Medical Missionary Nurse and Educator

 Esther Bergman (1894–1935)

Esther Bergman was a leading medical missionary nurse and educator in the United States and in Ethiopia, where she made a critical contribution to the early development of the Adventist mission.

Early Life and Education (1894-1917)

Born in Superior, Wisconsin, on July 18, 1894, Esther Louise Bergman seems to have been raised in a medically oriented family. Esther, after completing her early schooling in Wisconsin, entered the Nurse’s Training School of the College of Medical Evangelists, Loma Linda, California, in 1914. Before completing her nursing program, Esther engaged in Bible work for several months in 1916.

Medical Missionary to the Eastern United States (1917-1933)

In the years following the completion of her nursing studies at Loma Linda in 1917, Bergman filled a variety of positions at the White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles, California.

Early in 1927, Bergman accepted a call to supervise nurses’ medical missionary field work at Washington Sanitarium in Takoma Park, Maryland. This was a newly organized effort to extend the sanitarium’s healing ministry to the surrounding community. Bergman championed the idea that the medical work was the opening wedge of the gospel.

Medical Missionary to Ethiopia (1933-1935)

After nearly six years of successful and productive work in Washington, Esther accepted a call to join her brother, Dr. George C. Bergman, to strengthen the emerging Adventist medical work in Ethiopia. While her brother worked with patients at the hospital and a clinic they started, Esther both provided nursing care and also led a training school for nurses – the only one in Ethiopia. In 1935, two years after Esther Bergman arrived in Ethiopia, the second Italo-Ethiopian war (October 1935-February 1937) broke out. Italy, under the authoritarian rule of Benito Mussolini, invaded its former colony with overwhelming force, inflicting heavy bombing and poison gas. At the Adventist hospital in Dessie, the medical personnel persisted heroically in treating an overflow of wounded even as the hospital itself incurred severe damage from two bombing strikes.

In Addis Ababa, Esther Bergman labored amidst the war, even though her health had not been robust for some time. On December 10, 1935, a few minutes after an apparently successful tonsillectomy, she collapsed, both her respiration and heartbeat having stopped. After working for two hours the doctors got the heart action revived but Esther never regained consciousness. Two hours later her pulse and respiration again stopped, and nothing more could be done. She was laid to rest at the Paulos Petros Cemetery in Addis Ababa.

Though not a direct casualty of the war, the sudden death of Esther Bergman was a devastating blow to Adventist mission in Ethiopia during that stressful time. Her “cheerful, courageous, competent presence had been a chief inspiration and factor in both medical and nonmedical progress,” wrote historian Arthur W. Spalding.

In a letter written shortly before her death, Bergman described how she would respond if it were suggested that she leave her work in Ethiopia and return to the United States: “I could not consent; for Africa is now my country, and here I purpose to stay as long as the Lord will permit. I have no sacrifices or hardships to relate. I am only, O, so thankful for the privilege of having a small part in the work here, and pray that the Lord will make me a true missionary indeed in saving souls for His eternal kingdom.”

Contribution

Esther Bergman was a medical professional who incorporated a missionary mindset in her work both at home and overseas. She helped in the saving of hundreds of lives, while at the same time contributing to successful soul-winning evangelism. She founded and was the superintendent of the first nurse-training school in Ethiopia, and in so doing helped pave the way for advances in medical treatment and health education in that nation.

Condensed from the article by Ryan J. Walker

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https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=2FWY