The years went by.  Did Mary still remember she wanted to be a missionary in Calabar?  Yes, she remembered, but now she had all she could do to support her family.  Since Robert, the would-be missionary, had died, Mother Slessor hoped that her youngest son John would be a missionary.  But God had other plans.  John became sick.  He was sent to New Zealand for his health, but died when he arrived in that country.  Was there to be no missionary from the Slessor family?

Whenever missionaries came to the Wishart Church or to Dundee, Mother Slessor, Mary, Susan and Janie would go to hear them.  At home they would read the stories of missionaries and their work.  They read missionary magazines.  They read about the missionaries in China, Africa, Japan, India, and even Calabar.

One day William Anderson, a missionary to the West Coast of Africa, came to the little church.  He told of the great need for missionaries in Africa.  He told of the bad things which the people did who did not know Jesus.

Sitting in church, listening to the missionary, Mary saw in her mind a picture of Africa.  It was not a beautiful picture.  She saw captured Negroes being taken to other lands as slaves.  She saw alligators and crocodiles swimming in the muddy waters, ever ready to eat black children who would come too close to the river.  She saw cannibal chiefs at their terrible feasts and fearful battles with spears and arrows.  She saw villages where trembling prisoners dipped their hands in boiling oil to test their guilt; where wives were killed to go with their dead chief into the spiritland.  But these things did not frighten the Scottish girl who was afraid to cross a field if a cow was in it.  She longed to go to Africa.

“Why don’t I become a missionary?” Mary asked herself as she worked the looms in the factory.  “Can I leave my home?  Does Mother still need my help?  Susan and Janie are working now.  They could get along without me.  But will I be brave enough?  There are tropical jungles, and black men who eat people.  There are wild animals, sicknesses, and death.  God can make me brave to face all of these things.”

Mary prayed, “O God, if it is Your will, let me go as a missionary to Calabar.  Let me be a teacher to teach these black people the story of salvation.  You have commanded us, Your disciples, to carry the Gospel to the farthest parts of the earth.  Use me, O Lord, to help carry it to Calabar.  Hear me, for the sake of Jesus, my Saviour.”

It was 1874.  The news flashed around the world:  “Livingstone is dead.”  The great missionary had died on his knees in Africa.  Everywhere people were talking of this great man who had given his life to tell the people of Africa about the Saviour.  Mary made up her mind!  She must go to Calabar!  But what would her mother say?  And if her mother agreed, would her church send her out to that field?  Mary went to her mother.

“I want to offer myself as a missionary,” said Mary Slessor to her mother.  “Are you willing?”