While continuing to teach, Russell became the secretary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (WFMS), West Virginia conference.

Russell and another teacher named Jennie Gheer[3] sailed from San Francisco for Japan, on October 25, 1879, via Yokohama, reaching Nagasaki on November 23, 1879.

In 1873 when the edict prohibiting Christianity was abolished by the Meiji Government, the American Episcopal Methodist Church had already sent John Carrol Davidson to Nagasaki.

Russell founded a mission school for girls and women in the foreign settlement in Higashi-Yamate, Nagasaki on December 1, 1879.

[2] Russell also founded Kwassui Girl's home in Kumamoto, for children left without parents after natural disasters.