NORTHBROOK, IL (May 10, 2012) – A funeral service for retired Evangelical Covenant Church missionary and pastor George Welch, 100, will be conducted in Lexington, Kentucky, on Saturday. He died Monday at Brandel Care Center in Northbrook, Illinois.
Welch was born July 23, 1911, in Ponass Lake, Saskatchewan. He was a 1936 graduate of Minnehaha Academy and Bible Institute, a 1939 graduate of North Park College and Bible Institute, and attended Augsburg College for a year before his ordination during the Covenant Annual Meeting in June 1940.
The same month he married Gladys Berg, whom he had met during his time as a home missionary in North Branch, Ontario, in the 1930s. They were commissioned as missionaries and left for Unalakleet, Alaska, in 1940. They also served in White Mountain, Alaska. Following language studies in Mexico, they became the first Covenant missionaries to Ecuador, serving in Quito and Ibarra from 1947 to 1949.
Welch served Covenant churches in Phoenix, Arizona; Clear Lake, Washington; Hastings, Nebraska, and Kane, Pennsylvania. He also owned a Christian bookstore in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. His life story, Memories of a Sky Pilot, was published in 1997.
His wife preceded him in death in 1988. Survivors include his daughter, Grace Lund. Memorial gifts may be made by check to the Department of World Mission, Evangelical Covenant Church, 8303 West Higgins Road, Chicago, IL, 60631.
