7. | Ora Victoria Lovelace (2.James2, 1.Sarah1) was born on 06 Mar 1888 in Des Arc, Iron County, Missouri, USA; died on 14 Mar 1969 in Temple City, Los Angeles County, California, United States; was buried on 20 Mar 1969 in Mountain View Cemetery, Iron County, Missouri, United States. Other Events and Attributes:
- familyserch.org ID: L831-484
- Occupation: , , , Swaziland; 1919-1944 Missionary
- Residence: Temple City, Los Angeles County, California, United States; 1947-1969
- Residence: 1945, Intercession City, Osceola County, Florida, United States
- Created: 04 Sep 2011
Notes:
1907 - Harmon Schmelzenbach sails for Africa; Presbyterians and Methodists open Union Theological Seminary in Manila, Philippines; Bolivian Indian Mission founded by George Allen.
From: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/line.htm Missions time line
hculbert@snu.edu
Christian mission history: Important events, locations, people and movements in World Evangelism
20 July 1933 Arrive in New York from Southampton, England
30 Dec 1944 Arrive Philadelphia from Lisbon, Portugal
Fairy Chism, Ora V. Lovelace, and C. S. Jenkins, "The Lord's Doing": Nazarene Missionary Achievements in South Africa (Kansas City, MO: Nazarene Publishing House, 1941), 225.
Find A Grave Memorial #62504103
From "Messengers of the Cross in Africa" by Amy Hinshaw. pages 29-33.
ORA VICTORIA LOVELACE
Miss Lovelace is the efficient principal of the Boys' Training School at the Fitkin Memorial Station near Peniel, Swaziland. She is a native of Des Arc, Mo., where she was born March 6, 1888, and was converted and sanctified in 1905, when seventeen years of age.
During her childhood she received no instruction along missionary lines, neither did she hear any stirring appeals from missionary workers. Nevertheless, two years after her conversion, the Lord himself began to talk to the young girl about Africa. Many hours she spent in her closet weeping and communing with God, until He led her to understand that she was a chosen vessel set apart for work on the foreign field. At this crisis in her experience. Miss Lovelace attended a campmeeting conducted by Rev. and Mrs. E. P. Ellyson. During the progress of the meeting the divine "call" in her heart became more clearly defined, although no reference to Africa was made in any of the sermons. Finally, after a missionary address by Dr. Ellyson, she yielded herself to the will of God, and the question was settled. Miss Lovelace has never doubted the genuineness of her ''call," and to her it has always been most sacred. From that hour all her plans were formulated with reference to Africa.
When she first made her application to the Missionary Board, and learned of the long line of applicants waiting for appointments, she became a bit discouraged, but decided to hold herself always in readiness, while improving opportunities at home, so thatwhen called to account before God, she could truthfully say, ''I did my best to reach Africa."
Miss Lovelace received her education and training at the Missouri Holiness College at Des Arc, spending six years in that institution, finishing with the two years English Theological course. She graduated in 1913, then spent seven months in the Trevecca Hospital at Nashville, Tenn. This added to her equipment the elementary knowledge of medicine and nursing which is such a valuable asset to a missionary.
Since the World War began about the time Miss Lovelace finished her schooling, the way to Africa did not open for her until 1919. But she sailed on the first vessel that went through, in company with Miss Martin, Miss Rixse, and Rev. and Mrs. Penn. The missionary party reached Peniel, Swaziland, June 20, 1919.
After a few weeks of language study, Miss Lovelace was appointed to the Girls' School, where she served as teacher and principal for about three years. In 1923 she was transferred to the Boys' Training School, to take Miss Rixse's place as principal when Miss Rixse left for Lourenco Marques to study
Portuguese.
Since no biographical data for this study sketch has been received from Miss Lovelace, the missionary's personality must be drawn from deduction, a task not so difficult as might be supposed.
The position of principal and teacher in a training school for evangelists and native workers in a pagan community is no easy task. Into her hands is delivered the raw material,hewed so recently from heathenism, from which must be builded loyal, devoted Christian characters, real ''messengers of the Cross" who shall preach the unsearchable riches of Christ" to others still bound in darkness! Truly a task which requires faith and patience, fortitude and vision, together with a love that knows no bounds.
The principal of such a school must surely be Spirit-filled, for her burden is too heavy for human strength to sustain alone, and her problem is too complicated for human wisdom to unravel without the aid of the Spirit who understands the secrets of everyhuman heart.
The principal must be a woman of initiative, original and resourceful, able to adapt her teaching methods to the needs of untutored minds. She must also be a woman of poise and decision, to discipline with a firm but gentle hand these untamed children of the wild.
She must possess the gift of spiritual discernment, with a keen insight into human nature, and she must be endowed with rare wisdom and tactfulness in dealing with individual problems.
Miss Lovelace has herself likened the training school to a "melting pot" which receives its raw material from various tribes, Swazies, Shangaans and Zulus, all with peculiar tribal customs clinging to them, and all schooled in lying, trickery, witchcraft,and heathen immorality. To correct evil tendencies born of life-long associations, to elevate the moral standard of her pupils to the New Testament plane of living, to keep a strict guard over their social contacts, love-making, etc., and to gently reprove personal faults, such as laziness, dirty habits, or tardiness — all these form a part of the principal's task, and they surely require a degree of sanctified tactfulness which few women possess.
But in addition to all these lovely graces, the teacher principal must be blessed with an overflowing measure of that Christly, God-given love which can shut its eyes to all that is uncouth and revolting in her "raw material," while she sees only the precious souls as they will be after they have been transformed by the Spirit and refined in the "melting pot." Then, above all, the teacher-principal must be a woman of prayer! She must live in close comm.union with God so that she can draw responses from the skies, while she is leading her pupils into a like fellowship with God.
Ora V. Lovelace has been filling the exacting requirements of her difficult position for five years, and with remarkable success. Hence it is safe to conclude that she possesses all the qualifications enumerated. This conclusion is confirmed by a careful study of her contributions to The Other Sheep and the Africa Nazarene. Between her lines may be detected the missionary's modest personality, with self entirely lost in her devotion to others and her passion for lost souls.
When the news of the retrenchment of 1925 reached her station, Miss Lovelace was one of the first to join the Prayer and Fasting League and to introduce it among the ''boys" of her school. When orders came to reduce the number of native workers, with breaking heart, she sent an eloquent protest to The Other Sheep.
The quality of her love appears when she refers to the unlovely and repulsive features of African heathenism. She declares, ''Nevertheless, for them (these unlovely ones) our hearts break, and our deepest emotions are stirred." Then she adds, ''Oh, yes, it is worth living for, and dying for — if need be — to see the transforming power of the gospel in such lives!"
Again the missionary's devotion is manifested when, in response to an emergency call for a sick child, she quickly dons her riding-habit, mounts Dick, the old mission horse, and happily canters over the Swaziland hills under the light of the silvery moon,with "millions of twinkling stars" lending their tiny tapers to light her way!
Miss Lovelace is a strong preacher of the Word, and much given to prayer. It was she who induced her boys to erect the famous Prayer Hut to be used exclusively for intercessory prayer. She did this so that the student evangelists might learn "the greatestlesson of life," the secret of prevailing intercession. The story of the wonderful week when a continuous volume of prayer ascended from that humble hut night and day, of the glory that hovered over the mission station, and the mighty revival which followed, is already familiar to the readers of The Other Sheep.
With such a teacher as Miss Lovelace it is not strange that the students of the Boys' Training School grow in grace and in wisdom, developing into stalwart, devoted, loyal Christians whose holy lives, sacrificial spirits, and intense evangelistic fervor have attracted the attention of other missions, causing
them to wonder, and to inquire as to the secret!
From http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/holy3.htm
An incident of soul saving in Africa
From one Africa mission field came a little incident that will help us to visualize God working on that continent where we now have over five thousand members of the Nazarene family. One day an elderly native man hurried to the mission and begged Miss Ora Lovelace, the missionary [ see photo ], to come at once to his kraal. His wife was dying and was not saved. Miss Lovelace knew the family well. Gospel services had been held in that kraal. Two of the boys had been converted, had been in her Bible School and were now preaching the gospel. But the father and mother had not accepted the Savior.
She hurried with him to the humble home and found the poor woman very ill, lying on a few rags in one corner on the dirt floor. She talked with her about her soul's need, but her heart was hard. She seemed indifferent. The husband, although himself unsaved, was deeply concerned that his wife should be saved, and finally he lost patience and began to scold her. He said, "Mother, why don't you repent? You are not going to live any longer, you are going to die, why don't you pray? If you don't repent, we won't take care of you any longer. We won't give you food, and when you die we won't bury you." But even this did not move her, and after an earnest prayer the missionary returned home.
A couple of days later the man was back again pleading, "Please come once more, Mother is almost gone." So she made the long trip again in the burning summer sun, praying as she went that God would help her to win this blood-bought soul to Jesus.
Again she knelt beside the dying woman and taking the weak, trembling hand in her own, she told again the sweet story of Jesus' love and sacrifice. After praying, she noticed tears in the faded, almost sightless eyes. Her faith was encouraged, and she began to sing softly that old familiar chorus, "Come to Jesus, come to Jesus, just now," and as she sang it a second time, she saw the sufferer making an effort to lift her right hand, and then, when the chorus was finished, in a very feeble voice, the dying woman declared, as is the custom in Africa, "I choose Christ." Now the husband rejoiced, he fairly danced for joy, that at last mother had accepted the Savior. Thus souls in Africa are seeking and accepting Christ, some even at the eleventh hour. . . .
Hamon Schmelzenbach Biography: http://home.snu.edu/dept/PR/ARCHIVES/biograph/hfschmel.htm
Lived at Casa Robles, 6355 Oak Avenue, Temple City, CA, the official retirement center for Nazerence missionaries; from 1948 until her death in 1969. See http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/robles.htm and http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/casa.htm
Nazerene missionary Swaziland, Africa 1919-1944
ORA LOVELACE—PREACHER MAKER
"The Reader's Digest," said Ora Lovelace, principal of the Bible School at Stegi, in response to my question as to her favorite reading. A little unconventional you doubtless think for a hidden away missionary in far-off dark Africa. Possibly you are thinking she would be standing out under the African sun, a palm leaf fan in one hand, a native shooing flies off of her wrinkled brow, and a hymn book held high with the other hand.
Well, anyway, she drops back into the conventional preacher-maker when she adds, "I can spend the longest time unconscious of my surroundings when buried in a good Bible commentary, such as the Biblical Illustrator or the Pulpit Commentary."
What Miss Lovelace has not done on the mission field, I assume, has not been done, unless it was to shoe her favorite mount on which she formerly went mule-packing over the African veldt. Here is her story.
"My tasks and places of labor have been so numerous," she affirms in relating her life's work since landing in Durban, Africa, in June, 1919, "that I can hardly attempt to tell of them. First I had charge of the girls at Peniel, while studying the language as opportunity afforded, which was meager indeed. From there I was made principal of the Preacher's Training School, though it was scarcely more than a grade school as the students could not read or write, most of them, however, being very eager to pursue their studies.
"Miss Rixse was my colaborer in that joyous task. For ten years without a break, and with scarcely a day out of the schoolroom during the long terms, I loved and labored under the Holy Ghost, carrying every young man on my heart, his soul, training and his every problem as well as his distant future. This was my life.
"In 1931 the Esselstyns having been sent to take over the school I went for one year to become the senior missionary at Bremersdorp while the Hynds were on furlough. All the while at Piggs Peak I was in charge of the outstations and also pastor of the church. From Bremersdorp I seemed to become an extra, filling in here and there until the present time."
In 1932 she became overseer of the district with headquarters, or shall I say a hot room, at Stegi. The following year she came to America on furlough. During her furlough, her first and only one in twenty-two years, she underwent a thyroid operation under the skilful hands of Dr. Mangum at his missionary hospital in Nampa, Idaho.
"In 1935 I returned to Stegi," she goes on to tell her story, "to be a teacher in the Bible school for a year, as the school had by this time been located there. From Stegi I hopped to the Eastern Transvaal and spent a year at Bethel Mission station with a view to opening a way for a Girls' Home. On the furlough of the Shirleys I moved to Acornhoek to be the sole missionary in all the district for a time. Others soon came, however, and this year (1941) I have returned to reopen a Bible school here at Stegi."
"And those," I suggested, "were easy years."
"Not on your life, for sometimes the responsibilities were staggering and the load very heavy, but I have proved God to be true."
Alone so much I wondered if such a missionary could be afraid, and she replied, "I'm scarcely afraid of anything—maybe an uncaged lion. Perhaps, while on the lion's trail, the most thrilling moment I have ever seen physically was to watch a lion attack a young deer within a few feet of where I was standing."
Should such an experience be ours, I am certain not many of us palefaces in far-off and tame America would long be standing there, well, unless rooted by fear to the very ground. But she is not afraid. And there have been few thrilling or unusual events or unusual circumstances that have crossed her path in her African years. Well, not many at least, she says, and then goes on to relate such minor incidents as having her car come near skidding over mountainous roads.
"Once the saddle turned and ndabembi (mule or horse?) went wild with fright and I was thrown headlong onto the stones, which knocked me unconscious. All the while Miss Carpenter was busy driving the wild animals away to keep them from tramping on me."
No, not many unusual incidents! Just a few like the following one: One day she and a native boy were out visiting when the native killed a dangerous snake and on the return trip when they came to the snake, "there were so many around the dead one—so many we could not count them—that we got away as quickly as possible."
And of course it was just an ordinary event in the life of a pioneer missionary when as she was riding her horse across a swollen river that the current carried her mount far downstream. "I was helpless," she says, "to do anything but the horse somehow managed to get us out."
After telling of such incidents she appends, "None of these are outstanding dangers, just the ordinary type." One is reminded, reading of such heroism, of the request an official board in a far western town in Illinois in the early seventies sent to the Methodist bishop who was holding conferences over in Ohio. "Dear reverend sir," the request began, "this year when you send us a parson, please send one who can swim, for the last one we had sent us was drowned while tryin' to swim the river gittin' to his appointment."
"My favorite recreation or pastime," she relates, "is to go camping with a group composed of congenial members down by the side of an African river with some trusty natives in the party. And at night have a big campfire to light the scene."
However, she does not like to go native as we express it. For in living as the natives do, though there have been many sacrifices, little rooms, huts and all kinds of food that have checkered her past years in Africa, she finds that the natives lose their respect for her leadership. "The native," she says, "prefers someone to whom he can look as his superior."
This faithful missionary is the product of a little Missouri town that now has passed into glorious oblivion. Down in Des Arc, Missouri, years back, they had a holiness school with such men as Dr. C. E. Hardy, Prof. A. S. London and others there. In 1905 she was radically and gloriously converted, definitely called to Africa as a sphere of missionary work, through the work of that passed-on holiness preacher, J. B. McBride. Then she went to the college, finished high school, took the theological course, headed for Trevecca Nazarene College, took a course in nursing there and in Philadelphia later, and then was ready to set sail for the land of her calling.
The most momentous hour since her birth on March 6, 1888, was the moment she set foot on African soil, for she knew she was in the hands of God. Her first task was to run the Girls' School at what is now the Schmelzenbach Memorial Station. "I called it the deaf and dumb school, for I had been here only a few weeks and I could not talk to the girls neither could they converse with me. It was done by signs and wonders! When I see the girls now, women they are with families, we have much fun in going over those days together."
Yes, there are times when she is hungry for the companionship of the home folks and with the other missionaries she looks forward to the mail from the homeland.
"Just now," she writes, "I am occupying a small, stuffy room in Miss Dixon's home, which was her guestroom. It has corrugated iron on top and sides, making it extremely hot in hot weather and extremely cold in cold weather. Each Saturday I go kraal visiting with the workers and Miss Dixon and I oversee the cooking by turns. It has been so long since I have had a choice of foods and have had the power of choice that I would not know how to exercise it. Hence there are no favorite foods."
Her greatest joy is in pastoring a native church and "in seeing the growth and development of the congregation. I like making plans for this work, to get all talents in the church put into action, and to see new people reached and brought in."
"What conditions," I had asked, "do you deplore most?"
"I deplore most conditions that have brought about a decline of interest in the Bible Training School, the tendency among the native Christians to revert to some of their old unchristian customs and to bring them into the church. But most of all I deplore a missionary program that demands all the life and strength of the missionary force to carry it out, until there is little left to promote revivals and more definite salvation work."
From the book –
Missionaries in Action - On the African Front, Part 1
By Basil Miller
1941
Nazerene Publishing House
2923 Troost Ave.
Kansas City, Mo.
Locations mentioned = Present day
Acornhoek = Acornhoek, Mpumalanga
Bremersdorp = Manzini, Eswatini – home of Southern Africa Nazarene University
Durban = city of Durban, South Africa
Peniel – no modern day equivalent
Piggs Peak = Piggs Peak, Eswantini
Stegi = Siteki, Eswatini
Provinces in South Africa:
Swaziland was renamed Eswantini in 2018.
Eastern Transvaal was renamed Mpumalanga in 1994
Ora Lovelace photo:
http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/heroes.htm
Reference to teaching at the Bible College in Siteki, Swaziland:
http://www.dacb.org/stories/swaziland/kunene_edward.html
http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/?inventory/U/collections&c=A1441/R/5842
Birth:
Birth date from passport application
Buried:
findagrave.com memorial # 62504103
Ora married Dr. Charles Edward West on 09 Jan 1945 in , Osceola County, Florida, USA. Charles (son of Henry Snowdell West and Mary Elizabeth Black) was born on 03 Oct 1871 in Hannibal, Marion County, Missouri, USA; died on 12 Sep 1947 in Nampa, Canyon County, Idaho, USA; was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Hannibal, Marion County, Missouri, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]
|