Annie Skau was a missionary nurse from Oslo in Norway. In her youth she was a leader of a Karl Marx youth club, and at some point she decided to become a nurse.
At nursing school she exchanged her would-be Marxism for the Christian faith, and when she attended a course on tropical medicine run by the China Inland Mission in 1937, she was bitten by the missionary bug and set course for China (1938), where she served in Shanxian in Shaanxi Province for most of 13 years, treating thousands of sick and injured individuals and sharing the gospel with them. Sister Annie was a big woman (1m 90) with a big heart, and because of her size the (then) diminutive Chinese called her ‘the Giant Woman’.
Sister Annie saw miracles in her time in China and went through the Japanese invasion and the Civil War. In June 1949 the nationalist government abandoned the area, but when other missionaries were leaving, Sister Annie felt God wanted her to stay on. The danger increased hugely when the Communist forces took over, but she caused them a real quandary – they wanted to put her to death, but she was held in such high regard by the people, it tied their hands. She was imprisoned on two occasions but she surprised her captors, wrongfooting them by singing hymns in prison and by her irrepressible humour and goodwill.
Finally in 1951/52* she felt it was time to leave and she returned home, only to feel the call to go out to Hong Kong in 1953, where she ministered with other Norwegian sisters at the Rennie’s Mill refugee camp to hundreds of refugees from Communist China. Because of the prevalence of tuberculosis among the refugee population she co-founded the Haven of Hope Sanatorium [1] in 1953/55* and in 1959 was nurse in charge, with Dr Peter Jenkins of the Emmanuel Church, Kowloon, as medical superintendent.
In that year she received a visit from Bob Pierce of World Vision, looking for projects to sponsor, and she told him a bit of her amazing story. In the refugee camp she had with her some 20 children, many traumatised by what they had witnessed back home in China, and some with tuberculosis. After the visit Dr Jenkins shared more about Sister Annie with Bob Pierce, including that in the six years she had been there she had taken just one week of holiday.
Sister Annie continued her work with Haven of Hope until 1978, when she retired.
For her work Sister Annie received three accolades, the MBE in 1979 when she was aged 68 for services to the Chinese people; her home nation awarded her the prestigious King of Norway’s St. Olaf’s Order, and she received the Florence Nightingale Medal.
She died in 1992, aged 81.
*Different sources give different dates.
[1] Wikipedia states it was Sister Annie and Helen Wilson, a missionary from Scotland. Richard Gehman in his book says 'some deaconesses from the Norwegian Covenant Church', of whom Sister Annie may have been one.
Sources:
Let My Heart Be Broken – Richard Gehman.
Asia Harvest website – a fascinating read.
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