This Week in AG History — December 9, 1933
By Glenn W. Gohr
Originally published on AG-News, 11 December 2025
Blanche Appleby was a single female Assemblies of God missionary who served in China and the Philippines. During World War II she was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp.
Blanche Ruth Appleby (1887-1968) was born in Pendergrass, Georgia, and was raised in a Christian home. In 1897, at the age of 10, she made a commitment to Christ in a Methodist church in northern Georgia.
Ten years later, Appleby’s family moved to Atlanta. She and her mother both had a hunger for more of God. They visited revival services and eventually found Pentecostals who were worshiping in an upper room on Marietta Street. G.B. Cashwell of Dunn, North Carolina, attended the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, and he received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and had recently brought the Pentecostal message to Atlanta. Blanche earnestly sought to be baptized with the Spirit, and after several months she received.
One night while praying, God called her to be a missionary to China. She was afraid to say yes to God, because she knew that a number of missionaries had been martyred in China. But the words of Dr. A.B. Simpson came to mind:
God has His best things for the few
Who dare to stand the test;
He has His second choice for those
Who will not have His best.
She desired God’s best in her life, so after a great struggle in prayer, she said, “Lord, I’m willing to be made willing.” Then joy filled her heart and the words of Isaiah 55:5 were given to her through the Spirit.
Although she had no formal ministry training, Appleby went to China in 1911. During her first year as a missionary, she stayed in the Garr Missionary Home in Hong Kong, where a banner was displayed with this motto: “Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.” This motto spoke volumes to her. It was a time of sacrifice, and she also realized that she had gone to China too soon, without ministry training or pledged support.
From January 1911 to August 1911, Appleby received no support from the U.S. She borrowed money. She kept a careful ledger account and paid it back when funds eventually came to her. She shared that when funds were scarce, the missionaries ate rice and “poverty gravy” made of grease, flour, salt, and water. When money was more plentiful, they had “Pentecostal gravy” which contained some meat!
Appleby initially worked with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA). She transferred her missionary appointment to the AG in 1919 and worked as a missionary with Elizabeth Kunkle in Sam Shi and Lo Pau, China. Appleby was a prolific writer and a good advocate for missionaries because she was unafraid to speak frankly about her life on the field and to ask for resources. She wrote frequent missionary reports in the Pentecostal Evangel and the Latter Rain Evangel.
Converts often became effective evangelists. Appleby reported that one of her converts, a Chinese woman, was saved and baptized in the Spirit, and then quickly became an outstanding minister. Blanche reported that 24 or 25 missions had been opened in China before 1925. She estimated that more than 500 children were attending Christian schools organized by the missionaries. And since the beginning of the Pentecostal work in China, there had been as many as 1,000 baptized in water and 500 baptized in the Spirit. She was glad to be a part of these missionary efforts.
During an extended furlough in the U.S. in the 1920s, Appleby attended Central Bible Institute in Springfield, Missouri. She graduated in 1929 and returned to China, where she served as an evangelist in Kwangsi Province, along with Rena Baldwin (who later married Alexander Lindsay). After many years of missionary service, on May 2, 1940, Blanche was ordained on May 2, 1940.
Appleby witnessed miracle after miracle as a missionary. She remembered being challenged by a heathen woman to pray for healing for a crippled woman in order to prove that her God was better than the woman’s gods. After prayer, God not only healed the cripple, but two others also. As a result of this encounter, both the woman and the cripple became Christians and were baptized in water.
Another time Appleby was called to pray for a demon-possessed woman who was a relative of one of the Christians. Together with other missionaries and local Christians, Blanche prayed. The demon refused to let the possessed woman pray in the name of Jesus. Finally, they took the woman to their missionary home and prayed with her, and then sent her home.
Early the next morning, the woman came back, saying, “Truly, your God is the true God! He has delivered me. I was able to sleep last night for the first time in months.” The woman was perfectly normal and free from the tormenting spirit.
Another healing she witnessed was of a woman known as Grandma Seen. She sold baskets in the market, but she was so blind her baskets were often stolen. In answer to prayer, God healed her blindness, saved her and her husband, and gave her a wonderful vision of heaven as well as natural vision.
In a place called Bundle of Reeds, during special meetings, missionary Louise Schultz brought her blind assistant (known as a Bible woman) to seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. She did not know English, but when the Holy Spirit came upon her, she spoke in clear English, including a number of words with an “r” sound, which the Cantonese language does not have — among them “worship” and “Father.” She also spoke in French and German, which Schultz understood.
The Second Sino-Japanese War prevented Blanche and Rena from returning to China, so in 1940 they went to the Philippines. Twice the Japanese interned them at Los Banos, Philippines, first for a month in 1942, and then for eight months in 1944-45.
While imprisoned, Blanche read Psalm 107, which she described as an “internment” psalm. One verse says, “hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.” One time after picking water cress under armed guard scrutiny, Appleby was so faint from starvation and tropical heat that she felt her life drifting away. That psalm goes on to say, “they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses.” Blanche prayed, and Julia Hodge (another prisoner) came and read from the Psalms and left. Her reading of Scripture brought fresh strength to Appleby’s body and spirit. She continued to pray in the Spirit the entire time she was imprisoned, and God sustained her.
On the very day that they were to be machine-gunned and killed, Feb. 23, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur sent the 11th Airborne, the Amphibian Tractor men, and Filipino guerrillas to rescue the missionaries just in the nick of time.
Because of her frail health, the AG mission board did not allow Appleby to return to the field. She had served 26 years in China and five in the Philippines.
In her retirement years, Appleby taught Sunday School and led a weekly prayer meeting at Faith Memorial Assembly of God (Atlanta) until shortly before her death in 1968. She left a large bequest to the Foreign Missions Department. A handwritten note in her missionary file stated, “By denying herself she left over $20,000 to the AG.” This was a significant amount of money in that time period.
After Appleby’s passing, the Georgia District secretary also wrote in her ministerial file: “A real soldier called home!” Indeed, Blanche Appleby gave everything she had — herself and her possessions — to the Lord’s work. She was found faithful.
Read Blanche Appleby’s testimony, “Protected From a Thief,” on page 9 of the Dec. 9, 1933, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.
Also featured in this issue:
• “Habakkuk’s Vision” by William A. Coxe
• “The Man Borne of Four,” by Lilian B. Yeomans
And many more!
Click here to read this issue now.
To read about the experiences and rescue of Appleby and other AG missionaries from Japanese internment camps in the Philippines, see the two-part article in the 2004 Heritage magazine (starting on page 6) and 2005 edition (starting on page 14).
Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.
Do you have Pentecostal historical materials that should be preserved? Please consider depositing these materials at the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center (FPHC). The FPHC, located in the Assemblies of God national offices, is the largest Pentecostal archive in the world. We would like to preserve and make your treasures accessible to those who write the history books.
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