Through the Eyes of a Woman

  I love sunsets. The glorious colors that light up the sky before the sun dips from sight are so beautiful and warm. Sunrises are more of a challenge to me, although they can be just as beautiful.  Experiencing a sunrise to the full means getting up while it is still dark and cold, and waiting to see how the light of a new day slowly sends its first rays to illuminate the world. But the early morning light has a special quality. While sunset colors are warm and imply the completion of the deeds of the day before ceding to darkness, sunrise colors bring ever more brightness and light that inspire action and give new energy and anticipation of things to come. God calls us to rise and shine. He spoke to the nation of Israel and He speaks to us with the words in Isaiah 60:1–3. My first encounter with this Bible text was as an 11-year-old girl attending a church conference with the motto “Arise and shine.” I have attended many other conferences with a variety of mottos that I do n...

  It is always awesome to see what women have achieved despite all the roadblocks that were placed on their way. On May 8, in the series of meetings focusing on 150 years of Adventist Missions, the Women’s Ministries group in Tübingen (Germany) looked at women who pioneered in the medical professions in the early times of the Seventh-day Adventist church. It was interesting to see that the first sanatorium was established only three years after the church's founding and that the first doctor at the Western Health Reform Institute (1866) was a woman. This doctor, Phebe Lamson, was convinced that healthy food, simple dress, pure water, clean air, rest and exercise, sunshine, a happy disposition are the basis for good health and that almost everything can be cured or alleviated with hydrotherapy. This sounds very much like the NEWSTART program the church is using today to propagate healthy living. As the church spread to other areas and continents, health work was always at the foref...

  Looking back at history is not always dry as dust. Information can also be conveyed playfully. This was the case at the women's meeting on April 3 in the church in Tübingen, Germany, when the focus was on the women in the early history of the Adventist Church who were active in preaching the Word as evangelists, Bible workers, and pastors. It was also about the opportunities for women to get involved in preaching, which were greater in the early days than in the early 20th century after the death of Ellen G. White. An interesting and sad development! There was a lot of laughter during the board game, and the nets in both boats filled up with “fish” even though the male pawn usually got a few points ahead of the female pawn. With much admiration for the life achievements of the women Minnie Sype, Ellen Lane, Sarah Lindsay, Maud Boyd, Helen Williams, and Lulu Wightman as preachers despite many difficulties, we realized that God can use, has used, and will to use women The first e...

I grew up in a family whose life was centered on serving the Seventh-Day Adventist church. My grandparents and their sons discovered the truth that would change their lives in 1921. Ever since then, serving God through this church has been synonymous with our identity. My uncle went on to become a missionary doctor and my father’s dream was to be a missionary but he served in the homeland as a teacher and administrator instead. My sister became a pastor’s wife and missionary, and my brother followed in my father’s footsteps, including fulfilling my dad’s dream of becoming a missionary. I married a pastor and we, too landed in Africa as missionaries. The mission was in our blood. With all the modern media, I would suppose that today anyone interested in history will find the necessary information. However, some people need a little nudge to be reminded of special years and dates. 160 years since the organization of the Seventh-Day Adventist church went by last year almost unnoticed. T...

 Amalia Galladzheva-Löbsack (Lebsak) (1891–1942) She and her husband, Aleksei Galladzhev, were pioneer workers in Georgia and Armenia. Both husband and wife were imprisoned during the times of massive religious repression in the Soviet Union. Amalia Galladzheva-Löbsack was executed on February 4, 1942. Amalia Galladzheva-Löbsack represents many women from the Soviet Union who served the Church in trying times and whose names we do not know. Early Life Amalia Galladzheva-Löbsack was born May 5, 1891, in the region of Saratov in southwestern Russia. Her father H. J. Löbsack was a leading Adventist minister and missionary in Russia and the former Soviet regions. Amalia was the oldest of five siblings. She and her brother, Georg Samuel, studied at the Friedensau Adventist Mission Seminary in Germany. After graduating as a nurse, Amalia worked in Leipzig and in Pforzheim, Germany, as a medical home missionary. Ministry and Marriage In 1920, at the request of her...

Guillermina Deggeller de Kalbermatter (1892–1989) Guillermina Deggeller de Kalbermatter was a missionary nurse in Peru and Argentina, and wife of missionary Pedro Kalbermatter. Early Years in Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina (1892-1919) Born on January 8, 1892, in Águila, Uruguay, Guillermina was the daughter of Guillermo Deggeller, who emigrated to Uruguay from Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Guillermina's mother, Berta Kunzle, was originally from Sankt Gallen, Switzerland and emigrated to Uruguay with her parents and siblings. In the mid-1890s, a devastating drought in Uruguay forced the Deggeller's to emigrate to Paraguay. In the port of Buenos Aires, a friend and canvasser of the Bible Society gave them magazines that presented the theme of Saturday as the Sabbath and, without additional instructions, they began to observe it.  While studying the Bible in her home Mother Berta Künzle de Deggeller decided to be baptized with daughters Cecilia, Fanny, Luisa, and Guillermi...

 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 wor...

 Hanna Elisabeth (Persson) Bergström (1900–1953) Missionary, physiotherapist, and nurse, Hanna Bergström served in Dogba and Koza, Northern Cameroon, between 1931 and 1953, together with her husband Ruben Bergström. Early Life and Education Hanna Persson was born on April 29, 1900, in Helsingborg, Sweden, to Per and Elise Persson. When she was 10 years old, Hanna’s mother, Elise, became a Seventh-day Adventist, a founding member of the Adventist church in Helsingborg. Hanna attended Nyhyttan Mission School, probably between 1915 and 1918. At age 16, she was baptized in a cold river in April.   Following school, Hanna, like many Scandinavian young people, went to Skodsborg School of Physiotherapy in Denmark and graduated in 1923. She returned to Sweden where she worked part time at both the  Stockholms fysikaliska  (physiotherapy institution in the city of Stockholm), run by the Adventist church, and the Nyhyttan Mission School, which was transformed...

  Mary Mortensen (Tripp) Armitage (1859–1950) Mary Mortensen Tripp Armitage was a Bible worker, foster mother to Ellen White’s granddaughters, and pioneer missionary to Africa. Born on April 26, 1859, in Denmark to James Jens Mortensen and Karen Olsdatter she emigrated with her family to the United States in 1865. As a young woman, she served as a Bible worker in Minneapolis and subsequently attended Battle Creek College. In the early 1890s, while Ellen White and her son W. C. White were missionaries in Australia, she took care of Ellen’s twin granddaughters, Ella and Mabel, who affectionately referred to her as “Aunt Mary” and later recollected how they owed “much” to her “for the faithful motherly care she gave us.”  Initially, the Foreign Mission Board considered having her go to Switzerland as a school matron. Instead, the widowed George Byron Tripp (1853-1898) was advised to find a spouse before going to Africa. Two days later, on April 2, 1895, Mary and Geor...

 Lucy Mabel Andrus  (1889–1939) Lucy Andrus taught in church schools in Minnesota and Washington State for a decade before giving 16 years of active mission service in China as a teacher and Bible worker. Heritage Lucy Andrus was born in Rochester, Minnesota, on September 21, 1889, to Truman and Clarissa (Lull) Andrus. Her father was a farmer and a former volunteer Union soldier. Her parents became Seventh-day Adventists when she was a toddler. Church Career Lucy attended Maplewood Academy, near Minneapolis, from 1904 through 1907, and then taught church schools in Bruno and Mankato, Minnesota, until 1909. She then enrolled at Walla Walla College to begin her formal training as a teacher. In 1911, she began teaching in the cold climate of the Naches Valley, Washington State but continued her training during the summer semesters.  From 1918 through 1920, Lucy completed the Medical Evangelist’s Course at the College of Medical Evangelists, Loma Linda, California...

  Emma Marie (Thompson) Anderson (1865–1925) Emma Marie Thompson Anderson was a pioneer Adventist missionary to China, author, bookkeeper, Bible worker, and educator. She along with her husband, Jacob, and sister, Ida Thompson, were the first group of official missionaries to China in 1902. Early Life Emma Thompson was born May 6, 1865, in Lone Rock Valley, Wisconsin, to Ozro (1839-1928) and Martha Elizabeth (1844-1912) Thompson. She attended a country elementary school, and later a high school in Mauston, Wisconsin. At the age of 17, she began teaching at a public school and would continue teaching for the next five years. She subsequently studied for three years at the University of Chicago and Nebraska State University. In 1887, she became a Bible worker in the Wisconsin Conference. She also attended a short course of instruction in giving Bible readings from George B. Starr in Chicago, Illinois. She served as Sabbath School secretary and then president of t...