Source: News-Journal, February 27, 1941

ROXY LEFFORGE IS ON WAY TO CHINA

Miss Roxy Lefforge left North Manchester Wednesday and started for China where the last twenty-three years of her life have been spend in missionary work for the Methodist church. During her year's furlough here, Miss Lefforge has made 140 speeches and will make many more in Chicago, Pocatella, Idaho, and Berkeley, California, before she finally sets sail on March 18 for the Philippine Islands. She will have to remain at Manila until she receives permission to enter war-torn China, perhaps until the end of the war.

Miss Lefforge is a graduate of Central high school and was at one time a teacher in Chester school. She taught public school in Huntington county and was teaching in Huntington College the year before she entered into missionary work for China. She took advanced work at Manchester College, DePauw University, Terre Haute Teachers College, and received the degree of Doctor of Religion from Boston University.

Her first work in China was as a teacher in the Hwa Nan Girls College in Foochow which is a coastal town. She became a part-time secretary and later the general secretary of the Methodist church missions throughout the whole of china. Her work made it necessary for her to travel into every part of China under all conditions. Her life was endangered many times by uprisings of revolutionists, and more recently by the Japanese war thrusts. Foochow, which has always been the headquarters for her work, was bombed more than eighty times before she left last spring. She was in many of the air raids there and in other parts of China, but was never injured.

Miss Lefforge will be engaged in church work in the Philippine Islands until she is allowed to return to her real work in Foochow. She will teach part time in a theological school in Foochow and will continue as general secretary when she is allowed to re-enter China.

This was Miss Lefforge's third furlough. Almost from the instant she set foot in this country, she was eagerly planning for her return to her work. Early last summer she went to New York City for further study in the Union Theological School. Since then speaking engagements have called her to many places and before thousands of people. She will visit with a former missionary friend at Pocatella, Idaho; and with Merle and Mr. and Mrs. O.B. Sandifur in Berkeley, California. Then she will board the President Harrison and sail to meet the challenge of the need and the danger of the Far East in these troublesome times.