Dcn Leah Sandwell-Weiss

Dear friends,

We do not need to hurry, but let us be ready for the opportunities when God opens them to us. —Deaconess and Missionary Harriet Bedell

Born in 1875 in Buffalo, New York, Harriet Bedell’s first opportunity led her to become a public school teacher. In 1905 she was inspired by talks about missionary work in China to attend a year-long program at an Episcopal school for deaconesses. She then began her missionary work to three different Native American tribes in three vastly distinct locations.

She started with the Cheyenne Indians at Whirlwind Mission in Oklahoma. There she worked with Dcn David Pendleton Oakerhater to provide religious services, teach school, and provide medical care. During her 10-year ministry among the Cheyenne, Bedell learned to appreciate their culture, and was adopted into the tribe.

Bedell then accepted an assignment to serve Alaska natives in Stephens Village, Alaska, approximately 40 miles south of the Arctic in 1916. As she explained the distance to the mission in an article in 1929, the “Bishop … had to break trail for ninety miles to get to us and for eighty-five miles to the nearest town in leaving.”

While working in Alaska, in 1922 she was made a deaconess after 16 years of missionary service. The Stephens Village mission was moved to another town 185 miles away to set up a boarding school in the late 1920s, but the school closed due to a lack of funds during the Depression.

Deaconess Bedell then returned to the United States, where she soon found another opportunity.

Now approaching her sixties, Deaconess Bedell was asked to renew an abandoned Episcopal mission to the Seminoles in south Florida. Appalled at the conditions she witnessed there, she readily agreed.

She used her UTO stipend and $25.00 a month provided by the Church Service League to start her work. She wrote that these funds “enabled me to take the first step, a venture of human contacts, without buildings or equipment, future steps to be taken only as God opens the way and leads people to support the work.” In addition to her teaching and religious work, she worked to revive traditional crafts:  doll-making, basket-weaving, and intricate patchwork designs, which were sold to tourists.

Forced to “retire” when she turned 63, Deaconess Bedell continued her ministry of health care, education, and economic empowerment with the Seminole until Hurricane Dora destroyed the mission in 1960. Active well into her eighties, she won the respect of Indigenous people through her compassion and respect for their way of life and beliefs. She died on January 8, 1969.

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 your 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.

—Dcn Leah