I am ready to do what you say.  I lay the whole matter in God’s hands and will take from Him what He sees best for His work in Okoyong.  My life was laid on the altar for that people long ago, and I would not take one jot or tittle of it back.  If it be for His glory and the advantage of His cause there to let another join in it, I will be grateful.  If not, I will be grateful anyway, for God knows best.

The Board was very much surprised to get this letter.  If the Board members had thought about it at all, they had thought that Mary would never marry.  She was forty-three years old and Charles Morrison, her sweetheart, was twenty-five.  He was a mission teacher at Duke Town.  The difference in their ages did not bother the sweethearts.  They met and had fallen in love.  They wanted to marry.

“I will marry you if the Mission Board will agree to letting you work in the jungle with me,” said Mary.

“But suppose the Board will not let me go into the jungle, wouldn’t you be willing to come back to Duke Town with me?” asked Charles.

“No, Charles, I couldn’t.  I love you very much, more than anyone I have ever known, but my work for God is in the jungles.  There no one else has yet planted the Gospel seed.  To leave a field like Okoyong without a worker and go to one like Duke Town with ten or a dozen workers where the people have the Bible and plenty of privileges—­that’s foolish.  If God does not send you into the jungle with me, then you must do your work and I must do mine where we have been placed.”

It was not long after Mary had returned to England that the Mission Board gave its answer to her request.  The answer was no.

“What the Lord decides is right,” said Mary.  “I believe that the Mission Board is giving me God’s answer because they are His servants.”

What Mary suffered no one knew.  She longed to have a life’s partner by her side in the great work of bringing the Gospel to the jungle, but having given her life to God, she felt that He must be her first love.  Charles Morrison, however, took the refusal very hard.  He became sick and had to go home.  Later he went to America where he died.

Now that Mary was home in England, she soon got over the jungle fevers.  People wanted to hear about the missionary work in Africa.  Mary went from church to church telling about her work.  She did not like to do this.  She would rather be in the jungle telling the natives about Jesus.

“It is hard for me to speak,” said Mary, “but Jesus has asked me to do it, and it is an honor to speak for Him.  I wish to do it cheerfully.”

Everywhere people were thrilled to hear about the work for Jesus in the jungle.  They wanted to do something, too.  They gave money.  They sent boxes of clothes and food and other things out to Africa to help the heathen.

Then Mary got sick with influenza and bronchitis.  She could not go around speaking any more.  Instead, she wrote some articles for a missionary paper.