A Heart of Nepal: The Dr. Helen Huston Story

Lisa Arsenault is an elementary-school teacher in Ajax.

Helen Huston, a Canadian from Alberta, trained to be a doctor at a time
when medicine was still a male-dominated profession. She became a
missionary/doctor in Nepal, pioneering an effort in the early 1950s to
bring medicine out of the medieval age and into the modern world. She
worked there continuously (apart from furloughs and some time in India)
until her retirement in 1991. Her efforts resulted in the eventual
establishment of a “hospital in the hills,” and in the teaching of
hygiene and preventive medicine in the school founded by the mission. As
a missionary/doctor, she felt that part of her mandate was to spread the
message of Christianity, a task that met with only limited success in a
Hindu country where overt Christian proselytizing is prohibited by law.

This biography, obviously a labor of love, was written by a colleague
and fellow Christian who worked with Huston. He does a commendable job
of illustrating the difficulties (both philosophical and mundane)
encountered by a Christian North American doctor in a Hindu Third World
country, and how she surmounted them through a combination of humor,
love, and dedication. One does not have to be inspired by missionary
zeal to enjoy this book.