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📖 Biography
Marriage and Coming to China
Rosalind Goforth (Florence Rosalind Bell-Smith Goforth) was born in 1864 into a family of artists in London, England, and as a young child moved with her family to Toronto, Canada. She once aimed to become an artist and studied at the Toronto School of Art, but at a testimony meeting at Knox College she dedicated herself to overseas missions. In 1887 she married Jonathan Goforth, and in 1888 she went to China with her husband, joining the North Honan Mission of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
Pioneering in Henan
After arriving in China they settled in the area of Zhangde (now Anyang) in northern Henan, and pioneered churches in turn at Zhangde, Weihui, Wu'an and other places. She was responsible for work among women, children and families, opening literacy classes and girls' schools and going from house to house to talk about the faith with local women. When the Boxer Uprising broke out in 1900, they fled south by mule cart for more than a thousand li with four young children, and along the way the children fell ill one after another amid the hardship; they later returned to Henan to continue their ministry.
Revival in China
In 1907 Jonathan Goforth went to Korea and witnessed the Pyongyang Great Revival at first hand; returning to China through Manchuria in early 1908, he sparked revival in Fengtian (Mukden) and elsewhere (the Manchurian Revival), followed by a chain of revival meetings in Henan, Shanxi, Zhili and other places. Rosalind travelled with her husband on circuits to Shanxi, Zhili and the Northeast, witnessed the revivals in person and left a large body of first-hand records. After 1925 they turned their focus to work in Manchuria in the Northeast, with Szepingkai (now Siping, Jilin) as their base.
A Biographer's Pen
Rosalind Goforth was one of the rare women biographers in mission history. She wrote several works of missionary literature, including Goforth of China (Chinese title 《古约翰传》), Climbing: Memories of a Missionary's Wife, and How I Know God Answers Prayer. In a plain and gentle style they record the couple's nearly fifty years of ministry, and they influenced several generations of North American churches. In 1934 the couple returned to Canada for health reasons. After Jonathan Goforth died in 1936, she continued speaking and writing in Toronto until her death in 1942.
