Twins Were Marked For Death Until She Arrived - Mary Slessor Story

What would make a young Scottish woman leave everything behind to serve in one of the most dangerous regions of Africa? In this inspiring missionary biography, discover the remarkable true story of Mary Slessor, the courageous Christian missionary who became known as the "Defender of Twin Babies" in nineteenth-century Nigeria. Faced with deadly diseases, tribal conflicts, and deeply rooted superstitions that condemned twins to death, Mary risked her life to rescue abandoned children, bring peace between warring villages, and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her extraordinary faith, compassion, and unwavering commitment to God's calling transformed countless lives and left a legacy that continues to inspire Christians around the world today. If you enjoy stories of Christian missions, faith in action, missionary heroes, church history, and biographies of great men and women of God, this powerful episode from LEV 3:16: Stories of Courage. Legacies of Faith. is for you. Be encouraged to live boldly for Christ and discover how one person's obedience can change generations.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Imagine hearing cries of babies in the jungle. Not because their parents didn't love them, not because they didn't have food to eat, simply because they were twins. Now, it was the 1800s in Africa, Nigeria, and there was a superstition that the twins were evil. Actually, that one of the twins was evil. But before which twin was evil, both twins were cast out. One woman didn't look the other way. Communities looked the other way, villagers looked the other way, but one woman stood against this custom. And her name was Mary Slessers. Armed with only her Bible and her firm belief that all people were created in the image of God, she stood against this evil practice, and she fought it and she made a change for the difference. Her name was Mary Slesser, and she's my personal hero that we're going to be talking about today. Mary Mitchell Slesser. She was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, December 2nd, 1848. Now she was very, very poor. She was a working class family, in a working class family. Her father was an alcoholic, and she was forced to work in a textile mill, much like David Livingston. She was working in a textile mill when she was just a very young girl. She worked long hours. So to uh that it's very boring working in a textile mill. You do the same thing for 12 or 14-hour days. So, in order to help herself, what she would do is prop up books to read while she was working, and that would be her education. So one of the things that she liked to read was missionary biographies. She would read about missionaries, and her favorite missionaries to read about were missionaries to Africa. And her favorite missionary of all time was David Livingston. He came from Scotland, and so he was a fellow missionary, he was a fellow Scotlander, and so uh she liked to read about him. And she would think, because David Livingston was poor also and worked in a textile mill when he was younger, she thought to herself, if God could use David Livingston in such a powerful way, she asked to herself, God, could you use me also someday? That's what she would ask. Well, what she learned was that God wasn't looking for the wealthy people, he wasn't looking for the highly educated people, he wasn't looking for famous people, he was looking for willing people, and she was willing to go. Sometime later, David Livingston died, and it was published, highly published throughout the country of Scotland. In fact, it was published throughout the world because he was a famous explorer, not only missionary, famous explorer. And so when David Livingston died, that left a big hole in missions, and so uh there it was advertised that they needed missionaries to take his place. Well, that weighed heavy on her heart, and she wanted to go to be one of the missionaries that took his place. She applied to a mission organization and she was accepted. In 1876, she boarded a ship in Scotland and uh she sailed to Calabar, Nigeria. That's where she was appointed. She arrived there in 1876, she was 28 years old. It was a brutal climate close to the equator. Um, malaria was very common, and missionaries died often in their very first year of arriving there. Mary adapted. She adapted to the climate, she adapted to the uh languages, she adapted to the customs, she she learned many of the local languages readily. She built relationships, she learned their cultures, she would sit and visit for hours. So she left the mission stations and ventured out into the villages, and much to the dismay of the older missionaries, she wanted to know more about the people and the customs, but she it was not safe, and uh she just took it on herself to go ahead and go out into these areas and learn more about what was going on. She would venture out. Eventually, she moved out into these areas because she felt like the gospel needed to go farther and further inland. One day she learned about the practice while she was living out in uh uh deeper into the um Nigeria. She learned about the practice of abandoning twin babies after they were born. They would sometimes they would stuff the newborn babies into these um pot clay pots and they'd smash the babies and that would kill the babies. Uh sometimes they would just lay the babies in paths where wild animals like um cats, wild cats or snakes, any any wild animal could just get the babies and eat the babies. Um they would lay the babies in in the wild and the babies would cry, and uh somebody in the village would hear the um babies crying. Well, Mary would hear the babies crying and she would run from the village, no, and it was usually at night. She would run from the village in whatever she was wearing to sleep in to go get the babies. She would take them back to her own hut and uh feed them and then begin to raise them and protect them in her hut because she was determined to demonstrate to all of those living in Nigeria that there was no difference in twin babies than regular babies, um, single babies. That babies are babies, they're made in the image of God, and they were not evil, they they did not have the devil as their father, which is what they believed that one of the twins had the devil as their father. So um eventually it got to where some of the villagers would tell her that a baby had been born and they would say, Run, Ma, run! And she would get up and run to go get the babies. They were too afraid to get the baby themselves and bring the baby to uh Mary. So Mary would go sprinting into the darkness to go find the baby and save and save it. How did Mary change the mindset of a nation? Poor Scottish woman from a poor background. How did one person do it? It wasn't talent, it wasn't physical strength, it wasn't her own personal ambition, it was love. She genuinely loved the people that she served, and she loved these little babies, and she wanted to change the customs that she believed went against the word of God. What generations accepted just as traditions, the love of Christ began to transform. Her courage extended beyond rescuing babies. That was not the only thing she did. See, violence was very common in these villages, and it was one of the reasons that the mission didn't want her venturing further and further deeper into the inland parts of Africa because they were afraid for her safety. They the villages would have disputes. One village would dispute with another village, and it would turn into war, all-out war. And Mary would find herself in in the middle of it. She would get in between these two villages and she would negotiate peace. So she would just uh stand up right in between the two chiefs and tell them that they had to make peace. And they eventually they respected her so much that they would listen to her, which is amazing. She was five foot four and uh courageous. She was just courageous. She would convince both sides to lay down their weapons. That kind of courage earned the respect of the chiefs and the villagers alike. They trusted her judgment. They eventually made her something like a a judge. She would sit and knit while they brought her their disputes. And when she was older, she would sit and knit while one whole day, while they would just case after case after case, and she would render judgment, and whatever she said, that was what they would do. The British, when the British took over Nigeria, they recognized her power of judgment over the local tribes so much so that they made her a British consul. She was the only white woman that they did this to. If you were found guilty of committing a crime, you might not have a trial at all. In fact, you probably would not have a trial. What they would do in Nigeria in the 1800s is give you a little poison bean. And it was poisonous. It was deadly poisonous. And what they would make you do is swallow, they would force you to swallow this poison bean. If you died, you were guilty, and you probably would die. If you lived, if you survived, well then you were innocent. Well, the odds of you dying were very high. You were probably going to die. And you can see how this would be not a good way of telling if you were innocent or not, because most people would die and most innocent people would die. Mary did not like this poison bean trial and she fought it. She believed firmly that the gospel could transform lives, and she dedicated her whole life to proving that the gospel could transform lives. She spent nearly 40 years in Africa. By the time of her death, which was in 1915, she became one of the most respected people in the entire region. I already spoke of that. She crossed rivers in fragile canoes, she trekked dense jungles, she faced dangerous animals. There's a story of her in a canoe. A hippo came up while she was in the canoe. All the men that were rowing the canoe were terrified of this hippo, and uh they were sure that the canoe was going to be turned over. She took one of her uh frying pans that she had in the canoe and she swatted the hippo in the head. The hippo went back down into the water and she told the men to paddle on. They did. They were they couldn't believe that Mary Slisser got that hippo to go back down into the water. There's a story of a wild cat that when she was trying to save a twin, she got to the twins and the and the wild cat, jungle cat had the twin in its mouth, and the the baby was already in its mouth, and the cat was getting ready to take the twin away, and uh she got a limb and and hit, fought the cat for the baby, and the cat dropped the baby and ran off, and she picked up the baby and took it back home. Malaria attacked her body over and over and over again. She rarely complained. She said, Christ sent me to preach the gospel and he will look after the results. By the end of her life, abandoning twins had all but ended. Countless children were alive because she intervened. Communities had peace because she stepped into conflict, and thousands had heard the gospel because she refused to stay comfortable. Her legacy continues to inspire Christians around the world today, not because she was fearless, but because she trusted God more than she feared danger. Mary Slesser could have stayed in Scotland and she could have married and had a family and gotten out of poverty, hopefully, but she could have stayed and made a life for herself in Scotland. Instead, she chose to be obedient. She wanted to follow in David Livingston's footsteps. She walked into villages where babies were abandoned. She stood up against deadly superstitions, she confronted injustice wherever she found it. She shared the love of Jesus. And because she did, generations of people still experience hope today because of the life that she lived. There's a statue of Mary Slesser in Nigeria in Calabar, Calabar. It's on a roundabout. I've always wanted to go there and see it. Hospitals and schools are named after her in Nigeria. In Scotland, every now and then they'll print money with Mary Slesser on it in her honor. But none of that is her legacy. The legacy that she left, that's the lives that she changed, the customs that were impacted by the truth of the gospel. That's her legacy. The truth is most of us will never rescue twins in a jungle, but we'll be able to stand up for someone who has no voice. Maybe it's a lonely student in school, or an elderly neighbor who needs our help, a struggling coworker, or a child who needs someone to care for them. This week I challenge you to do an intentional act of courage and compassion for someone who cannot repay you. That's my challenge to you this week. Speak up for someone, encourage someone, serve someone, be the person who notices what everyone else ignores. If you want to read more about Mary Slesser, there's a wonderful biography by W.P. Livingston about Mary Slesser. Now, there's another book, but you have to find it like in a thrift store or a used bookstore called The Expendable Mary Slesser. It's the best biography that I have ever read about her, The Expendable Mary Slesser. You'll have to find it used because if you buy it like on Amazon, it's just a ridiculous price. Now, if this story inspired you in any way, please like, subscribe, comment, share. All of that stuff helps this little channel that's getting started. Share it with someone who loves stories of courage, faith, and Christian heroes. Thank you for joining me on Leviticus 3 16. Until next week, remember sometimes the greatest acts of courage begin with simply saying yes to God. God bless you.