Lisa Agnew looked long and hard at the large map on the wall. The teacher had just explained the difference between so-called Christian and non-Christian lands. She had pointed out the large colored areas and explained that those were not Christian countries.
“When I grow up I’ll be a missionary,” Lisa said to herself. “I’ll go to one of those countries and tell the people that Jesus loves them.”
Lisa was only eight years old—so it was a long wait for her until she could carry out her plan. But at last, twenty-two years later, she sailed for Ceylon.
In those days no Cinghalese woman or girl could read. They laughed at Lisa’s idea for a school. “What are the girls good for except to cook food? They can’t learn to read any more than sheep,” they said to Miss Agnew. But Lisa didn’t give up. She prayed on.
Often God used little things—everyday things—to start the answer to prayer on its way. This time it was a tropical shower. Two little girls, soaked to the skin, ran to the missionary’s house. Lisa felt sorry for them and offered them bananas. One little girl’s mother became very angry—her daughter had lost caste by eating in a stranger’s house! And there and then the door was open for Lisa to begin her work.
“You have given my child something to eat! You must take her and bring her up!” the angry mother said. Yes, Lisa’s prayer was answered.
But this was only the beginning. A tiny, tiny beginning. Lisa fed and clothed the child and taught her the Tamil alphabet, never dreaming what this would lead to. This one little girl was soon joined by others, and in a short time many of them had memorized the 247 letters of the Tamil alphabet. A girl’s boarding school was opened!
More than one thousand girls studied there with Miss Agnew as their principal. Lisa was given the name, “The Mother of a Thousand Daughters,” by her Indian pupils. But Lisa was not satisfied to just teach these girls to read. She wasn’t satisfied even to take in these thin, half-starved little girls and see their faces fill out as she fed them. No, not Lisa!
Perhaps she remembered that Obadiah had fed God’s servants with bread and water. He had kept them from starving even though it was a time of famine. But Lisa knew that there was a far worse famine in Ceylon than the one of Obadiah’s day. People were dying without ever having drunk of the water of life. People were dying who had never heard that Jesus was the Bread of Life who could satisfy their souls. Lisa couldn’t be satisfied unless she knew that she was giving the Bread of Life and the Water of Life to these girls.
Lisa personally told these girls in her care that the Lord Jesus loved them and died for them. She had the joy of seeing 600 girls profess to belong to Christ and go out to live among their own people. She brought Bread and Water to them and had the joy of knowing that they took the Water of Life to their own people.
“The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
“And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together:...
ML-07/08/1979