Missionary Stories

by Joyce Reed

John Eliot 1604-1690

John Eliot was born in 1604 near London, England. We know little about his early years, but he received a degree from Cambridge University in 1622.

He became connected to the Puritans while serving as an usher in the grammar school of Rev. Thomas Hooker, where he saw the power of godliness in their lively vigor and service. John soon devoted himself to the ministry of the Gospel with the Puritans. However, the Puritan persecution by the Church of England was so great that they emigrated to America.

John, along with three brothers and three sisters, arrived in Boston on November 4, 1631. It was a very harsh time for them, but they made it. John entered the ministry there that year at the age of twenty-seven years. That same year, John married Miss Hannah Mumford. They would eventually have six children. He was called as pastor of the church in Roxbury where he would pastor until his death nearly sixty years later. John never received more than three hundred dollars a year for his service, but he considered himself rich. He was indeed rich in God’s blessings.

Stephen Metcalf 1927-2014

On June 7, 2014, Stephen A. Metcalf, a faithful church planter and evangelist to Japan, passed away. He ministered in Japan for forty years with his wife Evelyn and their five children. However, Stephen did not always want to be a missionary to Japan.

Stephen was born on October 23, 1927, to George and Bessie Metcalf. The Metcalfs were missionary translators in Taku (now Dao-Gu), a mountainous Lisu village one weeks walk from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in Southwest China. At a young age, Stephen learned to fluently speak English, Mandarin, and Lisu. In 1934, when he was seven years old, his parents took Stephen to join his sister Ruth at a boarding school in Yantai. Except for Christmas visits, Stephen grew up in Yantai and rarely saw his parents.

Lilias Trotter 1853-1928

“Satan knows well the power of concentration.” Do we? Do we dare to focus on Christ with such genuine intensity that His glory is our only motive and consideration for every choice we make?

In October 1876, John Ruskin, a famous English painter and severe art critic, consented to evaluate a young woman’s artwork. Astonished by her exceptional portrayal of artistic elements and principles, Ruskin immediately offered to train the artist. As time progressed, he declared that she was a rare talent destined to become one of the century’s greatest English artists.

The young artist, Isabella Lilias Trotter, was born on July 14, 1853, to an affluent family in London. Her godly parents intentionally instilled spiritual truths in her life which blossomed following her salvation. Lilias’s love for art was matched only by her passion for ministry. When faced with a choice between the fortune and fame of an artistic career and a simple life of service, Lilias chose to relinquish her rights to her talent and follow Christ. In 1879, she journaled: “Are our hands off the very blossom of our lives? Are all things—even the treasures He sanctified—held loosely, ready to be parted with without a struggle when He asks for them? It is a loss to keep what God says to give.”

Isaac McCoy 1784 -1846

Isaac McCoy was born in Fayette, Pennsylvania, in June 1784. He was the son of a Baptist preacher who, as incredible as it sounds, did not believe in evangelizing. Isaac and his father argued over this, but Isaac was not afraid to stand for the truth. He became a missionary to the Native Americans. Before moving west to the wilderness of Indiana and Illinois, Isaac pastored a church for seven or eight years. His first missionary assignment paid him $500 per year, and he worked with the Weas, Miamis, and Kickapoos in Indiana. He later worked with the Pottawatomie tribe in Michigan.

There was no headstone for Charlotte Rowe until her name was uncovered among the missionaries appointed by American Baptist International Ministries during research as it prepared for its 200th anniversary.

Charlotte White Rowe was the first woman missionary to be officially appointed from the United States by any denomination or agency. Charlotte was born in 1782. Her early life was marked by sadness. She was orphaned at age twelve and widowed at twenty-two. She moved to Massachusetts where she was saved and joined First Baptist Church of Merrimac.

In 1813 Charlotte moved to Philadelphia and joined the Sanson Street Baptist Church. There she met and joined Charles and Phoebe Hough who were going to Burma to help Adoniram Judson with printing work. She applied to the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions in the summer of 1814. After much discussion, the majority consented to her approval but then said they did not have the funding to send her. She pledged her own small estate to the work and left for India. The next year, the mission society’s new ruling forbade the appointment of single women missionaries.

John Geddie
1815 – 1872

“The love of Christ banished the terrors of the law.” Those were the words of John Geddie concerning his salvation at age nineteen in 1834. He tirelessly preached this same message of Christ’s love as a missionary in the New Hebrides islands for twenty-four years.

John was an avid reader; his favorite subject being stories of mission efforts and the desperate need of the Gospel in unevangelized areas. After completing secondary school at Pictou Academy in Nova Scotia, he studied theology. Small and slightly built, he was often referred to as “little Johnnie.” While at seminary, his health became so poor that he was told to give up his studies. He promised the Lord that if his health were restored, he would go as a missionary to a heathen land. On March 13, 1838, he was ordained and began pastoring a church on Prince Edward Island.

Allen Gardiner paced up and down the street, ashamed to go into the bookshop and ask for a Bible. He had thrown aside his religious upbringing at the young age of fourteen for the rowdy life of a sailor, but now he needed answers. The letter that arrived, telling of his godly mother’s prayer for him before her death, struck his heart with a desire to read the Book that he knew held life’s answers. Secreted with the newly purchased volume in the quiet of a Chinese temple, Allen Gardiner came to faith in Jesus Christ.

With an earnest drive for missionary work, Gardiner went to South Africa in 1834 to win the Zulus to Christ. Although they were notorious for savagery, he brought about peace between the warring tribespeople and opened the door for missions among them. When war broke out between the Dutch settlers and the Zulus, it became impossible to continue the work, and he set his face toward South America.