Page 93 - Unseen Hands by Nona Freeman

Beacons
language secretly. Gumesh, his wife, felt the same call, and against fierce objections and with much hardship, they took their small daughter Wolete-Hiyot and went to fulfill a missionary call to the Oromos.
The friends of Gebre-Ewostateos knew that he prepared his sermons by spending long hours in the wilderness, weeping in prayer. He brought the church he established into a closer relationship to God and dispensed with many old traditions that were not founded on the Bible. He endured many tribulations and painful persecu tions. He innovated a highly beneficial custom of inviting believers to his home for coffee and messages from the Word of God after the formal early morning service. He had more liberty in his home than in the church. He bold ly opposed the evils of his day, from vain religious rituals to slavery. His oldest daughter remembered how he carefully saved his money to buy slaves, free them, and give them a new start in life.
One day, his old friend Gebre-Egziabher sat on his customary three-legged stool at Michael's Church and taught against error, angering his colleagues. They in cited a religious mob by screaming, "This man is anti- Mary!" They dragged him from the church yard with the command, "Stone the heretic!"
One lady, in a dilemma between pity and fear, threw a leaf. The monk came to the home of Gebre-Ewostateos with blood streaming down his face and laughed about his "leaf blessing"; it brought no blood!
Her heart touched by his plight, Salome, the second daughter of Gebre-Ewostateos, looked up to heaven ex claiming, "God avenge you of these evil men!"
"My child, do not speak as a foolish one," the monk 91