Although Theodora Johnson was born (in 1911) and raised in a small Pennsylvania town, she learned about missionaries early in life because her parents hosted all the missionaries who spoke at their Ridgway Covenant Church. Her cousin also corresponded with Teddy, as she was known, about her life as a missionary in South America.
Teddy knew early she wanted to be a physician who helped dying children. Immediately after graduation from Philadelphia’s Women’s Medical College, she applied as a missionary doctor to China.
The Covenant had no China openings then. They needed a missionary doctor to replace Dr. Wallace Thornbloom in the Congo (later Zaire), Africa.
In 1938, her home church commissioned her (then known as Dr. Teddy), then she flew to Paris to study French at the Alliance Francaise. Next, she studied tropical medicine in Belgium at the Institute Leopold Medicale.
To her surprise when she arrived on the Congo field, the missionary homes were pleasant with ceilings, several rooms, and cement floors. No little grass huts with mud floors.
Her challenge came within four days when she was given the entire charge of the Karawa hospital. She had no time to study Lingala, the local language. She and her nurse worked with patients, using their minute Lingala vocabulary, “Mpasi wapi?” (“Where is your pain?”)
This was during WW II and supplies were short. No antibiotics were available. Dr. Teddy and her staff worked with no refrigeration or electricity or plumbing. Her four-year term lengthened into seven because of unsafe passage to the States. She served at Karawa, Gbado, Bokada, Sonabata, and Kibunzi with the Svenska Missionsforbundet.
In the Congo, the 60’s were filled with riots, uprisings, and wars, and all missionary women and children were ordered to leave. Dr. Teddy hosted the evacuees, then shipped out the supplies and medicines. By the time she arrived at the evacuation sight, all the military planes had flown to Europe. The remaining men told her she was “such a brave woman” to stay. Dr. Teddy laughed; she hadn't intended to stay. In fact, she had expected to be reprimanded. In the 1964 evacuation, Dr. Teddy left to live in the Central African Republic where she helped at the Brethren Clinic.
Dr. Teddy and her nurse started a mobile clinic, thanks to the Covenant Women’s provision of the vehicle. They could visit more villages and schools to screen and treat various diseases.
Besides medical services, Dr. Teddy helped build the first school foundation in Gbado, a road into the Gbado station, and supervise a kiln. She didn’t know the amounts of wood to use and the fire often burned out. The low blaze and double firings produced the best bricks. “You could hold one in the air, drop it, and it wouldn’t break. Had I invented a new way to make unbreakable bricks?” She laughed.
Dr. Teddy supervised the construction of a huge hospital at Bokada. She taught the women and children sewing and reading. She led vacation Bible schools and taught village pastors at Karawa and Bokada about the Bible and arithmetic.
In 1978, Dr. Teddy retired and lives today in her home town of Ridgway, PA. Her biggest disappointment was not establishing a children’s hospital at Bokada.
Blest be the Tie That Binds