A Missionary Heroine

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 21, 1903

A Missionary Heroine

At Rangoon I attended a service at the chapel of the American mission. Over one thousand adults were present, and the preacher, twenty-two years of age, who had arrived at Rangoon the day before, preached with marvelous fluency. He was a missionary’s son. As a child, he lived with his father and mother in the jungles of Burma, where it was the business of the father to follow the Karens, who were nomads, on their wanderings. Cholera came, and the missionary died. It seemed the plain duty of the widow to return to America with her only child, that he might be educated. But the thought came, “If I leave these Karens, who is going to look after them?” She saw it to be her duty to let her son go home by himself, while she remained in the jungle to carry on the work. For seven years and a half she toiled, doing herself the full work of a missionary all alone. She preached, baptized, buried the members when they died, administered the sacrament, and saw a great harvest. All the time she prayed, “God, save my boy.” One day a letter came. He was converted; he wrote, “I think I will be a missionary.” She replied, “That is what I want; come and take up your father’s work.” The day before she had welcomed her boy, and now she sat hearing him preach. I said to myself, “If ever Christ had a heroine, this is one.”—Selected.