Gone home to Glory – Dr Tom Hale
United Mission to Nepal sadly announces the passing of Dr Tom Hale, who served for many years in Nepal as a surgeon and a medical leader for almost two decades. We give thanks to God for Dr Hale’s remarkable life and for the many young medical professionals he inspired and mentored.
Together with his wife, Dr Cynthia Hale (paediatrician), they came to Nepal in 1970 and worked in Amp Pipal Hospital, Gorkha, for more than eight years as medical doctors. He later worked in Tansen Hospital for a few years until 1984 and then served at UMN headquarters until 1987.
Beyond his service in the medical field, Dr Hale was a gifted and respected author. Among his best-known works are Don’t Let the Goats Eat the Loquat Trees; On the Far Side of Liglig Mountain; and On Being a Missionary. These books recount the years he and his wife spent as medical missionaries and demonstrate the love they had for the Nepali people.
Our heartfelt condolences, gratitude and prayers are with his family and wife, Dr Cynthia Hale, who strongly stood with him and served alongside him. Together they gave so much to Nepal. His memorial service will be on 8 August, 1 pm Eastern time, USA.
Well done, good and faithful servant.
Matthew 25:23
My wife to be (Maija Koski) and I worked together in Amp Pipal Nepal with Dr Tom and Cynthia Hale for almost 2 years in the early ’80s. Tom was appreciated for his surgical skills…but I also remember him as someone I could talk to about Christian faith in Nepal, politics, gardening, travel in that central part of Nepal, or South Asia, etc. All of this was appreciated as I was new to the county.
Later we connected in Ontario Canada with some reunions with their son Chris , Dr Helen Huston (also in UMN’s Amp Pipal Nepal hospital), and Tom was doing promotion of the other interdenominational mission in Nepal called International Nepal Fellowship.
I liked Tom’s books that he wrote later in life, and passed them on to friends.
Rest in peace.
I am sorry for your loss Cynthia but rejoicing Christ s gain, the hope we have is we all will meet again. I never had the chance to meet Tom except through his book which were wonderful. God bless and keep you dear Cynthia❤️🙏
I’ heard Dr. Hale speak in the Twin Cities sometime in the late 1980s. My close friend Edie Broschat was a missionary doctor at the Am Pipal Hospital before her death in a car accident in 1995 I read all of Dr. Hale’s at the time (3) and was held spellbound by his masterful storytelling. They are still among my favorite books of all time and I’m glad I bought a couple of extra sets to loan to people, I’ve been thinking of the Hale’s over the past week with the catastrophic flooding in Nepal, knowing that this would break his heart to see so much suffering in a country that is among the poorest in the world. So I went to look him up tonight and found that he passed into God’s presence just over a month ago. My condolences to his wife and family. He put Nepal on the world map for me and I have always held a keen interest in the politics there and the struggle to break free from abject poverty. My friends adopted a 5-year-old orphan off the streets of Kathmandu and brought him home to the Midwest where he grew up; the only survivor of that horrific car crash in February of 1995. I have shed tears as I have prayed over the past few days, praying that humanitarian aid gets there quickly and that they deeply grieving people who saw their loved ones swept away in the flood waters Will be ministered to in both spiritual and humanitarian ways.
I worked in Thalajung, Gorkha from 1981-1983 as a volunteer teacher. The Hales were special friends. Trips to Ampipal to have fellowship with the believers there was one of the highlights of my time in Gorkha. The Hales had an interest in the people among whom I worked. One in particular was helped when she failed to take the prescribed medication for TB. I am quite sure that act of generosity helped lead her to faith in Jesus. Now a small fellowship exists in that community.