For an entire generation, Rebekah Naylor has personified Southern Baptist medical missions. For 35 years, she served Bangalore Baptist Hospital in India as missionary surgeon and administrator. Stateside now, she continues to work on special assignment with the International Mission Board.
From the time Naylor enrolled at Baylor University in 1960, through her years as a medical student at Vanderbilt University and surgical residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (from which she was the first female graduate), and continuing throughout her missionary career, she wrote her parents in Fort Worth. Fortunately, her mother not only saved all 4,091 letters, but also cataloged them in chronological order.
Drawing from that voluminous correspondence and multiple interviews, Camille Lee Hornbeck paints a vivid word-picture of a living legend. But while Hornbeck’s admiration for Naylor seems unmistakable, she presents her subject as fully human and doesn’t shy away from the paradoxes in Naylor’s personality. She’s presented not only as a fearless single woman in a male-dominated, unfamiliar culture, but also as one who is deathly frightened of rodents, roaches and snakes. She devoted her entire adult life to selfless service among the poor, but she delights in fine food, beautiful clothing, classical music and elegant jewelry. Patients know her as a gentle and soft-spoken healer, but co-workers testify to her ability to be a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense administrator.
Any Christian would benefit from reading this inspirational story of a life fully surrendered to God’s calling.
Camp is managing editor of the Baptist Standard, Dallas, Tex.
Naylor to visit S.C.
Rebecca Naylor will visit South Carolina in November to attend the annual session of the state Baptist convention in Columbia. She will sign copies of her book at the meeting. Her father, Robert Naylor, was pastor of First Baptist Church, Columbia, from 1947-52.