Ressler, Rhoda M. (1910-2008)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2008 Sep 1 p. 10

Birth date: 1910 Jun 10

Pioneer Japan missionary dies at 98

By Mennonite Mission Network staff

MEDINA, Ohio — Rhoda M. Ressler, the younger of two sisters who helped pioneer the Mennonite church in northern Japan, died Aug. 5. She was 98.

With her sister, Ruth, Ressler spent 25 years in Japan — 21 of those years with Mennonite Board of Missions, a predecessor of Mennonite Mission Network.

The Ressler sisters were instrumental in establishing a Mennonite church in the town of Kamishihoro in the country's northernmost region of Hokkaido, where they taught the Bible, made friends and offered themselves ans a Christian presence.

Yukari Kaga and Mary Beyler, current workers in Hokkaido, remember previous generations of Japanese Mennonites speaking fondly of the Resslers.

Former Kamishihoro leader Keisuke Matsumoto, who died in 2005, told Beyler and kaga that the Resslers' dedicated ministry is the only reason a Christian church exists in the village.

In a 1999 gathering at the Kitami Mennonite Church, Matsumoto said the Resslers were his first contact with Christianity. He was skeptical of the message preached by representatives of the country that had bombed his country, killing his two aunts. He went to their church to prove that Christian faith was not truth.

"If those missionaries hadn't been Mennonite, I wouldn't have become a Christian. The call to peace called me," he said. "These American Christians were so kind, I gradually gave up the desire for revenge."

The Ressler sisters had intended to serve at an orphanage in China through Mennonite Central Committee. But during their 1949 sea voyage. Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China.

"And so we found that our town was gone," Ressler said, recounting the story of the journey.

MCC sent them to teach English in Kobe, Japan, for three years. They also did relief and rehabilitation work in Osaka.

Charles Shenk, who arrived with his family as a young mission worker in Japan in 1957, was impressed by Ressler's wit, wisdom and loving service.

"She was capable of making a feminist statement in the midst of what felt to her to be a male-oriented, or -dominated, mission structure there in the 1950s and 1960s," Shenk said. "Very early on, she had gotten the message from someone that preaching and baptizing were not part of her job description, presumably because she was not ordained, but also, clearly, because she was not a man. And she would not let us forget that."

Shenk said the Ressler sisters "blended into the community around them and shared of themselves and their resources with unflagging generosity and friendliness."

They worked on English instruction in the Japanese university and schools and taught Bible classes through 1973, when they returned to Ohio.

Ressler was born June 7, 1910, near Smithville, the daughter of missionary parents Jacob A. and Lina (Zook) Ressler. Her father, J.A. Ressler, was in the first overseas mission group appointed by the Mennonite Church and spent nine years in Dhamtari, India.

She graduated from Goshen (Ind.) College and earned a master's degree in deaf education from the University of Pittsburgh. She taught in Pittsburgh and the Scottdale, Pa., community for a number of years.

She was a member of Oak Grove Mennonite Church in Smithville.

Survivors include several cousins; nephews J.W. Townsend and George Townsend; and a niece, Rebecca Tice.

She was preceded in death by an infant brother, Luke; a sister, Ruth; a half-sister, Emma Townsend; and nephews Norman and Paul Townsend.