How eavesdropping on a gospel conversation changed a life
When Patricia St John worked as a missionary nurse in a small Moroccan town in the 1950s, she shared the love of Jesus with many children.
The following excerpt is taken from Patricia’s autobiography In Her Words and it tells the story of one of those children.
The slave girl Alia
Perhaps the child who gave the most joy was Alia, the slave girl in the mayor’s house. Her mother, a widow far from home in a distant village and starving, had brought her little two-year-old daughter to a distant relative of her dead husband in the town and sold her.
The child had grown up as a little slave. She was not cruelly treated, but she was desperately overworked in the large house. She must have been about 14 years old when she appeared at the door, a towel over her head. I could not see her face. A mumbled, ‘My mistress says come.’
The mayor’s son
I followed her and found the mayor’s wife sitting in a beautiful curtained room, with her precious first son on her lap (there had been three daughters). The baby had whooping cough and was vomiting every feed. He was desperately thin and dehydrated and exhausted with coughing.
The house was near, and I went three or four times a day to feed him again, if he wanted. And very gradually he grew better. Sometimes in the evening the mother would want me to stay and chat. I tried to tell her about Jesus, who had power to heal. But she turned away nervously and changed the subject. I left her rather sadly at the end of the fortnight. The baby was feeding well and gaining weight and there was no reason to keep on visiting. There were so many others.
It must have been three weeks later when I was startled by a violent hammering on the door. Thinking there had been an accident, I ran to open it, only to find a breathless girl on the doorstep carrying a large basket of vegetables. She pushed past me without invitation and stood in the passageway looking up at me. ‘Do you remember me?’ she asked. I had to admit I didn’t. ‘I was the servant in the mayor’s house. I used to listen behind the curtain when you talked to my mistress. You talked about Heaven. She sent me to the market, but I ran all the way and now I can stay for five minutes. Can you tell me the way to heaven in five minutes?’
The book with four colours
I fetched the little Wordless Book of the illiterate and we went over it. The brightness of heaven, the darkness of sin, the atoning blood of Jesus, shed on the cross for sinners, the white purity of sin forgiven. (The third page means nothing to them the first time, but I have had women say, ‘Tell me again the name of that man who died for me.’)
She understood enough to lift her hands palms upwards like the beggars in the street and say, ‘O God, give me a clean heart.’ Then she bolted. And it was some time before I saw her again.
The difference Jesus makes
But her mistress noticed the difference in her. The old sullen, defiant look had gone, and there seemed to be some secret contentment. One day she questioned her. I do not know what was said or how the child explained, but Alia was suddenly allowed to come and learn. She would turn up on a Sunday at a highly unorthodox time at the morning service. I asked her one day to tell us what difference it had made to her knowing Jesus. She considered. ‘I suppose I am no longer afraid,’ she replied.
Marriage plans
About two years later, her master planned to marry her to a countryman who would have taken her far away from us. But she was quietly confident that this would not happen until she had learned to read. ‘I know I shall have to go in the end,’ she said, ‘but not until I can read the Word of God.’
The day came when the man was coming to legalise the engagement. She sent us a message. ‘Pray for me,’ she said. And the tiny group of Christians gathered in my house and prayed for her deliverance. We sang the Arabic translation of an English hymn which Fatima loved – ‘The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will not desert to its foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake, I will never, no never, no never forsake.’ Later on in the day she sent a message that all was well.
How prayer was answered
I asked her what had happened. She had been asked the customary traditional question, ‘Will you marry this man?’ And to everyone’s amazement and indignation, she replied that she would rather not. Her rejection would have been speedily brushed aside had it not been for the man himself, who lost his temper and shouted that if she did not want him, there were plenty of girls who did, and that he would not take her at any price.
Her master, who would have received the bride price, was not pleased. That did not worry Alia unduly. God had heard her prayer and for a time at least she was safe. When she finally left to go, she could read her New Testament haltingly.
