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Doris Prayed

Sadie Busse

“Macal! Macal! Macal!”

A missionary named Jen heard the shrieking and screaming and rushed to the head of the stairs, which led down to the playground.

“What is it, Santisma?” she asked the Filipino teacher. “Why are you screaming?”

The frightened lady could only answer, “Macal! Macal!”

“Stop screaming and tell me what happened,” Jen said. 

This time Santisma realized that she was using a word the missionary did not know, and so she gasped, “Ahas! Ahas!”

The word meant SNAKE! 

Jen flew down the long flight of stairs and reached the frightened children just as the huge, black snake passed her and entered into the schoolroom. She told the children to stay outside while she chased the snake. By the time she got inside, the snake was coiled like a huge rubber hose between the wall and the door leading outside. She prayed that God would help her to kill the snake, and even as she prayed, she found the brush broom. The bristles were worn down, but the broomstick was just what was needed to pin the head of the snake against the wall. 

While all the children looked on in fear, Jen swung hard at the snake. Thump! Quickly, she called for Santisma to bring a club. The frightened Santisma obeyed, hit the snake with a stunning blow that killed it, and then she almost fainted! 

“Why are you so frightened?” Jen asked the staring children.

They answered, “Don’t you know that this is the most dangerous snake in the Philippine Islands? People around here believe that God’s curse is upon those who have been bitten by that snake. If anyone here had been killed by it, the work of the mission would have God’s curse on it, and the missionaries would be driven out. Now that you have killed the snake, the people will believe that God is with you.”

Jen was told that immediate death follows the bite of that snake, and so the children, workers, and missionaries knelt and thanked God for protecting them.

Six weeks later, a letter came to Jen from a little girl named Doris in Minnesota. Doris wrote, “I pray every day that the snakes won’t bite you.”

How did little Doris know about the snakes? Jen didn’t recall ever mentioning snakes in her letters. Then she suddenly remembered the snake she had killed six weeks before. It had taken Doris’ letter six weeks to reach her, and it had been written Sunday afternoon about five o’clock.

Jen pulled out her diary and found that the snake had come into the schoolroom at seven o’clock on a Monday evening six weeks earlier. When it was five o’clock p.m. on Sunday in Minnesota, it was seven o’clock in the morning in the Philippines. Little Doris wrote her letter, praying that the snake wouldn’t bite, right when the snake was in their schoolroom!

Perhaps, ten thousand miles away in the Philippines, a missionary and her schoolchildren were kept safe because Doris prayed.