Arthur Clifford Selmon was born in the year 1877. He attended John Harvey  Kellogg's American Medical Missionary College and graduated in the class of 1902. On July 6, 1903 he married his fellow classmate and sweetheart, Bertha Loveland, who also graduated in the same year. Immediately after their wedding, Arthur and Bertha Selmon, together with another fellow graduand couple, Harry and Maude Miller, accepted a call to go to China to open up new Adventist missions in central and northern China. 

Bertha Eugenia Loveland was born in Columbus Grove, Ohio on December 15, 1877. She was the daughter of Nicolas Eugene and Annie Parker Loveland. After graduating from the Battle Creek Sanitarium and Hospital School of Nursing in 1898, Bertha Loveland continued her studies in medicine at the American Medical Missionary College and graduated in 1902, the same year as Arthur Selmon, her newly wedded husband.

In 1903 J.N. Anderson sent an urgent request to the SDA Foreign Mission Board for more helps to meet the huge challenges of China, these two newly wedded couples, and four medical doctors: Drs. Arthur and Bertha Selmon, and Drs. Harry and Maude Miller responded. In fact there were two more nurses, Carrie Erickson and Charlotte Simpson, who accepted the call at the same time. At that time, the Foreign Mission did not have sufficient money. So they were told that they may have to pay their own way. Fortunately, four conferences, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin came up with some money to provide partial support for these six young missionaries. They were to receive about seven dollars a week allowance for each family.

So the six of them- two couples and two single girls: Arthur and Bertha Selmon, Harry and Maude Miller, Carrie Erickson, and Charlotte Simpson, left the United States for China in 1903. They boarded the S.S. Empress of India and left Vancouver on October 5, 1903. After 18 days of sailing, the ship took anchor at W00sang Channel on October 23. The next day, on October 24, they where taken by launch up the Hwang Poo River to Shanghai.

Elder J.N. Anderson was there to meet the six newly arrived missionaries. On the advice of Anderson, they remained in Shanghai only for a couple days to do some shopping of supplies that they cannot get in inland China. They then took the River steamship up stream Yangtze River to Hankow (Hankou). At Hankow they were met by Eric Pilquist, who was the one who had opened up a mission station in Henan where these 6 new missionaries were to go.