She Inspires – Helen Roseveare

Helen Roseveare is a familiar name to many who have read her books and perhaps had the privilege of hearing her speak in person. She is often quoted given the difficult ordeals she was faced with and how she shone for Christ throughout, making her an inspirational person for us to know more about.

Whilst Helen was born in Hertfordshire in England in 1925, she would later call Northern Ireland her home and is buried near Belfast. Her life and faith were remarkable - she would spend two decades working and serving the people of the Congo, bringing medical assistance to many, training others in medical work yet she would face abuse and imprisonment during the country’s political instability.

Helen became a Christian as a medical student at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1945. She was involved with the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, attending prayer meetings, Bible study classes and evangelical events.

After completing her studies, Helen applied to Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade (WEC) to be a medical missionary. She spent eight years training for the mission field, a reminder of the preparation time required before any of us enter a new ministry. She even took a degree in French in order to learn a new language.

In 1953, Helen travelled out to the Congo via a ship, ox cart and a lake steamer – taking a total of five weeks to get to the Congo.

There, she set up a hospital with local clinics and a training school for nurses. She served God in Congo during some of the darkest days of the country’s history and was imprisoned for five months. Yet her experience of God’s love in this trauma shaped her life and ministry for the years that followed when she travelled worldwide as a missionary advocate and writer.

Helen was assigned to the north-east provinces. She built a combination hospital/ training center in Ibambi in the early 1950s, then relocated to Nebobongo, living in an old leprosy camp, where she built another hospital. Helen travelled back to England in 1958 and returned to the Congo in 1960.

In 1964, she was taken prisoner by rebel forces and she remained a prisoner for five months, enduring beatings and rapes.

She left the Congo and headed back to England after her release but returned to the Congo in 1966 to assist in the rebuilding of the nation. She helped establish a new medical school and hospital, as the other hospitals that she built had been destroyed, and served there until she left in 1973.

After her return from Africa, Helen had a worldwide ministry speaking and writing. She was a plenary speaker at the Urbana Missions Convention three times and also spoke at the Bangor Worldwide Missionary Convention.

Her touching story about Ruth, a 10-year-old African girl, who prayed earnestly for a hot water bottle to save a premature newborn baby after its mother had died, has been widely shared online. We too should always be listening to the still voice of God and be ready to respond. Even though, worldly speaking, it didn’t make much sense for someone in England to post a hot water bottle to the equator! God knew!

Helen died in Northern Ireland on 7 December 2016 at the age of 91, but her legacy lives on.

If you want to read more from Helen in her own words, why not read some of her books: Doctor among Congo Rebels (1965), Give me this Mountain (1966), Enough, He gave us a Valley (1976), Living Sacrifice, Living Faith, Living Holiness, Digging Ditches, Living Stones (1988), Living Fellowship (1992) and Count it All Joy (2017).

Also, if you are looking to introduce Helen’s incredible faith to a younger generation, there is a book in the series, Do Great Things For God featuring Helen: The Doctor Who Kept Going No Matter What written by Laura Wickham and beautifully illustrated by Cecilia Messina.

Quotes from Helen

“God’s grace always proved itself sufficient in the moment of need, but never before the necessary time, and rarely afterwards. As I anticipated suffering in my imagination and thought of what these cruel soldiers would do next, I quivered with fear. I broke out in a cold sweat of horror. As I heard them drive into our village, day or night, my mouth would go dry: my heart would miss a beat. Fear gripped me in an awful vice. But when the moment came for action, God gave me a quiet, cool exterior that he used to give others courage too. God filled me with a peace and an assurance about what to say or do that amazed me and often defeated the immediate tactics of the enemy.”

“To be a living sacrifice will involve all my time. God wants me to live every minute for him in accordance with his will and purpose, sixty minutes of every hour, twenty-four hours of every day, being available to him. No time can be considered as my own, or as “off-duty” or “free.” I cannot barter with God about how much time I can give to serve him. Whatever I am doing, be it a routine salaried job, or housework at home, be it holiday time and free, or after-work Christian youth activities, all should be undertaken for him, to reveal his indwelling presence to those around me. The example of my life must be as telling as my preaching if he is to be honoured.”

“We are called to reflect the Lord’s beauty through our lives as much as through our words, and God will use this in his own perfect time.”

“Obedience tends to be a cold, legal word of calculated action: sacrifice throbs with life and passion. Certainly the one will inevitably involve the other. Sacrifice can only be worked out by obedience, but obedience will need sacrifice to give it fire and momentum.”