"Our generation will commend your works to one another; they will tell of your mighty acts" (PSALM 145:4).
"AT the close of missionary furlough in 1969, word came that we would not be allowed to return to Guinea, West Africa. The government had decided to curtail foreign missionary activity and was not granting visas. At the request of the remaining Guinea missionaries, we were stationed across the border in Sierra Leone for Fula language study.
DURING our Sierra Leone sojourn, I learned that my great-great-grandfather, Anson Carter, had been one of the first American missionaries to Sierra Leone. He died of malaria a few months after his arrival in the country. HIS wife, still in America, died soon afterward, leaving a 12-year-old daughter, Adelia. I discovered that Adelia's grave was in the same cemetery in Athens, Pennsylvania, as her daughter, Rachel (my grandmother), and her grandson (my father).
I KNOW nothing more about Adelia, but can speculate from the fact that her daughter was one of the charter members of The Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Waverly, New York, that Adelia had held no grudge against God for the loss of both her parents. It seemed rather that she had continued in the faith of her parents and had instilled in her children that same love for God and a deep concern for the lost of this world.
NEWS came that we would be allowed to return to Guinea, but before we left, we were able to visit Anson Carter's grave in Komenade.
What a wonderful heritage I have been given. It both challenges and encourages me to be faithful in passing on this priceless inheritance to my children." NORMA D. GARDNER
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