Obituary for Jean Raddon

AMS Staff | 29 October 2007

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We thank God for the life of Jean Raddon, a remarkable and effective servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. She has indelibly enriched all our lives.

Jean was born in the county of Hampshire in southern England in 1922. She was the daughter of a publican in a village delightfully called Middle Wallop and sadly lost the mother she hardly knew to the ravages of cancer while she was just a little girl. She sometimes reminisced about her childhood including visits with aunts to pantomimes and the joy of the first bicycle. Possessed with a positive, happy but mischievous spirit, her brief life of crime specialising in theft from the local sweet store did not last long. It ended when she tried once too often to deceive the shop owner by pretending to have put a penny in the machine outside his shop and he threatened to report her to her father. Lured by the prospect of a dance with the boys in neighbouring Andover she ended up at a mission in the local Baptist Church where she unexpectedly came to faith. As she said: ‘I realised for the first time, I had need of a Saviour and I accepted Christ into my life. My father was most annoyed when I stood outside our pub and gave out forms about Jesus Christ”.

She had always wanted to be a nurse and did her training in London where her father hoped she would get over the dose of religion. She didn’t, and four years later she joined the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, serving in Europe and India. Demobilised she obtained her midwifery certificate but an increasing interest in Christian mission work led to enrolment at Redcliffe Missionary Training College where she learned to begin to trust God for her every need. She felt a strong call from God to the closed country of Nepal and in 1952 was in the first Christian medical missionary party to trek into that country from India to establish what became famously known as The Shining Hospital in Pokhra. From the seeds sown by that group and especially the five Nepali Christians who accompanied them God has built his church. From 5 to 500,000 in 50 years in a country which only gained religious freedoms in 1991 and where proselytising is still illegal! As she herself once said –

“When we visited a village, we would tell the head man we wanted to say our prayers. Of course, they all came to listen. I will leave you to imagine the rest!”

It is called preaching with your eyes shut as God’s Spirit did his work! Jean was to spend 17 years serving on the roof of the world. Her memories are recorded in her little book Life on the Roof published in 1975. In it she details the work of God in her own life, the grappling with culture shock in primitive and difficult conditions, starting from scratch with few resources to develop a hospital, caring for people beset with superstition & fear, her first encounter with genuine demon possession, and the absolute sense that God was with them and that he would provide in his good time in response to prayer. It is all told with the legendary humour of a wonderful raconteur. We all no doubt have fond memories of some of the stories we no doubt heard again and again.

While in Nepal, Jean experienced another wonderful gift from God. She met another missionary named Mary Miller while on holidays in India. A wonderful complementary friendship and companionship was forged which has been a source of immense comfort to both since Jean moved to Australia to minister with Christian Women Communicating International in 1969. Having addressed their 10th anniversary convention in this country, she was in demand as an entertaining and challenging evangelist and Bible teacher. She was involved with Bible Study Fellowship and was thrilled to see hundreds of women really studying their Bibles, but was also burdened for women who lived in isolated and small places who were precluded by the size of their group from participating. So in 1972 she wrote the first Know Your Bible study. It was well structured, but less intense in its demands. By 1977 there were 7000 women studying God’s Word by this means and today in Australia there are in the order of 2000 groups. Furthermore KYB now works in 34 countries and this is testimony to her vision. Of course in ‘retirement’ Jean Raddon and Mary Miller with legendary energy travelled the length and breadth of this vast continent to encourage and minister to women in isolated places.

In addition to a range of wonderful friends, Jean always appreciated being embraced by the extended Miller clan which became her adopted human family in the country. All potential spouses had to be ‘checked out’ by Mary & Jean. In time she inherited some ‘honorary’ grandchildren who are all walking in the Lord and not least because she prayed for them every day. In recent times she has rejoiced to see the next generation begin to arrive. Her sunny optimism was always a perfect match for the Miller serious realism!

Let me finish this brief tribute with her own words –

“Nepal lives indelibly in my heart. The memories of the land, however, are not the biggest thing etched on my mind. The biggest thing is that God is real. That God has reached down to man in His Son, bringing deliverance from fear and guilt. That he has taken away the fear of death and loneliness and sorrow – this is the real issue. So many on the Roof found this deliverance and still, today, out in those villages and hills and valleys, many are saying with wonder, ‘Yes – there is a God who is alive’.”

On Monday October 8 Jean finally met face to face the God who is alive. She is now truly experiencing life on the roof! Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Bishop Trevor Edwards
October 12, 2007

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