Strong Women and Gentle Men

Banana grove romance: Lewis Steckley and Elizabeth G. Engle
Macha Mission, Northern Rhodesia, c. 1914

Years ago I outlined a book--Mom’s Adventures in Africa--for my young sons.  I scribbled off a dozen chapters with titles like Python on the Road, Giant Rat Invades the Hospital, Crossing a Crocodile-infested River, etc.  My writing goals soon changed, however, as something else took hold of me: interest in the lives and times of relatives who had also lived and worked abroad.  

Perhaps the deaths of family elders, or my own aging, urged me on.  I interviewed my parents, aunts, uncles and others, studied family genealogies, took notes on books/articles written by or about my relatives, and read histories of Africa, India, Japan, and Mexico.  Deeply inspired, I wrote and rewrote, at one point scrapping detail such that son Owen, then a young teen, said: “You might be taking things out that people would find interesting, Mom.”

I also did some math, and found myself numbered among 40 individuals (including spouses) who spent more than 900 combined years in missionary work—mostly in southern Africa—during the past century.  Represented were 6 of the 8 branches of my family tree of recent generations: Engle, Raser, Frey, Lady, Lehman, and Nissly.  Most worked under the auspices of the Brethren in Christ (BIC) church, a small denomination with Anabaptist roots.

The stories of my relatives emerged upon the colorful backdrop of the upheavals of the British colonial and post-colonial eras.  Those arriving in Africa in the late 1800s took up the vision of David Livingstone.  One received a land grant directly from the hands of fanatical empire builder Cecil Rhodes (a sore point for the Africans, whose lands were taken!).  A relative in India visited with Gandhi.

Some of my missionary relatives, Southern Rhodesia, 1924:  Steckleys center back, with (from left) grand aunt Naomi Lady and son David, great grand uncle Harvey Frey, wife Emma and daughters Mabel and Lois.
Non-related, at far right Emma and John Climenhaga with Arthur, David, and Joel, and Mary Elizabeth Heisey

Life was not easy, and some died abroad. In Africa and India—where malaria and smallpox were rampant—several lost their lives to disease.  One died after being mauled by a lion (see previous post), another from a gun accident.  But from the mire of loss, pain and deprivation, bubbled up joy...joy found in service, relationship, and meeting the challenges of dangerous, but beautiful frontiers. 

With housemates Mettie Hutten (L) and Shirley Heisey (R),
Silisi Cottage, Macha Mission, Zambia, 1976

Strong Women and Gentle Men is a book in progress. It needs more African perspectives. Meanwhile...this second blog in honor of the recent 100-year anniversary of Sikalongo Mission, Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia). Numerous relatives worked at Sikalongo, and at nearby Macha--my own home from 1976 to 1978--where this story begins.

Nursing students, Macha Mission, where I served as Sister Tutor 1976-1978

The banana grove, Macha Mission, c. 1914: my great-grand aunt Elizabeth Engle, right, with Lewis Steckley, her husband-to-be, and widow Sallie Krieder Doner, whose personal history was a reminder of the perils of Africa.  Sallie’s husband succumbed to malaria in 1911; he had lost his first wife to the infection in 1904.

Faith and a “call” to serve may have mitigated fears of disease and death, but saying farewells to loved ones who might not be seen again this side of heaven?  Wrenching.  “The partings were like funerals,” said a former missionary.  Aunt Elizabeth parted from parents and three siblings in Kansas in 1907, arriving in Southern Rhodesia at age 31.  She would not see her family again for 9 years.  

But love awaited her.  A canopied path beckons in the photo.  Did Elizabeth and Lewis ever walk that leaf-strewn carpet hand in hand, pondering the future, wondering how many years they would have together?  If only trees could talk!  The same grove shaded me 6 decades later when I came to Macha to teach nursing at age 24--full of purpose and dreaming of romance.

Photo from Frances Davidson's 1915 book, South and South Central Africa

Elizabeth was the first trained nurse at Macha.  She’d done basic practical nursing at home, but soon learned much more.  She delivered babies, set broken bones, and stitched up gashes caused by the slip of an ax or the goring of an ox.  Frances Davidson, who co-founded Macha in 1906 with Elizabeth’s cousin Adda Engle (previous post), wrote of a chief’s son “badly mauled by a leopard,” noting that Elizabeth “very successfully treated his wounds.”

And Lewis?  His grandniece Rhoda Marr wrote recently: “My mom was only a little girl when Lewis left home [in Ontario, Canada, at 28] to be a missionary. He was oldest in the family of 14 and she was next to the youngest. She...remembered him as being the quiet, studious one of her many brothers and her parents had mixed feelings about him going to the other side of the world and yet were pleased that he was following God's call.”

Elizabeth's parents Jeremiah and Susan Gish Engle;
Jeremiah died 6 weeks after Elizabeth's Nov. 1916 wedding

What drew the couple together?  Both came from farm families who were committed members of the BIC fold.  Lewis was the son of a bishop and Elizabeth the younger sister of one--my great-grandpa Millard Gish “M.G.” Engle.  Lewis arrived in Africa several years after Elizabeth.  He was 30 and she 36 when, in 1913, they traveled from Southern Rhodesia to Macha, working there together for 3 years.  They wed November 9, 1916, at Elizabeth's parental home in Abilene.

1925 finds the couple at Sikalongo Mission, where they served alone until 1928.  African Jesse Cikaile was their faithful helper.  Church, school, and medical work continued, and the Steckleys also did landscaping and got out and about.  In a letter to the BIC church magazine (Evangelical Visitor, June 21, 1926) Elizabeth wrote of a ~ 40-mile round trip visit to a student’s village.  Leaving just after midnight, they traveled “as far as my husband’s road repairing camp where we were given a fresh yoke of oxen and a new driver [and] after a cup of hot tea all around, we continued our trek.”

 Trekking near Macha Mission, c. 1913, as Aunt Elizabeth prepares to take on supervision of village schools,
photo from Davidson's South and South Central Africa

It seems Elizabeth loved to trek.  She wrote in 1920, from Southern Rhodesia, of a week-long visit “among the village people about 5 miles north of Mtshbezi Mission.”  She and Lewis stayed in a grass hut “which was quite comfortable,” and held services around campfires in the evenings. “Some expressed their regret that we had to leave so soon,” she shared, and: “Let us pray that God may raise up some good native workers, or someone to do evangelistic work in other villages, which are so much neglected.”

"They were very reserved," was the common response from numerous relatives I interviewed about the Steckleys. Yet letters penned to the Evangelical Visitor by the couple reveal lively spirits.  Farming blood in their veins, they often mentioned planting and harvest…and gratitude in the midst of hardship.  From Matopo Mission in 1923, Lewis wrote of drought and famine and sharing what they had with African staff and villagers.  “Our hearts swell up in praise to our heavenly Father for his loving care over us, and for all he has done for us we will never cease to love Him.” 

A mission historian wrote this of Lewis in 1950:  “Although a man of few words, no missionary has lived a more consistent life than he, and none excelled him as an industrialist.  He was a careful worker and a good financier...uncomplainingly he went wherever he was most needed.  And with him, just as uncomplainingly, went his noble-minded wife...”

Visiting cousin Mary Newlin in Abilene, Kansas, 2012

Noble-minded Elizabeth read literature and poetry aloud to the single missionaries when the Steckleys occupied the main house at Matopo Mission in the 1930s.  “She read while they ate so they wouldn’t gossip about their African students,” said Elizabeth’s missionary niece Mary Engle Newlin.  And during those early years there were other boundaries: “The only Africans to enter missionary homes were servants,” said Mary, “but Aunt Elizabeth served tea on the back stoop and did mending; she had a very soft place in her heart.” 

The Steckleys retired in 1941, and settled in Kansas amid a passel of Engle relatives.  “Uncle Lewis was one of my favorites,” said Mary Newlin.  And he was still living in Abilene, aged 93, twice a widower, when I passed through in the summer of 1976, the year prior to his death.  Having just completed a master’s in nursing in Ohio, I was headed home to Colorado to pack for Africa.  Grandma Minnie Lady Engle gave me a rug she’d made for me to take to Zambia, saying “the [cement] floors are cold.”  But she did not introduce me to Uncle Lewis, and I did not know of him to ask.  I'm so grateful for cousin Mary's memories, and the inspiration of her own life as a missionary in Southern Rhodesia and Sierra Leone, and later as a pastor in Kansas.  She was married and widowed twice.

Grandma Minnie Engle's 1976 gift,
for the cold cement floors in Africa

Grandma’s gift graces my living room floor here in Mexico.  And I have another treasure--Elizabeth’s steamer rug, a woolen blanket that warmed her on Atlantic crossings over 4 decades.  It came to me from cousin Mary, gifted to her by Aunt Elizabeth as Mary prepared for Africa in 1952.  “She saw that the local church had given me an amateurishly-made afghan that would not be adequate for the cold,” said Mary.

For a short while, a couple years before Elizabeth’s death in 1956, the Steckleys took Elizabeth’s brother M.G. Engle into their Abilene home.  He had just lost his second wife, was almost 90, and had led an illustrious life as bishop, evangelist, and long-time chair of the BIC Home Mission Board.  What did they speak of during those days?  Joys, regrets, the nearness of heaven?  Oh to have listened in…

Although I missed the chance to talk with Uncle Lewis, I spent some time in 1981 with Anna R. Engle (Elizabeth's second cousin), whose missionary efforts overlapped with those of the Steckleys. Then 85, Anna had spent half a century in Africa as accomplished teacher, translator, and author. “Looking back, would you have done anything differently?” I asked.  She paused for a few moments, and then said quietly, “I would have loved more.”

Aunt Elizabeth's steamer rug; perhaps she read Frances Davidson's recently (1915) published book
on the voyage back to Africa in 1918.  It contained stories and photos of Elizabeth…
something to share with her new  husband!

Quote about Lewis Steckley from Anna R. Engle, J.A. Climenhaga, and Leoda A. Buckwalter, There Is No Difference:  God Works in Africa and India (Nappanee, IN: E.V. Publishing House, 1950), p. 73.