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There are many people that we term “heroes of the faith” – martyrs, those who suffer in ways less than death for their faith, those who help the poor, those who build schools, and those who take the Gospel to others, often at the sacrifice of their “normal” lives. These last we call “missionaries.” It is never too early for children in a Christian home to learn about missionaries, people who have taken the Gospel all over the world, whether in their own country or in a foreign land. The six little books reviewed here are thirty-two pages long, half the pages being nicely drawn pictures, and are written at a level appropriate for third grade readers. These books could also be profitably read aloud to non-reading younger children.
Five of these books are biographies of well-known missionaries who either had a profound effect on their own country (David Brainerd: Trailblazer to the Indians, Pandita Ramabai: Heroine of India) and or on foreign countries (Ann Judson: Friend of Burma, John G. Paton: Missionary to the South Seas, and Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Mission). Note: Burma is the older name for the modern country of Myanmar and David Brainerd was a missionary to some groups of Native Americans, in the past called Indians. The book entitled Snow Over Bethlehem deals with some of the Moravian missionary work with Native Americans and is in the Plumfield Library (see my review). There is also at least one other book on Hudson Taylor in the Plumfield Library (see my review). All five of these missionary biographies were written by Vernon Howard (not the spiritual mystic but a Christian author). Overnight Mountain and Other Missionary Stories, by Joyce K. Ellis, is a collection of true stories taken from experiences of real missionaries on the mission field, and are fascinating. These stories, and the five biographies, give a real feel of what life is like on the mission field and give a good introduction to these heroes and heroines of the faith.