Lillian Trasher: I Just Stayed

[00:00:00] Once upon a time in medieval England, there was a young king who would do just about anything for his favorite knight. They were inseparable. With love at the front of a king's mind,

[00:00:10] instead of war or ambition, you'd think the kingdom would be in for a golden era of peace. But England is headed for the most catastrophic collapse seen for hundreds of years. The saga continues. Join me, Dan Jones, on This Is History,

[00:00:25] A Dynasty To Die For, available wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:01:29] Martyrs and Missionaries is a production of Revive Studios. You're listening to Martyrs and Missionaries. I'm Elise, and in every episode, I'll bring you a new martyr and or missionary, the called and the brave. In this episode, we're talking about

[00:01:44] the founder of the first orphanage in Egypt, Lillian Trasher. Before we get into this episode, I wanted to thank you guys for being such amazing listeners. I hear a lot from you guys on Twitter

[00:02:15] or in email. You guys are always so supportive, and I love hearing from you guys. And also, because you guys are so amazing in sharing Martyrs and Missionaries, in less than two years,

[00:02:24] we are in the top 2% of podcasts, which is absolutely amazing. So I wanted to make sure that I shared that with you guys and also gave you a huge thank you. And in other news,

[00:02:35] the merchandise store is back, or rather it will be. I'm behind schedule, but there are several new designs in the works. And there's actually, I think there will be two Christmas designs we are bringing back. Boniface, plus there's one extra one on the way that I'm really excited

[00:02:50] about. I was actually working on it myself for a little while and then I had to pass it on to a good friend who actually designed the Boniface shirt. So it should be here soon. And next episode,

[00:02:59] it should be up and running. So very exciting stuff. If you're looking at the title of this episode, and you're thinking, didn't we already do Lillian Trasher? The answer to that is no, we did Lillias Trotter. And if you are confused, or maybe it's just me,

[00:03:14] but I actually heard about Lillian Trasher first. I had her added to my list. And then I was talking with a friend and we were talking about different missionaries. And she was talking about this

[00:03:24] amazing missionary named Lillias Trotter who went to Africa. And I was like, oh, do you mean Lillian Trasher? She went to Egypt. She said, no, I mean Lillias Trotter who went to Algeria. And so I

[00:03:34] thought I was confused. Turns out there's two different people with very, very similar names in the same parts of the world, honestly, within the same timeframe as each other. So I feel it's

[00:03:45] an easy mistake to make or not. You can judge me either way is okay. But today we are talking about Lillian Trasher. Lillian was born September 26th, 1887 in Jacksonville, Florida. And she grew up in Brunswick, Georgia. If Brunswick sounds familiar to you, it is the headquarters of

[00:04:02] FLETC where all the federal law enforcement guys train. It's a really tiny town in Southern Georgia. Lillian's family were actually Quakers and they hailed from Boston. And then at some point, they became Roman Catholic and they moved south after the Civil War, which I feel there's a story

[00:04:20] there. There has to be a story there because they had been really wealthy up north. And then when they came south, they weren't nearly as wealthy. And in fact, they live really, really modestly.

[00:04:31] When Lillian is about 11 years old, her best friend's parents, Ed and Anna Mason come over one evening and Ed shares how he became a Christian during a camp meeting at the next town over. And

[00:04:42] he invited the whole family to a Wednesday night prayer meeting at the Mason's house. When Wednesday night comes around, it seems that Lillian is the only one in her family to come. First they sing

[00:04:52] When the Roll is Called Up Yonder. And she starts thinking, well, what's going to happen to me when the roll is called up yonder? And they sing Amazing Grace. And she says, what is this wretch like me?

[00:05:03] I don't understand. And then after the singing, they have a very long prayer session, which confuses Lillian even more because she decided to get on her knees and she regrets it after 30

[00:05:15] minutes or 40 minutes goes by because it's a very rough hewn wood. And she's just thinking, oh, my knees really hurts. And then after that, Ed leads a small sermon and he's no great orator. He's a

[00:05:27] very simple man. And he reads from John 3 16 and he shares his testimony. And Lillian is pondering the meaning of the verse. And the meeting comes to an end rather abruptly, and she doesn't fully

[00:05:39] flesh out her thoughts. Now for the next prayer meeting, Ed asks her to pray and she gets really excited. And she spends the whole week preparing this really long, impressive prayer complete with

[00:05:51] all these really fancy words. And when it comes time Wednesday night for her to pray, she forgets it all. And all she can do is strangle out a Lord before Ed comes to her rescue and praise instead.

[00:06:04] And she's absolutely humiliated. But days later, she's gotten over it and she's coming home from school alone. And now she has nobody to impress. And she says that her thoughts matured. Suddenly

[00:06:16] all the things that she was thinking about, what does John 3 16 mean? What does it mean to be a wretch? Where am I going to go when I died? Her thoughts just matured. And she sees this log and

[00:06:28] she just kind of collapses next to the log and puts her hands on in a prayer position. And she says, Lord, I want to be your child. If I can ever do anything for you, just let me know and I'll do

[00:06:39] it. It's such childlike faith, such a very simple prayer. And I think if she knew where this prayer was going to lead her, she would have been a little bit more afraid. After this, she was

[00:06:50] baptized and she started a Sunday school in a vacant old house to anybody who would come. And we're not going to go through her entire childhood. We're going to skip forward to when she's about

[00:07:00] 17 years old. Her family at this point had moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and her older sister, Jenny, had moved out to California to work as a secretary. I mentioned Jenny because she is very

[00:07:12] important and she will come up a lot later on in this story. Lillian is currently waiting to catch a train headed down to Brunswick to visit her friends, Anna and Ed Mason. And on her way

[00:07:22] back up to Asheville, she planned to stop by Atlanta to interview for an artist position at the big city newspaper called The Georgian. Now while she's waiting, she sees this lady standing

[00:07:33] away from the crowd. She's this tiny little woman. She's dressed all in black and Lillian felt the urge to go talk to her. So she headed over with a bit of small talk and the lady introduces herself

[00:07:44] as Miss Perry, who ran an orphanage and Bible school in a little mountain town nearby. And Lillian tells Miss Perry her plans to visit her friends in Brunswick and then come back up through Atlanta

[00:07:54] to interview at the newspaper. Interesting side note, but I only say this because I love Atlanta and Atlanta's history is really interesting. After Sherman's march during the Civil War, Atlanta had been almost completely destroyed and now it was being reconstructed and there were a

[00:08:10] lot of exciting things happening. There were lots of churches being built. They had just installed electric trolleys. It would have been a really cool thing to see just a city that went from just completely destroyed to really skipping forward several decades into the future. It would be

[00:08:26] really cool. But instead of being impressed like I am, Miss Perry was really concerned. She said, why are you applying for a newspaper? That's not something a young lady does. It's not something someone of your breeding should be doing. And Lillian sidesteps the question rather gracefully

[00:08:42] and instead asked Miss Perry about her orphanage. There are a few different books about Lillian Trasher's life and one of them is called Lady on a Donkey and I'm going to read a little bit from that

[00:08:53] because it covers a fundamental moment in Lillian's life. After Lillian asked about her orphanage, Miss Perry replied that it isn't her orphanage, it's the Lord's. Lillian said, well you know of course, but

[00:09:05] who supports it? And Miss Perry smiled and said, why the same one who owns it? Lillian straightened herself, looked directly into the eyes of the woman and said, but Miss Perry, someone has to buy

[00:09:15] clothes and food and provide shelter when you have an orphanage even if it is the Lord's. That's just what I mean, said the lady. The Lord does provide for all of our needs in some way and through

[00:09:25] someone he sends us everything we need. There are a hundred children and myself, we live from day to day on faith. All the time? All the time. Miss Perry's eyes gazed far beyond Lillian and the long

[00:09:39] silence seemed to reaffirm her convictions. All the time. Food, clothing, shelter, medicine, God never fails. Right now I have no food for our supper tomorrow night nor money to buy food for my 100 children. Suddenly she leaned toward Lillian and whispered earnestly, God knows, he knows right now

[00:09:57] where our supper is coming from. You have to have faith Lillian, lots of faith. You have to learn to take care of all those hundred children without any money in hand. You have to go to bed at night

[00:10:08] knowing you have no money, no food, no money to buy food for the next day, yet you must have faith to get a good night's sleep so you can get up and do your work in the morning. Lillian is absolutely

[00:10:20] baffled. She's never heard of this before and before we go any further I want to clarify a little bit about Lillian's background just in case you're familiar with her background or if you check out any of these books that she has. Lillian comes from a Pentecostal, more charismatic

[00:10:37] faith movement background and there are some things in her theology that I personally do not agree with or see the same way but her faith and trust in God and her relationship with God are

[00:10:49] clearly seen as this episode will show going throughout her story. So with that out of the way Miss Perry asks Lillian if she would like to come work at her orphanage. Lillian is very non-committal

[00:11:03] she doesn't really say anything in fact she hurries as quickly as she can to get onto the train and head down to Brunswick. And while she is in Brunswick she asks her friend Anna for advice

[00:11:14] and Anna she describes as one of those people that just you just know that they have a close relationship with God and everything that they do there's just so much wisdom and it's just like

[00:11:24] they're on a different dimension of faith than you are. And Anna tells her simply just listen to the Lord and he'll let you know it may be a loud voice or with a whisper but he will let you

[00:11:35] know. And soon after Lillian was back on the train and stepping off into the bustling city of Atlanta it's this mixture of old and new it's got lots of energy and lots of charm and when she arrives

[00:11:46] the Georgian she's greeted by the overwhelming rattle of typewriters the smoke-filled rooms and the cacophony of voices yelling back and forth to each other and she loved it. The art editor

[00:11:57] took her drawings and told her he liked what he saw but he had a headache a sore throat and a deadline so she had to come back tomorrow. So she goes back the following day and she's told the

[00:12:07] editor isn't in that he's out sick and the person she spoke with was sure that he'd already filled the position but nevertheless come back in a couple days for your drawings. And when she hears this

[00:12:18] she is absolutely filled with despair what is she gonna do she's missed her opportunity and she goes back to her room and she collapses onto the bed and just sobs her heart out all night until she

[00:12:30] falls asleep. And when she wakes up she has this reassurance that everything had played out the way that it was supposed to and she knows what God wants her to do. So she waits for several days

[00:12:41] before going to the newspaper to collect her drawings and she finds out from the editor who is now back that she was supposed to be the new hire which he's very upset about but they had

[00:12:53] already hired another person and Lillian says that's no big deal it's totally fine and he says well I feel bad for you and I also feel bad for me and she said well don't feel bad for me and she

[00:13:04] thanked him for the opportunity and she struck out towards Miss Perry's faith orphanage in North Carolina. And when she gets there it's really really hard she said it's a strange new life for

[00:13:17] me I'm learning all things how to cut out clothes, how to sew, how to cook, how to take care of newborn babies, how to teach and oversee large numbers of children, and how to do without. And nobody sent

[00:13:29] her any money and she also never asked anybody for anything. Nobody understood why she had come. A few months into her being there her shoes wore out and she went without shoes for a while or went

[00:13:40] with very very worn out shoes and a big box of donations came to the orphanage and in the box was a pair of men's shoes and children can be rather merciless and when she wore the men's shoes

[00:13:53] the children were not kind to her they drew pictures of her feet on the blackboard with her toes sticking out and she's she didn't care it was no big deal at least she had shoes.

[00:14:06] And she was getting very little sleep she was up before dawn to make gruel for the kids she scrubbed the pots and the pans she scrubbed the floors she washed she cooked she ironed she

[00:14:16] taught and studied and she also lost a lot of weight. Her clothes were drooping on her her skin looked sallow she had dark circles she just wasn't getting enough food and as she looked at herself

[00:14:28] in the mirror she remembered that somebody had given her 20 cents the day before and at the time she didn't know how to spend it but today all she could think about was bacon and apple pie

[00:14:40] and she headed out to go get some food but as she's heading downstairs she runs into Ms. Perry who says hey do you remember that 20 cents that you got yesterday do you think I could borrow it

[00:14:49] because it turns out I'm exactly 20 cents short to pay the delivery man for the groceries and she hands Ms. Perry her 20 cents and she knows that although Ms. Perry means well and she means to

[00:15:01] pay her back the 20 cents she never will because she has forgotten it as soon as it passed from her hand to the delivery man's hands. But when springtime comes and her health and hunger have improved she travels around doing evangelism holding adult bible studies lots of other things

[00:15:18] for about five years and in 1910 when she's 23 she meets a handsome young minister named Tom Jordan the two immediately fell in love and were very quickly engaged but then she goes to hear a missionary from India speak and she leaves the meeting in tears she runs up to

[00:15:38] her room and once again is collapsed on the bed sobbing uncontrollably. Ms. Perry comes in to check on her quite concerned what's going on and Lillian says that she has found the most amazing

[00:15:49] man that she cannot marry and Ms. Perry says what are you talking about and Lillian says that she knows that God has called her to be a foreign missionary she's not sure where but she knows that

[00:15:59] he has and the next day she breaks the news to Tom and he tells her he'll wait for her but she felt that she was going to be gone a lot longer than a year or two and as she watched him walk away

[00:16:12] she knew that she had absolutely shattered his heart in that moment and her heart was also shattered but she knew that God had called her to something else and nothing God ever calls you to

[00:16:22] is easy and it requires hard decisions and this was just the beginning of her very hard decisions all she had was five dollars to her name her family did not support her in any way shape or

[00:16:34] form and the little church that she'd been going to also couldn't support her not because they didn't want to but because they were too small now some people did get together to send her to a

[00:16:44] missionary conference in Pittsburgh and she asked Ms. Perry to hold on to her money in a safe drawer in her desk but Ms. Perry's sister didn't know that it was Lillian's money and so she used it

[00:16:57] to pay a debt and Lillian didn't realize this until she was at the train station trying to buy a ticket and her friends tried to help her but they could only gather enough money to send her to Washington DC

[00:17:10] Lillian had never been to Washington DC but Ms. Perry said she had a friend there and she would send Lillian with a letter of introduction so she could stay while Ms. Perry gathered the rest of

[00:17:19] her money so in the time before she went to DC she felt more and more like the Lord was calling her to Africa but not specifically where in Africa when she arrives in DC she's told that she can't

[00:17:32] stay there because the lady is already entertaining missionaries from Asut Egypt but she can come in for lunch and I'm going to read to you about one of the most awkward lunch parties anyone has probably

[00:17:43] ever had. The missionaries were a Reverend and Mrs. Dunning. Lillian their hostess explained was a missionary to Africa. What a lovely sound Lillian savored the words, the idea, the anticipation that

[00:17:56] came to her when it was said. The knowledge that these words were part of God's plan for her gave her a feeling of belonging at last a sense of being in the right time at the right place and

[00:18:06] headed towards a pre-arranged rendezvous with God's plan. The missionary from Egypt was speaking now she saw him as through a glass darkly Africa he was saying to what part of Africa are you going

[00:18:18] suddenly the faces in the room became a sea of questions flooding her engulfing her submerging her somebody asked what board is sending you to Africa Ms. Trasher no board your church then Lillian blushed painfully then she calmed herself looked at the people in the room boldly and said

[00:18:35] I'm not going under any board nor is my church sending me in fact at the present time I'm not even a member of a church though I have been attending a wonderful little holiness church in

[00:18:44] Asheville your family then I presume said Miss Dunning smiling kindly the Reverend Dunning moved to Lillian's side he was smiling too your family is sending you then it was a statement a statement

[00:18:55] a fact which he must have reasoned was the only way left sir Lillian took a deep breath my family is not in favor of my going at all Lillian would never forget the looks of sheer astonishment on

[00:19:08] the faces in the room she saw the Reverend Dunning stop as he walked towards her as if the shock of her statement had frozen him in his tracks you mean you have only your fare to Africa that a girl

[00:19:19] of her age would go to Africa without knowing the language and without having any money for support plainly seemed the height of folly worse a calamity for a young life Lillian for her part knew the

[00:19:29] man in front of her should know the conditions in Africa since he himself had been in Egypt for so long how could she explain to him that her plan like Miss Perry's was built on faith not money

[00:19:40] she raised her head met his eyes with a sure level gaze he was studying her closely now then saying you mean you have only your fare to Africa Reverend Dunning I have one dollar there were audible

[00:19:53] gasps in the room then a deadly silence finally she was aware of the Reverend Dunning shaking his head he looked at her frowning no no no he kept staring at her searching for a moment then said

[00:20:05] flatly no later Lillian wrote in her diary perhaps I better not try to tell you all that Brother Dunning said or thought but I can still hear him telling me to go home to my mother not exactly the

[00:20:18] start she was hoping for I would imagine but the next day Reverend Dunning and his wife apologized and they offered to let her come with them to Asyut if she can find money for the trip they

[00:20:27] will cover her room and board the next day the money arrived from Miss Perry and she was able to go to the missions conference in Pittsburgh and when the missions conference ended enough people supported her mission that she had the fare to go from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia then

[00:20:41] to New York to wait for her ship which would take them to Egypt except Reverend Dunning himself didn't have enough for his ticket so Lillian paid but then she didn't have enough for her own fare

[00:20:54] through friendly strangers she was able to make it to New York but now she had to buy her actual ticket to get on the ship to go and it was a hundred dollars she was invited to speak at

[00:21:04] various missions houses and churches raised forty dollars which was enough for her to secure her birth this is where her older sister Jenny comes into the picture Jenny is just the best I know

[00:21:17] that Lillian is also amazing but Jenny in her own way is also amazing her sister lived out in California her sister hated anything new she hated dirt she hated being away from home she didn't

[00:21:29] like going out after dark she was the embodiment of a home body I guess but she decided that because the rest of the family was just kind of out of the picture and wasn't helpful at all that she would

[00:21:42] come to Lillian and go with her to Egypt not just see her off at the dock but actually go with her to Egypt for an undetermined amount of time in order to make sure that Lillian was settled in

[00:21:55] Lillian could not believe her ears and she was so excited but at the same time she was also embarrassed because she didn't have all the money for the ticket so she didn't want her sister coming

[00:22:04] all the way out from California only to realize that at this very important moment she had not enough fare to even get to Egypt but early the next morning a stranger knocks on her door and

[00:22:16] tells her that she felt the lord tell her to give her this money and it was exactly 60 dollars she was able to buy her ticket before Jenny got there I had a thought while I was reading this and

[00:22:27] having done so many of these different stories I have come to the conclusion that the people who have the hardest time getting to the mission field often have some of the hardest missions and they

[00:22:39] also tend to stay in the mission field for a very long time may not be the same country for example Amy Carmichael bounced around to a couple different countries before she landed in India but if you

[00:22:50] look at the lives of particularly when it comes to women missionaries Amy Carmichael, Lillian Trasher, Lillias Trotter, Mary Slessor, Gladys Aylward there's this common denominator of their life was really really difficult getting to the mission field and when they got there they stayed there

[00:23:11] and they had these just incredible impacts for the lord so there is my theory on getting to the mission field so if you are in the process of raising support or you're having a really

[00:23:21] difficult time heading to the mission field be encouraged stay in prayer and God can open those doors and it can lead to a very long and fruitful ministry. On October 8th 1910 at the age of 23

[00:23:36] Lillian set sail for Egypt. Now imagine with me if you will you are a a late 19th century person and you don't have access to social media, YouTube, any of the streaming sites and channels

[00:23:52] you really just have what's in front of you what you've heard people talk about maybe the National Geographic magazine I'm not sure when it came out but my point is that your experience with other cultures is going to be very very limited and in fact even within let's

[00:24:07] say America someone who grew up in Georgia has really not that much of a clue what life in California is like. Now how much more of that if you are going to another country on a different

[00:24:21] continent even with social media and all the different knowledge we have about different cultures we still experience culture shock whenever we go to anywhere that is unfamiliar and a lot of these missionaries they had zero idea what they were getting into and so just imagine

[00:24:40] what it was like to set foot or even just to lay eyes on let's say you're on a boat and you're looking at this shoreline of whatever approaching country it would be so exciting and so overwhelming

[00:24:52] when you you step foot into the port and there's all these different people that are around you and they're speaking different languages it would just be so incredibly awe-inspiring and overwhelming. Now you take that and you look at Egypt, Egypt is so very old Alexandria the port

[00:25:11] city that they're going into it was founded by Alexander the Great 300 years before Christ and it is new compared to the other cities in Egypt so we talked earlier about Atlanta kind

[00:25:23] of being this mixture of old and new how much more is Alexandria a mixture of old and new and when they arrive Lillian is absolutely in awe to her it is already her home. Jenny is homesick

[00:25:38] and she's been brushing away tears of sadness thinking about how far away it is from her home in America but she is happy for Lillian and to contrast it a little bit further Jenny loves

[00:25:50] cleanliness she loves order and as soon as they disembark she's already pressing a handkerchief to her nose to combat the dust that Lillian hadn't even noticed so two very different people have two very different responses to the same amount of stimuli. A little historical note on

[00:26:09] Egypt at this point in time it is a protectorate of the British Empire and it had been since 1882 it has its own government but it is still heavily regulated by the British who wanted it because

[00:26:22] of the access to the Suez Canal and the shipping lanes that it contained this will play an important role in the history of Egypt going forward. When Lillian and Jenny arrive at the mission house they are greeted warmly by the other missionaries and Lillian immediately begins an

[00:26:37] intensive study of Arabic and she wanders the ancient sections of the city talking with the people and she says they're the most gracious people she'd ever met one family welcomed them

[00:26:47] in for supper and only later did she realize that they had killed their last chicken to do so. Weeks went by and the nights got quite frigid and Lillian could often hear Jenny crying herself

[00:26:57] to sleep. Jenny didn't want anybody to know just how lonely that she was. Lillian knew that Jenny belonged in her home safe and secure in California but instead she was all the way in Egypt caring

[00:27:08] for Lillian out of love. The world is made up of all sorts of people and we need Jennys and we need Lillians if we only had one or the other we would be extremely lacking in many areas.

[00:27:19] It was a mere three months after Lillian's arrival when late one night on the mission house door a young man comes running and telling them to come quickly, come quickly something is wrong. Lillian begged to come and was reluctantly granted permission and when they arrive at this

[00:27:35] house they see this woman who is clearly dying she's a young woman who is just kind of she's on the last moments of life and her arm kind of reaches out towards this woman in the corner

[00:27:49] and she's holding this baby and Lillian approaches the baby and as she gets closer she pulls back in revulsion because what she's looking at is this skeletal creature that doesn't even look

[00:28:02] like a baby maybe three months old there's matted just pus and bodily fluids and all the clothes have been sewed on to this baby so ever since the mother had been sick no one had been taking proper

[00:28:19] care of this baby and the mother was begging someone to take care of her baby and then she died and the grandmother stands up and she looks out at the Nile and she has the intention to

[00:28:34] throw the baby into the Nile because she has no use for this child and Lillian begs to be able to take this baby in and they said well what are you going to do you can't take this baby back to the

[00:28:45] mission house and she said someone needs to care for this baby if we don't care for this baby it's going to get chucked into the Nile and so she took her back to the to the mission house and they

[00:28:58] cleaned her up and Janish sewed her a little gown and they tried to feed her with a little dropper of warm milk boiled and diluted with sweetener as she'd done many times at Miss Perry's orphanage

[00:29:09] but the girl had been without food for so long that she wouldn't take it and instead she cried endlessly almost non-stop for 12 days and they knew that she was dying despite their best efforts

[00:29:21] they bathed her warmed her rocked her tried to feed her every two hours but little Ferda as they called her was dying now after 12 days the other missionaries were their nerves were shot no one

[00:29:34] was getting sleep and Reverend Dunning says to Lillian you have to give her back and Lillian says what am I supposed to do with her if if I give her back they're going to kill her and Reverend

[00:29:47] Dunning pretty much told her I don't care like you can't you this is the way of the world this is what happens and you have to give her back you can't keep her here and Lillian said well if she

[00:29:58] goes then I'll go with her and Reverend Dunning told her well if you choose to do that if you decide to just leave the mission house and you fail when you inevitably fail there's no place for

[00:30:10] you here we won't welcome you back we don't condone what you're doing and as an American in an Arabic world you're going to be killed or you're going to starve to death and in Lillian's mind she

[00:30:21] remembered the other day as they were going through the streets this narrow three-story house that was for rent and she left the mission house and she headed out for it immediately she paid 12.50 for

[00:30:33] the first month of rent and went back to grab her things and as she's heading back she says I haven't even thought about Jenny like I was she was so in this moment of just defending this little girl

[00:30:44] and she said what what is Jenny gonna think about all of this what would she say what's she gonna do and she goes back to the mission house to pack and the ladies beg her to reconsider it's just

[00:30:53] so dangerous and they asked her to help them talk Lillian out of it but she shook her head and she said wherever Lillian goes I go remember Ruth and Naomi in the Bible I guess I'm her Ruth

[00:31:07] I'm a big fan of Jenny she's so cool Lillian had just enough money to buy a small kerosene stove a table some chairs and she made a baby bed out of a box two palm branches for the two of them to

[00:31:19] sleep on and some groceries and milk and Ferida begins eating as soon as they get into the house something she had not done the entire time she was in the mission house and very soon she's gaining

[00:31:30] weight and she's thriving and as Lillian looks into Ferida's eyes she realized why God had brought her to Egypt to found a Christian orphanage for homeless Egyptian children a few days later she

[00:31:44] had spent her last bit of money on Ferida and how was she going to found an orphanage if she couldn't even feed one baby so she gave her way to the Lord and she prayed and trusted him to provide

[00:31:56] because after all he was the one who had sent her to Egypt and she went to sleep that night as though she had a cupboard full of groceries the next morning this little messenger boy comes to

[00:32:06] her door and he has this little envelope some a bit of mail and he says are you the lady who is going to start the orphanage and she looks at him and she realized that she had told the telegraph

[00:32:18] officer yesterday about her plans and she tells the little boy that yes that's what she planned to do and the little boy looks at her and he's very serious and he digs into his pocket and he

[00:32:28] grabs 35 cents and he gives it to her and then runs off this 35 cents was the first contribution to her orphanage and was enough to buy cereal bread and milk hi i'm dan jones and this is

[00:32:53] history a dynasty to die for is back for a brand new season this time we meet Edward II a larger than life character who starts out as the party boy prince and ends up well i don't want to give

[00:33:06] too much away he's got one thing on his mind not war not ambition but love and it's a love that will get him in burning hot trouble with his barons his family and his queen the king's affection

[00:33:21] for his favorite knight kicks off a wild roller coaster reign full of love and hate war and grief famine and just about all the horsemen of the apocalypse along the way we'll meet tiger mums

[00:33:33] scottish legends murderous cousins a herd of camels and one extremely hot iron poker listen to and follow this is history a dynasty to die for available wherever you get your podcasts with intuitive social media and online marketplace integration, you can advertise and sell via Instagram, eBay and Co.

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[00:34:46] Powered by Shopify. Each day she went out into the city and told her neighbors her plans to make an orphanage, and nobody understood what she was going on about because how could you feed, care and clothe orphans with no money? Now soon some slanderous rumors began circulating.

[00:35:11] They said she's stealing children to take to America or she's going to take children and sell them as slaves. But not everybody felt that way. The friendly telegraph operator told her of two children, a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy whose parents had died

[00:35:25] and their uncle was looking for a home for them. So the next morning she headed out on a rented donkey and brought them home. And then a little while later she brought home a five-year-old little boy. But within a few days he became desperately ill

[00:35:37] and she brought home a doctor from the local Presbyterian hospital and they told her that it was bubonic plague. Imagine the panic that would set into your brain and everything was immediately disinfected and they were all kept in isolation.

[00:35:51] Two days later Lillian is checking on the other children and she realizes that they had developed this horrible rash and she rushed to get the doctor and she was relieved they told her that it's only the measles. And then she came down with an illness.

[00:36:05] It was running a fever of 106 and she was taken to the hospital to recover and a few days later she was able to return home. And when she arrived home, a little children greeted her at the door and were excitedly calling out, Mama Lillian, Mama Lillian.

[00:36:19] It was a nickname which stuck. In 1916 at the age of 29 she found herself in the same three-story house but now she had 50 orphans. And the orphanage ran out of supplies every two or three days and she would rent a donkey and ride out to the Felaghan farmers

[00:36:37] which are these farmers, basically they have been around since the days of Moses. And they are a very... They're kind of like, honestly if you think about it, they're kind of like serfs, they're tied to the land. They have a very small plots of land

[00:36:52] and they basically raise enough money for their families and then they sell whatever they have left over to the market to make a profit. And they were very generous people and she would go out into these villages and they would give her whatever it was they could spare

[00:37:06] to help her feed the orphans even though they had so little themselves. Lillian wanted to expand the orphanage and because the three-story house wasn't really designed to hold 50 children but the donations that she got from the States and the generous friends in Egypt didn't even cover basic needs.

[00:37:23] And she had been eyeing this half acre of land across the Nile but it was too expensive for her to buy. That is until an Egyptian friend of hers bought it and offered it to her at a lower price. This price was $250 which still felt like a fortune

[00:37:39] but she told her friend that she would buy it and get her the money within the week. And then she gets down on her knees and she asked the Lord to provide if it was his will because she only had $1.25 on her. Then she hopped on a donkey

[00:37:53] and rode off to the office of the governor whom she had been told had taken an interest in her desire to build an orphanage. And the governor had that connection to the police chief who had stopped by a few weeks earlier and offered to support her children

[00:38:05] telling her to contact him if ever they needed anything. And the governor agreed to set up an appointment for her the next day at 11 a.m. And he asked if she had transportation and she told him she used a rented donkey and he was shocked.

[00:38:20] He said, had she ever had any unsavory encounters? And she told him that she hadn't. But even so he was worried that a donkey was unbecoming for an attractive young lady like herself. And she told him if it was good enough for the mother of her Lord

[00:38:36] then it was good enough for her. And she'd even heard the felon and call her the lady on the donkey and she rather liked the name. And the governor suggested that the lady on the donkey hire some professional donkey drivers to accompany her

[00:38:48] on the trip as it was a long one to make by herself. Egypt has some very interesting weather patterns which I didn't know before I was reading her book and kind of looking into this a little bit. But in July, it's almost peak flood season

[00:39:04] so the Nile had already grown considerably out of its banks causing vast dangerous swamps and lakes. And as they're heading out the next morning they're bobbing and weaving and it's slow and it's tedious and they were running behind schedule and Lillian is becoming anxious.

[00:39:21] And instead of being patient and giving her drivers the benefit of the doubt they were being very cautious. And I imagine it wasn't mentioned but I would imagine that in the flood waters of the Nile there are probably crocodiles. So there's many reasons to be very safety oriented,

[00:39:37] very cautious. But instead Lillian gets cocky and she decided to hike up her skirts and go across the water. And the two donkey drivers are calling out to her to stop they'd carry her across just stop. And she said, there's no time.

[00:39:51] And she said, come on guys, we're gonna go. She hiked up her skirts a little bit higher. She took one step and she plunged headlong into the hidden canal. And now she's covered in Nile mud on her way to meet an important man who might help the orphanage.

[00:40:05] And she would never be taken seriously looking like that. She did change a blouse and a skirt in her suitcase but no clean underskirt. And you did not go out in the early 1900s without your underskirt, it was indecent. So she sees a woman's home in the distance

[00:40:22] and she asks for water to wash her clothes. The only water this woman has is an earthen bowl where her ducks bathe. If you know ducks as I think we all do, ducks are nasty little creatures. They're cute, but they're nasty and they smell.

[00:40:39] But Lillian had no choice. So she shoes the ducks out of the water and she scrubs out her underskirts in dirty duck water with no soap. And they hang it out on these corn stalks to dry but she realizes looking at them

[00:40:52] that there's no way they're gonna dry in time. And she has to tell these drivers about her embarrassing situation. And they take her underskirts and they make a clothesline between the two donkeys and they head off again with her bloomers billowing

[00:41:08] in the wind like some kind of bizarre flag. Before they arrive at the police chief's house, she finds a place in the desert somewhere to change and they arrive at 11 and she is given the money she needs to start the orphanage. And now she has the land

[00:41:23] but she has no money to build on it. She has all these ideas. She's thinking of a lovely white brick and stucco with a protective wall around it, an open courtyard inside for prayers and Bible studies with lovely trees and masses of flowers.

[00:41:38] And the protective wall would have a massive front gate that would welcome new children. They needed two dormitories, one for boys, one for girls with a big kitchen, a dining room and a nursery. So to keep costs low, she and the children learned how to make bricks

[00:41:52] and it's not easy work, especially for young children but before long they learn how to make the frames and they get the mud mixture right. It's mud and straw and manure and before long it becomes second nature to them

[00:42:06] and the bricks begin to pile up ready for building. And it was in preparation for the orphanage's very first building that she developed her three brick rule. If she had three bricks, she'd start the next building. Every few days, regardless of whatever was going on,

[00:42:22] she would need to get on her rented donkey and travel to the villages to ask for food and money to help feed and clothe the children. No matter what the weather, 120 degree heat in the summer, frigid, damp, cold in the winter,

[00:42:35] the constant sandstorm winds in the early spring which came at you from every direction and settled into every facet of your being and home. These were the physical challenges that she met but there were also a lot of spiritual challenges.

[00:42:50] One of which came in the form of these missionaries that she would meet in the marketplace, these missionaries from the mission house and they would come to her, they said, you can't keep doing this. How are you gonna feed all these orphans that will descend on you?

[00:43:02] They're just gonna keep on coming. What are you gonna do? The authorities will resent you, et cetera, et cetera. She tried to assume they meant well but all the same she was still shaken after every one of their meetings and she began to call them Job's comforters

[00:43:16] which seems really fitting. Some of what these doomsday prophets were saying was not without merit. One day while Lilian is looking outside of her window, she sees a strange man watching the children play and he's intently fixed on Ferida and he comes to the front door with papers

[00:43:35] saying that he's Ferida's father and he's going to take her and there's nothing Lilian can do about it. There was no proof that she was Lilian's daughter and so this man was able to take Ferida kicking and screaming away from the only home that she had ever known

[00:43:49] and to make matters worse, not long after that, Lilian received word that Ferida had died of some kind of illness. Even though she'd been in perfect health when she left the orphanage and this news just completely devastated Lilian. This was the death of her first born

[00:44:07] and it just was so crushing and from that moment on, anyone who ever came into the care of the orphanage had to sign release papers so that nothing like this could ever happen again. As word of the orphanage spread, more support came from local Egyptians, individuals in America

[00:44:26] and the newly formed assemblies of God would send barrels of clothing as they could. With every gift and letter she received, Lilian always made sure to answer it the very same day it arrived. No matter what was going on that day,

[00:44:38] she never let a letter sit unanswered overnight which is absolutely incredible. This woman especially in later years, she received just tons of mail every single day and she would spend every night diligently answering every one of her letters and the orphans also kept coming and along with them,

[00:44:58] some much needed and unexpected helpers, the widows who were able to love and care for the children and she also had a wonderful relationship with the Presbyterian Hospital which had helped her very early on when one of the orphans contracted the bubonic plague

[00:45:12] and they helped save numerous babies who came to Lilian with various ailments and needs and as the orphanage grew and time wore on, the older girls were given charge over six little babies and they took their jobs very seriously and with such loving care.

[00:45:28] They fixed the formulas, sterilized the bottles, gave the cod liver oil and changed the diapers. It was a beautiful thing to see these older children be so excited to take care of these little babies. In these most recent years, World War I was raging and in 1918

[00:45:45] when the armistice was finally signed, Jenny went back to America for a short time to oversee some of her properties in California and Lilian breathed a sigh of relief that the war was over but sadly things in Egypt were just heating up.

[00:46:00] During the war, Egypt had been drawn in by the British and the felon had been seized without notice and forced into military service, leaving many families without a male provider and each governor was required to send a number of his citizens each month

[00:46:15] or suffer the consequences of refusal and to rub salt in the wound, the wealthier, more important citizens had been spared this military duty. In addition, Egyptians were told to surrender all their weapons to the police and in November of 1918, Egyptian revolutionary leader Saad Zaghul Pasha

[00:46:34] knocked on the door of the British embassy in Cairo to protest Egypt's deplorable treatment. They discussed independence for Egypt and what that would look like but in response to this, Britain rounded up the leaders and had them exiled to Malta but this wasn't what set the two countries

[00:46:52] on a bloody collision path. It all started with the death of a pigeon. One day, an Englishman decided that it would be fun to shoot and kill a felon's pigeon and the felon gave chase to demand recompense for his pigeon. Now according to British law in Egypt,

[00:47:07] an Englishman could not be tried or convicted of any crime including murder and the Englishman died of a heart attack while being pursued and in response, six felon were rounded up and shot. Five of them had nothing to do with this incident at all

[00:47:23] and they were shot in front of their own families. This is the start of the riots. British homes were being wrecked and burned, British citizens were fleeing the country in droves, the violence grew nearer and nearer to the orphanage and soon they could hear guns all around them

[00:47:39] inching ever closer. One night, the fighting was right on top of them and they huddled into a brick kiln trying to keep the babies from making a sound which would give them away. That sentence, every time you hear about these moments

[00:47:52] where children have to be quiet, especially young children, it just, their children are so unpredictable. They make noises at all the wrong moments so this had to be incredibly harrowing. They were about 300 yards away from the main building

[00:48:06] and in the distance, a hay factory had been set ablaze and it was belching these huge clouds of smoke into the air and dozens of English homes had been set on fire as well on the road between them and the main section of the city.

[00:48:19] After they'd settled in, Lillian realized that there were still two toddlers that were left in the nursery and she hurried back to get them as she was surrounded by gunfire and the screams which were everywhere and she found the babies. They were safe and sound.

[00:48:32] They were whimpering on the floor of the nursery and she scooped them up and she ran and crawled back whispering these comforting phrases to the babies and as she's going across the field, these two soldiers noticed her and gave chase but they really can't see anything.

[00:48:45] It's completely pitch black so they have no idea that it's this woman just holding two babies and she falls into this ditch and as she falls, she violently twists her ankle and they had landed next to this dead British soldier and these footsteps come closer

[00:49:01] and one of the men actually steps on her shoulder with his heavy boot and these shots ring out in the distance immediately afterwards and the two men scurry off to join the fray and Lillian sings Jesus loves you to the babies

[00:49:15] until it grows quiet and they made it safely back to the kiln. The next day, they're back in the orphanage and these marauders come to the door with plans to kill Lillian and to ransack the orphanage and her neighbor runs across his field

[00:49:28] and he stands in front of them protecting Lillian and he shames them and he says, these are our own Egyptian children for whom this woman has given her life. Would you destroy that? What are you thinking? What are you doing? Are you truly men?

[00:49:42] And that worked and out of note, they just turn around and leave and before Lillian can even thank him, he is running back across his field. In the weeks that followed, the fighting became so bad that the British authorities ordered all foreigners to leave

[00:49:55] and Lillian tried to protest. She went all the way to the local British general in an attempt to stay and she spent that night with all of her children in the American hospital and she could hear them all crying softly in the night

[00:50:08] and her own heart is broken as well. After almost nine years, she felt this despair, the thought of being forced to leave and she asked why the Lord had brought her here only to take her away when her heart was firmly planted

[00:50:21] but the next morning she woke up with peace and resolution and she placed two of the widows in charge of the orphanage while she was away and she told them she would send money from the States to cover operating expenses and then when God said so,

[00:50:33] she would return to Egypt. She boarded a ship and turned back to look at her 100 children watching from the shore. The little ones were crying and reaching out for her while the older children watched quietly and waved and she knew from conversations she had overheard

[00:50:48] that they had agreed not to cry if they could help it because they said it would make mama feel even worse. As soon as the ship was out of sight of the shore, she broke down across the railing and sobbed until she was utterly spent.

[00:51:02] Back in New York, she felt like such a stranger. She made several stops along the way to Jenny's home in California and everywhere she spoke, people listened and gave generously to support the orphanage. Amazingly, after just one year, she is able to return

[00:51:17] and she was immediately back into the thick of everything and she was so happy to be back but she was worn down by all the constant trips she had to make on the donkey to go beg for more money and more supplies

[00:51:30] and she was fighting tooth and nail for every single bit of rice and it was just breaking her and one day in particular, she's at this wealthy person's home and they're making her wait for hours and she's already actually left earlier in the day

[00:51:44] to come back and is still left waiting and just something inside of her breaks and she kneels down beside a chair and she told the Lord, I just can't do it anymore. I can't go out on the donkey anymore. I can't do it.

[00:51:58] I don't have the strength to do both this and to care for my children. I'll take care of the children, Lord, if you provide the money. She asked God to send her 75 pounds today that they needed to show that he was in agreement

[00:52:12] and to know that she was following his will and she gets up and leaves this wealthy person's home and when she arrived back at the orphanage, what was waiting for her? Not 75 pounds but 200 pounds and she says, thank you, Lord.

[00:52:27] Now I know that I've made my last begging trip on the donkey. Now I know and a short time later, her friends got together and bought her a car to help bring her supplies and carry on with orphanage business with more efficiency.

[00:52:42] I wanna skip ahead a little bit to the year 1933. There were two books that I relied heavily on for the research of this episode. One of them is called Letters from Lillian and you can get it for free in archive.org

[00:52:55] and I will link it in the episode description for you and it's a collection, as the name suggests, of letters from Lillian to her supporters and friends and there's a lot of really interesting stories in there and I'm gonna read one of them to you now.

[00:53:11] You'll be very glad to hear that the Lord is giving us a revival and he has been working in wonderful ways in our midst. The need of more young men for the work in Egypt is greatly felt these days

[00:53:22] when villages are calling for pastors and there are none. Our older boys have never shown such great interest in the Lord's work as they have this year. These boys are educated and capable and of course the younger boys will follow as they are led by the older ones.

[00:53:36] The mayor of a village nearby came and asked us to open a school and mission there, saying they would deed us the land if we would build a room for the church and mission. We have decided to do it as there is no gospel work

[00:53:47] or school in that village on the edge of the desert. One of our boys is going to preach and teach there full time. Perhaps the work of all those years in the orphanage was to get such boys ready for the great work

[00:53:57] of taking the gospel to the dark villages. The joy of seeing my boys stand up and give out the gospel just fills me with joy. In our afternoon meeting today, one of my boys got up and preached for over half an hour.

[00:54:09] He is now a young man, 20 years old. As I looked at him and heard the sermon that I shall not soon forget, I thought of those days when I took him in, a baby four months old, seed planted years ago is just beginning to bring forth fruit.

[00:54:25] As with all good things going on, there inevitably happens to be bad things that follow suit. And this is the midst of the Great Depression, so things are already pretty difficult. But in addition to that, this nationalistic fervor was being stirred up in Egypt. Why was that?

[00:54:43] Well, it all started with a little girl who was acting naughty and she received spanks from one of the Swedish missionaries, not even in Lillian's orphanage, in some orphanage off in Port Said. And word spread that she had been spanked because she was not a Christian.

[00:55:00] And this caught on like a wildfire and it stirred up especially the Muslim population to be very angry. And they began saying, well, we need to take care of our own children. Why are these Christians taking care of our children?

[00:55:13] And this caused quite an outcry against Lillian's orphanage. And they came to take her children. She had 70 children out of 700 who identified as Muslims and they were forcibly removed from the orphanage by the authorities, even though they had gone through all the books, they wanted to make sure

[00:55:31] that there was nothing untoward going on in the orphanage. And they found that it was squeaky clean. They loved it. They said, you're doing awesome work, but we're still gonna take the kids because you're not a Muslim institution. No hard feelings, but we're taking the only home

[00:55:49] these children have ever known and we're gonna chuck them somewhere else. On a happier note, one of her boys whom she took in as a six month old baby, he was now a 23 year old man who had opened his own orphanage that was run on faith,

[00:56:03] just like Lillian's orphanage and just like Ms. Perry's orphanage. And he was the only Egyptian with a Christian orphanage at that time. Lillian had been in ministry for many years at this point in her life. And many of the children had grown up, they had gotten married,

[00:56:19] they started families of their own, but many others chose to stay behind and help Lillian. And in her older years, she is never without a child to lean on. And that in and of itself is a beautiful testimony of how much she loved these children

[00:56:34] that even when they were grown, they chose to give back to her and to help the orphanage and the wonderful place they had grown up and they had heard the gospel. And it's just really cool. And throughout her life, God had used many different people

[00:56:50] to help support the orphanage, the very, very rich to the very, very poor. And as you can imagine, there are so many stories of God's provision and I can't focus on them all, which is why I recommended the book. But one I will focus on here

[00:57:02] is her relationship with a Scottish noble and his daughter. She writes here, one day several years ago, I was giving out religious tracts and booklets about the orphanage work on one of the Nile tourist steamers, which passes through.

[00:57:15] I walked up to his table where seven or eight ladies and a gentleman were having tea, held out one of my booklets and said, would any of you be interested in learning about the Ausuit orphanage where there are 700 children?

[00:57:27] A young man spoke up and said, no, I would not. Then one of the ladies said, I would like very much to see some of your booklets. I went and sat at some distance while a lady looked at the pictures.

[00:57:37] She got up and came over to me where I was seated and handed me $5. That same evening, she came to the orphanage at about eight o'clock. As she entered, she said, Ms. Trasher, this is my father, Lord Maclay. I showed him over the place

[00:57:50] and they were very pleased indeed. As he went, he handed me $100 and after that he sent me money every Christmas, sometimes $50, sometimes 100 and sometimes 250. Last month on February 15th, I received a wireless message from Lord Maclay who was on a steamer at the time

[00:58:08] asking me to meet him in Cairo. When I went to meet him in Cairo, he was most interested in all that I told him and in the many photographs which I had with me. He asked me if there was anything that I was especially in need of

[00:58:20] and I told him that the children were badly in need of clothes. And he said, well, Ms. Trasher, I'm going to give you $5,000. Ms. Trasher, you have no idea what it has meant to me seeing your work. I went back to Scotland and opened a home

[00:58:34] for tiny infants after I saw all your little babies and we now have 30 babies in the home. He is the trustee in the orphan homes of Scotland where they have about 1,200 children. They had never accepted infants before. I was so thrilled to think of those 30 little Scotch babies

[00:58:49] having a home just because he had seen my work. Praise God for his wonderful ways which are past understanding. Lord MacLean and his daughter came often to see the children and to ensure that Lillian was taking care of her health because earlier on in her ministry,

[00:59:03] she had developed a heart condition and it was hindering her more and more now that she was getting older. And at Lord MacLean's insistence, she took her first vacation in 27 years. Right before the outbreak of World War II, Egypt said that no charitable or missionary work donations

[00:59:21] will be exempted from duty fees. And the duty fees cost just as much as the items themselves. So Lillian was forced to tell her supporters that they should not send gifts but to send money instead. But then with the start of World War II,

[00:59:35] mail delivery slowed to a crawl and was delayed by weeks or months. And many of the missionaries who began helping at the orphanage in recent years evacuated at the beginning of the war. The tithes were lean and they'd already spent several years scrimping during the Great Depression.

[00:59:51] But the Lord always provided and the children always had food. One of these provisions came in the most unlikely of ways. The American ambassador summoned Lillian to Cairo. And when she arrived at his house, he was extremely excited to give her the news

[01:00:06] because Greece had just fallen to the Germans. A Red Cross ship carrying a load of relief supplies destined for Greece was ordered to dump her supplies and return home. A young Scottish soldier on board the ship knew of the Lillian trash or orphanage and convinced the captain

[01:00:21] to unload the supplies in Alexandria. In a warehouse waiting for Lillian were the supplies, including 2,600 dresses, 1,900 handmade sweaters, 1,900 pairs of boys' pants, 3,800 blankets, 1,100 towels, 700 kegs of powdered milk and 1,200 sacks of rice. As the war dragged on, she met several young soldiers

[01:00:48] who were staying in the city from many different countries. And some of them became Christians after witnessing the way that God had provided for the orphanage. One soldier from New Zealand told her, well now I can go back and stand the horrors of war.

[01:01:01] My whole life has been changed by what I've seen here. I know that God sent me to meet you and to see what you were doing. Two years after the war ended, there was a cholera epidemic raging throughout Egypt. On her way to get supplies,

[01:01:15] Lillian saw a large white circle painted around a house and a soldier was standing guard. And it meant that cholera had arrived in Aziut. And once someone was confirmed to have it, no one was allowed in or out of the house until it had passed.

[01:01:31] She hurried home and prayed that it would not come to the orphanage. You just think about the havoc that it would wreak in an orphanage of almost 1,000 kids. That night a fire broke out in the boys' dormitory and it spread to the kitchens

[01:01:44] and was inching closer and closer to the kerosene heaters. The boys were fighting the fire with all that they had, but if the fire hit the kerosene, many of them would be killed in the explosion. But the fire stopped inches from the tanks. A few days later,

[01:02:01] after they're still reeling from all these things, this recovering with the fire, because that's gonna take a lot of money and a lot of time, and then this worry about the cholera epidemic, she had decided not to allow any new orphans to be admitted

[01:02:15] and this absolutely broke her. It went against everything that she stood for, but she said, what would happen if I allowed a child to come in here who had cholera and then it spread to all of my children and several of them, many of them would die?

[01:02:32] One day, a dad and two small boys came to the door and one of her older girls came and said, hey, do I let them in? What do I do with them? And Lillian said, no, you can't let them in. It's too dangerous.

[01:02:45] Just tell them to go away. I'm sorry, but no. And as the girl went back to tell them, Lillian just said, I can't do this. This is, that's not Christ-like. And she runs across the field and she says, you can come in, it's okay.

[01:02:59] And then that night, he spends in the dormitory with the boys and he does have cholera. He doesn't make it and they disinfect the room and she's panicking and she's crying. She says, what have I done? And she prays and prays and prays

[01:03:15] and the whole orphanage is praying, but nobody else in the entire orphanage contracted cholera and eventually the epidemic passes on. At this point in the episode, you may be wondering what happened to Jenny. Well, she's been there the whole time

[01:03:32] with the exception of occasional trips back to California to take care of some rental property and she even builds Lillian a cottage, the cottage that Lillian had always wanted so that she could look out and watch the children play. And there was this beautiful garden area

[01:03:47] and there was a telephone even set up so she wouldn't have to go back to the main house every time she needed to make a phone call. Eventually, Jenny decided that she was done going back and forth. So she sold all of her property in California

[01:04:00] and moved permanently to Egypt. Lillian's home was now Jenny's home. In 1911, when she came along just to help Lillian get settled in, I guess after 40 years, she didn't consider Lillian moved in enough. Lillian would often go to visit her grownup children

[01:04:17] and she was so proud of all of her kids. She writes about a trip she made. She said, last month I had to go to Cairo, the capital city of Egypt, to speak to the YMCA. I spent only one night there

[01:04:28] in the home of one of my married girls. Somehow the word got around that mama was at Fahim's. That evening the house was filled with boys and girls who had lived at the orphanage along with their children. As I looked them over, my heart filled with joy.

[01:04:42] There was William, the son of a blind man, now the founder of a very fine school in Sudan. Philip, a professor in a government high school in Alexandria. Zacher, who had just received his BA from the Facility of Arts in Cairo.

[01:04:55] Edward, now working in the making of airplanes. Robert, William's brother, a finished cabinet maker. Alexander, the representative of a large drug company. Oscri was a clerk in a lawyer's office in Cairo. Shakeri was a clerk in the English Army stationed somewhere near Cairo.

[01:05:12] Wadia was a telephone exchange clerk in the main office in Cairo. Gurgus was a beginner in the Egyptian State Railway. These with many others were just a few of those now working in Cairo or on a holiday there who happened to hear that I was in town.

[01:05:26] We had such a wonderful time talking of old days. How we all wish it had been daytime so we could have taken a photograph. Such changes. As I look at these fine men, good fathers with solid Christian homes and their wives,

[01:05:38] many of them our girls and all the little grandchildren, I felt well repaid for all the work I had done. Remember, you were helping me to do all of this. God bless you. On December 17th, 1961, after two years of sickness and 50 years of ministry in Egypt,

[01:05:58] Lillian Trasher passed away. At her funeral procession to the cemetery, in every window and every balcony, people stood and remembered this American woman who had lived a life of great service to Egypt. Not long before her death, the reporter asked her, "'Miss Trasher, what is the secret

[01:06:15] "'of your missionary success? "'What is the greatest thing you ever did?' "'There isn't any secret,' Lillian answered quickly. "'I just stayed. "'I did not quit. "'I stayed with the work God gave me to do.'" In her 50 years of service, 8,000 orphans

[01:06:39] passed through the doors of her home. The missionaries who told her to return the baby and who had tried to frighten her with all the horrible what-ifs had packed their bags years ago. Her orphanage lives on and currently cares for over 400 orphans and 40 widows.

[01:06:55] And since 1911, it has cared for 20,000 orphans. Lillian would have overseen almost half of those 20,000. And it's rare to see someone whose life mission never wavered from the 11-year-old who prayed, "'If there's anything I can do for you, "'let me know and I'll do it.'"

[01:07:13] And there was no way that at 11 years old she could foresee that meaning that she'd routinely ride a donkey in 120 degree heat with her hair and skin singed. But when it did, she just kept going. A Muslim man was once asked what he thought about Lillian. He said,

[01:07:29] "'I believe that when she dies, "'in spite of the fact that she is a woman and a Christian, "'God will take her directly to paradise.'" And as odd as that may sound, you really can't get higher earthly praise than that. As always, thank you for listening

[01:07:44] to Morrison Missionaries. I'm Elise.