Inspirational Modern Day Christian Women

Inspirational Present-Day Christian Women
by Sandra

God’s Women in Action in Hammonds Plains

I invite you on a brief journey. We’re travelling down the Hammonds Plains Road, probably on foot. No fast moving cars, no blinding headlights. It’s June 28,1933 about 7 p.m. We’re headed for the First Baptist parsonage. When we arrive, Mrs. Ethel Jones greets us. She’s our pastor’s wife. She leads us to the parlour, and we meet three other women. They are engaged in serious conversation about a new topic – missions.

It has been only a few decades now since Hannah Maria Norris, of Canso, appealed to prominent Nova Scotian businessmen like Charles Tupper for funding for the unthinkable: a woman travelling alone to Burma to help people. They sympathized with her, but
couldn’t come up with the funds, so she had barnstormed her way across the Maritimes, organizing thirty-two new groups called Women’s Missionary Societies. And now, in 1933, these societies are springing up in churches everywhere.

Mrs. Jones wants us to be one of these churches. Attempts were initiated before, but didn’t succeed. So, strategies are developed. They form a “look out” committee. It’s aim: to look for new members. It works. In the first year and a half membership jumps from four to seventeen. One of the recruits from that first “look out” committee was a young Miss Lena
Eisenhauer, now Lena Smith, and Lena’s been “looking out” for us ever since.

And they begin holding meetings in the homes of women who are bedridden. Olive Thomson, now Olive Romans, another early recruit, had already attended meetings before becoming a member because, as a young girl she helped entertain the ladies coming to her mother’s bedside when her mother was ill with cancer.

It’s Depression Era. Not an easy time to be generous. People are starving in the east; crops are failing in the west. But two barrels and one box of clothes are sent from this community to prairie farmers. A young Baptist pastor, Rev. Douglas of Weyburn, Saskatchewan thanks us in a letter to the WMS. That young preacher later went into politics. We now know him as T.C. Douglas, former NDP leader, named by the CBC as Canada’s greatest Canadian, and father of our national health care system. Now we have something for which to thank him!

So as we leave the parsonage and say good night to Mrs. Jones, we might want to encourage her that, indeed, this time, her plans will succeed. That for the next seven decades, the church women will entertain missionaries from all over the globe in our homes, in the parsonage, and in the pulpit. And we might want to encourage her that the earlier
generosity will prevail in the area of “home missions” as well: whether it’s providing mittens to children, baby clothes to local crisis centres, or Bibles to the Gideons.

This month our society celebrated its 75^thanniversary, and we are still blessed to rely on the counsel of some of our founding members: Lena and Olive. It was through the continued guidance of Lena, who now lives in Sackville, Olive, who lives in Halifax, and so many others like Mrs. Ethel Jones. They have led us throughout the 20^th century, and their inspiration will continue to lead us in the 21^st century.