Dr. Tom Catena is a Catholic missionary from Amsterdam, New York. In Sudan’s war-torn Nuba Mountains, where bombing has been part of life and aid has been restricted, he became the only doctor permanently based there. Working at Mother of Mercy Hospital, he was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, caring for more than 750,000 people. Patients have been known to walk up to seven days to see him. He was estimated to treat around 500 patients a day and perform more than a thousand operations a year. In 2017 he received the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. Plenty of people could have left. He stayed. Love often looks like simply staying where the need is.
Lottie Moon served as a missionary in China for nearly 40 years. Her letters home kept begging for more workers and more support, and in 1888 Southern Baptist women started a Christmas offering for foreign missions. It began at about $3,000 and grew to more than $82 million by 1993, and it was later named for her. Near the end of her life a terrible famine struck the people she served. She gave them all she had. She wrote, “I hope no missionary will be as lonely as I have been.” Literally starving, she grew weaker and weaker. A nurse started home with her, but Lottie died on Christmas Eve, 1912, aboard ship in the harbor at Kobe, Japan.
Gladys Aylward had worked as a London housemaid since she was 14. The China Inland Mission turned her down after she failed their exams. She went anyway, arriving in Yangcheng in October 1930 as an independent missionary. She helped run the Inn of Eight Happiness and became a mother to orphans. In the spring of 1938 she learned the invading Japanese had listed her as a spy. With only one assistant, she led more than a hundred orphans over the mountains toward safety. One morning, hopeless, she cried, “But I am not Moses.” A 13-year-old girl answered, “Of course you aren’t, but Jehovah is still God!” When you feel too small, remember who God is.
Adoniram and Ann Judson were American missionaries in Burma. In 1824, when war broke out with the British, Adoniram was arrested as a suspected spy and thrown into the death prison at Ava. He lay with his feet in three pairs of fetters on the damp ground. Ann pleaded with officials and brought food and clothing to the prisoners. Before their house was searched, she buried his precious manuscript of the Burmese New Testament under the house. Later, afraid it might be stolen or ruined by mold, they sewed it up in the form of a pillow covered with a mat. The Word of God has always been worth protecting, whatever it costs.
