Heroes of the past: #1

It may come as a huge surprise to find that my choice for the top spot on my "Heroes of the past" list, is a female missionary, miss Marie Monsen of Norway (1879-1962).

She was one of the daring few to leave her home soil to enter a totally alien Chinese culture in 1901, simply because deep down she had a conviction she was on a holy mission. Marie Monsen came with little formal education, and with little financial support, but despite the lack of any safety nets, social or otherwise, she embraced the hardships and the opposition she knew would come.

Westerners were far from heroes in China at the time. On the contrary, both high-ranking officials of the Imperial court as well as the impoverished commoner, would often share a sense of hatred for the imperialist 'bandits'. China's uneasy rapport with the outside world could, at least in part, be explained by the harsh and brutal clamp-down by e.g. the English during the Boxer Rebellion in the late 19'th century. Bitterness was rife after this and would not subside for many years to come.

In this foreign world she came to serve ordinary people for 32 long and lonesome years, chiefly by offering them free of charge the message of hope and salvation in Jesus Christ. She has been hailed as a feminist because she helped improve the condition of Chinese rural women, near non-entities at the time; but for the most part she is remembered and revered in China today as the mother of the so-called House Church, numbering currently at least 20 million believers.

After returning to her native Norway in 1933, she initially spent her time looking after her ageing and ailing parents, again proving her greatness through putting the welfare of others above her own immediate needs. Despite the fact that her contributions abroad or at home were never met with public approval, her memory and her legacy have been perpetuated through the few books she managed to get published before her death in 1962.

The little, yet towering, woman had completed her mission by then, awaiting a round of heavenly accolades for her outstanding work on behalf of the Mandarin-speaking people of this world.