“You can get a lot done if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Dr. Ralph D. Winter

“Never do anything others can do or will do,
when there are things to be done that others can’t do or won’t”
– Dawson Trotman

They started out as ordinary men, born in ordinary places, by ordinary people, doing ordinary things in their secular localities but stepped out to become what they were. They changed paradigms, restructured order and brought to light what was in tick stratum of darkness.

Many of them will forever remain unknown and for that reason we will be greatly surprise at those who will be wearing the most lit crowns in heaven as we cross over to eternity. We will discover people we never knew, no book recorded them, their places of birth were unknown, for some their time of birth was not even known. Their parents were unpopular but these were behind the greatest moves in all of human history. No writer’s ink was split in writing their names on earth but heavens golden pen took notice. No biographer thought them worth writing, no one thought them worth reading but heaven’s gate opens for them as they heard “welcome thou good and faithful servant, welcome into the joy of thy Lord”.

Some were greatly misunderstood, their passion was mistaken for pride and arrogance, their zeal was misinterpreted for rapacious and an act of variance. They wallowed through the thick and thin, that the name of their loving Lord, the Saviour who loved them so may be known in the lands he was not known.

In this short article, I will briefly share some biography of missionaries who set the pace in their lifetime and we are the NEXT IN LINE.

Every paragraph will torchlight on the life of a particular missionary. As you read through, you will hear the voice of some calling you over, “I was not as educated as you are…  I was as educated as you are… I didn’t have so much financial blessings… I was so blessed financially still I gave in all… I invested all… I had no children to give up…  I had to surrender my only child who may have been martyred in the field… I raised other sons and daughters for the work… You will find yourself in the same shoes of men and women, young and old with all the limitations of humanness. It was said about Elijah that “he was a man subject to like passions as we are he prayed and shaped destiny of Israel through his praying” . He brought about a national revival in the land.

Bernard Mizeki: He was born Mamiyeri Mitseka Gwambe in Inhambane , Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) and raised in a traditional fashion. As a boy, he did some work in a store run by a Portuguese trader, and learned some Portuguese. Also, he campaigned against drunkenness, and tribal practices including the killing of twin babies and the harsh treatment (including killing) of individuals accused of sorcery.

David Brainerd: (1718–1747) An American missionary to the Native Americans. His biography has become a source of inspiration and encouragement to many Christians, including missionaries such as William Carey and Jim Elliot.

Adoniram Judson : (1788–1850) An American Baptist missionary, who served in Burma for almost forty years. Translated the whole Bible into Burmese and established a number of churches. Adoniram was thrown into a “death prison” where he was routinely hung upside down in leg irons. Judson spent nearly two years in that Burmese prison. When Ko Tha Byu returned to his people, who had murdered atleast 30persons, he boldly proclaimed the Gospel. Later known as the “apostle to the Karen,”. his wife translated the New Testament into the tribal language Peguan. She founded a school, wrote hymns and curriculum in Burmese and translated other material, including part of Pilgrim’s Progress. It was said about him by a pastor “Whenever someone mentions Judson’s name, tears come to my eyes, because we knew what he and his family suffered…Today there are six million Christians in Myanmar, and every one of us trace our spiritual heritage to one man—the Reverend Adoniram Judson.”

David Livingstone: (1813–1873) was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. Perhaps one of the most popular national heroes of the late 19th century in Victorian Britain. Protestant missionary martyr, working-class, “rags to riches” inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader. He and his brother John worked twelve-hours per day as piecers, tying broken cotton threads on the spinning machines. He was a student at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in 1838–40, with his courses covering medical practice, midwifery, and botany. he had glimpsed “the smoke of a thousand villages, where no missionary had ever been.”. Some of those villages are still burning anticipating your arrival.

Hudson Taylor: (1832–1905) A British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission (now OMF International). Taylor spent 51 years in China. The society that he began was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to the country who began 125 schools and directly resulted in 18,000 Christian conversions, as well as the establishment of more than 300 stations of work with more than 500 local helpers in all eighteen provinces.

Samuel Zwemer: (1867–1952), nicknamed The Apostle to Islam, was an American missionary, traveler, and scholar. He was a missionary at Busrah, Bahrein, and at other locations in Arabia from 1891 to 1905. He was a member of the Arabian Mission (1890–1913). Zwemer served in Egypt from 1913–1929. He also traveled widely in Asia Minor, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Apostle to Islam One of the most celebrated Protestant missionaries of the twentieth century, Zwemer made his home in Arabia and Egypt for most of 38 years (1890-1929). Initially an evangelist, he became a writer, publisher, and peripatetic conference speaker who, as much as anyone, introduced twentieth-century Christians to Islam. The son of Dutch immigrant parents, he was born in Vriesland, Michigan, where his father was a Reformed pastor. and became an early recruit of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM). In 1889, when Zwemer and his classmate James Cantine could find no agency to send them as missionaries to Muslims, they established the American Arabian Mission, which five years later the Reformed Church agreed to sponsor. Zwemer lived for a time in the United States (1905-1910) serving primarily as a promoter, recruiter, and publicist for the Arabian Mission, field secretary for the Reformed Board, and traveling secretary for the SVM. Besides writing twenty-nine books and coauthoring another nineteen, Zwemer founded, and edited for 37 years, the journal The Moslem World. He organized two major missionary conferences on Islam, one in Cairo (1905) and one in Lucknow (1911). In 1929 Zwemer accepted the professorship of the history of religion and Christian missions at Princeton Theological Seminary, continuing in that post until 1937. A lifelong student of Islam, Zwemer never ceased to contend for the finality of Christ. Though unusually prolific as a writer and effective in recruiting missionaries and inspiring interest in missions, particularly in the Muslim world, Zwemer saw only a few Muslims openly profess the Christian faith.

John L. Nevius: (1829–1893) was, for forty years, a pioneering American Protestant missionary in China, appointed by the American Presbyterian Mission; his missionary ideas were also very important in the spread of the church in Korea. He wrote several books on the themes of Chinese religions, customs and social life, and missionary work.

Charlotte (Lottie) Moon: (1840–1912) was a Southern Baptist missionary to China with the Foreign Mission Board who spent nearly forty years (1873–1912) living and working in China. As a teacher and evangelist she laid a foundation for traditionally solid support for missions among Baptists in America.

Amy Carmichael: (1867–1951) was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for 55 years without furlough and wrote many books about the missionary work there. Amy Carmichael had come to India as a missionary to reach those who did not know Jesus. Amy was sure that God did not want her to marry and have children of her own. That decision had been settled many years before. But was He now asking her to settle down and become a mother to an unwanted Indian child?  As a drop out from school after the declines in her father’s business. While eating in a restaurant with her mum she saw a poor little girl. And then She promised that when she grew up, she would give her money to the poor. she would go with her pastor to the poor neighborhoods to hand out tracts and food to the poor people known as Shawlies.She moved into their neighborhood and slept in bug-infested beds to be closer to the people. Over the 50 years she spent in India, Amy Carmichael took in hundreds of unwanted children. She became known as “Amma” or mother to them.

 Jim Elliot: (1927–1956) Was one of five missionaries killed while participating in Operation Auca, an attempt to evangelize the Huaorani people of Ecuador. The death of these five was a tremendous stimulus to missions among those of his generation, especially due to the books written by his widow, Elisabeth Elliott

William Cameron Townsend: (1896–1982) was a prominent American Christian missionary who founded, Wycliffe Bible Translators and Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL International), both of which remained active and focused on producing translations of the Bible in minority languages, and on facilitating literacy in minority languages.

Pandita Ramabai: (1858–1922) was an Indian Christian social reformer, a champion for the emancipation of women, and a pioneer in education. She acquired a reputation as a Sanskrit scholar.

Elka of the Wai Wai : A former chief witchdoctor of the Wai Wai tribe in Brazil in the 20th Century, whose conversion and leadership not only influenced many of his own tribe to confess Christ but stimulated missionary advance among other jungle tribes.

Kenneth Strachan: (1910-1965) Missionary statesman, General Director of the Latin America Mission, strategist of Evangelism-in-Depth in Latin America.

Helen Roseveare: (1925- ) An English Christian missionary to the Congo from 1953 to 1973, she became a Christian as a medical student in Cambridge University in 1945. She practiced medicine and also trained others in medical work. In 1964 she was taken prisoner of rebel forces and she remained a prisoner for five months, enduring beatings and rapings. Freed, she later returned to Africa and continued participating in rebuilding the country.

Samuel Wells Williams: (22 September 1812 -16 February 1884) was a linguist, official missionary and Sinologist from the United States in the early 19th century. At age 8 he was impressed by the departure to Ceylon as a printing missionary of a James Garrett who was associated with his father’s printing business. He assisted Bridgman in the latter’s Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect, published in 1842, [2] and Walter Medhurst in completing his English-Chinese Dictionary of 1848, two early works of Chinese lexicography.  Around 1875, he completed a translation of the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew into Japanese, but the manuscripts were lost in a fire before they could be published. Your educational proficiency is highly needed.

Inemeno Udobang
Vice President, Campus Momentum