A Most Remarkable Woman by Sheila Johnson

I feel very privileged to have spent the last two years writing up the devotions of a very singular lady, Dr Jember Teferra, an Ethiopian missionary.

Jember was brought up comparative luxury in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city, as the niece of Haile Selassie. But with the communist revolution of 1974 she and her husband were thrown into jail as political prisoners. There, although suffering,  she devoted herself to encouraging and teaching her fellow Christian prisoners. She later published these devotions in a booklet entitled ‘the Beacon in the Slums’ and ‘the Prisoner’s Lantern’. It was in prison that Jember came to identify with the poor as she shared a mattress in a rat-infested prison. This was to change her life which she has spent since working in the slums of Addis Ababa trying to improve the lot of the poorest slum dwellers by caring for their whole needs from health and housing to education and employment. Her aim was to empower them to enable them to become independent and able to support themselves. This work has since become internationally recognised as an effective approach to helping the urban poor.

Jember’s own life hasn’t been without its troubles either but she has kept a strong faith through terrible suffering, not just in jail, but then through multiple bereavements - even while she was in prison, one of her sisters died. She then lost her husband to illness and one of her sons to suicide on the very same day! The other son, Workneh, after losing his wife to breast cancer, suffered both a stroke and a heart attack in his forties and is currently in a care home unable to walk, talk or move very much. She wrote up her thoughts on the subject of bereavement in her booklet, ‘the Light through the Darkness of Grief’.

As I have written up her devotions, paraphrasing and proofreading them, collating them into one, I have marvelled at such amazing faith and feel very humbled to have been given such a wonderful task. I believe my own faith has grown too as I have experienced hers through her thoughts and prayers.

Sheila Johnson lives in Cheltenham and is a qualified journalist who has written for a number of publications both local and national. She has also written two books under her pen name Sheila Donald, Alpha Male and Waireka. Her website can be found at www.journojohnson.com