p. 6 | A Kafir Girl's Gift by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 27, 1915

A Kafir Girl's Gift

By W. A. S.

If the first sight of the Maranatha Mission was a glad one,—the bright light from the mission window shining upward as we drove down the hills,—so the first sound that reached our ears was a joyful one to the Seventh-day Adventist heart.

No sooner had we reached the mission home than there came from the school building the sound of voices, clear and strong, singing our familiar hymns. It was the evening practice hour. We went over to the school, and saw the platform filled with Kafir boys and girls. Miss Sutherland, who is doing noble work as teacher of the training school, was drilling the older students in English singing, and from these Kafir lips we heard the good old hymns “O could I speak the matchless worth,” “Saved by Grace,” “I Surrender All,” sung, too, with the spirit and the understanding. To the newcomer it was a touching experience to land on the Kafirland border by night and to hear these young people, some of whom were but a little time ago in heathen darkness, singing the good old hymns from the heart.

One girl, I noticed, wore tiny earrings, the smallest of gold circlets. By this I inferred that she was a newcomer at the school, and so I learned she was.

Cilia, her name is. She came from far over in Kafirland, really ran away to get to the school, though now her parents are not opposed to her remaining, though they belong to another society.

Last Sabbath was the thirteenth Sabbath, and the offering in the Sabbath schools was to go to Malaysia. The Kafir boys and girls were planning for their gifts. This girl Cilia had no money to give. But a day or two before, Miss Sutherland had read to the girls from the third of Isaiah, where the Scripture speaks of the Lord's disapproval of the ornaments and “the earrings,” with which his people were decking themselves. It was a new revelation to our Kafir girl. “I never knew that the

Lord spoke about earrings,” she said. “O Miss,” she added, “is it not wonderful that the Bible speaks about everything that we do?”

She was carrying the matter on her heart, evidently; for that evening during the study hour, she suddenly jumped up and asked permission of Rachel, Miss Sutherland's native assistant, to go out of the room. She was trying to get the earrings out of her ears, but the flesh had grown tight about them, and she could not get them out. Then she called Rachel out to help her. “Please take these rings out,” she said to Rachel. “I want to give them to the Lord. I have no money to give, and I will give these earrings for the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering for Malaysia.”

So on the Sabbath a little envelope was put into the basket, with the name “Cilia Ntutela” written upon it in a neat, strong hand, and inside were the two little circlets of gold which her uncle had given her when she was a little child. “It is all I have to give,” she said. And we thought it a gift that the Lord would surely bless. The little rings will bring but little at the goldsmith's; but it may be some reader will feel like making a money gift for missions in this Kafir girl's stead; and if so, it may be that last Sabbath Cilia gave more than she thought in surrendering those treasured little ornaments to the Lord.

W. A. S.