November in World Missions History: Events for Every Day
TL;DR:
Explore one significant event from world missions history for every day of November. These daily entries highlight missionaries, Christian movements, Bible translation, medical missions, persecution, and other milestones in the worldwide spread of the gospel.
November Events in World Missions History
“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses . . .” — Hebrews 12:1, NIV (2011)
- November 1, 1998 — In thick fog and a torrential downpour, a missionary plane
crashed in southwestern Guatemala, killing 11, including the Living Water Teaching
organization's founder Jim Zirkle. The organization, founded in 1979, focused on Bible schools,
medical work and evangelistic outreach in Central America.
- November 2, 1972 — American officials intercepted a Pathet Lao message ordering the deaths of missionaries Evelyn Anderson and Beatrice Kosin in Kengkok, Laos. The two women were later found to have been killed and their bodies burned.
- November 3, 1784 — Thomas Coke landed in New York with instructions from John Wesley
to ordain the first elders and bishops for the Methodist movement in the U.S. One of the first to
be ordained was Francis Asbury.
- November 4, 1859 — Dutch-born, American-trained Guido Fridolin Verbeck arrived in
Nagasaki, Japan. In 1877, the Japanese Emperor took the extraordinary step of conferring on this
missionary the Order of the Rising Sun.
- November 5, 1858 — John and Mary Paton landed on the island of Tanna in the New
Hebrides (now called Vanuatu). Earlier, he had been warned that he might be eaten by cannibals
on the island. His response: "If I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will
make no difference to me whether my body is eaten by cannibals or by worms."
- November 6, 1832 — Melville Cox sailed for Liberia aboard the Jupiter as the first
missionary sent to a foreign field by America's Methodists.
- November 7, 739 — Willibrord, a missionary monk who was trained in Ireland and traveled
through northwestern Europe, died. Called the “Apostle of the Frisians,” he played an important role in evangelizing Frisia and other parts of the Low Countries.
- November 8, 1741 — David Brainerd received a letter from Ebenezer Pemberton of the
Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge asking if he would consider becoming a missionary to the American Indians.
- November 9, 1793 — William Carey landed in Calcutta, India, to
begin his missionary career.
- November 10, 1890 — The Central American Mission was founded by C. I. Scofield in
Dallas, Texas. In 1975, it changed its name to CAM International because of expansion into Spain.
- November 11, 397 — Martin of Tours, a bishop responsible for the evangelization of Gaul (modern-day France), died.
- November 12, late 500s — Christians remember Machar (also called Mochreiha or Mochumma), an Irish missionary and companion of Columba, on this traditional feast day. Machar joined Columba at Iona, a base for evangelizing Scotland, and was later sent to establish a church in Aberdeen.
- November 13, 877 — Devenick, a missionary sent from Whithorn in southern
Scotland to the Picts of the Dee Valley and Caithness, died. He founded churches at Lower Banchory and Methlick in Scotland.
- November 14, 1998 — At an evangelistic rally on the steps of a government building in
Montevideo, Luis Palau spoke to a crowd of 20,000, calling the nation of Uruguay to Jesus Christ.
- November 15, 1893 — Charlotte Tucker, a prolific missionary writer serving in India, made the final entry in her diary. She died on December 2. Her nom de plume, or pseudonym, was A.L.O.E. (“A Lady of England”).
- November 16, 2002 — A religious law went into effect in Belarus forbidding unregistered
religious activity. It required censorship of religious literature, did not allow foreign leadership
of churches, and put tight restrictions on what organizations could be registered.
- November 17, 1634 — Giordano Ansalone, a missionary to Japan, was martyred in Nagasaki.
- November 18, 1882 — Kate and Frank Mills, American Presbyterian missionaries, arrived in
Shanghai on the steamer Hiroshima Maru. From there, they traveled to Hangchow (now
called Hangzhou), where they began missionary work.
- November 19, 1827 — Johann Gottlieb Christaller, West African missionary and Bible
translator, was born in Württemberg. Sent to the Gold Coast by the Basel Mission Society, he
served in Ghana from 1853 to 1868. He helped advance the study of West African
languages and translated the Bible into Twi (Tshi).
- November 20, 1839 — John Williams was martyred by cannibals on one of the islands of what is now Vanuatu.
- November 21, 1866 — African missionary-scholar Tiyo Soga finished an adaptation of
Pilgrim's Progress into the Xhosa language. He believed that the book, with its
vivid imagery, would do more to win souls than any other he could prepare.
- November 22, 1939 — Nurse Dorothy Davis was appointed as a Nazarene missionary to
Swaziland. After six weeks at sea crossing the Atlantic, which had become a World War II
battlefield, Davis arrived in Africa on June 4, 1940. Because of her role in training Swazi
nurses, she became known as “the Mother of Swazi Nurses.” One of her former students,
Martha Zubuko, said, “Dorothy was not only a nurse; she was a preacher.” For her service, Davis—though an American citizen—was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.
- November 23, 615 — Irish scholar and missionary Columbanus died in Bobbio, Italy. One of
the greatest missionaries of the Middle Ages, he established monasteries in Anegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines.
- November 24, 1965 — A Lutheran Social Service Center in Taipei, Taiwan, was officially dedicated.
- November 25, 1742 — The New York correspondents of the Society in Scotland for
Propagating Christian Knowledge approved David Brainerd as a missionary. By April, Brainerd
was working among Native American Indians at Kaunaumeek, about 18 miles southeast of what is now Albany, New York.
- November 26, 1705 — The Lutheran Mission to East India was founded through the
persuasive efforts of a preacher in King Friedrich IV's court in Copenhagen.
- November 27, 1900 — The first American Protestant missionaries arrived in Guam.
- November 28, 1978 — Independent Baptist missionary James Dearmore was ambushed in
Rhodesia by about 50 terrorists. Though suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, he survived.
- November 29, 1847 — Missionary physician Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 11 other people were killed by a small group of Cayuse men at the Waiilatpu mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington. A devastating measles epidemic had killed many Cayuse people, and some held Whitman responsible because he had been unable to save them. The tragedy arose amid disease, cultural misunderstanding, mounting distrust, and growing tensions over American settlement.
- November 30, 1846 — Presbyterian missionary John Geddie and his family sailed for
Polynesia. When Geddie died in 1872, his memorial tablet said simply: "When he landed in
1848, there were no Christians here, and when he left in 1872 there were no heathen." Note: “Heathen” is retained here as wording from a nineteenth-century historical quotation.
— Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
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