Kazuyoshi Kawata, an American engineer and missionary, is the son of Japanese immigrants. Kawata grew up in Portland, Oregon. In 1941, he and his family were held in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans. When the U.S. Army began accepting Japanese-Americans as enlistees in 1943, Kawata joined and served in Europe until the end of the war. After his honorable discharge he attended Oregon State College, finishing his degree in 1949. He married Marion Jean Sammis in August, 1949. After Kawata earned his M.S. at the University of Minnesota in 1951, the Kawatas served as missionaries to the Methodist Church in India for fifteen years. "Kaz" Kawata worked as a sanitation engineer, helping to design and implement improved septic and waste disposal systems. He was the first Methodist missionary to serve in such a capacity. Following his missionary service, Kawata returned to the United States to finish his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. He later taught at Johns Hopkins, where he remained until his retirement in 1988. His expertise allowed him the opportunity to continue working around the world through various community health programs.
Katherine Lorena Kelly (1903-?), American missionary, was born at Mt. Mourne, North Carolina on May 17, 1903. She received a B. A. from the University of North Carolina and an M.A. from Scarritt College (Tennessee). Kelly was a Methodist Episcopal, Methodist and United Methodist Church missionary in the Central Zaire Conference for thirty-three years. In 1936, she arrived in what was then The Belgian Congo, after spending a short time in Belgium for French language instruction. Kelly served as an education worker directing primary schools, organized a junior high school for women, and taught in various institutions. During her tenure, Kelly served in Tunda, Wembo Nyama, Lubondai and Lodja. She witnessed the transfers of powers from the Colonial Committee of Fourteen in Belgium to the eventual rule of Joseph Mobutu, later known as Mobuto Sese Seko. In 1960, the Congo civil war ended with independence for the former colony which was now known as the Republic of the Congo. Kelly, along with other missionaries in the area, fled to what is now Kitwe, Zambia, during the war and did not return full-time until early 1965. Upon her return she served as dean of the Congo Polytechnique Institute. In 1969, Kelly retired from active missionary work and returned to the United States of America.
Mathilde Killingsworth (1904-1986) was an American missionary. She was born on March 14, 1904 in Fayette, Mississippi. She received a B.A. degree from the University of Mississippi, and an M.A. from Scarritt College. In 1936, she was commissioned and appointed to China as a missionary for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. When the Sino-Japanese war broke out, Killingsworth worked in the Tai Wha Christian Community Center, Korea, for six months before returning to China. Upon returning to China, she worked in the Shanghai refugee camps. From 1938 until 1941, she worked at the Hong Kong Institutional Church in Soochow.
Sometime after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Killingsworth was ordered to return to the United States. She was transferred to the China Office of the Board of Mission in New York City. By 1946, she was allowed to return to Soochow and resumed her work at the Moore Memorial Church in Shanghai. Killingsworth began working with the Methodist Church in Malaya in 1954. During her stay she worked with the Kampong Kapor Methodist Church in Singapore for a year and a half and then as a treasurer and field correspondent with the Women's Division in Malaya and Singapore for six and a half years.
Upon returning to the United States in 1963, she served as a field worker, along with her sister Louise, for the Department of Christian Social Relations and the Board of Christian Social Concerns. Then in 1965, both she and Louise, transferred from the World Division to the National Division of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Church. The reason for this transfer was to work as deaconesses in the Upper Mississippi Conference of the Central Jurisdiction. Killingsworth retired in 1969 and died in 1986.
Walter Russell Lambuth (1854-1921), an American bishop, medical doctor and missionary, was born in Shanghai on November 10, 1854, the son of missionary parents, James William and Mary Isabella (McClellan) Lambuth. In 1859, he was sent to his relatives in Tennessee and Mississippi for his early education. His parents returned during the Civil War, and the Lambuth went back to China with them in 1864 and remained five years. He graduated from Emory and Henry College in 1875, studied theology and medicine at Vanderbilt University and received a medical degree.
In 1877 he was ordained an elder in the Tennessee Conference and was sent to China, where he worked in Shanghai and adjacent areas. During that same year he married Daisy Kelly. Mrs. Lambuth was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on February 24, 1858. Lambuth returned on furlough in 1881 and studied at Bellvue Hospital Medical College in New York and received a second degree of doctor of medicine. He returned to China in 1882 and organized medical and hospital service at Soochow and Beijing. In 1885, with his father, the founded the Japan Mission of his church and established the notable Kwansei Gakuin and the Hiroshima Girls' School. In 1891 he was assigned to field service in the United States and became editor of the Methodist Review of Missions. In 1894 he was elected general secretary of the Board of Missions, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. In this capacity he helped to unite Methodism in Canada and to form the autonomous Japanese Methodist Church, a union of all Methodist bodies working in that field.
Lambuth was elected bishop by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1910 and was assigned to Brazil. In the same year the Board of Missions projected a mission in Africa and in 1911 Lambuth, accompanied by John W. Gilbert of Paine College and a leader in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, went to that continent. They traveled 2,600 miles by boat and rail and 1,500 miles on foot through the jungles to the village of Wembo Nyama in the Belgian Congo. Their cordial reception by Chief Wembo Nyama convinced Lambuth that he had been providentially led to the Batetela tribe, and he proceeded to arrange for a mission. After more than a year, he returned home and recruited a group of missionaries, whom he took to the Congo in 1913. For his travels through Africa he was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society in London. During World War I, Lambuth went to Europe, visited the front, and made arrangements for establishing Southern Methodism in Belgium, Poland and Czechoslovakia. In 1921 he took a party of missionaries to Siberia and founded a mission there, but it met opposition and was of short duration. He served briefly on the Pacific cast and for a period resided at Oakdale, California. Bishop Lambuth participated in the Ecumenical Methodist Conferences, the World Missionary Conference and other movements involving the cooperation of the churches. He wrote three books on medical missions, the Orient and the missionary movement. Lambuth died at Yokohama, Japan, on September 26, 1921, and his ashes were buried by the side of his mother in Shanghai. Daisy Kelly Lambuth died on May 24, 1923 in Oakdale, California.
Spencer Lewis (1854-1939) was a Methodist Episcopal Church missionary to China. He received a B.A. from Northwestern University (1879) and attended Garrett Biblical Institute. Lewis married Esther Bilble ( 1859-?) in 1881. Later that year they sailed for China. Upon arrival in Chinkiang he was ordained, and he remained there for one year of language study. In 1882 he moved to Chungking where he began preaching in rural areas. Lewis was appointed superintendent of the West China Mission in 1888 and established a school for boys that year. His wife began a school for girls the following year.
Jenny Sophia Lind (1893-1988), American Missionary, was born on August 31, 1983 in Tioga, Pennsylvania. Her father, August Lind, was born in Sweden on October 27, 1857 and came to America as a young man, locating at Morris Run for short time, later coming to Tioga, where he spent the rest of his life. He was married to Matilda Johnson who died June 10, 1920, and he was an active member of the Tioga Methodist Church during his entire life in Tioga. Her parents were of thrifty, industrious Swedish stock. She received her education in the Mansfield State Normal School, Pennsylvania; Missionary Training Institute, Nyack in New York; Hartford School of Missions and School of Religious Education (Bachelor of Religious Education). She worked as a pre-missionary employment for sixteen years in rural schools, Tioga in Pennsylvania (1912-1914), Alleghany County academy in Cumberland, Maryland (1914-1917), Kuling American School in China (1924-1926), and Public School in Morristown, New Jersey (1927-1928). She returned to the U.S.A. when the Kuling school was closed by Civil War.
Lind was appointed a missionary on May 28, 1929 by the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church and return to China. She taught in Knowles Bible Training School, Kuikiang, China (September 1929-1935), Knowles-Rulison Joint School as well as Principal and Treasurer (November 1936-June 1942), Baldwin Girls School and Nanchang Academy, China (April 1948-June 1950), Colegio Americano, Porto Alegre, Brazil (March 1945-February 1947), at Aoyama Gakuin, Tokyo, Japan (January 1951-February 1953), Fukuoka Jo Gakuin, Fukuoka, Japan (September 1954-July 1957), and Aoyama Gakuin, Tokyo, Japan (September 1957-July 1960). After official retirement in 1961, she taught at the Kuling American School to Yokohama, Japan to 1964. Lind went furloughs (1935-September 1936; August 1942-March 1945). During that furloughs, she attended numerous schools of high education. She died on March 27, 1988.
Rev. Carroll Summerfield Long, D.D., PhD. (1850-1890) American Methodist Episcopal Church missionary was born on January 2, 1850 in Athens, Tennessee. He was the oldest son of Reverend William R. Long (February 18, 1819-November 4, 1847) and Sarah Elizabeth (Atlee) Long (April 4, 1829-December 5, 1889). He attended East Tennessee Wesleyan College (Athens, Tennessee) with the intent of practicing medicine. However, he had a change in plans and wanted to live a more religious lifestyle. He became licensed to preach on June 22, 1872 under Reverend J. W. Mann. Higher education was important to Long, and he would return to East Tennessee Wesleyan College to complete his studies, receiving a B.A. in the classics in 1878, a M.A. in 1881, followed by an PhD in 1886.
In October 1875, Long was admitted to the Holston Conference and was stationed in Asheville, North Carolina where he would serve for four years as the pastor of the church. During which he would also serve as the president of Candler College for two of those years. In August 1879, he was elected as the principal of Powells Valley Seminary (Well Spring, Tennessee), where he would hold the position for a short five months before accepting an appointment as missionary to Japan. Long and his wife sailed from San Francisco, California on February 28, 1880 and arrived in Nagasaki March 20, 1880. Long was determined to become emerged within the Japanese culture, and took up to the study of the language and customs upon his arrival. Within less than 13 weeks, Long was able to give his first sermon in the vernacular of the people. Reverend Carroll Summerfield Long would serve a total of eight years as a missionary to Japan. Some of his many accomplishments include founding Cobleigh Seminary (1881), becoming the presiding elder of the Nagasaki and Nagoya districts, as well as founding a school for girls in Nagoya (October 1888).
His missionary experiences were not experienced alone, and in many aspects, could not be completed without his family. On June 3, 1879 he married Flora Isadore Smith (1861-1952), the daughter of Reverend William Conway Smith (1830-1881) and Mary Eliza (Hemens) Smith (1835-1929). They met through “Pen Pal,” as Flora loved to read “The Children’s Corner” and began an relationship through the correspondence that the two would have. During their time in Japan, Carroll and Flora would have 4 children: Mary Elizabeth Long Dayharsh (1880-1975), Flora Hortense Long Harrison (1881-1968), Pauline “Haru” Atlee Long (1883-1931) and “Michi” Geraldine Long Bailey (1888-1985).
Reverend Carroll Summerfield Long made his last return trip to the United States on August 17, 1890, and due to bad health, passed away at the home his friend Reverend J.D. Robertson in Asheville, North Carolina on September 4, 1890 and is buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery (Athens, Tennessee).
Paul Stephen Mayer (1884-1962) was a missionary to Japan with the Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB) from 1909 until 1947. Mayer spent his childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended college at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, graduating in 1907. He then attended Evangelical Theological Seminary at Naperville, graduating in 1909. That year he married Frances Frank, who had just completed her nurses training, and they left together for Japan that November. They lived and worked in Tsukiji until 1914 and then in Shimo-Ochiai, Shinjuku-ku. Mayer taught English for most of his years in Japan at several different schools in addition to his church work. He served as the EUB Japan Mission superintendent from 1926 until 1941. He also served as the chairman of the Japan Forward Movement. of Christ in Japan (UCC Japan) in 1941. When the Japanese government ordered all missionaries home in 1942 the Mayers refused to go, and they were eventually held in separate internment camps for a year. They were released and returned to the United States in 1944. Mayer was part of the reorganization of the Church and in the preparations for new missionaries responding to MacArthur's call for "10,000" new missionaries to Japan. Mayer worked with the Foreign Missionary Conference of North America and the Kyodan, the indigenous church of Japan, as well as his own denomination, in this role. He also helped to begin the work of rebuilding damaged or destroyed church buildings and schools. He served as the associate secretary of the National Christian Council, which replaced the United Christian Church Japan, for five years. Mayer attempted to put together a history of the Japan Mission while in retirement, but it was never finished. Mayer died in Washington, D.C., but his body was returned to Japan for burial.
George Amos Miller (1868-1961) and Margaret Ross Miller (1870-1955) spent nearly three decades as missionaries and administrators for the Methodist Episcopal Church in Central and South America. Both attended Stanford University in California, and they were married in 1894.
After George Miller's ordination in 1896, they served churches in California until 1904, during which time they had their two daughters, Marian and Evelyn. In 1905 the Millers took their first overseas assignment when George Miller became pastor of Central Church in Manila. IN 1907, the Millers returned to the United States, where George Miller worked for the American Bible Society. He returned to local church work in 1908, and served churches in California until the Millers took their first assignment as missionaries in 1917. George Miller served as mission superintendent (1917-1919), and began pioneering Methodist work in Costa Rica.
George Miller was appointed executive secretary of mission work in South America for the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1920, and served this post from Santiago, Chile. While in Chile, Margaret Miller began her effort to organize women's groups on the mission fields. These groups were later organized into the Federation of Women's Societies, for which she wrote several study books. She also wrote and published Women Under the Southern Cross for the sixteen denominations in the U.S. that combined their missionary study courses. Conference. Miller was elected bishop in 1924 served one quadrennium each from headquarters in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. He retired in 1934, served a local church in Lafayette, California, and continued his interest in Latin American missions. Margaret Miller served as president of the Pacific branch of the former Women's Foreign Missionary Society, serving also in that capacity in the Women's Society of Christian Service.
Ernest Isaac Obee (1874-1952), Methodist Protestant Church missionary and minister, was born at Whitehouse, Ohio on October 15, 1874. Obee attended Adrian College and upon graduation in 1904 was quickly accepted as a missionary to Japan with support by the Christian Endeavor Society. Just before his missionary appointment he married Lotta Shields in August. Eventually they gave birth to five children. Together they spent twenty-four years in Japan before returning to the Ohio Annual Conference to pastor various local churches.
While in Japan Obee's duties included President of the Nagoya Boys Middle School, Mission Treasurer and District Missionary. Under his administration the Boy's School would eventually enroll over one-thousand students. Upon returning to the United States in 1928 he would become the pastor of the following Methodist Protestant congregations: Lewistown, Arlington, Rush Creek and Mount Cory. By 1940, the annual conference granted him superannuated status (retirement) but Obee continued to be a short-term supple pastor to various local churches when needed. Many of these churches were considered to be home mission charges.
Unfortunately, Ernest and Lotta were not able to enjoy their retirement together because of her untimely death in 1940. Two years later Obee married Paula Smelser who would outlive him. Obee died in Lima, Ohio, on March 20, 1952. His funeral took place at the Allentown Church on April 2 and subsequent burial was at the Whitehouse cemetery.