In this special episode, Elise chats with Jonathan Carswell of 10ofThose, a book selling and publishing ministry, to talk about the life of Pauline Hamilton. Pauline was an American missionary to post-war China and then to Taiwan. She lived an incredible and impactful life which is chronicled in her autobiography "To a Different Drum."
To check out her book visit 10ofThose at: https://www.10ofthose.com/uk/products/29450/to-a-different-drum
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[00:00:00] Once upon a time in medieval England, there was a young king who would do just about anything for his favourite knight. They were inseparable. With love at the front of a king's mind, instead of war or ambition, you'd think
[00:00:13] 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, a dynasty to die for. Or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:00] Martyrs And Missionaries is a production of Revive Studios.
[00:02:33] Youth pastor in Northern Ireland. So I spent three years there, and began ten of those as a bit of a hobby, I'll explain that in a second, but then moved back to another place in the north of England.
[00:02:46] So my accent is a bit-, well it's northern but it's a bit mixed up, but we moved to the states just over four years ago. And I'm trying to keep my English accent. But yeah, I, as I say, I started 10 of those as a hobby.
[00:03:06] I began really with a desire to see good books that hold to the Bible doing better in the sales charts. That's really where this all began. And so thought if I could buy good books that I really enjoyed, that I knew held to the Bible
[00:03:26] and pointed to Jesus, if I could buy them in big numbers and then sell them on in tens, then it might have an impact even if a tiny one. But that's how it all began because there's plenty of books out there. How do you choose what to read?
[00:03:44] And sadly, there are plenty of books out there that look Christian or purport to be Christian but actually could do you harm because they don't hold to the Bible. And you can quite easily begin to drift off. I remember I did a Bible training course
[00:04:01] when I just went after, I was a student and the guy said that if you're off one degree now in 30 years time, you can be 10, 20 degrees off. And that stuck with me of, okay, how can we get people reading good books that do hold to the Bible?
[00:04:19] It began to grow and develop. You could only buy in tens at the start. That's where the name 10 of those comes from. Okay, yeah. So people would say, I'll get 10 of those and 10 of those and 10 of those. And then before you know it, that name stuck.
[00:04:34] And now you don't have to buy 10 but the more you buy, the cheaper it gets. And it's developed a lot from those early days from selling books from the cupboard in my flat. But we're really still about the same thing of we road test what we sell.
[00:04:53] So we hand pick the best books from across the publishers. We know them, we've road tested them. We know that they make much of Jesus and then we discount them so that more can go out. And if we can get the price down,
[00:05:08] so instead of somebody only being able to buy one or two books a year, we can get them to buy six or seven because the price is lower. But then we use our profits to support missions around the world. So we're looking to generate as much money
[00:05:22] as we can from it, but not for our own personal gain but to support those around the world who otherwise couldn't afford good stuff. But about 10 years ago, we began publishing our own books. The main reason we began that was to publish smaller kind of often 48, 64 page books
[00:05:47] that would help new readers become readers. We wanted small in size, but very, very low in cost. So selling for one to $2 or one to two pounds. And we were in a privileged position that one of the first books we were able to do
[00:06:04] was Tim Keller's, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. People might know Tim Keller and that book just kind of opened up the doors really for what we're able to do and has gone on to sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands. So yeah, that's what we're about.
[00:06:20] We do it from a base in the UK and now a base in the States. One of the things that we do which is unique is we travel around providing pop-up bookstores for churches and conferences. So I've just come back from South Carolina
[00:06:37] where we're doing a women's conference, 700, sorry, 1,700 women. We provided a pop-up store. We made some recommendations as part of that program and yep, sold two or 3,000 books. And that's what we do. We travel around doing that. Oh, that's super, super cool. I like it.
[00:06:55] And I still like the fact that all of your proceeds or a lot of your proceeds go to missions. That's just super cool. Yeah, we really want to help missions and evangelistic, particularly evangelistic works to be able to give away resources
[00:07:10] without thinking this is gonna blow their finances. Sorry, you're gonna say something. No, no, no, I was gonna say, well, I'll just, I'll switch what I was gonna say here. But I was gonna, I wanna segue here into the new book that you guys have coming out
[00:07:23] to a different drum about Pauline Hamilton who is, I'd never heard of her to be honest before I got the email. I was like, oh, she sounds really cool. And then I was like, I'll check out the book. And I read the book in a day.
[00:07:36] It was just, it was phenomenal. And it starts in a way that you don't expect a book to start. So if you don't mind, just start telling us about her. She's amazing. Yeah, totally. Well, I'll take one quick step back as to how we came to publish it
[00:07:51] because it was published 30, 40 years ago but had gone long out of print. But I'm a passionate believer in missionary biography. I think there is so much to learn from those who've gone before. And as Christians, we should never graduate from reading missionary biography
[00:08:08] because it does show us what God can do with a life that's dedicated to him. For the life of me, I cannot remember the venue or the person who came up to me and said, I think you'd like this book. See if you can find it.
[00:08:22] And I did, I found it in a secondhand store. And I began to read. And I was like you, I just couldn't put it down. And it's funny, because I really shouldn't be in this role because I'm dyslexic. So I find reading really hard work.
[00:08:38] And yet this book just grabbed me. And I wanted to keep reading. And I judge a book of how good it is by how much I read out back to my wife as I'm reading. And I was reading every other paragraph back to her.
[00:08:53] This book just grabbed me. So I knew that we needed to do it. But yeah, to the story, it's called To A Different Drum. It's the autobiography of Pauline Hamilton. And the book starts with her running out of the door
[00:09:08] of her family home and her mom running after her, trying to stop what was about to happen. Pauline had grabbed the keys for her mom's sports car and was jumping into it in a not in a good way. She was in a very dark place
[00:09:29] and had been struggling with life. And well, to be honest, she was ready to end her life. She got into the car, sped off down the lane and she was going to drive herself off the cliff just near where they live. And on her way to doing that,
[00:09:48] leaving her sobbing mom behind her, she gets a blowout on her car. What we would call in the UK, a flat tire. And so she has to stop, she pulls over. And what's to happen then in the coming weeks or months
[00:10:06] is to totally change the direction of Pauline's life. And from that very gripping and real and raw situation in this first chapter, the book then begins to unfold with her story of how God takes hold of her and really redirects her life. So yeah, that's how it starts.
[00:10:31] When people say, well, what difference does Jesus make in your life? Of course, fundamentally, we take people to the cross, to being forgiven, to being restored, these sorts of things. But when God is the number one in your life, when he's boss, it does totally change things.
[00:10:50] So here's a lady who, she was bright, she had a brain for sure. But pre-Christ, she was a dropout in school because she got kicked out. She couldn't follow basically the rules of the school in terms of that. And yet when Christ is King,
[00:11:10] he can take the skills and abilities, the talents that he's given somebody. And here she was leaving with a PhD, which even that you see, she couldn't get funding, she couldn't get the backing to do it, but she was determined
[00:11:24] and she was now living with Jesus in charge. And she comes away with this excellent position, this study that she did. And again, for me, it just shows, yeah, that's what happens when Jesus is in charge. He does turn things around.
[00:11:42] He, a bit like a cleaner in a house, he comes and sweeps all of the rubbish away and he brings new. And that's even demonstrated in her studies and her determination to do her studies and do it well for the glory of God. I agree.
[00:12:01] How did she go from being, well, she ends up being a professor at a college, prestigious college. And how does she go from that to deciding to become a missionary to China? Yeah, and I don't wanna give too much away in the story,
[00:12:19] but again, I think this is how God moves and works in people's lives. There's a point where she's doing her studies, but she's also, she's spending time in God's word. And there does seem to be this passion, this determination to share Jesus with others.
[00:12:46] But then God begins to work in her life and set the people and place of China on her heart. She then receives a letter from her friend, which is quite out of the blue saying, well, when are you going to China?
[00:13:06] And she has no plans to go to China at this point. And she begins to then question, well, why has my friend mentioned this? And then at the same time, the Lord brought to her portions of scripture. Initially, I think it was Luke 14, Luke 14, 33, where it says,
[00:13:32] any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. And the PhD that she has got and the PhD that she has studied and worked hard for is then sort of brought into question because what she had planned,
[00:13:55] the Lord had greater plans. And again, the Lord begins to shape and to direct. And she felt for sure that the plans that she had were right, but the Lord began to speak to her and sort of say, well, why are you limiting me?
[00:14:15] Why are you saying that your plans are right? I have much bigger plans. And she distinctly remembers God saying to her, laying on her heart, I am the God of the impossible. And at this point, she was a bit older than most missionaries would be
[00:14:35] because she became a Christian later on in life. She wasn't brought up in that sort of environment of, okay, well, if you come to Christ, consider the mission field. She wasn't a Christian at that point when those questions were being asked.
[00:14:48] So God really begins to lay on her heart and that is the beginning of the process. One thing I would say though, I read a lot of missionary biographies and we were talking earlier of kind of some of our favourites
[00:15:03] and I think we share many of the favourites, the same favourites. But of the missionary biographies I read, I am just amazed time and time and time again, the number who read Daily Light as a sort of daily discipline, not necessarily as their main devotions,
[00:15:25] but as part of what they were doing, they read Daily Light. Now, Daily Light is a collection of scriptures put together as morning and evening readings. And they're done kind of thematically really of kind of bringing together a core message per day.
[00:15:45] And it is staggering how many times Daily Light is referenced. And in referencing what they are saying is, my reading today was this, which spoke specifically to the situation that I was walking through on that day. And I mean, I've read it hundreds of times. There's no exaggeration,
[00:16:05] hundreds of times where my Daily Light reading was this and it spoke to that situation. And that was the same with Pauline Hamilton. Over and over again, my Daily Light reading was this and it spoke to that situation.
[00:16:19] I therefore acted on the word of God that I'd read and it led me in this direction. It's unbelievable. And as you're reading, I'm sure you had this as you were reading. She's like, oh wow, God has spoken to her again. God is directing her again.
[00:16:34] And she tests it. You know, she doesn't want this to be kind of a whim or indigestion she's got. She wants it to be the Lord. And so she tests it. But over and over again, God spoke to her and directed her
[00:16:47] and yeah, ultimately led her to China. There's a pretty cool story. Sorry, I'm going on, but there's a pretty cool story of when she's leaving for China. And I don't know if you remember this and she's kind of, she's saying goodbye to her mom
[00:17:01] and her mom says, Pauline, before you go, I want you to know since the day you were born, I was praying that God would send you to China. And Pauline had no idea of any of this. You know, for a long while,
[00:17:15] Pauline wasn't even walking with the Lord and her mom was praying, Lord, send Pauline to China. And then there's this amazing conversion story of Pauline, but then God all this way was creating a path that would answer, we'll see the prayers of her mother answered, amazing.
[00:17:34] It is super cool. I loved one of the things I enjoyed about her story is her relationship with her parents. It was like, you felt like she had just these beautiful relationships with both parents and they both had health issues, which I won't spoil.
[00:17:47] But it was just beautiful seeing the letters back and forth. And especially because she had such a rough go of it as a kid, you know, cause she's, or even as a young adult, she was just rebellious and she didn't, she was resentful even when her parents would,
[00:18:00] she said they would go in and they would close their door and she knew that they were praying for her and she would get really mad about it. So it's just incredible to see if you're a parent and you've dedicated your kid to missions,
[00:18:13] then you see this, this has kind of got to be like, Lord, what are we doing? Like, is this gonna, what's gonna happen? Yeah, totally. I, she clearly had a very soft heart and a love for people, which came from a love from the Lord.
[00:18:30] I share your sort of, yeah, her relationship there. And what was interesting, you know, she originally wanted to go elsewhere other than China and the doors were closed there. And I wonder what her mum was thinking as, you know, cause she'd been praying for China
[00:18:48] and, you know, the door for the Philippines, which was where Pauline initially wanted to go, that was kind of closed. And the door to China was opened. I don't know if I was her mum, I'd be thinking, well, I've been praying so the Lord's listening.
[00:19:02] And, but yeah, I really wish I'd been able to meet Pauline in person because having read this, I just, yeah, she's clearly a delightful, she was a delightful woman and had a special relationship with her parents for sure. So after she gets, she comes to China,
[00:19:23] she goes to Shanghai and does it go, is it, is it from there? She's like, oh, the Lord has figured this out. I've got, you know, this is one step, you know, got this 10 step plan. It doesn't go that way exactly. She has kind of a rough time.
[00:19:38] Yeah, she does. And I mean, even it's, even getting to China, it was a, it's not necessarily long in the book, but the process was long. And I think there was just major, major relief that she got there. But when she got there, absolutely her commitment
[00:19:58] to the Lord and her commitment to China and the Chinese people was absolutely tested. She went through many, many trials. And I think, so she was doing some teaching with kids in a school. And that is my idea of worst nightmare,
[00:20:19] to do it in a foreign language, in a foreign country. But she, yeah, she had some challenges, whether it be things being stolen or language barriers, just opposition. And I think that that's one of the things that, again, I, that stood out.
[00:20:43] When significant works of God are being done, the devil is beside himself with anger because he doesn't want that to happen. And so the spiritual attacks that she experiences are significant. But I love how she goes into battle. She, as it were, does clothe herself
[00:21:08] with the armour of God. And you see that worked out, not in a sort of, oh, she knew the answer all the time and she just knew, trust God it'll work out. There was a battle raging and she was clearly a lady with real personality.
[00:21:27] And that comes through and comes through the spiritual battle that she faces as well. Yeah, there's an amazing story of a sort of struggle that she has trusting her cleaner that she has and something goes on there. And again, I don't want to spoil too much,
[00:21:46] but trusting the Lord in those situations and trusting that he has her best and the best for the gospel, you see that sort of battle raging. And she's very honest. She doesn't hide these struggles and the questions that she has of God. And I think often as Christians,
[00:22:14] we can be afraid to ask God questions. And yet in the Bible, we see lots of people asking God questions. It really depends on the heart of how the question is being asked. If it's sort of an obnoxious, an obnoxious, I know right sort of question.
[00:22:32] Well, yeah, the Lord deals with that. But if it's a humble, if it's a submissive question, it's amazing how the Lord graciously and gently reveals the answer over time. That's what happens with Pauline. I think she questions, she asks of God and over and over and over again,
[00:23:00] God provides just the right time. Usually in a way that she wasn't expecting or wasn't asking for, but turns out to be the very best way. And yeah, some of the struggles that she had, I'm glad God chose that for her and not me in some ways,
[00:23:20] but she's a real testimony to the Lord and his faithfulness. When she's talking about how the Lord would answer her or about particularly spiritual opposition, I thought that the way she, she didn't give the spiritual opposition more power. She didn't hyper-spiritualize her response to it.
[00:23:39] It was just very, it was kind of written like if you were a scientist, you're just like, I believe that this is, there are spiritual things. I believe that God has power over these things. And so they, she would combat it in a very practical manner that the,
[00:23:55] I don't want to spoil, but there's this point as she's trying to, and she knows she's going to leave China because there's the communists who take in power. And she's having to do something very important before she leaves for some students they're working with
[00:24:10] and just the spiritual struggle she has to be able to complete what she needs to do. And then years later, she finds out that these things she was working on were instrumental in helping these students later on. Now, I agree. I think she, because she's writing it herself
[00:24:31] and she's clearly, she doesn't think more highly of herself than she should. You get this very real working out, like you say, it's almost scientific in terms of she lays out the facts and examines it. It is very, it's very ordinary in that sense.
[00:24:51] But I think the beauty in the ordinary of God saying, okay, you work through like that. And I will bless it because she, each of those steps was trusting the Lord. And, but she's obviously got a real sort of cheeky sense of humor.
[00:25:08] I remember one bit where there was a decision coming up that needed to be made. And it was clear that she didn't want to go the direction that the mission leader at the time thought that she should go. And he said to her, well, you pray and fast.
[00:25:23] And she replies, you don't need to mention fasting. I've lost all appetite as a result of this conversation. And she's clearly just got a sort of cheeky sense of humor, which I want to. I remember later on, she's talking to this lady and they're having this disagreement
[00:25:41] and she was getting onto her for her American lip. You'll be hearing a lot more of my American lip here in a minute, was fantastic. Yeah, it's great. So she has to leave China and she doesn't know what to do from there.
[00:25:56] So she goes back to the States, spends time with her family. And then there's this door that opens to Taiwan. So she takes that about, I think less than a year after she gets back, which is amazing. Cause sometimes you live the mission field
[00:26:07] and it's years before you get back if you ever get back. So she gets back within eight months and she's in Taiwan. Yeah. And even just the way that the Lord provides that both financially and also circumstantially. Yeah, she's back. And again, she has no,
[00:26:29] in terms of the direction of where she's going, she really leaves it with the Lord. And again, you get this thing where she opens up her daily life and the direction of the Lord comes through her reading that.
[00:26:47] The bit where she goes home to her dad, thank you. I'd forgotten that section of it. But again, going back to what you said earlier of her relationship with her parents, I found that quite moving because, especially at that time of the world,
[00:27:03] getting back to see her parents was, you could get back, but that was really then gonna be it. And so in going back in prioritizing her parents, she was really saying, I'm from my future there. I don't know where I'm gonna be.
[00:27:21] And I just felt that was an amazing witness really. But yeah, she then gets this letter that provides her means to go back, the answering of prayer financially, I think is remarkable. And you and I were talking earlier about the book, Evidence Not Seen,
[00:27:45] where the story of Darlene DiBlerose, and if people have read that, you'll know the sort of story of the provision of the bananas. These are kind of the sorts of stories that are included here with Pauline that the Lord just provides these amazing provisions.
[00:28:04] So the ticket for her to go, that story, the round trip story is another amazing one of kind of provision. And because her health was beginning to weaken when she went there. And so there were lots of questions and challenges. But then do you remember the thing
[00:28:27] where she was in a house that had previously been haunted and nobody would go to remember that? Yes, and she said, she said, oh, there's just some things that have been moved around and she didn't explain. Yeah. I wanted some more information.
[00:28:43] Yeah, yeah, she kind of leaves it there, doesn't she? But again, just the work of the Lord in using that as a witness to other people was amazing. So yeah, yeah. Because most of her story takes place in Taiwan. That's where most of her ministry is.
[00:29:02] And so she has these honestly long narratives where she's just kind of going through, like I was in this ministry and then I was in this ministry and this ministry. And they're all just ridiculously engaging. There's not one of them that I was like,
[00:29:17] oh, let me flip past this. It's like every, like for example, one of my favorites, and she spends a lot of time in the library and she's like, like for example, one of my favorites and she spends a lot of time on this is her,
[00:29:29] she somehow becomes kind of the grandmother of several gang, like boy gang members, which, and she goes through several of their stories, which are just harrowing and sad. And then also just the Lord's provision in so many near death situations. Yeah, and you can always picture this gang
[00:29:56] and the sort of the boys that she gets alongside. And she talks about it very plainly. And yet at the time you must just think, cause I'm sure, well, a little bit of this comes out that other missionaries were kind of looking at her
[00:30:15] as if that's not how I would do things. And like, you are really kind of, cause they were, she was so committed to them. She spent a lot of time with them and they really were her life every day and there were significant challenges.
[00:30:34] I think, I talked earlier about her sort of, her perhaps cheeky personality. There was a time where she was needing something and there was, she was given a gift and she really sort of broke all protocol by opening up at the time, whereas in that culture,
[00:30:52] you just wouldn't open a gift in front of somebody else. And yet she did. And then how the Lord was providing through that gift. And I just, yeah, it challenged my personal faith as I was reading it because I wasn't discouraged in any way,
[00:31:13] rather I was encouraged to be thinking, well, do I walk with that faith each day with the Lord to provide? So whether it was with the boys or the stealing incident in her home or financially or food, each of these steps she was needing to totally rely on,
[00:31:34] on the Lord and walk each small step with faith. And she does it, not without fail, of course, but it did challenge me thinking, all right, here's a lady with real faith in her Lord and he did, yeah, he provided over and over again.
[00:31:58] And this wasn't just that she was doing some nice sort of humanitarian work of teaching English and these sorts of things, but she saw the Lord change people's hearts as well. She was a gospel lady, she had had her own heart changed
[00:32:17] and she was being used by the Lord to bring the gospel to others. Do you remember the story of towards the end where she's running a conference for those who've been coming to the Bible study? And again, I don't want to sort of spoil the story,
[00:32:37] but something happens with the locals that means the conference is really put in jeopardy and there is really just no way that the conference can happen because of what's taken place. And again, she just, she walks each small step with the Lord
[00:32:55] and he provides and then what happens as a result of the Lord providing and the conference being able to take place, just the spiritual work that went on was really amazing. So yeah, the Lord provided in a very special way over and over again for Pauline.
[00:33:16] Yeah, I think it's important you mentioned that she wasn't just doing some kind of humanitarian work because in the book, these Chinese officials, or not Chinese officials, I guess they're Taiwanese officials, but they come to her and they're like,
[00:33:28] hey, we want you to kind of run this boys school for wayward youth. And she says, I will do this, but I have to do it, you have to let me share the gospel, you have to let me, the Lord has to be a part of this
[00:33:41] otherwise I'm not gonna do it. And they allowed her to do that, but she was very specific. I don't want this to just be a feel good, like all straight and narrow kind of thing, but with no heart change, no Jesus.
[00:33:55] Yeah, yeah, and that was her motivation for being there, that was her daily walk and she wanted to pass that on to others for sure, yeah. So she has this long ministry, she's pretty old and then she has one of many health scares.
[00:34:15] It's actually incredible, it's even incredible she even went to China in the first place because there's a lot that happened before that, like you said. But then they kind of decide that, hey, your health is a little too rough to continue, she's with China Inland Mission
[00:34:31] and she's not super happy about it, but she follows, but she also kind of thinks this the end of her ministry, but then it turns out that it's not the end of her ministry at all. She has this fruitful ministry in the States when she comes back.
[00:34:46] Yeah, so she has this, without going into too much, she has a growth in her abdomen that, yeah, it just means she can't stay where she had been and so yeah, she needs to come back to the States, but she is not pleased about it.
[00:35:08] She makes that clear, she talked about questioning the Lord earlier, she really begins to kind of ask the Lord what he's doing. And she later reflects about how she feels that that was a lack of faith on her part,
[00:35:27] but she hears the Lord's voice as she's reading Isaiah 54 and yes, she's then to go back to the States where again, the Lord uses her and she says goodbye to the church, which she had been so massively influential in building under the Lord.
[00:35:50] And it's amazing, a little detail, as she's leaving, they give her a plaque with this verse from Isaiah 54 and they had no idea about it. And again, it's just the Lord's confirmation of what was going on that he was guiding her steps.
[00:36:12] And once again, the provision of being able to get back and the opening of the doors, the Lord worked on. And I think back then in a way that maybe doesn't happen now, and I'm not too sure why, but missionaries would come back
[00:36:31] and they would almost have another lap or two of ministry of doing things over here, perhaps sharing their story. And maybe the world has just got a bit smaller and things have changed, but yeah, she is then, she's involved in great work over here.
[00:36:55] And I think that perhaps humbles her in her own mind of, well, I thought you'd called me here and I thought that was my kind of work. And yet the Lord has more for her to do as she comes home.
[00:37:14] And you kind of see not the penny dropping, but over and over again throughout the story, you see the Lord providing and her then reflecting back saying, okay, yeah, you were in this and in this final sort of chapter of her life.
[00:37:33] And in the final chapters of the book, I think you see that, you get her sense of the Lord was in this as well. And the book finishes in quite an amazing way. From our point of view, we wanted to not just finish her story and that's that
[00:37:51] because this was several decades ago, but what is the Lord doing? And how has the Lord used what Pauline and others had done in China and then Taiwan and continued that work? So we approached an OMF worker, was China Inland Mission became OMF,
[00:38:13] the organization that Hudson Taylor founded and that she was with. We approached one of their workers in the States to write sort of an afterword to fill in the sort of final details. And he said, oh yeah, I'd be delighted to. And we hadn't realized why
[00:38:35] until we got the afterword back because as he explained some of the things that happened and her return in the late 60s from Taiwan and he connected them with Pauline. But he was staying with Pauline and the work that she was doing in,
[00:38:58] I think it was Oregon, he and his wife. And she was really quite poorly at this stage and Pauline's life comes to an end in his car as he's taking her to go for some treatment. And we had no idea when we were asking
[00:39:16] that that was the case. And again, it's just the Lord's hand on these things. I would, I'd challenge anyone who is perhaps wondering, oh, does the Lord care? Is he relevant in my life? Is he working in my life? Read the story of Pauline Hamilton
[00:39:35] and see how God moves and directs. We need to, as it were, have our ears open, our hands by our ears saying, okay, Lord, what are you saying? And we know that as we're searching his word, as we're reading his word.
[00:39:50] But if we're listening, the Lord speaks, the Lord guides and often in ways that we would just never expect. And that was for sure evident in Pauline's life and even evident as we brought together the sort of the final pieces of her story.
[00:40:09] I agree that the after was very surprising. Yeah. One of the things I think, if she had not basically been early retired, she would never have written her autobiography more than likely. So the reason that we have her story at all
[00:40:23] is because she got retired in her opinion early and arguably it was 20 years before she died. But if we want to read, if anyone wants to read this story, which obviously we both highly recommend to a different drum, where can we get it? When is it coming out?
[00:40:40] Yeah, so basically wherever books are sold, you should be able to get this. You can get it from tenofthose.com if that's helpful to you. If you buy it from tenofthose.com, you'll get the ebook for free, which means you can start reading it immediately.
[00:40:56] But yes, it's called To a Different Drum by Pauline Hamilton. It's published by 10 Publishing. It's a fairly inexpensive paperback, but it's a book that I am just gonna be recommending over and over and over again. So if you get it, be prepared to buy multiple copies
[00:41:16] because you'll be wanting to pass this onto friends. And listen, I read a lot of biographies, missionary biographies, stories like The Hiding Place, Evidence Not Seen we mentioned earlier. I would really rate this as the best autobiography I've read in the last decade,
[00:41:35] probably since I read Evidence Not Seen, to be honest. It is up there and it's up there for a number of reasons. The story's incredible. It's brilliantly written, but it's dripping with scripture and her relationship with God. You put those three things together
[00:41:54] and that makes for an incredible book. And I am excited to see what the Lord might do with this because we want to see it get out far and wide. Not so it's good for us, but good is coming from people reading the remarkable story of Pauline.
[00:42:13] I hadn't thought, actually, yeah, if she hadn't have gone back to the States, she'd have never been able to, I'd never thought that. So I'm grateful that the Lord moved in that way because it did me good.
[00:42:24] And I almost liked that I had no idea who she was. You know, I picked this story up as a secondhand used copy and yet the work of that God did in her life and through her life, well, it still speaks today. And I love that.
[00:42:43] I really love that. Well, thank you so much for coming on and really enjoyed hearing her story. And I hope that everybody who listens to this buys this book because it is absolutely amazing. I'm actually gonna link it into the episode description here
[00:42:57] so you can get it directly from 10 of those. Jonathan, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Just a joy to meet somebody else who loves biography as much and just appreciate the opportunity to highlight Pauline and what God has done. So thank you.
