Virginia Heslinga, Ed. D. is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Anna Maria College in Paxton, MA. She received the Living the Mission Award, which is presented to a member of the faculty who understands and appreciates the importance of educating the whole student and seizes every opportunity to do so. Over 50 years, Virginia has taught in a variety of schools, public, private, alternative, homeschools, religious, juvenile detention, religious, and online. She has worked in this country and others with every age group. She has articles published in education journals, writes curriculum, has published a memoir about a fire that devastated her family and changed her life, Grace Interlaced (2023). Her historical novel, Wounded Dove (2024), based on a real series of events in the life of Danish immigrants in twentieth-century Worcester County, Massachusetts, tells the story of a woman stricken with polio in the New England polio epidemic early in the 1900s.

Her China series, titled DID YOU EAT? comes from a question asked often in areas of China where famine reigned for many years. China Sweet and Sour is book 1, set in 2004 in a remote area of northwestern China. Book 2, China Spicy and Salty is from the 2009 adventure teaching in an even more remote location. Virginia describes herself as a child of God, wife, mother, grandmother, educator, author, and traveler who has the blessings of a caring family and friends near and far. Because of her experiences in the eight different years she worked with teachers, administrators, students, and communities in remote rural areas and in highly populated international cities in China, the country and people remain precious to her.