Missionary Stories

Born in 1941 in Duncan, Oklahoma, Thomas Laymon Sloan, M.D., grew up during the post-depression years. His unbelieving father permitted Tom’s mother to take him to church regularly. He was saved at age seventeen when a pastor led him to the Lord. Tom was a quiet but radical young man, criticized by some as an eccentric fanatic. He graduated as a pediatrician and planned to enter the medical field, until God changed his plans.

Billie Jean Ashcraft was born during WWII. Her mother was a believer. Her father was a drunkard until, when she was six months old, he was saved. Eight years later, he became pastor of a church in Waxahachie, Texas, where Billie was saved at age eight. During her teen years, her family moved to Mexico as missionaries. The change was difficult, but in time she sensed God calling her to be a missionary in Mexico, and to that she gave her life.

“Should I tell you I do seriously think of leaving my native dwelling, my friends and companions for ever; would you upbraid me?” Harriet Atwood asked her sister in a letter. “[God] now offers me an opportunity of visiting the Heathen.” She then poured out the great conflict of her heart—the choice between living a normal life at home among friends or accepting the proposal of Samuel Newell, an aspiring missionary. Samuel was bound for India with Adoniram Judson; and in the year 1811, a life of missions was practically exile.

As Harriet struggled, friends accused her of wanting nothing more than adventure and a great name for herself. “But God commands me!” she rejoined. “I would not oppose it. . . lest I should be found fighting against God, discouraging missions, and preventing the Gospel being spread among the Heathen.”She accepted Samuel’s proposal, and they departed with the Judsons for India in February 1812. In June they reached Calcutta, but as the East India Company was “violently opposed to missions” they were ordered to leave. While awaiting passage, Harriet described what was then known as Bengal. She wept to see the people worshiping dumb idols. “Miserable wretches!” she wrote. “O that American Christians would form an adequate idea of the darkness which covers this people! Do Christians feel the value of the Gospel?”

Jacob Bower was born to Christian parents who practiced regular morning and evening worship. His mother died when he was only six. The desire to see her in Heaven and the belief that only good people go there caused Jacob to live a virtuous life. But at age nineteen, he was influenced by Universalism which taught that God would save everyone. He later wrote, “I came to the conclusion that, if all the world are to be saved, I certainly would be included, therefore I was sure of salvation.” This false doctrine caused him to throw off his conviction of sin and spend five years in drunkenness and immorality.

In 1887, Amy Carmichael heard the founder of China Inland Mission (Hudson Taylor) speak, and her life was never the same. Born in 1867, the oldest of seven, she grew up in privilege. Her father, a mill owner, provided a comfortable living, and she spent much of her childhood gleefully riding her pony along the shores of Northern Ireland. Her family attended the Presbyterian church where she received Bible training, but it was an encounter with a poor elderly woman that caused Amy to consider her Christian walk. As she stopped after church to help the woman with a heavy bundle, the Holy Spirit reminded her, “Every man’s work shall be made manifest…it shall be revealed by fire…” (1 Corinthians 3:13). Gold, silver, and precious stones or wood, hay, and stubble—was she building that which would last for all eternity? This question haunted her. She spent the rest of the day alone with God, and when she emerged, her life had a new purpose.

“Dr. Becker, I recognize that fellow! He has a bad reputation. You shouldn’t trust him out of your sight!”

“Maybe so,” Dr. Becker replied, “but he’s one of our most trusted staff members now.” Then turning to the African in question he asked, “Why has your life changed since coming here?”

The man explained, “Many missionaries have preached Jesus Christ to me, and many missionaries have taught Jesus Christ to me, but in the munganga (healer) I have seen Jesus Christ.” Dr. Becker, the munganga, was known for caring for the poor and unloved as Jesus himself did.

Before he went to the Congo, Dr. Becker taught a boys’ Sunday school class where he influenced John B. Kuhn who later became a missionary to China. In 1929, Dr. Becker left his home and doctor’s salary to be a missionary in the Congo, 12,000 miles away. He became well known for his widespread medical work, his leprosy research, and his medical discoveries.

“Finding his contact with civilization was hindering him in his strenuous efforts to master the Mongolian language, he resolved…to persuade some Mongolian to receive him as an inmate of his tent…Gilmour feared nothing, but strode cheerfully over the plain making for the first tent he saw on the horizon.”1

For twenty-one years James Gilmour worked among the Mongols of Northern China. After centuries of Buddhism, they were very contented with their way of life and saw no reason to turn from it. It was therefore ten years before Gilmour saw his first convert. This man was saved at a roadside inn, then after a twenty mile walk, prayed with Gilmour and left him at the crossroads.

“I shall never go into the ministry until God takes me by the scruff of the neck and throws me in.” Most Christians would be surprised to know that these words were spoken by Oswald Chambers, author of the devotional book “My Utmost for His Highest.”

When he wrote these words, Oswald Chambers was in art school, preparing to turn the world of art upside down by being a witness for Christ to an exclusive group of people. He was a gifted artist and probably would have done well, but God closed door after door in his face and called him in another direction.

Chambers wrote to a friend, “the repeated and pointed shutting of doors that seemed just opening . . . leads me to consider most earnestly before God what is His will.” Shortly after this he wrote, “my whole being is ablaze and passionately on fire to preach Christ. All my art aims are swallowed up in this now. . . . in the midst of a keen consciousness of complete unworthiness, my soul cries out within me—Here am I, send me.”

John Chamberlain had no idea what the future would hold when he embarked on his journey to India. With his ministerial education, his new wife, and his zeal to reach lost souls, he was ready to begin his missionary journey. His path seemed clear and straightforward. He would go to Calcutta and learn the Bengali language. He would work with William Carey and evangelize the lost Hindu and Bengal people. He would serve God with his family. Life does not always follow our plan, however, and this Baptist missionary soon found his faith and commitment tested.

Chamberlain and his wife set sail for Calcutta in August, 1802, and not long after his wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Chamberlain was overjoyed at the prospect of becoming a father but soon was recorded as saying, “But alas! I saw not the cloud behind.” For, after seven short days, their daughter grew sick and died, and they were forced to commit her body to the sea.

Into the trepid jungle of Africa strode a young Scotch woman intent on spreading the gospel of Christ. She was a small, naturally timid woman, but nothing was too perilous when the cause of Christ was at stake.

Mary Slessor found Jesus as a slum child in a textile factory and instantly gave her life to Him. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, she had high dreams of evangelizing the little black children of Calabar, Africa. When not working at the factory or studying, she was playing at teaching a class full of little black boys and girls. She prayed to be sent to Calabar. When she grew older, she took on a class of wild street children for Bible instruction. She wept for Calabar. She took on a Sabbath School class. Still she longed for Calabar. She worked at the mill, and cared for her family. On and on she labored, until the Lord gave peace and direction to follow her dreams. Inspired by David Livingstone she applied to a mission board and was accepted. On August 5, 1876, at age twenty-eight, she reached that ominous continent, Africa, “The White Man’s Grave.” Besides her experience as a mill-worker and the training of her mission board, she had her faith in God and a small thin body absolutely committed to his will. She had made it to the Dark Continent!

“ ‘He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.’ I have been directed to these and similar passages again and again. I should like to put these truths to the utmost test… Seemingly God delights in many instances to place men in situations which magnify their weaknesses for the simple delight of showing Himself strong to all observers” (Unfolding Destinies by Olive Fleming Liefeld).

Peter Fleming was raised in a Christian home but was not a believer until age thirteen. In his youth he was respected for his spiritual maturity and knowledge of God’s Word. As a gifted athlete he had opportunity to pursue a career in sports. However, it was God, not sports, that had Pete’s heart.

William Carey (1761–1834)
“Thy Redeemer … The God of the whole earth shall He be called.” Isaiah 54:5

In 1783, above a cobbler’s bench in England, there hung a large hand-made map of the known world. As the young cobbler worked, he prayed for little-known lands full of people who were ignorant of the Gospel. Between shoe-making, school teaching, and itinerant preaching, he found time to teach himself Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Dutch, French, and Italian. In 1789, eager to spread his vision of the need for organized world missions, he went to pastor a large church in Leicester.

In spite of indifference, resistance, and even public rebuke, he presented his burden tirelessly, finally gaining the attention of the Baptist world in a sermon on world missions of which the keynote was “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” As a direct result of this sermon the Baptist Missionary Society was formed “for the propagation of the Gospel among the heathen.” Thus William Carey is known as “the father of modern missions.”

Margaret Stringer is a member of Freedom Baptist Church, Greenville, South Carolina.

“From the very first, I wanted to go to the most primitive people in the world and so was thrilled when God gave me the privilege of going to West Papua.”* So writes Margaret Stringer, who served for thirty years among people who never heard the name of Jesus before 1980. After ten years on the southern coast of West Papua (1964-74), Margaret went to Senggo, an island village where mission work had just begun. As a linguist, she was there to help translate the Bible into the Citak language, but the team at Senggo had another assignment for her. Several villages had just been discovered further upriver—practicing cannibals who had recently killed four men from an oil company. The team sent Margaret with two Christian Senggo men to learn whether these villages spoke Citak, or some other language.