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Slagle, Lois (1914-2003)
Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2003 Dec 15 p. 11
Birth date: 1914
text of obituary:
By AIMM News Service
BRYAN, Ohio — Lois Slagle, a missionary nurse with Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission for 32 years in Congo, died Nov. 15. She was 89
The Evangelical Mennonite Church (now the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches) sent and supported Slagle in the AIMM partnership.
Slagle arrived in what was then the Belgian Congo in 1945. Africans gave her the Tshiluba name "Mama Muondapi" — a healer. She desired to help people find physical and spiritual healing.
She served as a nurse, pharmacist and teacher. She was often on 24-hour call, working in settings far from a resident doctor. She helped hundreds of women deliver their babies.
She counted on God's intervention in the medical challenges she faced. In 1971 she wrote, "I wouldn't want to be in the baby business without the Lord's help."
She also didn't want to be in the medical business without giving God's Word.
"To some we have the privilege of telling the [gospel] story for the first time, and to others who are so very ill we know that it is for the last time," she once said.
Her greatest joy was leading a patient, or a village woman or man, to the Lord.
When she had to evacuate in 1960 due to violence related to Congolese independence, Slagle longed to return to the people she loved and to the land that had become home to her. She was able to return.
She retired in 1977 and enjoyed part-time employment and a teaching ministry at Solid Rock Church in West Unity.
