Adèle MacBeath was set on an academic career in the early 1960s. An MA graduate from Glasgow University with a double first, she then completed an MLitt on the Italian author Lampedusa and had embarked on doctoral studies in Rome when God intervened to redirect her life into missionary service.
She had fallen in love with David Ellis, a student at the Bible Training Institute, where her father, Andrew MacBeath, was Principal.
Missionary life was not unfamiliar to Adèle. Born in the Congo, where her parents were missionaries with the BMS, she was accepted by CIM/OMF and travelled out to Asia to marry David in 1964.
Indonesia
Their service together began in Salatiga, Central Java, where Adèle taught at Satya Wacana Christian University. These were not easy days, as Communism began to penetrate Indonesia. For the Ellis family there were additional pressures, as Adèle contracted tuberculosis and had to be hospitalised many miles from David. Some lessons they learned about reliance on the Lord are set out in David’s book entitled Nothing Else to Fear.
She raised their four sons in Bandung, Jakarta and Singapore and supported David when he was appointed to various leadership positions in OMF. Like other missionary mothers of the period she had to endure separation from her boys as they boarded for their education in Malaysia and the UK. Overall this added up to almost 30 years of separation!
Family issues brought them back to UK in 1982 and Adèle became a minister’s wife in Glasgow when David was invited to be Associate Minister at St George’s Tron, working with Eric Alexander. In 1989 they moved to Kent to take up the leadership of OMF’s UK work.
Adèle’s steady faith, her deep enjoyment of the Scriptures and active prayer life fed into her ministry to people, both preparing prayer materials and carrying out research for OMF. It was during this period that she had to face not only the early death of one of her brothers, but also that of his daughter a few months later in the Dunblane tragedy.
Christ seen in her
David and Adèle retired to Scotland and continued to minister together until Adèle’s Alzheimer’s became increasingly difficult. The last two years of her life were spent in a care home where, as Sinclair Ferguson said at her thanksgiving service, even in such circumstances the Lord continued to lead her as a shepherd and, through her illness, people saw Christ in her.
