Kelsi Vanada
Dear friends,
Growing up in the Evangelical church, a high priority was placed on missions and evangelism. I still feel sorrow and guilt over a mission trip I went on in college, in which we handed out tracts and tried to convert people to Christianity.
Part of my faith journey is reckoning with the church’s history of colonialism and its harmful impacts. Perhaps you can understand, then, why I sometimes struggle with how our tradition honors missionaries as saints of the church.
But I will say that reading about Harriet Bedell, the saint we honor today, one sentence caught my attention: “Bedell emphasized health and education rather than religious conversion in her work with the Seminoles; their spiritual and physical comfort was more important to her than religious conversion.” *
Bedell, born in New York in 1875, was made a deaconess in the church in 1922. She first served as a missionary-teacher to the Cheyenne Indians at Whirlwind Mission in Oklahoma, then in central Alaska, where she often traveled by dogsled to serve remove villages and also opened a boarding school. Then, until 1960, she lived and worked among the Mikasuki-Seminole Indians in Florida, helping them revive their crafts and skills that had nearly been lost.
Missionary work is complicated, to be sure. It’s also beautiful and humbling to read about lives dedicated to serving others, to meeting needs and increasing others’ comfort. I think this is part of what church “done right” looks like—following Jesus’ own example. And it’s often what our non-Christian friends see and recognize as a positive thing about our faith.
“Holy God, fill us with compassion and respect for all people, and empower us for the work of ministry whether near or far away; that like thy servant Harriet Bedell, we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, and by giving up ourselves to your service. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
In Christ,
—Kelsi
