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Lea and Louise Little (retired missionaries to China and Japan)

Louise's Story, taken from: Mel Larson, 114 Ways to the Mission Field: Testimonies of Evangelical Free Church Missionaries (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Free Church Publications, 1967), 141-42.

 

CHINA .. HONG KONG .. JAPAN

 

The door to China opened for her to go without a young man in whom she was interested. They put God first and she went to China alone. A few years later he followed. By that time her area was under Communist control. Her husband-to-be's missionary group had fled. It was two more years before they met in Hong Kong. They were married there.

 

Today Mrs. Lea (Louise Davis) Little is serving in Japan.

 

They had been unable to get back into China. In their first terms they were affiliated with the China Inland Mission but later transferred to the Evangelical Free Church of America.

 

Mrs. Little was reared in a Christian home in Peace River, Alberta. She made a stand for Christ at the age of 15, but later backslid. When she began teaching school she left her Christian home and lived more and more in the world until she could no longer be recognized as a follower of Christ. At 22 she married an unconverted man. Nine months later he died of cancer which developed as the result of a war injury. This all happened in a short time. To her it meant a sad ending to all she had planned for her life.

 

"Mother and father never ceased to pray for me," she relates. "God was working in His own way to answer their prayers. That same summer a friend invited me to attend Riverside Bible Camp. Rev. David Enarson was preaching. Matthew 6:24 was emphasized frequently and I was made to see that I could not serve two masters. On the second night of camp the Holy Spirit worked in my heart. As I made my way down the sawdust trail to the altar I turned my life completely over to God. I covenanted with Him to go to Bible school and then to any mission field He would choose for me. Heaven was very real that night and God so close that those hours have never been erased from my memory."

 

A few years later, Bible school days over, she headed for China under the China Inland Mission. Those were exceedingly difficult days in China, but God saw her through and brought her and her fiancé, Lea Little, safely out of China to I-long Kong where their wedding took place. Now at the beginning of their fourth term they are again experiencing the faithfulness of God. She explains, "We have a responsibility toward our own four children and toward the Japanese people. Through God we shall endeavor to meet the challenge of both. God has been faithful, even as He promised He would."