Monday, November 26, 2018
Luke 22:42b Yet not my will, but yours be done.
THE GIRL WHO HATED UGLY INDIA
We in the Church of the Lutheran Confession have been blessed by an increasing number of our women going overseas as mission helpers, and it is good to hear their glad reports on blogs and in person.
There was one eighteen year old girl who said India was ugly and she hated it there. She got tired of all the poverty, famine and death. She said she wanted to be like the other girls in the USA and marry a millionaire. This girl, Ida Scudder (1870-1960), who was born in India, got tired of trying to force bread into the mouths of malnourished children. Though her father was a doctor and helped a lot of people, that was not the life for her. Although she said she was a Christian, she was really hankering after the god mammon. Not wanting to spend her life in India she went back to school in the USA.
She returned to India when her mother was very ill to help take care of her, though this was not going to be a permanent stay. One night while she was at her parents' home in 1892, something happened that Changed all her plans. Dr. Scudder was trained in medicine, though his daughter was not. On that night a high caste Brahmin came to ask if she could come and help his young wife who was in labor. There were problems and it was not going well. Ida said she couldn't as she did not know how to help, but her father could come. The Brahmin said he would rather have his wife die than to have a man come into his house to his wife. And she died. Later that night a Muslim man had the same problem of a wife who was in labor. He asked Ida to come, but Ida just could not. She again offered her father. The Muslim man left saying no man would look on his wife's face. Still later that same night another Hindu man came with the same problem of a wife in labor who was too young to really bear a child. The same result of an offer of her father met with refusal of this unclean man to come to his wife.
Ida was greatly troubled at the night's happenings. The book she had started to read that evening she could not continue, and she had trouble sleeping. She asked around in the morning about those three women and found that they had all died. It was then that Ida in her prayers learned to say, "Not my will he done but Thine." She determined to go to the USA study to be a doctor and return to India. This was not a simple matter like it is today, but God blessed her efforts and she was even able to return with money for clinic work.
If any of you are ever able to come to India, you can travel along NH #4 from Chennai toward the Vaniyambadi District, and along the way stop in Vellore to see what God did through the girl who hated ugly India.
