Joan Melrose, 71, of Columbia Heights remembers the pact she made with God after hearing his calling to do missionary work.

“I told God I’ll never beg,” she said. “I’ll share the vision God has given me. When the money quits, I quit.”

With her own money, she started on her missionary path in 1986 and continued with contributions from others inspired by her work. Melrose said she always had just enough to accomplish her missions, which included founding an international accredited nondenominational Bible college in Africa.

She built a campus in Bungoma, Kenya, and developed satellite schools across Kenya. Other institutions teach her curriculum in Uganda, Congo, Malawi, India and the United States.

Melrose also wrote two books that help support and augment her missionary work. She expanded an earlier testimonial book into “A Worm Becomes a Butterfly,” an autobiography urging people to listen and heed a spiritual calling.

In “The Truth abut the Rapture,” Melrose reveals her personal insights based on in-depth research. She said she thought people needed better teaching about the rapture, to learn exactly what the Scripture says.

“This book is to encourage you to prepare — spiritually and physically — for hard times,” she said. “If you don’t have to go through any, you can praise God but you’ll be prepared.”

In spite of her major accomplishments, Melrose remains humble, referring to herself as just a mother, self-taught in the Bible, who listened and followed God’s call.

 A native of eastern Montana, she was raised a Lutheran but said she “didn’t meet the Lord” until she was 33 with a 4-year-old daughter from a short-term marriage. She recalls the exact day, Sept. 11, 1972, and the circumstances when Jesus appeared to her while she was living in Seattle.

Melrose said a friend started the transition by telling her that she didn’t know what to do with her so she was going to pray for her and turn her over to God. She had the profound encounter after returning from an appointment.

“Tears started,” she said. “I went out to my car and he just bathed me in his love. When he revealed his love to me, that changed everything. I could understand people and events.”

 In 1979, Melrose moved from Washington back to Montana, to Columbia Falls, where she owned a health food and Christian bookstore and met monthly with an interdenominational group of women.

“It was at that time that God called me to missionary work,” she said.

Over the next three years, while her daughter finished high school, Melrose said God showed her that she was to go to Africa. In 1986, she put her business and building up for sale, telling herself that she would follow the vision if buyers appeared.

Both the business and the building sold in June. In the fall of 1986, Melrose joined Youth with a Mission for discipleship training and began to do outreach in face paint as a character named Rainbow.

“We would dress as clowns and evangelize, handing out tracts,” she said.

Melrose got her baptism in missionary work on a two-month outreach trip to Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. When she returned to the home base in Lakeside, she said she was led to go to health-care school, where she learned everything from how to stitch people up to how to help deliver babies beside a midwife.

“I attended 26 home births,” she said.

With her new skills, Melrose left in 1987 for a six-month mission to the Philippines where she spent her days ministering to people living in a garbage dump outside of Manila. She said she walked around encountering people who needed care for all manner of afflictions, including rat bites.

She said these impoverished people, victims of health problems or other setbacks, made their living from the garbage. Adding to their misery, the huge pile often developed smoldering fires.

“They called it smoking mountain,” she said.

In the spring of 1988, Melrose moved her mission to Kenya, where she worked at an orphanage for a year. She said she loved the children but had philosophical disagreements with the man in charge of the facility, who saw their role as only caretakers.

“I wanted to raise up leaders and Christians in the community,” she said.

Melrose left to attend a language school offered through the Anglican Church in the Nairobi area. From there, she took over teaching at an evangelical school with a pastor who confirmed her vision of her next mission to put together a grounding course in Christianity.

“I felt it would be a traveling school,” she said. “Most of the pastors had no training but most couldn’t leave their farm or church.”

Melrose wrote a 60-topic course of study and opened her first school in a market area of Malakisi, Kenya, in 1990. In her first year, she taught 13 students, who graduated in 1991.

She marvels that God kept providing people and money, sustaining her on her teaching path for two decades. Her Christian Life Teachings, College of the Bible, expanded to teach in 60 different areas of Kenya, Uganda, the Congo, India and more.

She administers the college out of its headquarters on the main campus in Bungoma, Kenya.

“I built seven large buildings and seven little buildings in seven years,” Melrose said, referencing seven as the number of spiritual perfection in the Bible.

Danger and cultural discrimination in Africa against women in missionary work did not dissuade her from her calling. Melrose said women are not esteemed, but she was older, so that helped, because their culture values and cares for older people.

She also weathered civil war in Kenya in 2008.

“I was in my house for five days with guns going off,” she recalled. “There were over 1,000 people killed.”

Accepting government corruption and potential violence as a fact of life in Africa, Melrose keeps guards on the campus compound and persists in her teaching mission.

Her school now awards bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees with accreditation through the American Accrediting Association of Theological Institutions.  Melrose counts about 1,600 graduates from the basic course and 150 with more advanced degrees.

She takes pride in her graduates and other Africans building churches across the continent. When she first arrived, only Americans and Europeans were building churches.

After decades spent traveling between Kenya and the United States, she feels now is the time to turn the Bible college over to the Africans as she follows a new call.

“God gave me a vision,” Melrose said. “I want to start a school with Native Americans.”

She maintains a stateside office at 3185 Whitefish Stage Road in Kalispell, where one of her graduates works and provides a ministry in local jails. Melrose has teamed up with a woman in Ronan to manifest her vision of an American Indian Bible college.

At 71, she still walks the talk she gives in “A Worm Becomes a Butterfly.” She describes it as “hear the voice of God, obey him and walk in accordance with what he wants you to do.”

Melrose points to miracles that followed her down that path, like the fire that appears behind her in the photo on the book cover. She said no one saw the fire when the picture was taken of her.

“I call that my miracle picture,” she said. “I believe it’s the fire of the Holy Spirit.”

The books are available locally at Borders in Kalispell, Harvest Health and Hope Shop in Columbia Falls, Bad Rock Books in Columbia Falls, Amazon.com, from her Whitefish Stage office or from her by e-mail at joanmelrose@yahoo.com.

“All the profit goes into the ministry,” she said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.