The Missionary's Last Thirty Dollars

In the winter of 1952, Helen Roseveare sat in a mud-brick clinic in the Congo, staring at thirty dollars — every cent left in the mission's account. The supply truck from Stanleyville wouldn't arrive for three weeks. She had forty-seven patients, a dwindling stock of quinine, and a growing line of mothers carrying feverish children through the red-dust morning. Helen did what she had done every other time the funds ran dry.…