An interview with Dr. Helen Roseveare

well I'm in Inverness Scotland with dr. Helen Rose via a veteran missionary of the Congo later codes I Airmen's but can you just tell us maybe where you were raised where you were brought up I born into a normal English family down in the southeast of England and went to I went to boarding school for seven years and I had a very big formative affect on me and then University and whilst at university I for the first time ever I heard the simple gospel truth that Jesus Christ died for our sins know you becoming a Christian I understand there were a variety of things used in that there was well you tell me the factors that led to that well there's a hunger in my heart I went up to University I've been brought up a churchgoer but I never heard the gospel I never saw much point in I date myself by saying that as a teenager during the war World War two not one and I felt God was not able to cope and like many other families we'd found remembers who went to the front and we never saw them again and it all seems so stupid so when I went up to University I really decided to give up pretending about God and I never quite dad said I didn't believe in God in case I was wrong so I kept one foot in each camp and there I met with Christian girls who were just different and they my invitation that I asked the way they used to go to after suffering evenings and rather shyly they said well they had a prayer meeting I'd never even heard of a prayer meeting so I said can I come and I went and I heard these girls praying to God in a way I'd never realised as possible they knew God and that was the first introduction to me that God was somebody that you could know and love and so through their influence on my life and their kindness and their thoughtfulness and they were always the same they didn't daughter different one day from another and this attracted me and then really I came to the Lord because I was in the house party at Christmas and something had been said at the evening meal and I got mad and nobody else they looked horrified that a Christian could be so angry so I was ashamed I rushed down to the dining room I went up to the dormitory and I threw myself in my bed and I was crying and I just said God if there is a God make yourself known to me and I looked up through my tears and on the wall of the dormitory there was a text of Scripture but the rain had come through and washed out the last word and it just made be still and know that I am the verse of course would have had the word God at the end please be washed away and it's just of God Himself spoke to me be still and know that I am God and that just overwhelmed me and I was just I sometimes say I just fell in love with Jesus I thought this is so wonderful that God some loved me died for me and that that moment on the rest of my life I just had one desire in life after that to tell others about Jesus well you went up to Cambridge at that time and just explore a little thing there gender thing medicine in those days was a very much a man's world well I didn't worry me but the lecturers are all quite certain it was a man's world and they did make it very very uncomfortable for us women students I mean there were very few of us in our class there were 250 students in our year medical and 25 of us were girls and at least 13 of those girls had dropped out before the end of the three year course at Cambridge just because the unkindness of lecturers and and they made to feel fools it was not an easy life but there were Christian students men students and no other Christian girls and so I used to sit with them and as a sort of defense mechanism was unspoken as who would sit at a glass ceiling an expectation that girls could only rise so far in medicine and no father possibly I don't know other people say that the man felt threatened bias because the end of the day it was often girls who came top of classes and that I think they felt this was their world and they didn't want us in it I don't know why but it wasn't very pleasant I was one of the last group of students at Cambridge women students where we weren't allowed to get our degree we took the exams we were given the degree but we weren't allowed to go up to graduation date so I have no photograph of graduation day I got my degree through the mail that's quite extraordinary for today's view a year younger than me she had graduation day and got us a degree no talk about a call to the mission field I understand that your call came very early same night they knew I was saved that Jesus died to save me i I just I just felt it was awful I'd live 19 years and never heard it I hope this is terrible I just want everybody to know and I knew immediately that's why I didn't like doing medicine I didn't like mids now I'm built like that but I said thought well itself I can use that to serve others and so I became a doctor in order to go to the mission field to tell others about Jesus I didn't know where I would go I just knew I would be a missionary and when I went to Missionary Training College for six months every week we had a missionary from somewhere in the world and every week I got a call to a different field and almost everyone always said we need a doctor now usually the only doctor sitting in the room at the end he made it clear it was to be Africa the African church I wanted to go to somewhere where there was no church I want to go to some with it never yet heard of Jesus but the African church that was already established send home people to say please please send us a doctor and so we know one to help keep the Evangelist and the pastors healthy and to look after their children and so my call to Congo was through the Congolese church which is as it should be the church calling for you back a little bit further by to graduation clearly you felt called to be a doctor you just graduated you had to build up some no post-grad experience how did that come about where did you do that I should have done that and I always tell everybody else they must do that don't tell me you didn't do it didn't do any I graduated in December and in January I was in Missionary Training School and the following year I was on the mission field so just it's a newly qualified doctor going almost your first job is in literally the jungle in Africa with hardly any medicine hardly any equipment nothing and was there much back-up did you of the help of consultants or senior people no it was I think that was the biggest shock was the realization of the fantastic responsibilities suddenly lands on you and everybody else had so much expectations you're a doctor so you can do everything and so I was the senior chief consultant from Pediatrics to geriatrics and everything in between but I was also the bottle washer so you had a meteoric career shift then from 0to consultant in a day that's right and that was frightening and new then minutes so what are you doing some medicine where you're doing some surgery where he didn't obstetrics were you didn't lords everything everything I must have brought thousands and thousands of babies into the world and and not only for the Africans the Africans so lovely the Africans love you and with no questions they just love you that you're there to serve them and then know it and they love you but and they'd no expectations because they've never seen a doctor before in my part where I went to but the other pale skin people missionaries and commercial workers they all were comparing to a hospital back at home and if they got sick they knew they went to hospital what they need they'd have blood tests done and I couldn't do blood tests and they had all the tests done I couldn't do them they'd have X rating and I couldn't take x-rays I hadn't got an x-ray machine so as off when they came you felt very small was there anyone you could go to it with questions things you just really had to work yeah so there was someone you could go to and it was true true I mean I've known right in the middle of doing a surgery in an operation I haven't meeting something that haven't a clue what is water and literally then God please what do i do where do I go and you almost I'd over say this day but you always felt him guide your hands to do the right thing and God was wonderfully good to us and he gave us quite outstanding results that I could never ever have achieved of myself and you just knew this isn't me this is the God who brought me here so your first possession was it to develop a missionary hospital yes they wanted that the talking drums beat the day that I got there and the talking drum sent the message out 800 miles in every direction our doctor has come and the word they used in Swahili for the doctor is the same word they used for the witch doctor so this is our doctor instead of the rich doctor and and people just came and people just came every direction you just didn't know and I had no language he starts off with absent nothing and but God was saying good he really was he he gave an ability to spot what I call spot diagnosis which I wouldn't rely on here but a patient walking through the door towards me I see something I suspect some before they've even spoken and he helped us so enormously I want to turn to one or two specific ideas and issues that you dealt with the your missionary service the first one is that of the court did a burnout and stress I think you experienced that didn't you and you know seven nine years on there were times in your life you really really God was dealing with you yes Sonique by the end of five years it was I was getting very irritable with sheer weariness and and the weight of responsibility and I would get aggravated over stupid silly things and it was an African really an African helpless person dr. Helen God would never speak to a patient like that and you felt so rebuked you felt so so awful that he was a student I was teaching to love them serve the Lord and here it was him who's actually doing the teaching that God was always produced somebody from somewhere very frequently through Africans and my African pastor he saw that I was really stress at one stage and he went to my pale skin director and made or made arrangements and came to my village said pack your bag and come out after me so I packed a rucksack and got my bicycle and I cycled out behind him about 18 miles to his home in a forest village where he told his wife I was coming she got a room ready for mean they just cared for me for a week it was sleep I mean people imagine a missionaries are sanctified overnight with most of us it does take a life time to really grow and knock off the hard edges I know in your career you do a little bit way with pride issues it was came about yes I wasn't really conscious of them myself and it was my African pastor who drew my attention in fact he said Helen you don't think an African will ever be able to do things you do that there never be as good a doctor as you are and you don't really think an African never preached as well as youth preach I was very shattered by this night to really sort of get down and think about it has it unconsciously that is true that I I did and it was an occasion in the classroom I was trying to train an African who just graduated to take over the lecturing of first year students from me and bring a lecture on the physiology of the eye and he said from the back of the classroom dr. Heywood show them the diagram in and you've already said volume two and I turned around took down from the Towson bookcase volume 2 of my physiology book and turned out to page seven hundred and sixty watt and I suddenly knew that the whole atmosphere in the classroom had changed that the students had a 72 page booklet that I had printed off a little gassed Aetna printing machine for them which was the total of their physiology and he was acting now volume two was 700 odd pages and they suddenly backed off from me that I'd spoiled everything they felt they were getting somewhere they felt they were getting on well and suddenly they realized that what they got was minut was one tenth of my textbooks and that was another point of me that I hadn't sensed that this was between me and then that my being pale skinned and thinking I knew one they knew was a hindrance to their listening to the gospel and there were lots of other ways there was an occasion is down at the brook brick kiln training a team of Africans how they had to build a bit kill and be hard to empty it when it was burned and a nurse came down he said you need it up in the hospital at once so he went straight up the little modern fact hospital we had and there's a patient the mother there who needed an operation to have her baby and I was scrubbing up and having scrubbed up my hands with a new nail brush but my hands were sawn bleeding from handling bricks which I wasn't used to and then I put my hands out for the nurse the poor arm and septic alcohol and I sort of angry with God I said god this is so stupid I wanted to be a doctor to help these people why can't you send somebody else to do the building and later I went to the African group who led the hospital with me and our weekly prayer meeting and I said I need your prayers because I'm angry with God at the way he's doing things and they prayed me and they said doctor don't you realize when you being a doctor the white coat on a stick around your neck we're scared of you and whatever you say does we say yes yes when you down the brick kiln your hands are so on bleeding like ours are and you're speaking the local tribal language and when you make mistakes and we laugh at you that's when we listen to you telling us about the love of Jesus and and that was another way God had to deal with the things in me that stops them listening to the gospel and show me his way was better another issue for whatever viewers will be interested and this is a whole issue of singleness and people often call singleness as the gift but others say it's a gift that nobody wants and I know that I suspect you struggled with this whole issue tell us about that are you naturally a single did you embrace the gift with Thanksgiving mostly yes I really am as I said earlier when I knew that God sent his son to die for me because he so loved me I really did fall in love with Jesus and I've never really not truly ever wanted anyone else and I think I never thought of it as a gift of being single i Jesus was a gift but there were one or two occasions during the rebellion when we were held captive of guerrilla soldiers you desperately need iserlohn and not just guys the only pale skin amongst thousands of dark skin but I was alone because I was separated out by the rebel soldiers and very easily treated and humiliated it was a shocking time and he just wished was somebody there and I did a silly thing really when it came to the nighttime I thought I couldn't face another night of this awfulness and I'd heard Americans speaking to their wives and wife speaking to their husbands as honey so I really used that word to God it seemed awfully wrong of me but I just said honey I just need comfort and I really in my mind I was thinking I needed a husband there who put his arms around me and initially I think the verse of scripture and God said to me I will beat your husband and I said but I want his arms around me and his graciousness I really did almost physically sense the arms of God around me and the next day the other people in the prison cell where we were they said you slept all night I said yes nobody else has slept all night at all and it was just the assurance that God was in charge and so I really never wanted anything else I think God knew me well enough to say that I was best single because I think if I'd had a husband that it wanted 12 children I said when I was a teenager I was going to have 12 children I knew all the names they were going to happen and I think God knew it would get between me and him biography you do see that eye growing up you were why was not a member of the awkward squad you were an individual you were in a spirit Eli let's see and as I continued all your life yes I was twenty somebody yesterday that I've had come to realize that God the Holy Spirit's work is to change us to become more like Jesus but he doesn't actually change us I've kept contact with still who he made us and he doesn't actually change our character he makes our character molded into hit the line of his will so I'm still me and there are times I wish I wasn't God uses you as he made you I think that's what I'm trying to say the you string me you're a character you're an individual you are really not afraid to go against the floor to do I was gonna say your own thing but I sense may be selfish you're not afraid just really to go against convention I think that's true and but you have to learn to do that in God's Way and and there were times when I wanted to do it in my way and then that would irritate the other missionaries I felt that I mean people would say that I've heard others use the phrase about me that with my relationship to the dark-skinned people that they say about you were before your time because I could see them as leaders and I could see what the potential in them when others could only see them as ignorant people who had no background and had no training and couldn't believers and in making my own he lovely boy john manga dima he was my colleague had trained him and taught him and I made him leader him to take over from me when independence came in the country and there were a lot of people very almost empty that feeling that they weren't ready for it but so yes I I did put other people's backs up that was the me that came out rather than godliness that the thing done I think was right but not it was done in my way not his way back to the rebellion and you've spoken and you've written extensively about that dark period when you were imprisoned and the hospital compound for five months you speak especially about one I'm sure many other there was a neighbor you know you and in that room there was just the most awful depravity at so many levels was a changing point in your life possibly I I don't know whether really changed things at the initial moment there was a overwhelming realization that God was in charge of the situation he said to me really well you didn't use words later on I put words to what I sensed that night that he was saying can you thank me and everything in me wanted to say no it was too horrific why didn't he take us out of it the very thing can you thank me for trusting you and that was a changing point for me yes till then I trust God but to think of God trusting me in other words he was saying I could have taken you out I could have prevented this could have saved you from it but I have a purpose God speaking I have a purpose it's bigger you can't see the hole and this has a part in it can you thank me for trusting you with your part in it and I think that did swing my attitude to things to realize that God is in charge and we can trust him who we can trust him with the deeply impossible things the deeply hurtful things what we went with five months of physical suffering but I think of some people I think of mothers with teenagers who get onto drugs and one thing another and will go through a lifetime of heartache in the over at all and it seems gone but God knows and God has a purpose of me is working and if you can trust him and thank him I was trying to parents of a quite severely disabled child recently and the Christian people but they were heart aching how do they handle it and just st. them God must trust your tremendous amount God would know this baby needed a home where he'd be loved and cared for despite the disability and he's entrusted to you and certainly to watch their faces to see them changing and becoming willing to accept from God the privilege caring that child I think again that word privilege privilege is underlined almost everything in my Christian lifetime right from the first night when I was told it was a privilege to live for Jesus and that's been an underlining thing to me that God when he saves you he could just put your one side said okay say now get on with it but he doesn't he in fact you to be his fellow work as fellow stone and it's privilege it's all privilege and that so I think that's been a big word to me and I think it became a big word to me particularly during the suffering of the rebellion that is a privilege to know something even a little bit of sharing in the Fellowship of his sufferings theology was here that night God was with you indeed the room was filled with angels a cynic would say well they aren't really much good they must have been asleep in the job how do you feel about that no since then because hindsight's a wonderful thing and that's right if when you ask me what I feel at the time I can't answer that because behind side I now know what I think and since then God has given me opportunities of serving others and helping others and counseling with others and pointing others to Jesus that I would never have had if I hadn't gone through the experience myself because I've been through experiences others will listen to me I have a right that they think I have a right to speak to them because I mean during the rebellion and in the compound item there's abuse of alway of all psychological physical sexual the whole ought I said guess it's a little bit like the Queen Mother remember when Buckingham Palace was no and so I guess a privileged Cambridge educated doctor you now have an experience that was really way outside of your normal experience and do you find that women especially can can relate to unity Helen I think you know possibly that way certainly I find minim and a lot of my life is spent with university students to challenge them to give at least a year of their lives in service in another third-world country and not necessarily in mission but but in service of the Lord and Savior and because people would say to me how can you say that when I sometimes had I said that no country in the world that we can't get into today and then you pause you say you may never come out and I sort of grin but you've the right to say that the students when you've been in a situation like that and they listen to it because they know you suffered actually right during the rebellion just in a matter of weeks after I was so badly I lost my back he threw the booth of a rebel soldier and I was able to go and minister to the crowd of captured Greek Cypriots they were the mosha workers of our area and they'd been rounded up by these rebel soldiers and thrown into a house and there was a woman there who was expecting a baby and she'd been very severely kicked and beaten in great pain and I was taken down to help her and when I entered this house they all knew me I was there only doctor for the whole area and looked after them in sickness and birth and what-have-you but they'd head for dam they were absolutely despairing they there's nobody wanted to look up or anything I don't this is lady and I preach the gospel to them and as I left the place they looked up with smiles and you'd lifted their whole atmosphere and their because they had some of them had seen me the night I was so severely beaten and because I've been through it I had the right to speak to them who were going through it so all through God has very graciously shown this is part of why I took you that route it gives you the right to associate with others and challenge young people to be willing to go to a mission field they say how can you do that when you know what they may suffer out there why I've been through it it's all privileged and it is it is if they could just see that it is a privilege if the rebel who kicked your teeth in came into this room just now Helen what would you say to him okay could you forgive him for example yes interesting that because when we went when we were rescued and taken home I had to face that question and the Lord that went to the spot where yes the the realizing that I don't forgive people God forgives people and I have to accept the fact that God's forgiving and when I got back to Congo afterwards a moment arrived when I was actually asked to go to the prison to meet you there and my friend John my edema said the man who treated you so evil is in the prison would you go and see him and I had a fight I didn't want to go I thought I have forgiven him I don't want but I don't want to see him again and it took six days to like Levin said okay Lord and we went to see him but not to fact when I got there I didn't doubt you see him because they had been moved off to another prison but I had to do that in myself there was a hesitancy now yes this is a lovely story told of a lady carry ten boom and lady who was a wonderful mission if the Lord and she suffered through internment camp during World War two under the Germans and in fact her sister died through it and on an occasion later when Cory was taking a meeting a woman came towards had to greet her with an outstretched hand and somebody said do you know her she's one of the guards who was in that prison where you were held and where your sister died and she said she's given this in public test me she said in that means I'd say God put your loving to me because I can't love her my love is not sufficient but yours is and I think that's what you come to that you're not asked to love or to forgive in that sense he forgives them through you and he loves them through you and it really is that you're one of the children's hymns channels only blessed master we just a channel for the love of God and he meets people's needs in wonderful ways through you know you are living in Belfast you're not retired by any means you've spoken at Urbana you've done desiring God you're speaking for groups like cross you're still speaking with with students is there more or less than the gas tank Helen well I'm having to I'm having to allow the Lord to cut things back I just want to go on going on but I'm not as able as I was and so but there are other jobs you can do Lord surely you don't have to be out and about and traveling all over the world all the time that my church needed somebody help with being treasurer in the church because I can sit at a computer and do do the typing on the computer without rushing around the world I've had to accept that any tasks he gives us to do he's a privilege and it is a privilege when you narrate is to be given jobs you can do them you're releasing somebody else who could be traveling a lot get away and do it while you do the background job just as important they need to be done and you're writing just now you've come under the spell of our mutual friend William Mackenzie and Friends a Christian focus and you've brought a few books we've good living faith a lot of the sub-site too willing to be stirred as a port of pain tell us just a little bit about this book one of the first meetings I took after I came back from Africa and I had to readapt to living in UK and said if in Africa which I loved and he gave me this picture of the there's a him in your case akimbo Sturm Eostre me Lord I care not how but stir my heart in passion for the world and that was sung the night I first stood up to offer for the mission field and it says stir me to give stir me to go but stir me most to pray he's lying 3 in verse 1 and so this book was based on that they're staring to to give everything you've got if yourself your talents your life everything your ambitions still me to go anywhere he sends you to your next-door neighbor or the other side of the world I still be to pray in every circumstance I've learned now that when you stopped at red traffic lights you've got 50 seconds till they change and you can pray for a mission they have the mission his name stuck on your driving wheel its buying up every opportunity and that's living faith that faith is for real in you everyday living in everything you're doing is turned to serve Him don't talk much about holiness these days again great subject you willing to be the legs of a galloping horse a few sentences an assailant yes holiness is so it's an intrinsically wonderful name it's a name that just means God we've no other explanation the world holiness and the great hunger in your heart is a Christian to become like Jesus that's holy he said to be holy as he is holy and when I had tried to get down to think of that I got it in four phases it's a nice and easy to talk about the need of repentance the need of love and there were four steps and I saw them like they don't have to come in that order and sometimes one or another is more important than another I thought was like a galloping horse and you needs four legs he can't gallop with only three but you don't see the order they come and sometimes you think they're all four off the ground same time and and this one a living sacrifice willing to be whittled as an arrow again I just love the subtitles a few sentences above this one we know about sacrifice but we basically as a Christian I would say the only one who really knows sacrifice is Jesus he sacrificed his life on Calvary for us and if there's a verse in Romans that says that we should be living sacrifices and that the desiring to give all I've got to serve him and it sometimes seems like sacrifice without effect really from our angle it isn't it other people may think you sacrificed everything I think people said I'd sacrifice my home my friends my language my culture in going to the middle of Africa but to us it was privileged that's the other side of the word sacrifice and so this was but you have to read the book to unsend about the whittled arrow doctor for your life story digging that she's the latest chapter of an inspirational life I'm sure you didn't write the subject and he probably would know I came home from Africa to nursed my mother and my dear mother died and I thought I'd go back to Africa but that moment I had to go into hospital for major surgery I had a breast cancer and I when I came round from anesthetic I asked the nurse to open my Bible but where the marker was and foot in front millions leave me alone for a bit and I was asking the Lord for direction for the next phase of my life and he was opened at 2 Kings my Bible just Falls open at it 2 Kings chapter 3 I thought how can you get guidance out of 2 Kings but there it was and there's this verse that came out I said I want one of those verses it says the Lord says so nobody can argue with it and and I was really old authorized version so I had in those days but there it was the Lord said make this valley full of ditches and the valley was clear my mother just died I got cancer my mission was not going to send me back to Africa because of my own health and it was a dark Valley and he said make that was business a job something to do is active make this valley full of ditches and so eventually I got through and I said okay digger Suez Canal and he said I didn't ask for a suez canal house for a ditch and of course you read the story in 2 Kings 3 there is just a small might be a meter long she said to me this deep I need to keep on doing it because the next during that night the Lord sent rain and he filled up this sandy riverbed with water has it just need ditches the cat God's blessing and so I've taken that to mean that every day now is an extra day every day is an extra opportunity to speak for Jesus and so it's making new ditches and when I get times in Lord I've had enough could you sort of give me a different direction he's not yet full still ditches to be dug well Helen I think the key word of today's interview has been privilege there's been many you've had a privileged upbringing you had a privileged education in boarding school privileged education at Cambridge but it's wonderful to hear that you the greatest privilege of all has been serving Lord Jesus Christ all the days of your life and it has been our privilege to have you in the studio's here at Inverness TV and we would encourage the viewers to read out more about Helen and get in touch with Christian focused publications read her story and her insights in these four books that we've highlighted today thank you for joining us during this interview Thank You Helen for being with us thank you very much god bless you you

Channel: ChristianFocus

Views: 60,070

Rating: 4.905004 out of 5

Keywords: Helen Roseveare, Dr. Helen Roseveare, David Meredith, Inverness TV, Interview, Christian Biography, Missionary

Id: ij6hwPfKLPM

Length: 40min 24sec (2424 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2011