Person

Funé, Myrtle (1905-1992)

3 April 1905-1 February 1992

Myrtle Amelia hall was born on 3 April 1905 in Colchester North, Essex County, Ontario. After graduating from normal school, she taught high school in Comber and Dorchester. In 1928, she met Jean Funé in Quebec City, where he was pastoring. He left to serve as a missionary to Vietnam that same year, and they began corresponding. Meanwhile, Myrtle enrolled at the Missionary Training Institute in Nyack, NY, to prepare for missionary service. She and Jean were married in 1935, after which she joined him in Vietnam.

Rev. Jean Émile Roger Funé (1902-2000) served as a missionary and pastor in the Christian & Missionary Alliance (C&MA) for nearly 50 years. He was born on 18 May 1902, in Ville Favard, France to Eugène & Rachel (Gargot) Funé. Jean Funé spent 42 years in Vietnam and Cambodia as a C&MA missionary and five years in Quebec as a missionary and pastor before retiring in 1975.

From 1922 to 1925, Jean Funé attended the Nogent Bible School in France. While at Nogent, he received a call to become a missionary to French Indochina. With this in mind, he enrolled at Nyack (N.Y.) Missionary College in 1925. He graduated in 1927 and began his service in Vietnam the following year. Funé used his French citizenship to good advantage. For example, he was instrumental in purchasing land at Dalat, on which the C&MA later built a school for missionaries’ children, and several other strategic properties elsewhere in the country.

Jean and Myrtle had two children, George Eugène (b. 25 March 1938) and Esther Marie (b. 30 September 1942). In 1944, the Funés and their children were taken to Hanoi and then Xieng-Khouang, Laos, where they were interned for eight months by the Vichy Government. In 1966, the elder Funés left an increasingly dangerous Vietnam for Cambodia, where they served until 1970, when they began their retirement in Canada. Their retirement was short-lived, as Jean became both the coordinator of C&MA work in Quebec and the pastor of Belvedere Church in Quebec City for five years. In 1975, the Funés moved to Regina, where they worked with Vietnamese refugees. Myrtle died in Regina, Saskatchewan on 1 February 1992. Jean passed away on 5 January 2000 at his home in Hamilton, Ontario.

Vietnam, missionary, 1935-1966.
Cambodia, missionary, 1966-1970.
Quebec City, Quebec, assisted Jean Funé in his pastorate at Belvedere Church, 1970-1975.

missionary, pastor's spouse

Ambrose Archives