Torbjorg (Thea) Nilsdatter Ronning (1865-1898), was born on a farm outside the town of Bo in Telemark, Norway. Thea and her two brothers, Nils Nilson and Halvor Nilson, immigrated to America in the 1880s. All three distinguished themselves in God's service. Nils and Halvor were well known in their new land. But not their sister. Thea Ronning had a burning desire to minister to Chinese women whose lives by all accounts were filled with oppression and cruelty. This is a story of how she learned of the needs in China, the establishment of the mission society that sent her, and the Ladies Aids from whom she had to garner interest and support. The women in the Midwestern Norwegian-American churches supported her and the entire mission with their gatherings, their dinners, bazaars, surprise parties, and fishponds, at a time when a few nickels could make the difference between life and death in China. Their work to bring the gospel to women in China through women like Thea shows that the lady missionary's vocation was a worthy profession, one she and her other women colleagues, married and unmarried, filled with passion and unrelenting zeal to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ and salvation to the Chinese women. Although Thea Ronning s story is the book s red thread, Thea was but one strand of a vital web of comrades whose stories are dramatically intertwined. Adding to the book s richness is the author s research into the family and church life in Norway and America from which they came, and then the complex, often hostile situation awaiting them in China. The reader will be moved not only by their compelling stories but also by their legacy of discipleship, too precious to be forgotten. --Paul Ofstedal, president, China Service Ventures A very fine study of Thea and her family, based on an amazing collection of material. We tend to forget that Thea and others, inspired by Haugean pietism in Norway, and often accused of being both isolated from the world and limited to rural culture, were really our pioneers in a global world. --Øyvind Tveitereid Gulliksen, professor emeritus, Telemark University Gracia Grindal, professor emerita at Luther Seminary, has recently completed A Treasury of Faith, a series of over 700 hymn texts on the lessons of the Revised Common Lectionary. In 2019, Alice Parker and Grindal published an English version of thirty of Heinrich Schütz's settings of the Becker psalter. Hallgrím Church in Reykjavik will publish her translation of Hallgrím Pétursson's Fifty Passion Hymns.