by DOROTHY C. HASK IN
McDonald
Far too young and full o f fun to be a doctor
ing to be a missionary.” However, medicine also fascinated the young girl and so the only solution was to be a medical missionary. When she was 17 she left home and went to Toronto University. There she heard a missionary from China tell that “ one million souls die every month, most of them without any knowledge of Christ.” When she graduated from the Toronto University Medical School without even a break to go home, she took her internship first in Bos ton, then Philadelphia. She wanted to go to China under the Canadian Presbyterian Board, but they ad vised her to wait until she was 24 or 25. Her father had died, so Jessie and her mother went to Scotland to visit their ancestral home. There in Great Britain Jessie took a three months’ course in tropical diseases, slipped over to Vienna for another three months’ training and visited the China Inland Mission home in London. There she read The Life of Hud son Taylor, founder of the mission, and God’s leading was clear. Her spirit was knit to the spirit of the CIM. She applied, was accepted and became one of the few (per centage-wise) medical missionaries. (Of the present 400 missionaries under the CIM, only about five percent are doctors.) In the spring of 1914 after study ing the Chinese language, she was sent to Kaifeng, Honan in north- central China. Kaifeng was a noisy Chinese city, with walls 13 miles in circumference. Due to the er ratic course of the Yellow River, there was sand everywhere. Around and within the city sand storms would blow up without warning. Sand grated between the teeth, filled the nose and eyes and covered tables, books and boxes. CONTINUED 17
Jessie McDonald doesn’t remem ber when she first believed in Christ as her Saviour, but when she was eight years old she used to go with her mother to a Chinese mission connected with their Pres byterian church in Vancouver, B.C. Her mother taught English to the Chinese and so young Jessie asked, “Mother, can I have a pupil?” “ Indeed, child, you may,” her mother agreed. As Jessie taught the man English, she found that he did not know about the Lord Jesus. Distressed, she went to her moth er who explained that no one had told the Chinese of Christ and that was the reason they worshiped idols. Jessie,asked, “ Then, mother, why don’t you go and tell them about the Lord?” “ Because— ” and her mother ex plained about the responsibilities of her marriage. “ Then I will go,” Jessie de termined. Ever afterward she told people, “When I grow up, I’m go
whether the missionary life is worthwhile or not. She was not only a missionary, but gave her life to China where missionary work is now forbidden by the Communists. She went to China in 1914 and served there for 38 years. Twice she was driven out, once by the Japanese and again by the Commu nists, She served in Kaifeng, the last provincial capital to be opened to the gospel, and that only by the surgeon’s knife. She served in Tali from where she wrote, “Ventila tion is ample and accidental, pro vided by cracks around the eaves and elsewhere.” She served in Poa- shan where her X-ray machine was flown in on the last airplane to arrive before the airport was closed in ’48. A woman with slim prettiness and gracious heart, she was one of the youngest doctors ever to go to China. When she arrived in Ho nan, she was described as being one “who looked far too young and full of fun to be a doctor.”
Vivacious and young, Jessie McDonald (right) was greatly loved in China. Picture shows operation being performed in first women’s hospital in 1916.
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