In World War II, the Marines needed a code the enemy could not break. They decided to try one based on the Navajo language, which was unwritten and spoken by very few people outside the Navajo Nation. In May 1942 the first 29 Navajo recruits arrived at Camp Elliott near San Diego and built the code themselves, adding a layer of code words on top of their language. From then on, Code Talkers served in every major Marine operation in the Pacific. During the battle of Iwo Jima, six Code Talkers worked around the clock and sent more than 800 messages without a single error. Their signal officer said the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima without them. God can use what others overlook.
In the summer of 1873, cholera swept through Nashville. Close to 1,000 people died, roughly one in every 25 residents. Many who could afford it fled the city. David Lipscomb lived ten miles out in the country, but he stayed in Nashville to help the sick. He drove Catholic sisters to their patients in his buggy and cared for the sick and dying himself, including African Americans. Young men from the church of Christ worked especially in the neglected villages of freed slaves, bringing medicine and food. Afterward Lipscomb wrote that faith which does not make us willing to brave death for suffering people is little more than empty profession. Different churches and races served side by side. Mercy crosses every line we draw.
Mary Slessor grew up in Scotland and sailed for Calabar in West Africa in 1876. In that region twins were often feared and killed, and Slessor became a champion baby-saver. One of the first twins she rescued, Jane, lived with her for more than thirty years. She once said, “I am ready to go anywhere, provided it be forward.” She then moved inland to the Okoyong, a region where missionaries had found no welcome. She admitted that she often had a lump in her throat and that her courage threatened to fly away. She went anyway. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is going forward with God while your knees are shaking.
When Patrick was 16, Irish pirates raided his village in Britain and carried him off. He was sold as a slave and forced to herd pigs. There, in the filth, God began to change his heart. After six years he escaped and made it home. As far as he was concerned, he was done with Ireland. He wrote, “It is not in my nature to show divine mercy toward the very ones who once enslaved me.” Then God changed his heart again. Through a dream, Patrick believed God was calling him back. His friends were horrified. Around AD 432 he paid for a boat with his own money and sailed to Ireland to preach the gospel to the people who had enslaved him.
Ramabai was born in India in 1858. Girls had no schools, but her parents taught her Sanskrit. During the great famine of 1876 to 1878, both of her parents starved to death. She became so respected as a teacher that she was given the title Pandita, meaning wise teacher. Later her husband died, leaving her an orphan, a widow, and a single mother. In England she came to faith in Christ. In 1889 she founded the Mukti Mission for orphans, widows, and single mothers. In 1896, during another severe famine, she led a caravan of ox carts that rescued thousands of girls and widows. She learned Hebrew and Greek to translate the Bible for poor women, and she died in 1922 just as she finished.
