Category Amazing Grace

THE CLASP OF THE SAVIOR

After a week of nightly seminars among one local congregation, things were rounded off by a special day for all the elders in the region. The main subject with these men and their wives: Christian marriage. Afterwards I once again found myself packing my bags and on the point of being whisked away to another town in this South American country. Then someone whispered:

“Carlos (not his real name) wants a conversation with you.”

“Fine,” I said, “could you just ask him to allow me a few minutes to finish my packing?”

When I stepped into the crowded room, children and young people were milling about, and the adults chatted over their “hierba-mate”, the boiling liquid sipped through a metal tube from a small container, often simply a cow’s horn or a gourd...

From the book “Sister Abigail” by Clara S. Feidler – slightly adapted.

          In any big city the elderly and the handicapped may be at a disadvantage, experiencing great physical and economic hardships, not to speak of spiritual need. One century ago that was very much the case in Buffalo in the United States of America. In 1901, a recent widow, 42 years of age, Abigail Luffe, better known as Sister Abigail, arrived in Buffalo from England. She had grown up in Bristol, with her parents attending the meetings where George Muller was an elder. What she learned there, though a very young child, remained with her for the rest of her life...

Rev. 12:11 (Weymouth)

by Jim van Heiningen

Martyrdom is being written and talked about more than ever. You may remember how Jim Elliot gave his life for Christ, together with four other young husbands and fathers. It happened in the Amazon jungle in 1956. On this website you’ll be able to find the page that is dedicated to him. The book about his life, written by Elizabeth, his young widow, and entitled “Shadow of the Almighty” (Hodder & Stoughton), deeply blessed me when I read it. If you can get your hands on it, you will see why.

Going back to 1934 we find John and Betty Stam of the China Inland Mission, beheaded by the Communists. Their baby was wonderfully rescued. Tellingly, the book about them is entitled: “The Triumph of John & Betty Stam” (OMF – London).

It happened more than twenty years ago – Rashid picked up that gospel in a library and promptly put it in his pocket. His search for the truth had started. Then, when he had found the truth, the pinched Gospel even led to his involvement in a translation, not just of one of the gospels, but of the whole Bible for his own people…

   Rashid grew up in a country that was strictly Muslim and Islam was the pattern of his life. “I faithfully kept all the religious decrees and duties. At times I even surpassed my own family.”

His father had an important function in an adjacent country, which eventually got them to move and live there as a family. Rashid attended a school with a Christian foundation and English as the medium of communication...

Bolivia and Paraguay, both landlocked in South America’s heartland, once fought a brutal war over the Chaco territories (1932-1935). It couldn’t prevent the unfolding of a love story between a Bolivian ex-priest and a Paraguayan country girl. The love that bound them together was anchored in far more than human romance – it was anchored in a personal relationship to their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and dedicated to serving HIM together.

This is Gricélida’s story as she told it in 1999.

On November 13, 1916, I was born in a village of Paraguay, but at three years of age we moved to the town of San Ignacio, named after the founder of the Jesuit order...