Granny Brand

Title: Granny Brand: Her Story
Author: Dorothy Clarke Wilson
Publisher: Paul Brand Publishing, 1976
Pages: 222
Begun: February 8, 2009
Finished: March 6, 2009
Rating: ***
The writing was not the greatest, but the story and lessons were excellent.


Trust and Triumph. Her husband, Jesse, had seen this sometime before they were married and had taken it into his marriage as the motto for their lives as pioneer missionaries to the hill countries of India. Jesse died after he and Evie had been married for less than 15 years. The week before his sudden death from Blackwater fever, as he and Evie stood looking over the 5 known mountain ranges dotted with villages and unreached by the gospel, he had said, "Before we die we must go to all five ranges and take the saving message of the Christ!" "Yes," she replied with all the solemnity of a vow.

It was that vow that gave Evie the drive to continue in the ministry in the hill country for the more than 60 years following her husband's death and before her own in December of 1974. The hardships that she encountered during her 60 years of widowhood (she had been 35 when married!) were absolutely astounding. She had been born into a wealthy English home and was considered the "belle of the ball" in prominent circles in London. Yet she came to prefer sleeping on the floor to sleeping on a bed, riding a donkey to riding a car, and eating her meals on a bamboo rug to an ornate table.

It is obvious that Evie struggled with her flesh--primarily stubborness and wanting her own way. However, it is also obvious that Evie was aware of her weaknesses and willing to allow her Saviour to mold her and grow her into a vessel fit for His use. On one of his visits to his mother, when she was 89, Paul wrote back to his wife that he "'found her distinctly younger than she was a year ago.' Yet when he tried to define the change he was at first puzzled. She was not physically any stronger. ... Then he put his finger on it. In previous years her passionate love for her hill people had been striving within her with an anger towards those who had been hindering the work. The result had been stress and strain. Now it seemed that she had been able to extend her love a little further, to include those who may have deserved her criticism. In this broadening and deepening of her love had come a serenity and peace that brightened her smile and gave her new inner strength. 'This is how to grow old,' he had wirtten. 'Allow everything else to fall away, until those around you see just love. They will also see your own life renewed and they will recognise the love to be the love of God.'"

I was very touched by Evelyn's life and dedication. I was also encouraged by her weaknesses. She recognized that while she strived to make things happen according to her own personal agenda, the motto chosen by her husband so many years before was what she had to rest in. Trusting in her sovreign Lord would bring triumph--not necessarily what she had planned but what He had planned. In her 30+ years of ministry after retirement, Evie had the joy of seeing dozens of churches started not only on the 5 mountain ranges known Jesse, but 2 additional ranges. Evelyn went to her own triumphant entrance peacefully in her beloved India and was buried next to her husband at the age of 95. Hundreds of those saved, nurtured, taught, admonished, rebuked, but all loved flocked to pay hommage to "Mother", the lady who had manifested Christ's love to the most depraved and despicable of characters. Truly she had trusted and triumphed.