Sagamore resident’s life ‘mission’ led her to Africa 

by Laura Bednar

Sagamore Hills resident Polly Strong has spent her life in service to others locally and internationally. She has written literature, spoke at conferences throughout the country and spent decades as a missionary teaching and aiding the people of Africa.

Faith has been the cornerstone of Strong’s life since childhood. “My family firmly held to standards of right, responsibility, respect and a strong work ethic, not only for our own productiveness, preservation, protection and pleasure, but also for those around us and throughout the world,” said Strong. 

She was born in Tacoma, Washington, and later settled in Painesville, Ohio, where her father was a pastor for 20 years in a Baptist church. When she was 10, Strong “promised to read the Bible daily,” a promise she has kept for over seven decades. 

After graduating from college, she spent 5½ years as the Christian education director for the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Seattle and directed Camp Gilead, a Christian summer camp. At the end of camp one year, she recalled feeling she “lost her sense of dependency on God” and felt called to minister and teach somewhere to strengthen her faith. “I knew I wanted to serve God,” she said.

This led Strong to apply to work through the Baptist Mid-Missions in 1965. After traveling through western states and Ohio to raise financial support for her missions, she was sent to France for one year of language study, as her destination in Africa was a former French colony.

In 1967, Strong went to Sibut within the Central African Republic, the southern part of what was French Equatorial Africa. France colonized parts of Africa in the 1800s, and this portion of the continent gained independence in 1960. 

“The country was only 30% literate and was the third poorest country in the world at the time,” said Strong, adding that for a long time, the country had no written language of its own.

Reading between a third- and sixth-grade level in French was considered higher education. Strong said Sango, a trade language, became the national language, and missionaries translated the Bible into Sango to teach the African people how to read.

“We want them to be a free people,” she said. “Anyone who has not read the Bible for themselves are slaves to what other people have told them.”

She taught African people how to read, write and understand the Bible, but Strong also recalled “helping them with food, medicines, seeds for their gardens, bikes for transportation, nets for fishing, building materials for their houses and lots of hours of advising and comforting.”

The normal pattern of mission work was three to four years abroad and one year in the U.S. to visit supporters and further your education. Throughout her furloughs, Strong earned bachelor’s degrees in religious education and French/English education and a master’s degree in humanities.

During her studies, she wrote a thesis about Central African folklore and the stories from a folklore teller in an African village. Those stories, with Strong’s help, were turned into a children’s book with illustrations done by a former American student of hers, a child of other missionaries.

She later spoke about the book at a conference in Bangui. Strong said that one of the African men in attendance said, “She knows and loves the people of this country.”

Strong said this was a contribution towards international relations between the United States and central Africa, and she received a letter from the U.S government thanking her for her work.

On her second visit to Africa in 1971, she became principal of the Bangui high school, which began with children of missionaries. A network of African churches was independent of, but worked with, the missionaries, sending people to be taught, as well. 

In 1981, Baptist Mid Missions asked Strong to write a history of their missions. She accepted the task of covering 60 years of missions in 40 countries. There were 10,000 copies of the book printed. 

Research for the book required reviewing mission files in Cleveland, which took months. 

Northfield Baptist Church Pastor Lynn Rogers had worked with Strong’s father in the development of a Christian summer camp on Kelleys Island, so at times she stayed with him while she wrote the book. 

In the 1980s, Strong also spent a month at a kibbutz, or communal settlement in Israel, teaching college students in a study abroad program beginning Hebrew and cross-cultural communication before they set out on their ministries.

During her furloughs in the United States, Strong continued her mission by speaking at conferences and events connected with the Baptist church. She even taught and spoke at conferences in French Quebec, two African countries and Haiti. 

She wrote teaching materials in Sango, French and English. “One course I did for ROGMA International [a global ministry] was translated into Arabic, used all across North Africa and on a radio broadcast in Baghdad.”

During a 1991 visit to Africa, she witnessed the destruction of missionary sites by attacking rebels.  The buildings were dismantled to their foundations and half of the school was burned.

Strong continued in her ministry, despite the circumstances, teaching English to doctors and other professionals helping Africans. She brought the first computer into the mission and one of the first photocopiers into the country to train locals to type and produce Bible school notes. 

After war was declared in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1996, foreigners had to evacuate. Strong returned to Bangui a few years later to train the native people that took on the missionary responsibilities. This was done within a war zone with refugees, gunfire and blockades. Through the turmoil, she also trained pastors and church leaders to teach in schools and rewrite the Bible school curriculum. 

With one of her former students, she created the Center of Advanced Education in Biblical Studies, which included classes at the mission, correspondence courses and two-week conferences with 40-50 pastors from as far as 500 miles away. One of Strong’s former American high school students later took over the program.

Strong returned to Africa in the early 2000s, when she was in her 60s, to volunteer at an orphanage in Ethiopia and teach at a school in the country of Haiti. 

In 1998, she bought her Sagamore Hills home, which is near the Northfield Baptist Church, where she still teaches English as a second language. She continues to help many who pass through her door, including students in an Israel study abroad program who completed orientation in her home; mothers with children who needed a safe haven; and girls, couples and families who needed a temporary place to stay.

Members of the Northfield Baptist Church made meals for the Israeli students and the church offered financial support for her mission work over the years. 

Her ministry goes hand in hand with her love of gardening. Strong tends the gardens at Camp Patmos, a Christian summer camp on Kelleys Island started and supported by the Ohio Regular Baptist Church Association.

Many of her students have gone on to earn advanced degrees and Strong said many she runs into remember her. She said to this day she carries her students and the African people in her heart.

When asked what inspired her to continue her mission work for so many years, she quoted Bible verse Ecclesiastes 5:13: “I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners.”Strong said her riches came from parents who ensured she had a good education and strong faith. “I needed to share these riches with people who had nothing,” she said. 

photo caption: Strong (l) taught African women how to read and write, many had never used paper and pen before. Photo submitted.