| Evelyn
Brand felt called by God to go to India. For a single woman in 1909, a
calling like that required a lorry-load of faith. She married a young
man named Jesse and together they began a ministry to the people in
rural India, bringing education and medical supplies and building roads
to reduce the isolation of the poor. For seven years they went without
making a single convert to Christianity. But then a priest in a local
tribal region developed a fever and grew deathly ill. No one else would
go near him, but Evelyn and Jesse nursed him as he was dying. He said,
'This God, Jesus, must be the true God because only Jesse and Evelyn
will care for me in my dying.' The priest gave his children to them to
care for after he died--and that became a spiritual turning point in
that part of the world. People began to examine the life and teachings
of Jesus, and in increasing numbers began to follow Him. Evelyn and
Jesse had thirteen years of productive service, then Jesse died. By this
time, Evelyn was fifty years old, and everyone expected her to return
to her home in England. But she wouldn't do it. She was known and loved
for miles around as 'Granny Brand', and she stayed another twenty years
under the mission board she had served so faithfully. Her son, Paul,
came over to see her when she was seventy years old, and this is what he
said about his mum: 'This is how to grow old. Allow everything else to
fall away, until those around you see only love'.
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