Mary Slessor: Winning Hearts through Humble Service

“I do not care where He places me or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me. For in the easiest positions He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient.”―Mary Slessor

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” This well-known saying gets to the heart of what the apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 9:22: “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.”

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many missionaries did not apply this idea to their ministries. But in 1876, a woman named Mary Slessor went to West Africa and challenged the norms of the time.

Humble Beginnings

Mary Mitchell Slessor was born on December 2, 1848, in Aberdeen, Scotland. Her family was part of the poor working class, and her father struggled with alcoholism. When Mary was just eleven, she went to work to help support the family, spending half her day working at a mill and the other half at the school run by the mill owners. By fourteen, Mary’s father and brothers had died, leaving behind Mary, her two sisters, and her mother. She started working in the mill from six a.m. to six p.m.

Mary’s mother was a woman of deep faith, regularly reading the United Presbyterian Church’s publication, the Missionary Record. Inspired by her mother’s example, Mary developed her own deep faith, going on to teach at a nearby mission. When she learned that David Livingstone, a fellow Scot and missionary, had died, she decided to follow in his footsteps and become a missionary to Africa.

A Courageous Calling

When Mary arrived in West Africa, she was assigned to Calabar, in present-day Nigeria, to minister to the Efik people. Mary spent her first three years in the missionary compound, working in the local missions. After a sixteen-month furlough in Scotland after contracting malaria, Mary returned to Calabar, moving three miles farther into the region. She lived among the women of the area to learn the language, and while there she was confronted with issues arising from the traditional religion and superstitions.

Mary’s rapport with the Efik people grew as she mastered the language. She gained their trust, confidence, and friendship, and as a result she was able to greatly influence them. Three years later, Mary had to return to Scotland for another health furlough, but when she returned to Africa, again, she went farther away from central Calabar, into the bush to the remote region of Okoyong.

In those places, twins were often abandoned because of a belief that an evil spirit had fathered the second baby and that the mother had committed some great sin. Mary saved hundreds of these babies, adopting some herself. Another common practice among the Efik people was determining if someone was guilty of a crime by making that person drink poison. Mary brought the light of Jesus and taught the people to turn from their old ways to worship the one true God.

A Lasting Legacy

Mary Slessor was so influential in Calabar and the surrounding area that the British government appointed her as vice-consul to the region, where she presided over the court of the local people. She was the first woman to ever hold that office.

When she died on January 13, 1915, her body was taken to the colonial settlement at Duke Town, where British officials attended her funeral to honor her. To this day, people in Calabar refer to her by the honorary title Obongawan Okoyong, which means Queen of Okoyong. Though her time in Africa was met with intermittent illness, the legacy she left behind was one of an unwavering commitment to the Lord and the people He had called her to serve. Mary’s life reminds us that faithful service is not measured by comfort or ease, but by a willingness to lay aside our own preferences and go wherever God leads, becoming all things to all people for the sake of the gospel.