For some reason it’s not letting me have a block quote as the beginning of my text, so I’m only writing this to keep it from going haywire…
Well do I remember how in the gladness of my heart I poured out my soul before God. Again and again confessing my grateful love to Him who had done everything for me, who had saved me when I had given up all hope and even desire for salvation, I besought Him to give me some work to do for Him as an outlet for love and gratitude…
Hudson Taylor wrote these words shortly after his conversion. I picked up his autobiography in Richmond, Virginia, during my orientation days before shipping out to China. Not many pages later, he wrote, in a letter to his mother,
Continue to pray for me. Though comfortable as regards temporal matters, and happy and thankful, I feel I need your prayers…Oh Mother, I cannot tell you, I cannot describe how I long to be a missionary; to carry the Glad Tidings to poor, perishing sinners; to spend and be spent for Him who died for me! … Think, Mother, of twelve millions - a number so great that it is impossible to realize it - yes, twelve million souls in China, every year, passing without God and without hope into eternity…Oh, let us look with compassion on this multitude! God has been merciful to us; let us be like Him.
I recorded these words in my own journal during those days in Richmond, and many times over the next few years, I flipped back in my journal to reread them. This actually began for me what became a fairly consistent love affair with missionary biographies - works that proved a great source of encouragement to me during my time on the field.
I say this, in light of hearing the beginning of some of our own couples’ autobiographies, with a twofold hope. First, that hearing from people like the Miersmas, Ryans, and Sills would be a great source of encouragement to us; and second, that we would be their mothers…kind of. That is, that they would be able to depend on us, as Taylor did his mother, for consistent prayer, both now as they prepare to go and in the future, as they labor in foreign lands for the sake of the kingdom.
~adam graig for the Missions Team