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Missionary voice, Volume 7 By Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Board of Missions.
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The Moving Spirit of Ruby Kendrick Memorial
By Gus W. Thomasson
1917
A few years ago a young Texas girl wend out as a missionary to Korea, her chosen field. There she died, following a brief year of labor, but not without implanting the gospel in the hearts and minds of the people eager to learn of a higher life. It seemed as if her death would prove a calamity, for coworkers and natives alike were not prepared for her sudden taking away.
With keen perception and an alertness that inspired confidence from the beginning, another young Texas girl began plans for continuing the work of the former and perpetuating her memory. A fund was started, a missionary was employed, and the Ruby Kendrick Memorial became a vitalizing force in the same field where the one in whose honor it was named had laid down her life.
Seven years have passed, and this fund has grown to many thousands of dollars. A number of missionaries have been employed, and this work has taken first rank in the missionary activities of our Church. Not only so, but here in Texas the lives of scores of our brightest and best people have been touched and inspired by the heroic story of Ruby Kendrick and her work, and many have given themselves and their all to the service of the Master. Throughout the length and breadth of the North Texas Conference, the home of Ruby Kendrick, and even throughout Texas itself, the influence of this work has gone.
During all this time the one directing mind and energizing force of the movement has been Miss Mary Hay Ferguson. She conceived and founded it. She build up the system of records by which the fund is now collected and distributed. She evolved a system of awards and promoted liberal and definite giving. She has been constantly in touch with the workers in the mission field and has kept the North Texas Conference aflame with missionary zeal. She visualized in her own life the Ruby Kendrick Memorial, finding the supreme joy of service in its promotion and making its success her one chief object. To her, as to no one else, is due the great success of this movement. In her own life and character she became a missionary, carrying the light of the gospel to others. Frail health has compelled her to relinquish leadership to others; but her work will abide as long as time itself shall last, and her sweet, heroic Christian character will reckoned alongside that of her comrade. The names of Ruby Kendrick and Mary Hay Ferguson will be linked together forever in the memory of the young people of Texas.
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GENEALOGICAL ABSTRACTS FROM REPORTED DEATHS
THE NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE 1908-1910
By Jonathan Kennon Thompson Smith
Copyright, Jonathan K. T. Smith, 2002
Page 12 give a few details on Ruby:
RUBY KENDRICK, a Methodist missionary, died of appendicitis, Songdo, Korea, June 20, 1908; formerly of Plano, Texas. [Tribute to her memory, July 10, 1908 issue, page 31; a poem entitled, "Ruby Kendrick" by Julieet Howe appeared in Sept. 11, 1908 issue, page 20]
