George John Appel was born in Madison, Indiana, on May 6, 1892, and passed to his rest on March 13, 1982 at Portland, Oregon, being nearly 90 years of age. His first contact with Adventism was at the age of 19 when he and his brother Nick took over an old homestead at Powell Butte, Oregon.  Among the discards in the corner was the book Bible Readings for the Home Circle.  He attended and completed his high school at Laurelwood Academy.  He was married to Laura Evelyn Gibson on March 27, 1913 and entered the ministry in the Oregon Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in June of 1917.  It was at Walla Walla that his first son Melvin was born.  George Appel was ordained in 1920 and in the same year a call was accepted to work in the Far Eastern Division.  He sailed to China on the SS China October 30, 1920 arriving in Shanghai in November.  While on his first furlough, he completed his last year and graduated from Walla Walla College. 

From Shanghai they went to Nanking for language school.  On June 15, 1921 they went to Singapore on the SS Nile where he served as president of the Singapore Mission.  It was here that their second son, Alva, was born.  Then on November 3, 1922 they sailed on the SS Nile back to China and Tsinan in North China where he was the Mission President.  While there he was very active in support of the mission school which was supported by its towel-weaving industry, supplying the towels to hotels and other buyers in Shanghai.  In 1925 he became President of the North China Union at Peking.  It was while there that the Mongolian work was begun.  In addition to his administrative work in the Union he supervised the building of the hospital at Kalgan and fostered the establishment of the mission and building on the steppes of Mongolia.  He purchased the old Dodge touring car from the explorer Roy Chapman Andrews and used this during this time and later in Northwest China.  It was during this time that he built the North China Union Headquarters at Peking.  He also engaged in evangelism and built the Peking Central Church.

In 1935 he became the President of the Northwest China Union with its headquarters at Lanchow, Kansu Province.  He built the union headquarters offices, housing, and the sanitarium-hospital. While firmly supporting and fostering the established work he also had a great desire to see the development of the work among the Tibetans.  This was the time of the “on to Lhasa” emphasis.  It was arranged for the converted Lama priest, Feng Yu Sheng, to travel to Lhasa with Tibetan Seventh-day Adventist literature.  The success of this difficult undertaking was a thrill to all concerned.  All of the literature was delivered before he returned.  

The next appointment was the Central China Union Presidency at Hankow.  During this term war clouds were gathering.  Yet the new hospital was established on grounds which soon housed an estimated 30,000 refugees seeking aslyum from the invaders. This was prior to Pearl Harbor.  A plan was developed to give the refugees rice for their community work on roads in the area.  Even though connected to humanitarian work, he was subjected to physical abuse.  As America was entering the war, he was able to reach Chungking where he served as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Provisional China Division during the war years.  After this conflict was over he was elected as the Home Missionary Secretary of the China Division.  That was at Shanghai, then later in Hong Kong when the offices were moved when Shanghai was evacuated.  During this time unnumbered chartered planeloads of supplies were flown in and distributed behind the lines.

He was then asked to take over the responsibility and become President of the Middle East Division with headquarters at Beirut, Lebanon, where he served eight years. During this time the Middle East College and Division headquarters were completed in spite of the unsettled conditions. The Baghdad Hospital was built and staffed and medical work was established in Libya.

In January, 1959, due to his wife's ill health, he retired and moved to Portland, Oregon where he served for a number of years as a chaplain at the Portland Adventist Hospital as well as serving as a supply preacher for the Oregon Conference. Thirty-eight years of his ministry were spent overseas.  From Lake Kokonor on the Tibetan highlands to the deserts of the Middle East, from beauty and verdure of Western Oregon to the steppes of Mongolia, George John Appel served his church with untiring zeal and dogged determination and unending faith in the soon coming of the Lord.  God used this western woodsman and pioneer.