Missionary Stories from Africa
A Little
Child Shall Lead Them
MISS LOU'S BABY
THE rude mud hut thatched with straw was close to the trail that led to the sea. In front of the hut stood a young woman, looking down the trail. Her hair; shone like gold in the bright African sunshine, and tiny, curls blew all about her face in the brisk wind.
Around her were many women whose hair was also curly, but black like burnished ebony. Her face was lovely to look upon, as were those of many of the women. But they all, seemed homely to Miss Lou on this day, as she stood looking at them, for she was homesick, dreadfully homesick.
Three years before, when a missionary had spoken in her college chapel in America, she had thrilled at the thought of working in Africa where there was so much need and where the opportunities were so great. When she had volunteered to go, her home town, thinking that she was very brave to go so far away, had made her feel much like a heroine.
She had enjoyed the ocean trip, and the adventures, and the new scenes all about her for the six months that she had been in Africa studying the language, but during the last week she had been longing for home. She wanted a clean, attractive place in which to live; she wanted young folks of her own kind with whom to enjoy herself; she wanted some home-things to eat. So, as she looked about her in the little village to which she had come for a two weeks' visit with one of the older missionaries, it did not seem as if she could possibly stay.
"Why did I ever come?" she said to herself. "And I volunteered for life! What made me make such an awful promise? If I only had some one to love—some one who was my very own, it would be different. I seem so dreadfully alone out here by myself."
Suddenly she saw a big black man running up the narrow street toward her. In his arms he carried a little black girl, perhaps two years old. The child was kicking and yelling, but the man paid no attention to her at all. When he saw Miss Lou standing in the door of the hut, he came to her, talking as fast as he could.
Miss Lou knew only a few words in the African dialect used in that town, so she could not understand what he wanted. Sometimes he seemed to plead; then he would look very fierce and seem to scold. Once he shook his fist as he looked at the baby. At last Miss Lou, frightened and ready to cry, rushed past him and down the street to find the other missionary.
Ten minutes later the two women came back, Miss Lou telling her friend about the baby as they hurried up the village street. Suddenly she stopped, for there, fast asleep on her doorstep, lay the little girl, and the man was nowhere to be seen.
"What can it mean?" asked Miss Lou.
"I suppose he wanted to give the baby to you," was the reply. "That's the way they do in this country when a baby's mother dies, or when a man does not want to support his little girl. I suppose he has gone home and left it for you."
"Left it for me!" cried Miss Lou, horrified. "What would I do with a little black baby? We must find him at once." So the older missionary began asking the people of the village what they knew of the man or the baby. Some had seen the man come; some had seen him go.
No one knew anything more than that about him. And the tired baby slept on, unconscious of her fate.
When the child awoke, Miss Lou was sitting on bench near the door. The big brown eyes of the baby filled with tears at first; then she toddled across the intervening space and held up her arms to be taken by Miss Lou, Miss Lou, homesick for some one to love her, pitied the little one, so she washed the dirty face, brushed the matted hair, and found herself saying to her friend:
"Isn't she a dear? How could any one leave her or give her away?"
The days went by and the father could not be found. The missionaries talked of sending the child to an orphanage, but no one was going to the far-distant town where the nearest one was located. So Miss Lou took the child back to the Mission Station, and had her cared for in her own room.
Soon she found that she was neither so lonely nor so unhappy when Baby Lou, as she was called, was there. There was no fund for the care of the child, and Miss Lou's salary was very small, yet one day she sent word to the head of the Station that she would provide somehow for the expenses of the child, and wanted, to educate her.
The years went by and Baby Lou became Little Lou, and then Missy Lou. At first she was taught at home; then she went to the Mission School. Twice she was taken to America and put in school there for a year, but these were hard and discouraging days for the girl. In America she was just another black girl—not Miss Lou's girl, as she was in the Mission—and she was always happy when the time came to go back to Africa. As Missy Lou grew older, Miss Lou found that she had to give up many comforts to pay the expenses of the girl, but she loved her dearly and wanted her to be in the home.
When Missy Lou was nearly nineteen the doctors told Miss Lou that she must go to America to stay; that it would be a long time before she was well again; that she must go for a time to a hospital and then must be cared for at home. What was to be done with Missy Lou? Miss Lou would no longer have money to care for her. The girl had had several offers of marriage, because, of course, she was far ahead of the other girls in the village in culture and education, but Missy Lou had wanted to go to school.
When only a week remained before Miss Lou was to sail, she called the girl to her bedside and said:
"Missy Lou, I want to do for you just what you want me to do. If you want to marry Mvondu, I think he will make you a good husband, and I will give you a wedding. If you want to go to school, I will try to find a way by which you can work your way. But I ought to know today what you would like your future to be."
All that day, instead of singing about the house as she was used to doing, Missy Lou was very sober and thoughtful. In the evening, when the moon was bright and the sky was full of stars, she drew a chair beside the bed of her good friend. For a long time she sat silent. Then she said, very thoughtfully:
"Miss Lou, America is a long way off and I wasn't happy there. I like Africa. If I married Mvondu and stayed here, I would be a native preacher's wife some day and would be honored as I am now. Isn't that possible?"
"I think that is true, Missy Lou," agreed the older woman.
"In America they are not always good to me," faltered the girl.
"I know you are happier here, child," said Miss Lou, "and I want you to be happy."
"I could work for Jesus here, and I don't think I could there," said the girl, reaching out to take hold of hand of her good friend.
"Perhaps we could find some place for you to work. I should be glad to try, if you come with me," suggest Miss Lou, not wishing to influence her decision, and yet eager to have the girl feel her love and sympathy.
"But, Miss Lou, you have loved me all these years, cried Missy Lou, passionately. "I love you, and I want you more than any other happiness. Where you are, I want to be. I want to go to America and earn money to make you comfortable. I want to give you care, as best I can as long as you live. Maybe I can study in America and become a teacher, just as near like you as I can be. When you no longer need me, I will come back here and try to take your place."
"But, Missy Lou, you want a home of your own. Mvondu wants you to marry him, and he would make a good husband for you," said the sick woman, almost fearing that the girl would stay with Mvondu.
"You have never had a husband here," replied the girl with a sigh. "Perhaps I shalt not have one if I go away but I can find a little girl who needs me, just as you did and I can help her for your sake. I want to go with you Miss Lou, for I love you best of all."
So the two took ship for America. Missy Lou studied and worked hard for the seven years that Miss Lou, her beautiful adopted mother, lived. She gave her loving care and made her very happy with her gentle ways. Then when Miss Lou had been laid to rest, Missy Lou went back to Africa to find Mvondu still waiting for her. He was already a native pastor, and she took her place happily beside him, teaching in the schools and mothering little girls of the villages, "just trying to be like Miss Lou.”
WE WILL GO
INANDA SEMINARY, a Mission School near Durban in Africa, had a guest whom they all delighted to honor. She was. the granddaughter of Daniel Lindley, the founder of the Mission nearly seventy-five years before. He had been a pioneer missionary, gathering his groups of uneducated black people under the great trees or in rude thatched huts to teach them, and his granddaughter was very proud of the results of his work as she saw them in that well-known school in Africa.
One morning while she was there, she was wakened by the singing of the girls of the school, who had already begun their housework about the buildings. It sound so happy and so spontaneous that the visitor hurried to dress and go out to talk with the girls, and to enjoy the view of mountain and valley spread out before her.
To her surprise, when she opened the door of her room she saw weeping girls instead of singing girls. They were sitting on the steps of the house of a teacher not far away, and they looked forlorn indeed. Their clothing and their general appearance showed that they were not girls of the school.
"What is the matter?" asked the visitor. "Can I help?
"I don't think so," said a teacher, hurrying up to say good morning to the guest. "These three girls have walked a long way to get here, but I have had to tell them that they cannot stay because there is no room."
"Oh, what a pity!" said the visitor. "Isn't there some place to tuck them in?"
"We have no money with which to feed the girls, even if we had a place where they could sleep," was the answer. "It seems as if some way ought to be found," said the visitor, thoughtfully.
"We shall see what we can do after prayers," answered the teacher, motioning to the three girls to follow her.
Soon the schoolgirls began assembling for chapel, and the visitor looked at the happy group as they passed her, thinking of the squalor and degradation from which they had come to this school of her grandfather's. She had seen it all too plainly on her trip through the country as she had come to the school. She thought of the overcrowded kraal homes, the lack of sanitary conditions, the prevalence of animals everywhere; the lack of anything, in fact, to bring out the character and the personality of a girl, Then she looked at their shining faces, their clean clothing, their eagerness to be of service. She listened to them sing the songs of the church, and she wished her grandfather could see and hear it all.
After the service of worship was over, Mrs. Edwards, the teacher, rose and said:
"Girls, three more students have come from the villages far away this morning. They want to stay at Inanda. They want an education. It is a problem that I do not know how to solve. We have no more room, and we have no more money with which to feed and care for more girls. I have told them that they must go home, but they have been begging me to keep them. It is many long miles back to their homes, and they are very tired. What shall we do about it? Tell me what you think."
There was a buzz of conversation as the girls talked it over among themselves. They would all be willing to have less to eat, themselves, if the girls could stay. Maybe they could find places for them in some building. To question, "Shall we send them back?" there was a ready "No." Yet how could they stay?
"Our visitor thinks they should stay," said the teacher, "but I see only one way in which it can be done. Are there three girls who have been here a long time, and who have received the Light of Christ in their hearts, who will give up their places to these three new girls? Are there three who will go home and let these girls stay?"
A frightened look came over the faces in the group. Go home! Leave Inanda! How could they? One by the girls filed out, and no one offered to go.
"Do you think any girl would be willing to sacrifice her school and her happiness to give a stranger her place? That is a great deal to ask," questioned the visitor, as she joined the teacher.
"We shall see," replied the teacher. "It is the only way that the new girls can stay, I think."
Only a short time had gone by when three girls, with very sober faces, came to the place where the two ladies were sitting.
"We are willing to go home and let the others have our places if you will let them stay," said one of the girls.
"But you have been here only a short time," said the teacher, looking at the youngest of the three. "Do you not want to stay in the school?"
"I love the school, and I want very much to stay," said the little black girl. "But I have received the Light of Christ in my heart, and I am willing to go that these other girls may stay here and find it. I will go home and tell those who are there what I have found here."
So the three Christian girls went to pack up their few things preparatory to going back to their homes; while the teacher sought out the new girls to tell them that they could stay.
"'Tis the spirit of Inanda," thought the visitor. “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and thy neighbor as thyself.' It is the spirit of my dear old grandfather."
A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM
DOWN the long narrow trail through the African bush which led to the small medical outpost, Abesolo and her mother walked wearily along. They were nearly a hundred miles from home, and more than half of the way they had walked, so the child's feet were blistered and she was very tired. As the day wore to a close it seemed as if they could go no farther. Then, as they came to the top of a small rise of ground, they saw a long, low building about which many black women were squatted, each cooking an evening meal.
"Is this the place where the man lives that makes children well?" asked the mother.
"It is," said one of the women, rising quickly and handing the child a drink of water. "Come and sit with us and we will give you food, for you seem very tired."
She made a place for them quickly beside her own kettle. Then, tearing two great leaves from a tree, the dipped out some of the hot food which she was cooking and put it on the two leaves in front of the travelers. Immediately another woman brought a piece of fruit, and others gave meat and nuts.
"Why do they give us food, mother?" said the child. "We have no money to pay."
"Hush, child," said the mother. "I do not know why they give us food, but I am glad they do. They are very kind."
"Why do you give us food when we have nothing to pay?" persisted the child, turning to the woman who next to her.
"All Christian women here share their food with strangers when they come, until the strangers can cook food for themselves," she replied. "Our doctor tells that is the way Christ would have done, and we want be like Him. Where is your village?"
"Very far to the north," said the mother. "One day a stranger told me that if I could find a man he had heard about, that man would make Abesolo well again, so have traveled far. He said the man would help us in the name of a new God. Have you seen the man, and will he help my Abesolo?"
"He has gone away now, but he will come again, you can wait with us here. He is kind and good, and if he can, he will make Abesolo well," said a woman who was also waiting to see the doctor.
As the mother talked, the child walked about, watching the women carrying food to their sick ones in the little hospital, and asking many questions about the man who could make little girls well.
“When he comes, you will love him," said a woman who had only one leg, "and when you go home you will love the God he tells you about, for he is a kind God and loves us all, even if we are poor and sick. He loves lepers, child—lepers!" repeated the woman.
Night came, and all slept under a great shed, but Abesolo could not sleep. She lay thinking of the women who had shared their food with them, and of a God who loved lepers. It seemed like a fairy tale to little girl who had known only hardship all her life.
"I hope He will love me, too," she said. "I know I shall love Him if he is like the nice women"
A week later, when the doctor came from the Mission station, Abesolo was put on the operating-table, and then for many weeks she lay on one of the hospital beds among the other patients. She could not walk, but she could see and hear, and her eager mind absorbed every song that the patients or nurses sang; every story that she heard told; every kind deed that she saw done. Each day she grew more interested in that man, Jesus Christ who healed the sick and opened the eyes of the blind.
Just as soon as she could walk, she asked to be allowed to go into a class of women who were being taught to read, while they waited outside the building for their sick relatives to go home. Soon Abesolo could read many simple words and recite many texts.
As fast as she learned things herself, she went up and down the room teaching others a new letter, or a verse of a song, or a text. Soon she was having a "sing" with the women every night as the sun went down and darkness began to fall. She could tell stories almost word for word as she had heard them told by the doctors and nurses, so she was popular in the ever-changing group of women in the yard, and the children shouted when they heard her coming. She seemed a messenger of hope and cheer to all who saw her, and the nurses knew that she was surely a born leader.
Just after Abesolo had passed her twelfth birthday her mother came back to take her home again. That was not a happy thing for Abesolo, for there was no one in her town to tell her stories or teach her songs except her mother, who had come to believe in Christ during the first weeks of Abesolo's sickness, when she, too, sat outside the building and cooked and waited.
“If you will let me have a Bible," said Abesolo to the doctor, "I can read a little of it. Maybe I can teach others to read, or find some one who will read it to me. Mother and I will sing together, anyway." So she was given a Testament in her own dialect, some illustrated texts, and a book of simple stories.
Two years later the doctor who had helped to make Abesolo well and strong visited her town; he wanted to find the child. Passing down the street, he saw a large number of women and children sitting in a group, listening intently. Thinking they might tell him where to find her, he walked to the edge of the circle.
In the center stood Abesolo telling them the story of Jesus healing the man let down through the roof; then she told how He had healed her, too, and how she wanted them to love and trust her Friend. They sang together, and then several women prayed.
"Who is your leader in Christ here?" asked the missionary as the meeting closed and he saw Abesolo trying to help some little children through the crowd.
"Abesolo tells us what to do," she said, in surprise. "She went far away, and there she learned about a kind God who loves us every one. She has taught the children to read and to sing. She tells us stories, and she reads to us from God's Book. She says we must be kind and good, and then some day God may give us a church here in our village and send some one to tell us more of the Good News."
"And He will," said the doctor, reaching out his hand to the girl of fourteen who stood smiling before him. "I am sure He will."
"And so are we," the woman replied. "Abesolo says so, and she knows."