A gift of five dollars

At the close of our four months of meetings in Great Britain, in 1910, I felt a strong desire to send a gift of five dollars to five different objects in Britain, to show in a practical way our sympathy with the workers in these various branches of the Lord’s work.

My husband was in the midst of his accounts when I asked him to give me five pounds for this purpose. He told me it was impossible, as we had barely enough for the journey to China. As I left I wondered why I seemed to have these gifts so definitely laid upon me to send away, when there was no money. Reasoning that if the thing were really of the Lord he could himself give me what he wished me to send, I put the matter from my mind.

That evening’s mail brought a letter from a stranger living some distance away, judging from the postmark; for the letter had no address, and was not signed. The letter said: ‘I do not know you, nor have I met you, but the Lord seems to have laid it on my heart to send you this five-pound note as a farewell gift, to do what you think best with’.

It was with a joyful heart I sent off the gifts to the five Christian workers in Britain. Had the giver said it was ‘for work in China’, as was usually the case, I could not have used it for any other purpose.

Rosalind Goforth (Mrs Jonathan Goforth)

Missionary in China

From Rosalind Goforth, How I know God answers prayer, Philadelphia, The Sunday School Times Company, 1921, pages 110-111

Rosalind Goforth (1864-1942):

Rosalind Bell-Smith Goforth was born near London, England, and moved with her parents to Montreal, Canada, three years later. Her Dad was an artist, and Rosalind graduated from the Toronto School of Art in 1885. In 1887 she married Jonathan Goforth. They served together as missionaries in China and Manchuria. They were married for forty-nine years and had eleven children (Gertrude, Donald, Paul, Florence, Helen, Grace, Ruth, William, [Amelia] Constance, Mary, and [John] Frederick), five of whom died as babies or very young children. She was the author of How I Know God Answers Prayer (1921), her husband's biography, Goforth of China (1937), and Climbing: Memoirs of a Missionary's Wife (1940).

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