Mary Slessor part 2
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mslessor2.1.mp3
Mary decided to be a teacher in the Sunday School. This was a bit like our Sunday Club. She also helped at a mission.
The idea of a mission.
In that part of Dundee many people were very poor indeed. The houses that they lived in were slums. Often they had a roof that leaked and the houses were very draughty. People got lots of coughs and colds and quite often these turned into very serious diseases like pneumonia, Sometimes the people died. Sometimes the father of the family spent a lot of his money on beer and was often drunk.
Many of the boys and girls who lived in that part of Dundee were very rough.
Very few of these people went to Church. This was partly because they did not have enough money to buy good clothes. At that time many people thought that you must dress up in your best clothes to go to church and if someone had only shabby clothes they might feel that they would not be welcome.
Nowadays some people do dress up in their best clothes because they want to look their best when they come into God's house while other people come in their ordinary clothes. Everyone is welcome and it does not matter how they dress.
Some of the people of the Church decided to set up a mission. They rented a house and invited people to come in from the street. People would come into the mission in their ordinary clothes even when they did not feel like going to Church. When they came in they talked about Jesus and about God.
More and more people came to the mission so they needed more room. They moved to a shop. Mary taught classes of boys and girls.
But some people would not come into the mission so Mary and some of her friends went out into the street and started telling people about Jesus. At this time this was a brave thing to do because they were in danger of being beaten up and very badly heart. Sometimes some rough lads pelted them with mud. One gang wanted to break up the mission. Ond day the gang surrounded Mary as she stood in the street. The leader of the gang had a lead weight on a piece of string.
He swung it towards her head. The weight was very heavy and if it had hit her it would have made a very nasty wound indeed. Mary must have felt very frightened but she did not run away. The leader swung the weight nearer and nearer until it was nearly touching her brow. Mary did not show any sign of being frightened.
Then the leader saw that Mary was very brave. He dropped the weight. Because he and the others in the gang saw how brave Mary was they decided to come into the mission and they listened to what she had to say.
mslessor2.2.mp3
The gang leader stopped being a bully. He worked hard and in time he got a good job. He got married and had children. He sent a photograph of the family to Mary. Later when she was a missionary in Africa she put it on the wall of her bush house.
Another bully had a whip and he told others that he would whip them if they did not go into the mission but he would not go in himself. Mary went to speak to him. "What would happen if I held the whip and told you to go in?" she said. "Then you would whip me," he said.
"Well you can use this whip on me if you will go in," said Mary.
When the lad saw that Mary would really let him do that he dropped the whip and went in.
After he listened to Mary he decided he wanted to serve Jesus and he became a Christian.
Although some of the lads were very rough they came to like Mary. On Saturday afternoons she would sometimes take her class of boys for trips into the country.
A church nearby started a mission service for young men and women. The mission was led by Mr James Logie and Mary offered to go and help him.
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