THIS WAS typical of the missionary, Mary Slessor (1848-1915). She knew about hardship, having grown up in the slums of Dundee, Scotland, her father a hopeless alcoholic. At 11 she was working 12-hour shifts in a factory. Her Christian mother led her to Jesus and taught her to pray. All this formed character in Mary: feisty, Jesus-loving, compassionate, prayerful, and no stranger to tears.

In 1876 Mary felt God’s call to Nigeria. She sailed for Calabar but found that she wasn’t at home in traditional missionary nursing and school-teaching. Her heart ached for the jungle tribes, whose lives were dominated by bloodshed and witchcraft, and where women were treated no better than cattle.

So, often alone, Mary walked barefoot through snake-infested jungle. In each village she preached Jesus and built a small wooden church. With angry tears she forced chiefs to stop the mutilation of girls. Her heart bled for the many abandoned babies, so she rescued all she could and brought them up herself. For a time, she even lived in a chief’s harem, so she could reach his wives with the gospel. Once she stood between warring tribes and refused to move until they laid down their weapons; then she had tea with them!

She became a revered figure in the area, feared by witch-doctors and loved by the oppressed. They called her Ma, the spiritual mother of thousands. But the cost was high. She witnessed scenes so horrifying that “had I not my Saviour close beside me, I would have lost my mind.” An outbreak of smallpox killed hundreds of her converts, including chief Edem, her main supporter; she dug his grave herself.

What sustained Mary Slessor was prayer. “I find praying is harder work than doing,” she wrote, “but in it lies the dynamic to advance God’s kingdom.” She knew failures: she prayed for years for her father, but without result. She also knew prayer had to be shared. “I have no idea how and why God has carried me to so many places and made hordes of people submit to me, except that waves of love and prayer have kept coming from Scotland.”

Mary likened the process of prayer to the newly-invented radio: the air-waves buzz with messages from our ever-speaking God, but we must tune in by carefully nurturing a heart-relationship with Him, or we will not receive from Him.

In later years, almost blind and hardly able to walk, she wrote: “My heart is singing all the time to Him whose love and tender mercy crown all the days. I can testify with wonder-stricken awe that God answers prayer: for physical health; for overcoming mental strain, errors, and dangers; for provision of food at exactly the right hour. My life is one long, daily record of answered prayer. It is the very atmosphere in which I live and breathe, and it makes life a million times worth living.”