Isobel Selina Miller was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,[1]: 117  and moved with her family to Vancouver, British Columbia, when she was eleven years old.

[1]: 6–7, 85 [2]: 15  After experiencing a "pitying sneer" from a skeptical University of British Columbia English professor, Kuhn decided that she did not need to know or seek the God her parents had been teaching her about.

[1]: 9 Even though she had abandoned Christian teachings, she was still "considered a good girl, even a 'Christian'!," by some of her friends and acquaintances[1]: 9  Yet after a crisis in which she discovered that the man to whom she was secretly engaged not only was unfaithful to her [1]: 11, 13  but also told her to expect the same treatment in their marriage,[1]: 12–13  she was on the verge of taking her own life.

She taught third grade at the Cecil Rhodes School in Vancouver for more than a year, living in a boarding house because her family had moved to Victoria.

[1]: 70  A staunch Canadian, the missionary-to-be never would have chosen this school on her own initiative; however, a Christian acquaintance who gave Kuhn the train fare and startup money for the first year requested that she go there.

[4]: 15 At Moody, her energies were then focused on the Tibeto-Burman Lisu people, on the China-Burma [Myanmar] border,[4]: 13  after meeting and hearing Mr. Frasier speak at The Firs and being convinced that was what God wanted her to do.

On a whim she took an unpaid speaking engagement before a women's group and, much to her surprise, was asked to be the superintendent of what was then called "Vancouver Girls' Corner Club" for a salary of $80 a month - a small amount even then.

The club was an evangelistic outreach to business and professional women, who met in a downtown Vancouver building during the work week to talk and eat bag lunches together.

For the newly minted Bible school graduate, it was a paid position that she grew to love deeply, but could resign from on a moment's notice[1]: 126–129 It was October 11, 1928, Isobel sailed on a passenger ship out of Vancouver to China.

She eventually found ways to cope with certain irritations, like fleas; she even grew to enjoy certain things she initially couldn't stomach, like "large chunks" of boiled pork fat[4]: 41–44  and bean curd.

: 18 [3]: 23–29  She married John Kuhn in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, on November 4, 1929.: 18 [3]: 10 Over the next twenty four years they served together - like her mentor, J. O. Fraser, who came before them and who also worked alongside them until 1938.

[5][7] The communist revolution in China forced Belle and her son Danny to leave the country in March 1950, and to put her missionary life on hold for two years.

: 18 [3]: 118, 121 Sensing God's call again, but with China closed to them, the Kuhns continued their ministry in 1952 among another Lisu people group, this time in northern Thailand.

[8] After Isobel's 1954 cancer diagnosis, the Kuhn family returned to the United States and settled back in Wheaton, Illinois, where she continued to write and published several books.

[10] Son, Daniel Kreadman Kuhn (1943-2022), served two tours in Vietnam as a pacifist, supporting the troops, and went on to lead a quiet life with his family in the US.

[16][15] Fifty years after the death of Isobel Kuhn, Christianity has been thriving in the Salween River valley where the Lisu live in China.

[17] Today, this strong Christian presence in the Lisu communities of China and beyond can be attributed at least in part to Isobel Kuhn and her idea to start what she called the "Rainy Season Bible School."

This was a school borne of the fact that, in the heavily agricultural area where the Kuhns ministered, the rainy season disrupted all normal life.

And, quite ignorant of where that attitude would lead me, I had unconsciously stepped off the High Way where man walks with his face lifted Godward and the pure, piney scents of the heights call him upward, on to The Misty Flats [original].

[1]: 7 Of her brief Bible school years, Kuhn reflects: ....I received more blessing through the devotion and fire of my fellow [missionary] students at Moody than I did even through my studies.