Tag Archives: Ethiopia

Passing the torch from one missionary to another, part 2

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A few days ago I received an email from Papua New Guinea, sections of which I’ve abbreviated and included here:

For years now we’ve been wondering how to contact Dick McLellan. I was personally challenged into mission work through Dick’s testimony back in 1978 when I was 22 years old and a student at Word of Life Bible Institute in Australia. I remember thinking that if God could use a “red-headed, freckled, middle-aged Aussie” in the harsh Ethiopian sun, then He might be able to use me as well. I knew without a doubt that God wanted me to go into missions.

Then Dick spoke to us from Rom 10:13-15 … “How can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent?”

How will they hear unless someone is sent! As a young believer I had always expected some kind of a “call”… but I never got one. I learned later that the call is for salvation (v14 above), once we are called, God is able to “send” His people. I saw the need and God sent me.

After Dick challenged us through his experiences with the Bodi people and the Word of God, we entered training in 1979. In 1986 we came to PNG and have been here for 24 years.

We’ve never had the opportunity to see or chat with Dick since that day and would love to contact him again and encourage him in how the Lord has worked in our lives. It would mean so much to us to encourage this elderly Christian statesman and let him know how his ministry in the 1970’s has had an impact on the lives of Papua New Guineans for the last 24 years.

I was doing a search for him on the internet and your web page popped up. I did read the sample chapter from “With Two Hands” and was encouraged again, after all these years, to hear about how the Gospel is going out in Ethiopia.

It was my joy to pass along contact information for Dick McLellan, but even greater joy to ponder how our lives and words—all of us—may be used in ways we never even realize in the furthering of the kingdom of God.

Passing the torch over three hundred years

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Our friends, Odell and Beth Summer, are preparing for a particular mission field in Thailand. Who laid the groundwork for that mission field?

In 1695, August Francke, a direct product of the Reformation, founded an orphanage in Prussia and supported over a hundred orphans on faith alone.

Years after Francke’s death, a young man at the university where he had taught picked up his autobiography and was deeply and profoundly influenced. He went on to found orphanages in England that became known all over the world. That man’s name was George Mueller.

While Mueller’s orphanages were thriving, housing over a thousand orphans on faith alone, a young man visited them and in turn was deeply and profoundly influenced. He decided to found a mission board that would never ask for funds but would depend on God alone for all their needs. That man’s name was Hudson Taylor.

A young man listened to Hudson Taylor speak and decided to leave his fortune and his promising future to join Taylor’s China Inland Mission take the gospel to China where it had never been heard. That man’s name was C. T. Studd.

Studd spoke at a conference and deeply and profoundly influenced a young man who left all to take the gospel to China, working among the Lisu people of the western mountains. This man’s name was James Fraser.

James Fraser returned to the States briefly and spoke at a conference where a young woman was deeply and profoundly influenced. She left all to go to China and bring the gospel the Lisu people, first in China and then, after the Communist takeover, in Thailand. During this time she wrote a number of gripping and inspiring books about God’s work in her life and in the lives of the people. This woman’s name was Isobel Kuhn.

Isobel Kuhn and her husband John had a daughter named Kathy, who married another man who had gone to northern Thailand to bring the gospel to the tribal people there. That man’s name was Don Rulison, and as of this writing he is almost a hundred years old and is still living in Chiang Mai. Their children are still working for the Lord there as well.

After Kathy’s death a children’s home and boarding school was established in Chiang Mai and named after her, Kathy’s Home. Our friends Odell and Beth are hoping to be able to leave the U.S. next spring and become the overseers of Kathy’s Home.

Over three hundred years and across three continents, we have traced the work of God, as one generation proclaims His works to another.

Have you ever thought about how the gospel came to you? It started with Jesus, who spoke it, as a fountain of life, to the apostles. They took it as a glorious gift to many people, who carried it, one by one, like a precious treasure, to many other people, who passed it along, like a fire catching hold, to many more.

One by one, from one person to the next, like a roaring blaze, like a rushing river, the gospel traveled across the lands, around the world, taking root like a tree in the heart of one person after another. Then finally, like wind blowing from the east to the west, it came to someone who told it to someone who told it to someone, who told it to you.

—from chapter one of With Two Hands: Stories of God at Work in Ethiopia

News from Dick McLellan, SIM missionary to Ethiopia

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Dick McLellan, a veteran missionary to Ethiopia with SIM (Sudan Interior Mission, now Serving in Mission) and the vehicle for the stories in the children’s book With Two Hands, just sent me his Christmas letter.

Among other things, though he is in his mid-eighties, he says that he is hoping to make the trip to Ethiopia from his home in Australia—again. This after almost dying from health problems a year ago. Like Dr. John Dreisbach, the subject of a tribute in my post last week, Dick McLellan just keeps going and going and going.

He also just finished writing a new set of stories about the work of God in Ethiopia, similar to his first one, Warriors of Ethiopia, on which my children’s book was based. I’m sure it will be another cracking book, as the Scottish say.

I’m very humbled and extremely excited to have the privilege to work with and write about men and women who have given their lives in the service of God, for the love of Jesus, in such a way. Not only the western missionaries, but all the national missionaries that they represent.

If you haven’t yet, I’d like to invite you to read the sample chapter of With Two Hands! by clicking on the “Children’s Books” tab above. This missionary book for children is due out in March in the U. K. and in May in the U. S. I pray that it will be one of many books used of God to fan the flame of the next generation.