You remember in the last edition we spoke of that brave missionary Mary Slessor and how, even before she went to Africa she bravely told the people in her home town of Jesus' love for sinners.
In this edition we find Mary in Africa, in a place called Duke Town. A messenger comes to her hut and calls out, "Run Ma, run." (Ma, is what the Africans called Mary.) Mary ran to a hut where twin babies had just been born. She took them in her arms and said to the woman, "What are you going to do?" "Break their backs and put them in that calabash," was the reply. For to have twin children was regarded as a curse, a bad omen.
Mary held the two little babies close to her and asked, "Why are you going to kill such tiny little babies?" "Because the father of one of them is an evil spirit, and one of the twins will grow into a cruel monster and destroy us. "Give us the twins and we will throw them into the jungle to be eaten by a lion."
Wasn't that terrible, boys and girls? But, you see, these poor people didn't know any better. They had no Bible and did not know about God and the Lord Jesus. They believed everything that the Witch Doctor told them and this was his doing. Mary knew this and bravely she carried the twins back to her hut. When the chief was told that she had allowed the twin children to enter her house and had put them in her own bed, he would no longer come near. Mary was deserted by everyone, but she knew she had done right, and that the Lord would give her strength to carry on her work in that place. And, sure enough, the people gradually came to accept what she had done.
One twin girl lived all her life with Mary like her own daughter, and Mary called her Janie, after her sister in Scotland. When she returned to Scotland, Janie, who had now became a true Christian like Mary herself, thrilled the boys and girls in Mary's old Sunday School by reading the Bible to them with her own African accent. How thankful Mary was that she had been able to save her life that day in Duke Town.
Love,
Mrs Seaton
