The Board was very much surprised to get this letter. If the Board members
had thought about it at all, they had thought that Mary would never
marry. She was forty-three years old and Charles Morrison, her sweetheart,
was twenty-five. He was a mission teacher at Duke Town. The difference in
their ages did not bother the sweethearts. They met and had fallen in
love. They wanted to marry.
"I will marry you if the Mission Board will agree to letting you work in
the jungle with me," said Mary.
"But suppose the Board will not let me go into the jungle, wouldn't you be
willing to come back to Duke Town with me?" asked Charles.
"No, Charles, I couldn't. I love you very much, more than anyone I have
ever known, but my work for God is in the jungles. There no one else has
yet planted the Gospel seed. To leave a field like Okoyong without a
worker and go to one like Duke Town with ten or a dozen workers where the
people have the Bible and plenty of privileges--that's foolish. If God
does not send you into the jungle with me, then you must do your work and I
must do mine where we have been placed."
It was not long after Mary had returned to England that the Mission Board
gave its answer to her request. The answer was no.
"What the Lord decides is right," said Mary. "I believe that the Mission
Board is giving me God's answer because they are His servants.
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