ELKHART, Ind. (Mennonite Mission Network/Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission) - Tina Quiring, a mission worker in Congo from 1950 to 1977, died Jan. 30 in Mountain Lake, Minn. She was 89.

Born Feb. 20, 1912, to Rev. Henry H. and Anna (Schultz) Quiring in Mountain Lake, she was one of three sisters who eventually found their way to Africa under the sponsorship of the former Commission on Overseas Mission of the General Conference Mennonite Church and what was then the Congo Inland Mission, now Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission.

COM, together with the GCMC Commission on Home Ministries and Mennonite Board of Missions (Mennonite Church) now is part of Mennonite Mission Network in the USA.

After a year in Belgium studying French, she spent her first two terms in Djoko Punda, dividing her time between a girls school and a two-year training program for young men preparing for service in village schools as Christian teachers.

In 1960, Quiring's service in the Congo was interrupted by the violence of political independence. As soon as it was considered safe for women to return, she was among the first to go back. She located in Tshikapa, a government and commercial center. From 1962 until her retirement, her work there focused on the distribution of Christian literature through a network of bookshops.

She was known to the Congolese as "Mama Tina." People who learned to know her remember her for her sense of humor and punctuality. Quiring always was busy and enthusiastic about her work. She firmly believed in the importance of African believers having God's word written in their mother language.

Quiring graduated from Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School in Minneapolis in 1936. She also received a bachelor's degree from Goshen (Ind.) College in 1948. She taught in the Bible department of the Mountain Lake Bible School and at the Berean Academy in Elbing, Kan., before her service in Congo. Upon retirement, she made her home in Mountain Lake with her sister, Anna, who also had served in the Congo. Quiring continued to type manuscripts in the Tshiluba language for use in the theological education by extension program in Congo.

She is survived by a brother, Samuel H. Quiring of Tacoma, Wash.; three sisters: Helen Sawatzky and Esther Dick, both of Mountain Lake, and Marie Ruth Clevenger of Lima, Ohio; and 25 nephews and nieces. She was preceded in death by her parents; two brothers, Henry and Cornelious; and three sisters, Sarah Penner, Anna Quiring and Elizabeth Clevenger.