Helga Jensine Waabenø

Who was Helga Jensine Waabenø?

Helga Jensine Waabenø was a nurse and former Lutheran missionary affiliated with the Norwegian Missionary Society in China. She worked as a missionary in the Anhu and Taohualun in the province of Hunan from 1946 to 1949, and fled to Taiwan where she continued her missionary work. She arrived in Taiwan on 23 December 1949, becoming the first missionary from the Norwegian Missionary Society on the island. She worked there until Christmas 1951 and returned to Norway via the United States after the new year of 1952.

After Mao Zedong's Communist regime then took control in China, all foreign missionaries had to evacuate from the mainland. Among these was Waabenø who in 1949 was evacuated from Hunan, to Hong Kong. Later in the autumn of the same year she was contacted by Doctor Christopher Fotland working for the Norwegian Mission Alliance in Taiwan. He believed that there was a great need for missionaries to work among the large group of Mandarin-speaking refugees from mainland China. Waabenø was interested in this, and on 17 November 1949 consulted with the Norwegian Missionary Society committee of her plan. She obtained permission to work at a large Mission hospital in Taipei, which is now known as the Mackay Memorial Hospital. Thus, the Norwegian Missionary Society still work among the Chinese today in the Republic of China today.