A retired Presbyterian missionary from Western Pennsylvania, known to thousands of Africans as "Mama Lois" Anderson, was killed with her daughter, Zelda White, in a Saturday carjacking in Kenya.

	"Mama Lois" Anderson, left, in a 1995 family photo. The Rev. William Anderson, right, survived.

Mrs. Anderson, 79, was a native of Beaver and both were graduates of Geneva College. Their husband and father, William Anderson, who also was in the car, survived the attack, along with two other people. Mr. Anderson is a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and a onetime minister in Beaver.

The Andersons spent 49 years as Presbyterian Church (USA) missionaries, mostly in Sudan. Mrs. White, 52, was in seminary in Kenya, where her husband works at the U.S. Embassy.

The Andersons were popular speakers at the annual New Wilmington Mission Conference at Westminster College.

"Everybody loved them -- Lois particularly because she had such an outgoing personality, overflowing with joy," said the Rev. Donald Dawson, director of both the New Wilmington conference and the World Mission Initiative at the Pittsburgh seminary.

The shooting "wasn't targeted toward them. It was just a random act of violence," he said.

The Andersons retired to Clinton, S.C., in 2000, but were in Kenya for a family gathering. According to an e-mail from their daughter Sylvia, a witness, the Andersons, their two daughters and Sylvia's teenage son were in a U.S. Embassy vehicle near Nairobi, waiting on the roadside for a friend. A car pulled up and gunmen jumped out firing AK-47s.

Those in the back seat escaped, including Mr. Anderson, but the two women died at the scene. Kenyan police said the carjackers later died in a shoot-out.

The e-mail concludes with a biblical paraphrase: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labors."

They are a storied missionary family. Mr. Anderson was born in Egypt to missionary parents. He and his four siblings all became missionaries and many of their children and grandchildren have done likewise, Mr. Dawson said.

After graduation from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1950, Mr. Anderson became an associate pastor at Park Presbyterian Church in Beaver, where he met Lois Crawford. They married in 1951 and spent their honeymoon studying Arabic at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Okla.

Despite decades in Africa, her family ties kept them close to the Beaver congregation, said the Rev. William Teague, the current pastor.

"Lois was warm and vivacious. From a pulpit in front of 300 people, her warmth, her smile and the sparkle in her eyes were so engaging it was incredible," he said. "They told stories that made you want to go to the mission field."

The birthplaces of their four children mark their travels for education and ministry: Egypt, Uganda, Sudan and Kenya. Zelda was baptized Christine in Uganda, but never liked the name. In college she became Zelda, in honor of the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Mrs. White was in her final year of seminary in Kenya, said Bill Andress, a friend and supporter of the Andersons in South Carolina. "She had two children in college and one in high school. She felt she could go back to school and wanted to become a minister" to extend her family's legacy.

Mr. Anderson trained African pastors -- including 40 who became Anglican bishops -- while Mrs. Anderson reached out to families.

They were in Southern Sudan from 1952 to 1959, when foreign missionaries were expelled. They worked in Uganda from 1959 to 1962 and Kenya from 1962 to 1973. Then, in what they called "a miracle," a new government of Sudan allowed them to return.

They resumed work in the Christian South, but in 1984 civil war forced them to move north to the capital of Khartoum, where reports of the Presbyterian Church (USA) indicate a Christian revival despite an increasingly radical Islamist government. They helped to found a seminary, Nile Theological College, in Khartoum.

Mrs. Anderson was known to thousands of Sudanese as "Mama Lois," said Mr. Andress, a member of the Sudan Mission Committee in Trinity Presbytery in South Carolina. It was a familial title of love for "a classic grandmother," he said.

"When she came at you, her arms were always wide open, with a smile on her face so big that her eyes squinted shut. She always wanted to hug you and always had a personal thing to ask you about."

She also knew how to say a gentle "no" in a place where everyone assumed all Americans had boundless wealth, he said.

"She was generous, but she knew that in a nation with poverty like that, you can't give a cup of sugar to everyone who wants a cup of sugar. She was able to say no without offending people."

Trinity Presbytery has created a memorial fund, intended to help with funeral travel and whatever missionary effort Mr. Anderson designates, Mr. Andress said. Checks may be made out to Trinity Presbytery, 554 DeVega Drive, Lexington, SC 29073, with "Lois Anderson Memorial Fund" in the memo.

Both women will be buried Friday at St. Paul Seminary near Nairobi, where Mr. Anderson taught from 1959 to 1971 and where Mrs. White was a student.