Challis Rebecca Woolsey

Challis Rebecca was born to Harry and Anna Jennings on September 6, 1932, in Takoma Park, MD. When she was born, she had two brothers--Alfred and Jerry, and two sisters–Anna Jean and Marilyn. After Challis, another sister, Joylyn, joined the family.

Challis graduated from Takoma Academy in the spring of 1950. Her older sisters were nurses, and both of her parents had been, so that became her interest. She enrolled in pre-nursing training at Southern Missionary College. Within a few months she and I met and began dating. On April 1, 1951, the college held a Women’s Open House as a social event. Challis and I went into her dorm room. I locked the door and proposed to her. She did not accept immediately. (She said later that inasmuch as it was April Fool’s Day, she was not sure I was sincere.) Within a few days the matter was settled and we were engaged to be married.

After that school year, Challis returned to Takoma Park and enrolled in nurses training at Washington Adventist College (now known as Washington Adventist University) and Washington Sanitarium and Hospital. As for me, I was taken on as a minister by the Alabama-Mississippi Conference (now known as Gulf States Conference).

Long-distance phone calls were expensive in those days, so we kept in touch via U.S. Postal service. I would go every six months or so to Takoma Park to see her. Here is one of the poems I wrote during that period;

Reverie

Sitting by the fireside,

Buried deep in thought;

An open book is in my hand,

Its contents go unsaught.

Heedless of its message,

Knowing not its name,

The book is but a prop for me

To think of you again.

Watching as the embers

Crackle as they flame;

It seems that every tongue of fire

Would try to form your name.

Red and golden colors,

Streaks of bluish hue,

Are painting pictures of the times

That I have spent with you.

Now the fire is dying;

Light is growing dim.

I trust the Lord to keep you safe

And hold you close to Him.

(I never wrote poems before or after that period.)

In 1953 Challis broke off her nursing training in order to marry me on June 14. I was in charge of two churches, in Dothan, Alabama. and Marianna, Florida. Challis worked in a small hospital in Dothan. After a year, she decided she wanted to complete her nursing training, and returned to Takoma Park. Her graduation was slated for a date in June, 1955, but inasmuch as I was to be ordained on the same date, she chose to forego her graduation ceremony in order to be with me for my ordination. That summer we conducted an evangelistic series in Bonifay, Florida. When it closed, we were able to establish a new church in that town. We both shared in the construction of a new church building.

In 1956 we received a call from the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to mission service in Burma (now known as Myanmar). Inasmuch as I had been born in China, and Challis’ dad had been born and raised in South Africa, we had no qualms about accepting the call to foreign missions.

Missionaries did not fly to their assignments in those days; they sailed on ships. Just before we left the States we learned that Challis was pregnant. We did not have time to buy and pack baby clothes, but we did buy a portable sewing machine. Challis has never been one to enjoy ocean travel, so the trip was a burden to her. Our ship stopped at Lebanon, and we were able to visit a former teacher at an Adventist school there. Then to Egypt, where we visited the Pyramids while riding on camels. After a short stop in Karachi, we disembarked at Bombay. Challis elected to fly the rest of the way to Rangoon, while I stayed with the ship and our personal goods on board.

Our assignment was to Maymyo, a small town in the mountains 20 miles east of Mandalay. Our two-story home had been built by the British before World War II. We used the first floor; the second floor was used by Adventist missionaries as a vacation accommodation during the summers. Our first job was to learn the Burmese language. I did well, but Challis found she did not have the knack, so she concentrated on preparing for motherhood.

Challis had plans to go to Rangoon SDA Hospital for the birth of her child, but it came sooner than expected. Cheryl Lynn was born in a local Maymyo hospital on November 30, 1956. Without baby clothes, Challis sewed some, and fellow missionaries in Rangoon helped with other needs. A little more than a year later, on December 25, Marcella Jean was born, this time in the Rangoon hospital. Linda Marie followed, born on July 19, 1960.

With my work as an evangelist calling me away from home for sometimes months at a time, Challis’ work as a mother was a demanding one. Fortunately, she had the help of a national woman in doing the housework.

In June, 1962, we left Burma on furlough. By that time, airplane flying was in common use by missionaries. We had brief stopovers in Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Anchorage, Alaska. Challis’ parents met us in Seattle, and from there we flew to Chattanooga, where my parents met us. We spent much of the summer on the west coast, first at a General Conference session in San Francisco, then at Challis’ sister Anna Jean’s home in Roseberg, Oregon. Then we returned east to Takoma Park. .

Normally, furloughs last for one year, but Burma experienced a change in government, from democratic to military. The result was that we could not return there, and all foreigners there had to leave. Our family settled in Takoma Park while matters were being worked out. Challis took on a job in the maternity department of Washington Sanitarium and Hospital and Cheryl began school at John Nevin Andrews School. After two and a half years, I was called to be editor of the Philippine Publishing House, near Manila.

Our home was on the publishing house grounds; a church school for missionary kids was included on the same plot. This made it easy for the girls to go and come, and relieved Challis to be able to volunteer to work for the Philippine Union Mission, helping in the early childhood area, making and shipping supplies for children’s Sabbath Schools.

After six years, in 1971, I was called to the book editorial department of the Review and Herald Publishing Association, located at that time next door to the General Conference office on the border between Washington, D.C. and Takoma Park. Challis found permanent employment at the Sanitarium, working again in the maternity department. In order to have time with our girls during the day, she chose to work at nights.

In 1982, the Review moved from Takoma Park to Hagerstown, Md., and of course we moved, too, into a new house that our son-in-law, John Sines Jr., helped build. For a few weeks, Challis tried commuting from Hagerstown to Takoma Park, but that turned out unsatisfactory, so she took a job as assistant librarian in the Review. After a few years, she changed to helping in the Review’s kitchen.

For several years after we settled in our new house, my mother lived with us. Then Challis’ mother joined us. Challis resigned her work at the Review in order to take care of our mothers. My mother died in 1990, and Challis’ mother passed away a little later. Challis began spending her time compiling books. First was OUR WAY, the life stories of her father and mother. Then she compiled MOTHERS IN LOVE. Most of that book consisted of letters she had written home from the mission field–her mother had saved them. The latter part of the book consists of stories Challis had collected, related to family life. In 2007 we bought property in Greenbriar Cove, Collegedale, Tennessee. But at that same time, an economic depression hit the US, and we could not sell our house in Maryland until 2013. We built a new home, designed inside and outside by our daughter Linda, on our property in Greenbriar, and moved in early December, 2014.

Challis had her own workroom in the new house, and spent time writing to friends. She also enjoyed entertaining family on various occasions in our new home, and having new grandchildren visit us. Late in December, 2019, she had to go to hospital. From there she was moved to a nursing home in Cleveland, and after a couple weeks to a nursing home in Collegedale. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, we were not able to visit her; We moved her to our own home May 1, 2020, and arranged for hospice care for her.

Challis had developed a case of dementia and it became so strong she did not know who or where she was. She did not even know how to stay alive. She passed to her rest on December 16, 2020.

She had asked that the following poem be read at her memorial service. I do not have a title for the poem, nor do I know the author. But this represents her sentiments:

When I come to the end of the day

And the sun has set for me,

I want no rites in a gloom-filled room.

In God there is joy, you see.

Miss me a little, but not too long,

And not with you head bowed low.

Remember the love we once shared/

Miss me, and let me go.

For this journey we all must take,

And we all must go alone.

It is the Master’s plan,

A step on the road to home.

When you are lonely and sick at heart,

Go to friends we know,

And bury your sorrows in doing.

Miss me, and let me go.