Rose Sarah Rasey, Australian nurse and missionary in China

Abstract

In the mid-1920s Rose Rasey trained in obstetrics at Melbourne Women's Hospital, and .was an active member of the Australian Nurses' Christian Movement. After her training she was asked to go to Queensland as the Organising Secretary of the Movement. Nursing in Queensland for 2 years drew her to missionary work: gradually the Lord began to burden mv heart with the great need of those in foreign lands who had never heard the Gospel. At first T thought it was Fgypt, but later on China ... was the place of His appointment for this life of mine . And so Rose Sarah Rasey joined the China Inland Mission on July 16,1929. On Armistice Day of that year, the China-bound SS Tanda steamed out of Moreton Bay with Miss RS Rasey listed among the passengers She was entering the social and political chaos that was China between the world wars, a China that would be her home for the more than a decade and a half. When Rose arrived in China in 1929, the China Inland Mission had 1162 active workers, of which 129 were Australians or New Zealanders . They were scattered across China, from Yunan to the Manchurian border. Since the mid-1860s, missionaries of the China Inland Mission had been learning the language, adopting local dress (when appropriate) and working to spread Christianity in China. They suffered illness, physical privations, attacks from and occasionally death at the hands of-bandits or ill-disciplined soldiers and other innumerable hardships in their chosen task, but they persevered '. Rose Rasey's training as a nurse equipped her to dispense aid to bodies as well as souls as she worked in troubled provincial north China.