Martha Farrar Highfield. A Time to Heal: Missionary Nurses in Churches of Christ, Southeastern Nigeria (1953-1967). Sulis Academic Press, 2020. ISBN: 978-1-946849-82-3. eISBN: 978-1-946849-83-0. 367pp. $19.95 (pbk). $15.99 (eBook). The previously untold story of how a remarkable set of lay and professional nurses shaped Church of Christ (COC) missions in southeastern Nigeria. These women’s decisions…
In thriving churches, the leadership would include ministers, but also might include medical doctors, attorneys, business men and women, teachers, carpenters, judges, accountants, nurses, bakers, and so on.
For three years, the Thomas H. Olbricht Christian Scholars’ Conference undertook to ask fifteen well-respected senior leaders in the Churches of Christ to tell their own stories of their history into positions of leadership and influence. Each was also asked to articulate his or her vision for the future of Churches of Christ.
All authors are beyond age seventy, all have terminal degrees in their field, and all have stayed within the fellowship of Churches of Christ. They include Fred D. Gray, Carolyn Hunter, Lynn Anderson, John T. Willis, and eleven others.
These essays witness to the shaping work of God in the lives of notable church leaders, and perhaps also give hope to the readers for seeing God’s work in their own lives.
As a missionary to West Africa, Grace Farrar recounts the joys and frustrations of family life in the field and tells about the struggles involved in establishing the Nigerian Christian Hospital. She chronicles their work from 1964, when she and her husband, Dr. Henry Farrar, Jr., arrived in southeastern Nigeria with their five children, through the 1967 beginning of the Biafran War. Brimming with stories of faith, hope, and the daily puzzles and pleasures of living in another culture, Grace shares her letters and narratives.