Prayers, The Strength of Missions

On a rainy April day, Dr. Ufford, who was on furlough in Boston from China, invited me to share his umbrella. In fact, with gracious hospitality he insisted that I come to lunch in their home, a square, white New England homestead, the birthplace of Adoniram Judson. At the dinner table I boldly said to our gracious hostess Mrs.

Ufford, “How did you happen to become a missionary to China?” “That,” she replied, “is a long story, but if you have patience to hear it, I will be glad to tell you.”

“Well,” said this Wellesley graduate who had already served almost thirty years in China, “the story begins with my grandfather Hartwell who was graduated from Brown University shortly after Adoniram Judson had begun his pioneering work in Burma. My grandfather was a fine Christian young man and determined to follow Judson to Burma. He was accepted by the Missionary Society and then came up for his medical examination.

The examining physician shook his head and said, ‘No, you cannot go to Burma. You have weak lungs. You would probably not survive a year in that country.’ It was a crushing blow to the young man, for he had felt positively certain that it was God’s will that he should go to Burma to join Judson in the service of Christ. Deeply distressed over his bitter disappointment, he gave himself much to prayer.

The conviction somehow gripped him that since he was denied the privilege of going himself, God would raise up through him a son who should go to Burma in his place. “Hartwell, nothing daunted, continued in his prayer with the assurance that God would send him a son. The first five children were girls. The sixth child was on the way in the South Carolina homestead.

By a strange coincidence it happened that Luther Rice, who was just home from Burma, was opening the gate to the Hartwell’s Southern homestead and coming up the front walk when the nurse called down from the bed chamber upstairs. ‘It’s a boy. Your son has arrived.’ Hartwell was so overjoyed he rushed down the steps, threw his arms around Luther Rice and exclaimed, ‘Praise God, you have just come in time to welcome my son from heaven who will some day be a missionary to Burma.’ “This second young Hartwell went to Brown University and was graduated.

Just before his graduation he felt a clear call from God to go as a missionary. On his return home, he fervently told his parents of Christ’s call. With tears streaming down their faces his parents said, ‘Son, you were a child of prayers. Before you were born we asked God to give you to us and we have always prayed that you would be a missionary.

You have given us today the greatest joy of our lives.’ “As it turned out, however, he was led to go to China instead of Burma.” During his years of service there, God gave him four sons all of whom became missionaries. They, in turn, married and their children also became missionaries, one of whom was Mrs. Ufford.

The three generations of Hartwells have already given over three hundred years of service collectively to Christ in foreign mission fields, and eleven missionaries have gone out from the Hartwell family as the fruit of Grandfather Hartwell’s original persistent prayer that God would send him a son who should become a missionary in his stead.