George simplified life. He took complex issues and made them simple and practical. Missionary work to him was not all about strategizing with designs and master plans. He got up every morning and did what he believed every missionary should do. He loved the people, served them, visited them in their homes and
villages, witnessed to them about Christ, and taught them the Bible. George busied himself using his Land Rover as a taxi, a truck, an ambulance, and a hearse so he could serve the people who possessed nothing but their feet to transport themselves around. When necessary, he pushed small trees over, climbed steep hillsides and forded streams and rivers to reach the people. If he could not drive there, he walked.

          Harriette usually went everywhere George went but she was different. She came from the colorful Stebbins family. At 5’7”, she was stunningly beautiful with jet-black hair and sparkling dark eyes. She did not try to hide her beauty and used it to her advantage in a godly way. She often traveled to the jungle villages in Vietnam where the natives wore practically nothing,[1] dressed in a bright red dress, with some jewelry and makeup. Red was her favorite color.
          “Hat” would say with a sparkle, “God did not call me to look dreary.”

          With this kind of boldness, she had a way of making herself noticed. She did this not for her sake: she wanted people to listen to her talk about Jesus.

          She was not just colorful in her appearance but she did everything with panache. Hat cooked like a gourmet; she wrote elegantly; she spoke with enthusiasm; she designed and painted vibrant backdrops for Christmas dramas she produced; and she tirelessly worked with the young people for hours preparing them in song and theatrics for the yearly Christmas program. The Irwins would then take these young people out to present the Gospel of Christ to a different village each night every year for more than a week. As a teenager, I remember practicing many hours with these young people as she taught us to sing in four-part harmony the Christmas Carols while she played on an old folding pump organ. She even designed and sewed colorful costumes for the pageant players.

          I write this about my parents, George and Harriette Irwin, two missionaries already in Glory. I do this from my own experiences and from the stories about their lives, they and others told me. In 2007, George (89) died at the end of January and Harriette (84) went in the middle of March. They left a godly legacy in their life and work, which bears witness to the enabling presence of God through the Holy Spirit where they sought to bring the saving power of Christ to all peoples.

          George (1917) and Hat (1921) literally began their lives and missionary work in the Anamese province of French Indochina but that is not where their work ended. They were both born there and then returned as missionaries to Vietnam’s ethnic minority in 1947. They left suddenly in 1975, with the communist overthrow of the South Vietnamese government, and never returned. After a brief 2-year ministry to Vietnamese refugees in Florida and Montreal, the Christian and Missionary Alliance appointed them to the Vietnamese in Europe where they took up residence in France because they both spoke French as well as Vietnamese. In 1990, they retired to George’s home city, Toronto, and continued their ministry to Vietnamese people living there right to the end.

          In 1947, when the missionaries to the ethnic tribal people started to arrive in Vietnam, after the war, the mission assigned them to french language study in the City of Dalat where one of the ethnic tribes, the Koho, lived. Very few Vietnamese lived in the highlands at the time. French was the government’s official language so the missionaries did not need to study Vietnamese. Both Irwins, however, already spoke Vietnamese and French having grown up in the country as children of missionaries. Studying French was a formality. They also already had experienced missionary work as children among the Koho tribe so the mission assigned them to serve these people. The other missionaries went elsewhere assigned to other tribes. (Over 80 different non-Vietnamese tribes live in Vietnam’s highlands.)

          Missionary work among the Koho began because Herb and Lydia Jackson felt burdened to evangelize them while George and Hat were growing up. The Jacksons already had had a fruitful ministry among the Vietnamese in the delta basin of the Mekong River but they had seen the scantily clothed Koho walking along the roadside when they visited Dalat. These people had never heard the Gospel, which broke their hearts. They asked the mission to transfer them and obtained permission from the French government, so they moved to Dalat.

          Because Dalat City’s temperate climate provided an ideal location away from the steamy hot weather elsewhere in Vietnam, the mission leaders decided to place a school for missionaries’ children school there and asked the Jacksons to serve as its directors and dorm parents. Jacksons took the children to the Koho villages to help in the work.

George and Hat were two of the school’s first three students when the school began in 1929. As part of the school’s activities, the

          The idea for the school came about while George’s parents, E. Frank and Marie Irwin, were on home assignment in Toronto. They told the people at their church that they did not think they could return to Vietnam as missionaries unless the mission solved George’s education problem. He was already in the fourth grade but the schools in Vietnam did not provide the right kind of education. Led by the Spirit, two prominent citizens of Toronto and members of the church, Mr. Christie of the Christie Biscuits Company and Mr. Jaffrey of the Toronto Globe and Mail, provided $5000 to start Dalat School.

          George and Hat lived with “Uncle” and “Aunty” Jackson. Often they would travel with the Jacksons to the jungle villages of these people. They would either walk or ride out on horse back. No roads, only footpaths connected the city to these villages. Some of the Koho worked at Dalat School. Sau[2], a teenager was one of them. George, much older than the other students, made friends with Sau. Their friendship along with the trips to the Jungle helped George develop a deep love for the Koho people. Before leaving Vietnam to study at Nyack Missionary Institute (now Nyack College) in New York State, George and Hat independently committed their lives to return as missionaries to Vietnam so they could preach Christ to the Koho people. Although George and Hat were friends, they were not childhood sweethearts. Their romance began around three years after George graduated from Nyack Missionary Institute.

          George’s story actually begins with his Grandparents, James and Martha Irwin. Albert B. Simpson came to Toronto to preach and teach about the urgent need for the Church of Jesus Christ to send missionaries to un-evangelized people everywhere. The Irwins liked what they heard and when the Christian and Missionary Alliance launched their first church branch in Canada, which was in Toronto, the Irwins immediately joined.

          So did Robert Jaffrey. Shortly, thereafter, Jaffrey went to Nyack Missionary Institute and then to China as a missionary. In China, Jaffrey did not notice any protestant churches working to evangelize the Indochinese living in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. He reported this to A. B. Simpson and in 1911, Simpson sent two missionaries to start the work among the Anamese people in central Vietnam, but they possessed German surnames. The French regime expelled them when hostilities between France and Germany started to escalate.

          Around this time Ontario’s champion fencer, Mr. Edwin Franklin Irwin (Frank), of Toronto, and Miss Marie Helen Morgenthaler (Marie), of Hamilton, OH, sensed the call to serve as foreign missionaries and went to Nyack Missionary Institute to prepare. Marie and her family attended the German Lutheran Church on NW Washington Street in Hamilton where Marie sensed her call. She talked about it to her pastor, Rev, Dickman. He heard about missionary meetings in New Bremmen between Bowling Green and Dayton, so they went to see what was happening. Both Marie and Rev. Dickman found Christ as Savior at those meetings and Marie chose to go to Nyack. Frank’s call came when he heard A. B. Simpson preach. Of course, the two of them fell in love with each other when they met at Nyack.

          Although engaged to marry, Frank and Marie arrived in Vietnam’s harbor at Tourane (Danang) as single missionaries in 1914. The ship’s boat could not get close to the shore so a Vietnamese labourer carried the very embarrassed 23-year-old missionary woman to the beach on his back. Frank waded ashore. One wonders why Frank did not carry Marie. I never asked my Grandmother the question.

Sr. Irwins with George and Hat, Children and Sister, Helen May

          The mission wanted them to serve two years before they married. The mission suddenly changed its policy for them. Morgenthaler was a German name and Irwin was not. Marie was under threat of expulsion, so the mission ordered them to go to Wei Chou in Southern China to marry. Robert Jaffrey married them. Two years later, on December 5, 1917, George Edwin Irwin was born in Danang, Vietnam.

          Harriette Frances Stebbins arrived in Danang almost five years later on November 23, 1922. Her parents, Irving Randolph Stebbins and Mary Hartman Stebbins—a second-generation Alliance missionary, arrived as single missionaries in 1918. I have no stories that a Vietnamese labourer carried the young Miss Hartman ashore. My grandfather, a bold and gallant gentleman, probably would have insisted on doing it himself. Irving had left his sweetheart in the United States expecting her to come later. When he met Mary during the voyage to Vietnam, the courtship with the other lady ended. Not long after arriving in Vietnam, Irving proposed to Mary and two years later in Canton, China, Robert Jaffrey officiated their wedding.

          The Senior Irwin’s home assignment came due in 1934, so George completed his junior and senior years of high school in Toronto. His parents returned to the field in 1937 after an extended furlough while Frank was writing his book, With Christ in Indochina[3]. They thought they would see George again when their next furlough arrived in five years.

          Shortly before their time to return to Canada, some of the missionaries including their lead missionary, Frank, believed God wanted them to stand with Vietnam’s Tin Lanh Church in the face of an imminent Japanese invasion. The Japanese only fought three days but quit because the French Vichy government in Vietnam was part of the Axis alliance. Their real objective was to take the Island nations to the south. Even though the war was heavy around the world, the missionaries in Vietnam were free to travel but under the duress of Roman Catholic leadership and with Japanese pressure, the government interned the missionaries with their children into a concentration camp in My Tho, south of Saigon, until the end of the war in 1945. George’s 19-year-old brother Franklin taught school there to his 7-year-old sister, Helen May, and the other missionaries’ children.

          George completed his studies at Nyack. With two years of “home service” completed at the Alliance Church in Hopeville, ON, he and Robert Ziemer prepared themselves to sail on December 7, 1941, from San Francisco for Vietnam to serve as missionaries. Of course, the attack of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor that day halted all travel plans for civilians going anywhere.

          George had to return to Canada. He knew that either he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force or the government would conscript him into the army as a foot soldier. He entered the Air Force to train to pilot Lancaster bombers. He remained there through the duration of the war with Germany. When it was his turn England, the war ended. Canada discharged him, but the Air Force called him back again to prepare him for flight navigation in the pacific, but that too ended before he got into the fight. Though somewhat disappointed, George realized God protected him so he could fulfill his commission to serve as a missionary. He never again piloted an aircraft. He blamed Hat’s prayers for his not getting into the war itself.
to ship over to

          The mission told the Stebbins family they needed to return to the United States. They had seven children, four of them already teenagers and two ready to enter college. Hat was the oldest. She had finished high school a year earlier and Ruth graduated that year.

          Hat entered Nyack Missionary Institute in 1942, preparing for missionary service. One day, she received a letter from George. Apparently, he wanted them to begin writing to each other. The last time she saw George was at Dalat School seven years earlier. At age twelve, she had no serious thoughts of marriage, especially not him. He was five years older than she was. This letter, nonetheless, flattered her. The tall, handsome pilot was one of only two upper classmates she could have looked-up-to as a student at Dalat School and he was the only older boy. They began corresponding, then courted, and finally married November 28, 1945, at Nyack, right after his discharge from the air force.

          One story often repeated which apparently turned the friendly correspondence to love for Hat was a very romantic letter she received from George. It captivated her heart. She fell in love, only to discover later that George did not write the letter. His best friend, Tom Northcott, without George’s knowledge, wrote it and signed George’s name out of fear that George would lose Hat. George had absolutely no ability to write anything romantic.

          George’s parents arrived in Canada in December 1945, fully expecting to witness the marriage of their son to Harriette. They already loved Harriette since the Stebbins and Irwins were friends on the field. The word of their imminent arrival had not come; so George and Hat continued with their plans to marry British Columbia before the heavy snow fall season. 
November 28. They needed to get to their home assignment in the northern part of

          This kind of sacrifice of missionaries of not being able to attend the major events in the lives of their adult children is commonplace and more so back then. God’s call on a person’s life requires the sacrifice of everything. Just as God sacrificed the life of his Son for our sake, so Christians must make the complete sacrifice for the sake of the souls of others. My parents did not take my sister Marilyn and me to an altar to symbolically leave us there but they did not leave their ministry to serve us. Just as their parents sent them to boarding school, they sent us. They missed our graduations, weddings, and the births of our children. The only funeral they attended of their parents was George’s mother (see Matt. 16:29). As I consider this, I look at God’s wonderful benevolence and protection over the years for my life and my family. At times, we MK’s often felt desperately lonely but God showed me he loved me deeply.

          I thank God for my great missionary heritage, as I feel especially sheltered by God for it. In the end, millions of saints worshipping at the throne of Christ will stand there because so many from my family responded to God’s call to preach to the nations. George’s brother and sister, and five of Hat’s siblings served God as missionaries. Today, 10 of their children and grandchildren are in fulltime ministry for the Lord, five of them missionaries.

          As soon as George and Hat completed their home service, they returned to Vietnam in 1947 with their newly born daughter, Marilyn. After language school, they moved to their assigned station, Dilinh. Hunters from around the world came to Dilinh because roads and trails from the city led to their favorite hunting grounds. Those roads and trails also provided the missionary great access to the villages of the Koho nation.

          While Hat maintained the home base in Dilinh, George would take extended evangelistic trips into these villages with a Vietnamese missionary and his language teacher. Harriette was unable to go because she had to care for two small children. I showed up in June 1949.

          The work was not easy and not just because of their separation. The people lived in fear of an evil-
spirit world. They made regular cruel ceremonial sacrifices of their animals to the demons for protection. They also heavily drank the rice liquor they made. The system left these people wretchedly poor and sickly. George visited one village of seventeen people with five families living in a thatch and bamboo longhouse built on the ground. It had one door. George had to stoop to enter. Five fires smoldered inside, one for each of the families. The people stank from the lack of good hygiene and their sickness. Their pigs, dogs, chickens plus other small animals shared the house with them, too.

          The Lord told George to tell these people only about Jesus, nothing else. Nobody responded at first, but he kept going back. One man and his family finally responded whom on his own moved out of the house and built a new one off the ground with a separated kitchen. Despite experiencing some extreme testing, the family stayed true. One by one, the people turned away from their spirit worship and experienced a miraculous transformation. The village went from a disgrace even among their people before to exemplary status of what Christ can do when people turn to him.

          George and Hat started teaching them the Bible as they visited them. Hat prayerfully dispensed medicines sent to them from various medical missions. She had little training but she read the directions, prayed and believed God would give her the wisdom (see James 1:5). They began to hold weeklong Bible schools particularly to train young men to “shepherd the flock.” They followed this practice as other villages began to turn to Christ. To help them, George began to translate the Bible into Koho until another missionary arrived who assumed the responsibility.

          Illiteracy hindered the growth of the Christians. As noted, they had no Bible in their own language and most of them spoke neither French nor Vietnamese. After a chance meeting in Saigon with Dr. Frank Laubach of worldwide literacy fame, Hat wrote a language study primer for the Koho and successfully began to teach them to read. She even taught the hundred-year-old grandmother of their language teacher. Later in their career, she was asked to design the reading primer that would be used in the public schools to teach Koho children to read in their own language. She did so well the project managers asked her to design the primer for the Vietnamese language.

          In 1954, South Vietnam achieved full independence from French rule and Vietnamese became the official language. Vietnamese started to move into the highlands, in particular the people who were fleeing the communist regime of the north. Vietnamese became the official language of the highlands. The tribal and Vietnamese churches were growing rapidly and the Alliance was sending new missionaries to start ministry to tribes not yet reached. These missionaries to the tribes now needed to learn Vietnamese, not French. The mission chose the Irwins to oversee the language training and orientation of these new missionaries. Hat did the language work and George took the missionaries in to visit the mountain villages.

          Before they began, they traveled the length of the country with their field leader and his wife to visit the different tribal groups. George and Hat went because they spoke Vietnamese. After the trip, the mission decided to relocate them to the city of Danang, which was more centrally located to the new tribes. The new missionaries settled in the city while they learned the language under Hat’s tutelage.

          While they lived in Danang, the Irwins started work among the Bru people who lived in the north, near Khe Sanh, and among the Katu who lived to the south inland from Hoi An. They eventually moved to An Diem, a village directly bordering the territory of the fierce Katu. The Katu worshiped human blood, not their own, but the blood of people murdered in another village. Consequently, all the villages had no direct access by paths and they were heavily booby-trapped with poisoned arrows. They lived high in the mountains and the trail went straight up. Marilyn and I went with my parents to visit the Village or Hiep. I remember walking along a path in razor sharp grass that was higher than my head and then for two hours we climbed straight up the side of a mountain. We walked very carefully. Marilyn and I became the first white children to visit a Katu village. Great things were starting to happen among the Katu when it was time for the Irwins to return to Canada for home assignment.

          When the Irwins returned in 1962, the Katu region was no longer accessible. Viet Cong guerillas actively patrolled the region. The Irwins moved back to Dilinh to continue their work among the Koho. They continued to train new pastors and went into the villages to hold short-term Bible schools. Hat began training the young people to sing at this time. Marilyn and I greatly enjoyed walking with these young people back to their villages during the Christmas season until we both graduated from high school and had to leave. George drove the Land Rover, but not everyone could ride. The villages were sometimes fifteen miles apart. For one village, we crossed a river on a narrow swinging bridge. Everyone walked carrying on our backs the supplies including the folding organ.

          The Irwins continued to work like this year after year until the fall of South Vietnam’s government in 1975. Marilyn and I were gone, but George and Hat literally inherited three new children. Hat’s sister and her husband, Ed and Ruth Thompson, were killed in the North Vietnamese 1968 Tet Offensive. The Toronto on home assignment. Dale (15), Laurel (11) and Tommy (7) joined them when they returned to the field.

Thompsons had willed their children to my parents. This happened while they lived in

          On March 29, 1975, the North Vietnamese launched a massive assault to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. George needed to go to Saigon in April and since things were deteriorating rapidly, he threw a couple of barrels of their things into the back of the Land Rover. George unsuccessfully tried to return.

          Airplanes full of babies and children waiting adoption by American parents were flying out of Saigon. The children needed caregivers while they traveled. George and Harriette joined the crew and they sadly left Vietnam not ever to return.

          The legacy of their work among the Koho to train young people how to teach the Bible shows today. Nearly 60,000 Koho people identify their selves as Tin Lanh, which is the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Vietnam. When they left the entire Tin Lanh Church numbered 75,000. Young people from the Koho, Katu, Bru and many of the other ethnic tribes now attend the Saigon’s Seminary preparing for ministry.

          As I stated above, the Irwins did not retire from missionary work when they left Vietnam. Their language proficiency in Vietnamese, French and English enabled them to serve Vietnamese refugees moving to Europe. They moved to Paris and then Toulouse where they started two churches. Church ministries among the Vietnamese also started in Belgium and Denmark.

          In 1989, Hat’s memory was noticeably deteriorating. The Alliance asked them to retire and they returned to settle in Canada in 1990. Already the Vietnamese had started five churches in Toronto and the Irwins continued their work.

          In 2001, Harriette, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, had to move to a nursing home, as George was no longer able to care for her alone. This greatly distressed George, but he drove across the city everyday to her unit to visit with her. George would read the Bible to her and sing songs with her every time he visited her. When she could not do anything else, we could see her mouthing the words as we sang.

          We were able to get Harriette moved to a Canadian Pentecostal Assemblies Home where George had obtained a studio apartment. He would go regularly at lunch and dinnertime to feed his wife. Toward the end of 2006, George’s health turned bad and we had to place him into the nursing home. On January 28, 2007, George passed into the presence of his Savior and Harriette followed on March 15.

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[1] Early in their missionary career, the Koho women dressed only with a short wrap-around cloth skirt they wove and the men wore a skimpy loincloth. The Koho no longer dress like this.

[2] The book, The Bamboo Cross by Homer Dowdy, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (1968), tells the story of Sau’s life. He became a powerful preacher but he died and was then placed in the hospital’s morgue. Shortly afterwards he came back to life again. I remember George translating for Sau as he told Dowdy his story.

[3] Irwin, Edwin Franklin. With Christ in Indochina. Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications Inc., 1937.