Alfred James Broomhall

Alfred James Broomhall (6 December 1911 – 11 May 1994), also known as Anthony James Broomhall, or A. J. Broomhall, was a British Baptist Christian medical missionary to China, and author and historian of the China Inland Mission (renamed as Overseas Missionary Fellowship in 1964, known today as OMF International based in Singapore).

"Jim" Broomhall was born in Chefoo (now Yantai), Shandong, China, in 1911, the son of Benjamin Charles Broomhall and his wife Marion, missionaries to China with the Baptist Missionary Society. The Broomhalls were a missionary family, and Jim was the third generation to be involved in such work. His grandfather, Benjamin Broomhall, had been the general secretary of the China Inland Mission for 20 years and had married Amelia, sister of the founder of the agency, James Hudson Taylor. His uncle, Marshall Broomhall was the most famous of Benjamin's sons as a missionary and historian - a professional pattern repeated in Jim's life.

Broomhall was educated in the city of his birth at the China Inland Mission Boy's Preparatory School (Chefoo School) at Yantai, and later at Monkton Combe School, Bath, England together with his older brother, Paul. When he was nineteen, he read a book about the Yi people (also called Nosu), an isolated people of the Liangshan mountains in China's Sichuan province. Intrigued, he made up his mind to tell them about Jesus. In preparation, like his great-uncle Hudson Taylor before him, he became a medical doctor receiving his training at the Royal London Hospital. After completing his courses, he joined the China Inland Mission (C.I.M.) and sailed for China in 1938.

Before he arrived, China was at war with Japan. The Japanese were already in control of much of China and travel in the country was difficult. Undaunted, he and some fellow missionaries went to Hong Kong where they bought station wagons which they then drove through French Indochina and back over the Chinese border to Chongqing, Sichuan. Broomhall decided to stay in China to face the difficult times alongside the Chinese people. During this wartime, he practiced medicine in Sichuan at the mission hospital.

He married Theodora Janet Churchill (born 13 June 1913; died November 2000) in 1942 in China; they had four daughters. The couple began pioneering work among the Nosu tribe in 1943, they traveled among them giving medical aid and making friends. But a Japanese advance forced them to leave, still not having reached his target - the Liangshan mountains. The family had to flee to India for safety.

Although thwarted, he told everyone

"I want to go to Liangshan to make friends, for there are my Yi brothers whom I love and wish to serve."

After the war, Broomhalls returned to China in 1946 and Broomhall went to Nosuland, leaving his wife and two daughters at Luoshan, southwest China, for a while. In the end the Broomhalls spent four more years among the Nosu and established a clinic before the arrival of the Communists. In 1947 he finally arrived at the place he had dedicated his life to serve, a region in southwestern Sichuan where he could minister again to the Yi people. He had traveled the thousand miles from Lanzhou to Liangshan. Supported by British missionaries, Ruth Dix and Joan Wales, he opened a clinic to help the sick and to spread the Gospel at the same time. He was greatly loved by the local people. In order to dispel the misunderstanding and fear the public had for people with leprosy, he invited a leper to live in his house for a year. The two shared a room and ate the same food. The Yi were appalled when he took in a leper. The villagers were so outraged that the leper would endanger him in this way that they wanted to kill him, but his condition improved, although the irreversible damage could not be undone.