heavy in the air.
‘I felt angry’
My heart heaved at Jessie’s words. ‘This is madness,’ was my immediate reaction. I felt angry. No-one had asked me for my opinion. Who would build the needed facilities for a medical centre to flourish? Jessie suggested that we pray together until the committee was free to see me.
‘Pray?!’ No way, I thought. In my anger, I just wanted to show them how unreasonable was their suggestion … and yet I think I knew that if we paused and prayed about it, God would ask me to give in and accept their direction, and not to push my own point of view.
Jessie sensed my rebellious spirit. She quietly prayed – and practically ignored me. Slowly my heart quietened, and I kind of whispered to God: ‘Please forgive me and help me to accept whatever the committee says.’ But certainly there was no bit of me that could rejoice in this decision.
The committee called me in, explained their point of view and suggested that I plan to move – lock, stock and barrel – in about four weeks’ time. They would help me to settle in at Nebobongo.
I said nothing. God had won the battle when Jessie prayed – and I just accepted the decision. Yet I did so not with joy and gladness, nor with meekness and submission, but only out of necessity. Four weeks later I moved.
Then I had to come face-to-face with the task that needed to be done. Patients started flooding in, once the tom-toms had sent out the message: ‘Our doctor is now installed at Nebobongo’. I needed a consulting room, pharmacy, laboratory, outpatient hall, wards and that was only the beginning! There would have to be workmen to build such facilities, yet such workmen, mostly married, would have families and so all would need homes. We would need a school for the children. I would have to feed them all, train nurses and clothe them. The problems loomed bigger and bigger. How did the committee think I could manage all this alone? Who was going to pay for it all?
Looking back
Years later, as I looked back on that move and all that followed during the next 11 years, I could see, yes, God was in charge, and it was for the best. But at the time? No, I could not see this! I accepted the committee’s right to make the decision … but I felt they were being insensitive. Why had they not asked me what I thought about this planned move? Why did they think that a single lady missionary (trained to be a doctor) could actually become architect and builder, teacher of all age groups and in all subjects, provider of food for an ever-increasing family, etc.
However, grumbling apart, I set out to throw myself into each of those roles. I soon grasped an idea (if not actually a vision) of what we needed to do, stage by stage. I sought to train different groups for each task. We drew up a plan of campaign and set about actualising it month by month. On the whole, I enjoyed the challenge – and determined not to grumble, but to see it through to completion. And through it all I enjoyed the friendship of some of the African women, who loved me and stood by me – even when I made mistakes!
Bible teaching
Agoya, a Bible school graduate, came to us to ‘pastor’ the church. He and I worked together so that Bible teaching became the foundation of every day, and prayer was the focal point that underpinned every decision. Agoya’s wife, Mama Taadi, became one of my closest friends.
But the weariness and load of responsibilities began to take their toll. Still I nursed the aggravating question, ‘why?’ – why did no-one feel they should come to help me? ‘They’ did not even seem to appreciate what we were doing!
But I failed to see that, through it all, God was seeking to change me – to make me more Christ-like; more patient, caring and trusting; and always more dependent on him for all that we needed. God saw that the best way to accomplish the change in me was at Nebobongo, with all my Congolese helpers, and not actually at Ibambi, where I would have depended more on my missionary colleagues.
God cared so much
With hindsight in later years, I can see now what God was doing, and what he had planned all along to achieve – but why couldn’t I have accepted that this must be true at the time? The fact that God was seeking to mould me into the pattern he had planned for me should have humbled me, and led me into an enormous sense of privilege that God cared so much for me that he would take the initiative to bring about the change needed. And such a sense of privilege at being God’s child and in his care would indeed have filled me with the joy that I craved, yet often lacked.
