Tonight my story is built around a little mountain home where there is a group of children crying for their mother—a home where there is a husband and father with stiff and toil worn hands trying to console the children and care for the wife and mother, who the doctor says cannot live. It is a home where the specialist in a great southern city has sent the mother back to die—a home where God has answered prayers. How wonderful, how truly wonderful to know that God is with us; that He hears and answers our prayers!

Let us turn back the hands of time a few weeks and visit in this home that was like so many other homes we contact in the mountains daily. Just another home where there are a father and mother and a large family of children, living without God and with seemingly no love or thought for the Savior. They never attended any churches services or Sunday School. None of them were saved. They would eat their meals without even a word of thanks to the Great Provider!

This little home is located upon the side of a hill. There is a footpath which leads up to the door; there are many other different paths leading in different directions which are worn smooth by the little bare feet running to and fro—one can hear the children laughing and talking as they play through the house and out on the hill side.

But one day all is quiet; the little feet tiptoe softly through the house, there is no more playing, there is no more laughing—mother is sick. The local doctors gravely shake their heads as they diagnose her case, at last they advise a well known hospital in a far off city where there is a specialist who might be able to save her. As they were very poor people, this husband and father did not have the money to get her in the hospital, nor any way to take her there, but the serious condition of the mother and the sorrowing plight of the family touched the heart of a kind neighbor who went with his car as near the house as possible, and with gentle hands helped to carry her to the car and took her all the way to this hospital, where the specialist pronounced her ailment as cancer of the brain, and after an operation he said she could not get well, so with sorrowing hearts they brought her home to die.

A few days after she came back I was in the vicinity going from house to house doing personal work. Some one told me of this home, so I went to see them, following the foot path around the side of the hill and up to the little cabin door. I went in and sat down near where she was lying on the bed, part of her head was badly discolored and her hair had been closely clipped when the operation had been made. She turned her face toward me and smiled when I told her of a Savior who lover her and had died for her. I knelt there by her bed in prayer and did not leave until she made a definite confession of Christ.

A few days later Frances (my wife) and another lady went to see this family. They read the Bible and had prayer. They also had an opportunity to talk to the husband who said he had lived all of his life for the devil, but was now going to live for God. The oldest daughter said she was not saved until her mother was stricken, but was now trusting God for her salvation.

Once again you can hear the happy voices of the children singing and shouting as they run and play through the house and out on the hillsides. God has heard and answered prayers. Mother is saved and is up and doing the house work. Frances and I were in the community recently. We did not get to visit this home, but one of her neighbors told us she was living a sincere and true Christian life.

Sometimes the ones we hold most dear in this life have to be stricken or entirely taken away before we will submit our stubborn, selfish hearts to Him from Whom all blessings flow.

We earnestly request a great interest in your prayers that we may be used to the utmost to lead the lost to our dear Lord and Savior.