Title: Missionary Stories With the Millers
Author: Mildred A. Martin
Series: Miller Family series
Major Themes: Missionaries, Adventure
Synopsis: A collection of stories from around the world and spanning 200 years of missionary work help children to learn about how God works through and protects His people.
I believe I have read Missionary Stories With the Millers aloud at least three times now. Each group of my children that I have read it to has been enthralled by these stories, and even when they hear them again when I read them to another group of children, they find them fascinating. We read this book over the last couple of months as part of our morning routine before school starts, reading a chapter a day.
When the Miller children all donated money for Bibles for people in a poor country, they became curious about missionaries. Mother began telling them stories about missionaries around the world. She had many stories about how God protected people who were doing His work in various parts of the world, and what happened in the lives of people in the local area as a result of what happened to the missionary. The stories range from an Egyptian postal worker who stole a New Testament from the mail and got saved as a result, flowers that saved some people smuggling Bibles into Romania from discovery by the Communist guards, to the well-known account of Jim Elliot and the Auka Indians. Other stories tell of David Livingstone and how he was able to share God’s truth with a tribe in Africa after successfully doctoring the Chief’s daughter, an earthquake in Alaska, which brought a Mennonite man from the other side of the continent and gave him the opportunity to share Jesus with an Indian man, or the talking tortilla in Mexico that brought the Gospel to people who hadn’t had a chance to hear it before.
These stories are amazing. Missionary Stories With the Millers is chock full of narrow, miraculous escapes, and amazing works of God. Many of the stories are quite intense and scary for young children. I was reading to the older children, but my three-year-old, who is very sensitive about tense stories, was listening to most of them. I had to reassure her many times that the story came out all right in the end, and then she was fine. There are only two stories in which the main character is killed, the one about Jim Elliot, and one about some missionaries in Guatemala. In all the others, the people are in great danger, but are delivered. If you are trying to shelter your children from the harsh realities of life, you may want to wait awhile for this book, but if you want stories that will build up their faith and encourage them to trust God to care for them, this book is a wonderful way to do that.
WARNING: Chapter 1: Simba guerillas threaten to kill missionaries. Chapter 3: Children running from soldiers, nearly starve before rescue. Chapter 7: Man is threatened with death for sharing his faith. Chapter 8: Man drowns in front of missionary. Chapter 9: Battle, woman hides among dead bodies. Chapter 10: Angry man tries to shoot missionaries. Chapter 11: Men speared to death by Indians. Chapter 17: Men shot by guerillas in Guatemala, one dies. Chapter 19: People flee an army and hide for safety. Chapter 20: Girl runs from temple prostitution. Chapter 22: Men faced with drowning or starvation when the boat motor quits. Chapter 29: Man nearly drowned, then later nearly burns to death.
Age levels:
Listening Level—Ages 5 – 8, 8 – 12
Reading Independently—Ages 8 – 12, 10 – 12, 12 – 15
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