The Work of the Missionary’s Wife by T. T. Williams

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 21, 1909

The Work of the Missionary’s Wife

By T. T. Williams

SCANT justice would be done to the work of missions, if no account were taken of the work done by the wives of the missionaries. Their work is seldom reported, and is not always reportable, but it has to be done all the same. In one sense, their work is never done, for they are always at it, helping in a score of unnumbered and unsentimental ways. They visit the schools, conduct the sewing classes, look after the Bible women, and teach the female Bible classes, look after the women of the churches,—old folk, young folk, well folk, feeble folk, and all sorts of folk who need bits of help, and odds and ends of guidance, good advice, and wise suggestion,—besides that which cometh upon them daily—the care of their households, their small families, and the attention native servants all require.

They have to make the most of the preparations for their husbands when they go off on itinerating tours—see to their cooking utensils, stores, stretcher, bedding, etc. Some of these men would starve by the way if their good wives did not look after them. If there are any social amenities to be observed in order to good standing in the community, as there are sometimes, the wives have to see to them, or they will not be done. They have to see that their husbands are not barbarized while about their work. Some of the husbands would go round with sleeves out at the elbows, or in their cook’s white drill coat which the washerman had by mistake put along with the missionary’s, or in shoes careened over on one side and tied with twine, if their wives did not look after them. They would get to taking their breakfast in the pantry, or on their desks, or even go off into the country without breakfast, if left to themselves. Every time they return from an itinerating tour, their wives have to put them through their facings, make them presentable to society, and not a discredit to those that sent them out. Nor is this all that missionaries’ wives have to do and see after. They have to be the general supplementers in most mission fields of all manner of minor unfinished items in the round of missionary life.

In some fields the wives have to mix medicines, spread plasters, give out doses of “pain-killer,” quinin, castor-oil, warn the children against green fruit and colic, put on patches, sew on buttons, deal out bits of thread and needles, doctor the children, ask the children how their mothers are, and the mothers how the children are, keep count of the baptizing gowns, look after the preparations for the communion service, keep the desk supplied with pens, ink, paper, and postage-stamps; and so on, and so on, with twenty other things of no account in making up a “report,” but all of which are most valuable items of solid missionary usefulness, and go a very long way in making the work of their husbands a success or a failure.

There are many gifted, cultured, gracious women, whose devotion to the cause of foreign missions is soul-refreshing to see or to read about. But there are also others, equally gracious women, although not equally gifted and cultured, whose labors, sacrifices, and influence are and have been such as even their more gifted and cultured sisters have never come near—gentle, sweet-tempered, tender-hearted, unobtrusive women, who, seldom seen on platforms and never in the pulpit, and little heard of even in missionary circles, are not much reckoned among the workers and forces making for righteousness; and yet the influence, example, and work of such are among the most powerful factors in the mission field. For not only do they reign as queens in their own homes,—which are always models of what such ought to be in cleanliness, comfort, and hospitality (“Marys in the house of God, Marthas in their own”),—but also in the huts and homes of the natives, because they reign in the hearts of the native women, who adore them, and look up to them as their highest example of all that is Christian, womanly, and motherly.

With limited gifts and but little culture—as those words are generally understood—they are greatly gifted in tact, mother-wit, and sanctified common sense, and rich in that heart-culture which counts for so much in all Christian work, but especially in foreign mission work. Like their prototype, Mary of old, they do what they can, and their influence and example, like the odor of her ointment, are felt far and near. For they fill their fields of labor with their aroma, penetrating to the most unthought-of places, and permeating all the ways and walks of native and missionary home, social, and public life. Such are not only mothers in Israel, sisters in sorrow, and helpers in every season of affliction and time of need, but they are the Marys, Marthas, Dorcases, Priscillas, and Phoebe’s of the mission field, and rare and precious blessings they are to it and to all connected with it.—Rev. T. T. Williams, in “Thirty Years in Madagascar.”