Ruth Patterson was born in 1924 just outside of Toronto, Ontario. She took her post high school training at Toronto Bible College, Windsor School of Nursing and Nyack Missionary College. Ministry and missionary service were no strangers to her as she was brought up in a home with parents dedicated to serving the Lord. So it was no surprise when she headed off to her first missionary assignment in Zaire where she served for four terms from 1952-1972. She assumed nursing and administrative duties at the Kinkonzi Hospital and also gave direction and taught at the nursing school.

In 1973 Ruth responded to a call for nurses in Cambodia that was issued by World Vision and ministered in Phnom Penh and in refugee camps. In 1975 when Cambodia fell, she relocated to Thailand teaching English and English Bible at Bangkok Bible College. She continued to assist Cambodian refugees with transitioning from camps to other countries. France was next on her journey. Moving to Paris in 1978 she worked with the Boulogne Cambodian Church outreach to Cambodian refugees and then moved to Pau in 1983 to work with French, Asian and Angolan refugees. Her final term from 1986-1991 was spent helping to plant a church in Martiques and also working in church planting among Cambodians in Marseille.

After forty years of service, Ruth retired to Ontario, Canada where she continued to minister in missionary meetings, Bible studies, prayer lines, and chapel services at a nursing home.

The fonds are from the experiences of Ruth over 40 years. Missionary letters and prayer requests highlight the activities she was challenged and blessed with on this journey. Numerous personal letters from family, friends, colleagues and those she so capably ministered too in spiritual and practical ways through her nursing skills, theological knowledge and servants heart, bring to life a missionary’s life.

Viola Mae Post (nee Griebenow) was born in Minnesota on 3 September 1903 and died on 2 July 1998. Ms. Post became a Christian when she was 12. During her teenage years her family moved to Salem, Oregon, and after a few years she began attending Simpson Bible Institute in Seattle, Washington. She finished her studies at the Missionary Training Institute. While there, she applied for missionary service. She had initially wanted to serve in China and Tibet but when presented with two possibilities for service, China or the Netherlands East Indies, she chose the latter field. She departed in September 1931 to assist Dr. R. A. Jaffray in the C&MA’s Netherlands East Indies field office. There she met Walter Post, and a year later they were married.

The Posts worked in East Borneo (Kalimantan) for a year and then were sent to Makassar to work in the Bible school there. After their first furlough, they pioneered a mission effort in New Guinea (Irian Jaya), but in 1943, with the advance of the Japanese forces, they were evacuated to Australia. While there, they were asked by the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service to assist in translation and interrogation work.

They were flown to Makassar in September 1945 to assist in post war rehabilitation. For the next few years Walter served as chairman of the field and taught in the Bible school. In 1952 the Posts were able to return to New Guinea (Irian Jaya) and work in the Bible school there. They ended their missionary service in 1972.

Walter Post was born on 14 January 1904 in Chicago, Illinois and died in (September?) 1982. Brought up in a Dutch home and the Christian Reformed Church, he received what he considered to be an excellent background in Christian life and practices. In 1921, through the ministry of an evangelist, he made a personal decision to follow Christ.

Shortly after this decision his family began attending a newly formed Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) church led by R.R. Brown. This church introduced Walter to the Alliance’s missionary program, but it was not until he took a course from Dr. Robert H. Glover at Moody Bible Institute’s Evening School that he felt a desire to become a missionary. In 1926 he began studies at the C&MA’s Missionary Training Institute in Nyack, N.Y., intending to pursue missions in a general way. Following his time at Nyack, Post continued his studies at Wheaton College, although he had to withdraw for a time because of personal financial difficulties brought on by the Great Depression.

While at Wheaton, he was encouraged by Dr. W.M. Turnbull to apply to the C&MA’s Foreign Department for a field assignment. The board responded with an appointment to a new field that was being opened by Dr. R. Jaffray in Borneo, Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). He accepted and, under the sponsorship of the South Side (C&MA) Church of Chicago (pastored by A. W. Tozer), sailed from Seattle in November 1931. He arrived in Borneo a month later. There he met fellow C&MA missionary Viola M. Griebenow, whom he married in 1932.

The Posts worked in East Borneo (Kalimantan) for a year and then were sent to Makassar to work in the Bible school there. After their first furlough, they pioneered a mission effort in New Guinea (Irian Jaya), but in 1943, with the advance of the Japanese forces, they were evacuated to Australia. While there, they were asked by the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service to assist in translation and interrogation work.

They were flown to Makassar in September 1945 to assist in post war rehabilitation. For the next few years Walter served as chairman of the field and taught in the Bible school. In 1952 the Posts were able to return to New Guinea (Irian Jaya) and work in the Bible school there. They retired in 1972.

Marguerite Railton was born in Smithville, Ontario in 1904 to a family of five children. She also came from a Christian background. After completing high school, she took teacher’s training at Toronto Normal School in 1922-1923. After two years of teaching in a three-roomed schoolhouse in rural Ontario, she decided to return to school, and completed one year of nurse’s training. She later moved to Edmonton, where her sister Mabel and brother-in-law Gordon Skitch were ministering, and she became actively involved in their church. She later enrolled in the Prairie Bible Institute, where she became Marion Hull’s roommate.

Marion Hull was born in December 1901 in New Westminster, British Columbia. She was actively involved in the church from a young age and later moved with her family to Edmonton. She played for the Edmonton Commercial Graduates (known as “The Grads”) women’s basketball team for one year while in high school. She worked as a secretary in Edmonton and then enrolled at Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta in the early 1930s.
Marion and Marguerite became good friends at Prairie Bible Institute and both felt a call to the ministry during their final year. The district superintendent from the Christian and Missionary Alliance did not wish to send them out to rural areas on their own; however, once it was agreed that they would go together, their “selfless service” began. Over 36 years, they served in five rural communities: Denzil, Saskatchewan (1935-1941); Hythe, Alberta (1941-1949); Daysland, Alberta (1950-1960); Lamont, Alberta (1960-1967); and Mirror, Alberta (1967-1971). Although the Christian and Missionary Alliance did not ordain them, they were regarded as pastors/evangelists, and they actively led Sunday church services and prayer meetings. They also did home visitations and participated in Bible camps and other recruitment activities. They were well-liked in their communities, highly regarded by the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and very successful in nurturing the growth and development of the Alliance churches in the various areas in which they served.

After retiring from Mirror in 1971, Marion and Marguerite moved to Red Deer, Alberta, where they were active members of the Red Deer Alliance Church for 20 years. They moved to Calgary, Alberta in 1991 because of health concerns and to be closer to family. Marion passed away in 1994, and Marguerite passed away in 1998.

Reg Reimer was born in 1940 on Vancouver Island, B. C. When he was four, his family moved to the Chilliwack area, where they began attending the German-speaking Mennonite Brethren church in which Reg was later baptized. After graduating from high school, he moved to Omaha, Nebraska, to attend Grace Bible Institute (GBI). During his second year, he met LaDonna (Donna) Rose Goodwin from Hutchinson, Kansas. They married in the summer of 1961. Reg and Donna have two children: Jay Reimer, born in October 1964, and Jill (Kila) Reimer, born in May 1966.

Reg was expelled from GBI for defending the supposedly deviant theological views of one of his professors. On the advice of this same professor, he decided to pursue further studies at the University of Nebraska. He graduated in 1964 with a B.A. English Literature and a certificate in secondary education.

Reg and Donna were called to missions at the Omaha Gospel Tabernacle, a flagship church of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). As one of the conditions of their appointment as missionaries both pursued further studies in Nyack, N.Y. – Reg at the Jaffray School of Mission and Donna at Nyack Missionary College. In 1966 they received an assignment to Vietnam.

The Reimers served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1975. Their first assignment after language study was to the coastal town of Phan Thiet, from which they were evacuated almost immediately during the Tet Offensive of 1968. In 1970 Reg took a leave to attend Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission, where he earned his master’s degree.

During the fall of Vietnam, Reg was sent to Guam to assist the United States military in caring for the thousands of Vietnamese evacuees who had been sent to the island in anticipation of being relocated. His job was to oversee missionaries who were serving as translators and trouble-shooters. For this he received high commendation from a US Navy admiral.

In 1975, Reg spent a year as the missionary-in-residence at Canadian Bible College and Canadian Theological Seminary in Regina, Saskatchewan. Since 1980, he has made frequent visits to Vietnam, during which he has kept careful record of religious freedom abuses against Protestants. He also served as the representative for Vietnam at the 1974, 1989, 2010 Lausanne Congresses. Since 2009, Reg has returned to Vietnam yearly to give lectures on Protestantism in Vietnamese to government religion and security officials.

In 1976, Reg and Donna were sent to serve as missionaries in Thailand. Reg became the Director of CAMA Services, which did relief and development work among Indochinese refugees. Until 1983 he also served as the director of World Relief US’s work in Southeast Asia, as well as chairing a committee composed of NGO’s, UN agencies, and representatives of the Thai government. During the Cambodian refugee crisis of 1979-1980 he helped lead a relief effort that provided Cambodian peasants with seed and agricultural implements, thereby decreasing their dependence on aid from the West. At the same time he worked with the Mennonite Central Committee and World Relief US to resettle Vietnamese refugees in in Canada and the United States. For his humanitarian work Reg was awarded the Order of the White Elephant medal by the king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej (r. 1946-2016).

In 1983, the Reimers moved to Toronto, so that Reg could become the first president of World Relief Canada (WRC), the relief arm of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. He was seconded to serve as the senior staff member of the World Evangelical Alliance; in this capacity he worked to facilitate reconciliation and healing in Rwanda and Indochina.

In 1997, Reg helped organize the Strategic Vietnam Partnership (SVP) an informal organization dedicated to helping mission agencies in Vietnam coordinate their efforts. In 1998, he joined Interdev (later International Partnering Associates) as the coordinator for mainland Southeast Asia. Reg is now the senior mentor for SVP, and he also serves on the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s Religious Liberty Commission. In 2000, he was invited to brief President Bill Clinton on the eve of Clinton’s historic visit to Vietnam.

Reg is the author of Vietnam’s Christians: A Century of Growth and Diversity (Littleton: William Carey Library, 2011) and also co-authored and co-edited Sorrow and Blood: Christian Mission in Contexts of Suffering, Persecution, and Martyrdom (Littleton: William Carey Library, 2012).

This biographical description is a condensation of an autobiography that can be found here https://globalvault.ca/5-biography-2/

Lindsay Reynolds (1920-2005), an engineer from Toronto, was a member of an Alliance church from 1935 until his death. His two books Footprints: The Beginnings of The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada (Toronto: The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, 1982) and Rebirth: The Redevelopment of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada (Willowdale, Ont.: The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, 1992) chronicle the history of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) in Canada from its inception as the Dominion Auxiliary of The Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1889, to its absorption by the American parent body in 1897, to its autonomy in 1981, to its subsequent development in the late 1980’s.

George Edward "Ed" Roffe was born in Toronto on February 1, 1905. His father was A.W. Roffe, an influential pastor who served as superintendent of the District of Canada for the Christian and Missionary Alliance from 1919 to 1925.

After graduating from McMaster University and Nyack Missionary College, Roffe was appointed by the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) to serve as a missionary in French Indochina. In 1928, while studying in France in preparation for travel to Southeast Asia, he was directed by the C&MA to pioneer a new field among the tribal peoples of northern Laos. In 1929, he became the first resident Protestant missionary in north Laos, settling in the city of Luang Prabang. Soon after, Roffe brought his new bride, and recent Nyack graduate, Thelma Wilhelmine Mole (1907-1999) to live and serve there with him.

While on Furlough during World War II, Ed and Thelma Roffe attended two sessions of Wycliffe’s Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). Ed Roffe also took advantage of the delay which the war posed to earn his wings, and upon returning to Laos in 1947 became the first missionary pilot in the area. In addition to their ongoing direct evangelistic efforts and administrative duties, the Roffes were also given the responsibility of running a Bible College tasked with raising up indigenous leaders. In 1950, a young student from this school by the name of Kheng was instrumental in sparking a mass movement among the mountain tribal people of northern Laos, which saw whole villages come to Christ in a matter of days. This revival precipitated the formal incorporation of the national church in northern Laos. The “Evangelical Church of Laos” held its first assembly in 1957, with pastor Saly (the first Laotian ordained by the Alliance) as the first president.

In 1951, the Roffes were transferred to the city of Vientiane. After returning to Laos in 1955 from an extended furlough, during which Ed Roffe was able to complete graduate studies in Linguistics at Cornell University, the Roffes were assigned to engage full time in the ministry of translation and literature. In a ten year period they were able to turn out approximately 100 titles, some of them original. Ed Roffe was eventually freed from his other duties to work exclusively on translating into Lao a new version of the New Testament, complete with cross-references, a glossary, a dictionary of unfamiliar terms and a limited concordance. The completed work was presented to the king of Laos in late 1973.

In 1975, the communists took control of the government in Laos, and the Roffes were forced to leave the country. In all, punctuated only by war and furlough, Ed and Thelma Roffe had labored faithfully in Laos for 47 years. Upon their return to North America (Orlando, FL) their ministry to the people of Laos did not come to an end. In addition to monitoring the situation in Laos, the Roffes actively cared for Laotian refugees in their area and helped many get adjusted to North American life. During his retirement years, Ed Roffe was also actively involved in correcting, editing, or translating various documents sent to him for comment.

Ed Roffe died on 14 September 2000. He was predeceased by Thelma, who died in 1999.

Thelma Wilhelmine Roffe was the wife and co-worker of Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary to Laos, G. E. Roffe.

George Edward "Ed" Roffe was born in Toronto on February 1, 1905. His father was A.W. Roffe, an influential pastor who served as superintendent of the District of Canada for the Christian and Missionary Alliance from 1919 to 1925.

After graduating from McMaster University and Nyack Missionary College, Roffe was appointed by the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) to serve as a missionary in French Indochina. In 1928, while studying in France in preparation for travel to Southeast Asia, he was directed by the C&MA to pioneer a new field among the tribal peoples of northern Laos. In 1929, he became the first resident Protestant missionary in north Laos, settling in the city of Luang Prabang. Soon after, Roffe brought his new bride, and recent Nyack graduate, Thelma Wilhelmine Mole (1907-1999) to live and serve there with him.

While on Furlough during World War II, Ed and Thelma Roffe attended two sessions of Wycliffe’s Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). Ed Roffe also took advantage of the delay which the war posed to earn his wings, and upon returning to Laos in 1947 became the first missionary pilot in the area. In addition to their ongoing direct evangelistic efforts and administrative duties, the Roffes were also given the responsibility of running a Bible College tasked with raising up indigenous leaders. In 1950, a young student from this school by the name of Kheng was instrumental in sparking a mass movement among the mountain tribal people of northern Laos, which saw whole villages come to Christ in a matter of days. This revival precipitated the formal incorporation of the national church in northern Laos. The “Evangelical Church of Laos” held its first assembly in 1957, with pastor Saly (the first Laotian ordained by the Alliance) as the first president.

In 1951, the Roffes were transferred to the city of Vientiane. After returning to Laos in 1955 from an extended furlough, during which Ed Roffe was able to complete graduate studies in Linguistics at Cornell University, the Roffes were assigned to engage full time in the ministry of translation and literature. In a ten year period they were able to turn out approximately 100 titles, some of them original. Ed Roffe was eventually freed from his other duties to work exclusively on translating into Lao a new version of the New Testament, complete with cross-references, a glossary, a dictionary of unfamiliar terms and a limited concordance. The completed work was presented to the king of Laos in late 1973.

In 1975, the communists took control of the government in Laos, and the Roffes were forced to leave the country. In all, punctuated only by war and furlough, Ed and Thelma Roffe had labored faithfully in Laos for 47 years. Upon their return to North America (Orlando, FL) their ministry to the people of Laos did not come to an end. In addition to monitoring the situation in Laos, the Roffes actively cared for Laotian refugees in their area and helped many get adjusted to North American life. During his retirement years, Ed Roffe was also actively involved in correcting, editing, or translating various documents sent to him for comment.

Ed Roffe died on 14 September 2000. He was predeceased by Thelma, who died in 1999.

Dr. John Staples Sawin was born in 1915 in Wakefield, Mass. Sawin graduated from the Missionary Training Institute (now Nyack College) in 1935. He went on to study at Gordon-Conwell College (formerly Gordon College) where he graduated from in 1938, the same year he married Woneta Forest. John Sawin proceeded to pastor churches in Marblehead, Mass., Muncie, Ind., and Cleveland, Ohio during which time he did graduate studies and earned his master of divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He began pastoring Christian and Missionary Alliance churches in 1942. In 1947, John and Woneta left for Vietnam, where they would spend the next 15 years as Alliance missionaries. John Sawin’s responsibilities in Vietnam included active participation in evangelism, church planting, pastoral training, seminary teaching, music, radio and literature. John Sawin also served as pastor of the International Church in Saigon and as an auxiliary chaplain to U.S. service personnel in Southeast Asia. Upon returning to the United States in 1962, Sawin served as professor of Bible and missions at Simpson Bible College in San Francisco (now Simpson College, Redding, Calif.). The Sawins went on from there to lead churches in Washington, D.C., Lombard, Ill., and San Jose, Calif. In 1976, Sawin began a six-year commitment to organize the A. B. Simpson Historical Library and Archives in Nyack, N.Y. He also co-authored All for Jesus: God at Work in the Christian and Missionary Alliance over One Hundred Years (1986), and compiled an extensive collection of the C&MA’s work in Vietnam from 1911 to 1975. From 1983 to 1992, John consulted with Canadian Bible College and Canadian Theological Seminary (CBC/CTS, now Ambrose University College and Canadian Theological Seminary in Calgary, Alta.) to lay the groundwork for the archive collection there. He donated his library and research work to the CBC/CTS archives. For his outstanding service for Christ in the ranks of the C&MA, and his generous and laborious efforts to preserve the history of the C&MA, John Sawin was honored with a doctor of divinity from CTS. He passed away on November 25, 2003.

A. B. Simpson was a pastor, hymn writer, author, educator, and magazine editor who founded The Christian and Missionary Alliance. He was born in Bay View, Prince Edward Island on 15 December 1843 and was baptized in 1844, in the Cavendish (P.E.I.) Presbyterian Church by John Geddie, a Presbyterian missionary. His family moved to Chatham, Ontario in 1847. He was converted in 1858, and in 1861 wrote a "covenant" in which he dedicated himself to God. From 1861 to 1865 he attended Knox College in Toronto. In 1865, after graduating from Knox, Simpson received a call to Knox Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, Ont. He accepted the call, and that same year married Margaret Henry (1841-1924), with whom he had six children.

In 1873 he accepted a call to Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. The following year he experienced "the baptism of the Holy Ghost" after reading W. E. Boardman's The Higher Christian Life. In 1879 he became pastor of Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York City. During this pastorate he began editing his own missionary magazine, The Gospel in All Lands, which lasted from February 1880 to October 1881. In 1881 he experienced physical healing from a heart condition and was baptized by immersion. That year, increasingly at odds with his upper-class congregation, he resigned his pastorate in order to devote his ministerial efforts to “the poor and neglected masses.”

His efforts led to the founding of the Gospel Tabernacle in 1882, the same year in which he began publishing The Word the Work and the World, a periodical for the promotion of missions and "the higher Christian life," that later became the official organ of The Christian and Missionary Alliance. By 1883, the newly-incorporated Gospel Tabernacle had grown to the point where it could launch its own missionary sending society, the Missionary Union for the Evangelization of the World. It also opened a "home for Faith and Physical Healing" ( renamed the Berachah Home in 1884) and began the New York Missionary Training College (now Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary) which graduated its first students in 1884. That year the Missionary Union sent out its first missionaries (to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Simpson organized his first conference for the promotion of evangelism, the deeper life, and missions. The Friday evening services at the conference were dedicated to holiness and physical healing.

Simpson encapsulated his movement's teaching in the phrase "Christ our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King," which became known as "the Fourfold Gospel".

In 1887, he founded the Evangelical Missionary Alliance (EMA). Its major object was "to carry the Gospel 'to all nations', with special reference to the need of the destitute and unoccupied fields." It sought "to unite all Christians of evangelical denominations in its work." The organization’s name was changed to the International Missionary Alliance on its incorporation in November 1887 (Alliance Yearbook 1888, p. 52-55).

That year he also founded the Christian Alliance as a "fraternal union of believers in cordial harmony with evangelical Christians of every name." It was responsible to hold annual conventions and form local "branches". These were intended as fellowships, not as churches, for the purpose of bearing testimony to the Fourfold Gospel, diffusing its truths, providing community for those who believed them, and praying for the evangelization of the world. (Alliance Yearbook 1888, p. 48-51).

On 31 March 1897, the boards of the two organizations authorized a merger; it was made law on 1 April 1897 by a special act of the New York legislature and ratified by a special convention held 14-18 April at the Gospel Tabernacle. The aims of the newly-minted Christian and Missionary Alliance combined those of the original bodies: (as stated in the Fraternal Letter that resulted from the 1898 annual convention) the C&MA was "to preach a full Gospel at home and send missionaries; to carry the same glad tidings to the unevangelized regions beyond; to preserve our non-sectarian and interdenominational attitude; to study to confine the [administrative] machinery to that which is necessary…." (Pardington, George P. Twenty-five Wonderful Years, p. 74, 75).

In October 1897 the Missionary Training College relocated to Nyack New York, a town about 30 km. from New York City., and was renamed the Nyack Missionary Training Institute. Simpson and his family also moved to Nyack so that he could participate more fully in the activities of the school. He commuted daily to New York City to minister at the Gospel Tabernacle and to work at the C&MA's headquarters.

The C&MA encountered a major crisis in the decade following the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in 1906. Simpson believed that all of the charismatic gifts were available to believers, but he rejected the Pentecostal belief that glossolalia is the initial physical evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. To his great sadness, many Alliance folk disagreed with him and left the C&MA for Pentecostal churches. A significant number of those who left became leaders within the Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal groups.

Despite these losses, the C&MA continued to expand, both in North America and overseas, and so the movement was strong enough to be saddened but not demoralized by Simpson's death when it came on 29 October 1919. The Alliance continued to grow under the leadership of Simpson's successor, Paul Rader (1879-1938), and subsequent leaders, so that today it numbers 6 million adherents worldwide (of whom about 600,000 are in North America).