Home
Funeral Services Saturday for Dr. Theodora "Teddy" Johnson
RIDGWAY, PA (June 27, 2001) - Funeral services will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday for Dr. Theodora "Teddy" Johnson, retired Covenant missionary doctor who died early this morning in Pittsburgh from complications following gall bladder surgery. The funeral will be at the Evangelical Covenant Church of Ridgway.
Known as "Doctor Teddy," Johnson served in Congo (Zaire) from 1939 to 1978. She always wanted to be a missionary doctor, even as a child growing up in Ridgway, because nversations with the many missionaries who visited her church. In a Covenant Companion article in November 2000, she recalled that "the thing that caught my attention were the pictures the missionaries showed of the sick children."
After graduating from Ridgway High School, she attended Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College before going to medical school. She graduated from Women's Medical College in Philadelphia and later earned a Masters of Public Health degree from Loma Linda University.
Dr. Teddy cared for many sick children in Congo, starting at the Karawa Mission Hospital, then later at the Gbado mission station and a medical mission center in Bokada. Johnson became a missionary with the Covenant following an unsuccessful attempt to join with the China Inland Mission. Her fortitude became one of the hallmarks of her ministry in Africa, a quality that allowed her to treat some 40,000 people by her estimation.
"Bokada was already a long ways from anything, but Dr. Teddy was often even further afield," said Dr. Charles Thorpe, who grew up in Africa and knew Dr. Teddy long before he became director of the Robotics Institute for Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "She had this great mobile clinic, a truck with a custom-made back that had a dispensary, examining room and lab facilities. She and Gerda Wahrgren would spend weeks going from village to village, working in the hot sun."
Dr. Teddy retired and moved back to Ridgway where she was involved in a local cancer prevention group. She also continued as a speaker at churches and Covenant events, where she would show slides and talk about her experiences in Africa. Her work became the great joy in her life, she said in an interview last year.
"I liked helping people that may not have been helped if I hadn't been there, and seeing these tiny babies get well, and seeing women who were having trouble with deliveries take care of their children," she said.
Jim Gustafson, executive director of the Department of World Mission for the Evangelical Covenant Church, remembers Dr. Teddy fondly. "Dr. Teddy not only treated the sick in Congo, but she also established a strong and lasting relationship with the people of the Congo Covenant Church," he said. "The last time I was in Congo several months ago, one of the Congolese leaders I was meeting with told me of his relationship with her and how she had blessed his life and asked me to carry his love back to her."
For more information about the funeral arrangements for Dr. Teddy, contact the Department of World Mission at 773-907-3316.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
