John and Betty Stam
The anticipated knock at the door came suddenly. The rumors were true. The Communists had arrived to arrest them.
John and Betty Stam had met each other in a prayer meeting for China. Their friendship grew into love, but their applications for mission work put them in different corners of the country. Believing God’s work should come before human affection, they committed the matter to the Lord. Through a series of events, Betty ended up in Shanghai, the very place John had been stationed. Within two years, they were engaged, married, and had a newborn baby, beautiful little Helen.
On this particular day, a loud knock came at the door, signifying the Communists’ arrival. Although they had been warned, it was too late for the Stams to flee. The Communists barged into their home, demanded all their money, bound John, and took him to their headquarters. They later came back for Betty and baby Helen.
In a letter which John was allowed to write to China Inland Mission, he said, “We were too late. The Lord bless and guide you. As for us, may God be glorified, whether by life or by death.”
Taken twelve miles on foot to Miashea, the location for their execution, the Stams spent the night in the home of a wealthy man who had fled to safety. John was chained that night, but Betty was given enough freedom to tend to the baby. The next morning, they were led to the execution site. When asked by the postmaster where they were going, John replied, “I don’t know where they are going, but we are going to heaven.” They were both executed by beheading in front of a terrified crowd.
The Christians in the city fled to the mountains and stayed in hiding for two days. A Chinese evangelist, Mr. Lo, ventured back into town, but the people were too fearful to tell him who had been executed. After much effort, he discovered it was the very missionaries he had been working with and that their baby had been left behind.
Mr. Lo searched the house where the Stams had spent that last night. It had been ransacked, but during his search he heard a soft cry. Baby Helen had been left in a sleeping bag by her mother along with a few supplies and ten dollars. That money was used to finance the trip that carried her to safety. Helen was taken to a missionary in another city, and today she lives in the US with her husband and family.
Tourists gather yearly to see the Yörük caravans depart their winter coastal homes for their summer pastureland in the Taurus Mountains. Excitement abounds. Sheep and goats walk single file, bells ringing. The huge loads of tents and equipment carried by camels are covered by colorful Turkish rugs. Women in their long, flowered skirts and young people dressed in their colorful best lend an air of festivity.
The Brunei Malay people are a native Malay ethnic group that live in Brunei, a little-known nation on the island of Borneo. The country is tiny (a little larger than Delaware), but enjoys the wealth from oil resources. The Brunei also live in Malaysia, Canada, and the United States. The in-country population is 184,000; the worldwide population is 556,000.
On May 10, 1968, the pastor’s wife and another lady from Beacon Hill Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, were visiting new arrivals in their area. The house they planned to visit had whiskey bottles in the front window. The intended message was “Bad people live here; don’t mess with them.” The residents, Robert and Linda Huddleston, had bought the house and recently moved in. They had met at the Player’s Lounge where Linda was a bartender. The church ladies considered skipping this house, but they didn’t. Instead they won Bob and Linda to Christ!
The Tama people live in eastern Chad and western Sudan. Statistics vary according to source; reports include a population of anywhere from 170,000 to 300,000. The Kimr tribe, numbering 169,000, belongs to the Tama people group and speaks the same language.
“You are a good man; we will not harm you.” Roger Williams was face to face with the fierce Native American warriors. There was fighting all around him, and the town was on fire. Roger was an old man now, and the Indians still respected him. Perhaps he was the only white man in the colonies that they trusted. This time, however, his peace-making efforts had been swept aside.
Alexander Mackay was born in Scotland in 1849 and surrendered his heart to Christ as a young boy. Reports of David Livingstone, a fellow Scotsman and missionary in Africa, inspired young Mackay. He was interested in mechanics and building and went to engineering school, but he longed to serve God, too. In 1875, a letter published in the local paper spurred Mackay to action. The letter was written from Uganda by Henry Stanley: “King M’tesa has been asking me about the white man’s God… Oh that some practical missionary would come here…who can cure their diseases, build dwellings, and turn his hand to anything.”
The patient stirred. Dr. Wallace tried to soothe him in his Tennessee-accented Cantonese. The patient was waking from an abdominal surgery. They alone were left in the upper story of the Stout Memorial Hospital in Wuchow, China. Everyone else had taken refuge in the basement when the air raid alarm had sounded. The year was 1938, and the Japanese were invading China. Just then there was an explosion on the roof directly above them—and doctor and patient were thrown to the floor! Miraculously, neither were hurt.
Nathan Brown, the oldest of five boys, was born on June 22, 1807, to devout Baptist parents. At age nine, he was convicted of his sinful condition after attending local revival meetings, trusted Christ as his Savior, and was subsequently baptized in a stream.
It was 1782, and George Leile didn’t see any other way: to escape slavery once more, he had to become another kind of slave. Years ago, his former master, Henry Sharp, had graciously freed Leile so that he could wholly pursue preaching the gospel in the Savannah area. But now that Sharp was dead, his family sought to re-enslave Leile. And so he struck a deal. To escape to Jamaica with his family, he would become the indentured servant of Colonel Kirkland.
“Picture a teenage girl in a school cafeteria…. She’s slouched in a chair popping bubble gum. The whole world passes her by, yet she doesn’t even notice. Why? Because she’s tuned in to that little thing in her hand—a cellphone. Most likely she’s texting, instant messaging her friends, or browsing Facebook. Picture a young man on a computer in an internet café somewhere in a third world country. Or how about a young college freshman browsing the web on a laptop? The new generation coming along is radically different from you and me. I’m a young man myself and can barely recognize or connect with this new generation. But what if we could present the gospel to each of these people through their medium of communication? ….We can!” (~Jared Rowe)
Fourteen-year old Attie Bostick sat in rapt attention, listening as her older brother, a missionary to China, preached on Mary anointing the feet of Christ with the most precious thing she had. “She hath done what she could.” Attie could not forget those words and years later would say, “That day God spoke to me, and said that I would not be doing all I could unless I was willing to go to China, too.”
Ellie sat on the rough church bench clutching a small paperback book in her hands. Her brilliant white smile revealed her excitement as she spoke to me in Melanesian Pidgin, the trade language of Papua New Guinea. “This story strengthens my heart!” she exclaimed. The irony of her simple words silenced me for a few minutes. Ellie and I had just finished reading two chapters in a Pidgin biography of George Müller—a man who had been born two hundred years ago on the other side of her world but whose story was still living.
Solomon Ginsburg asked his father—a Jewish rabbi—this question when he was only thirteen. Despite being soundly slapped in the face, his interest in the prophesy of Isaiah 53 did not die. As a young man, Ginsburg left his native Poland for London, England. There, a fellow Jew found him on the street and explained Jesus as the Messiah prophesied by Isaiah. After reading the New Testament, Ginsburg trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior, but was promptly disowned and cursed by all his relatives. He bore it gladly, recalling that Christ had been made a curse for him. Even several assaults by orthodox Jews in London could not dissuade him from his new-found faith.
After Maude Cary heard of the heathen in Morocco, no physical or spiritual trial could deter her from joining the missionary work in North Africa. Just before her twenty-third birthday, Maude and four other co-workers embarked for Morocco with the promise to spend their life’s energies evangelizing the Muslims and Berbers. As they departed, they sang, Anywhere with Jesus I can safely go; Anywhere He leads me in this world below; Anywhere without Him dearest joys would fade; Anywhere with Jesus I am not afraid. Surely there would be opposition and heartaches, but Maude thought only of exciting campaigns to bring the gospel to wild tribes!