Lilies
are in the field and also seen on hills. These lilies on the Kolli Hills had
caught my attention for some reason. That afternoon when I reached Kolli Hills,
the sun was shining above our heads. When I captured these lilies on my Lumia
Mobile, I never knew a woman who lived on this hill 100 years ago uttered a
prayer out of the dryness of her heart, at the sight of these flowers that bloomed
brilliantly in that dry season!
She said,
"Let me be like that, Lord, flowering best when life seems most dry and dead."
Evelyn Brand, fondly called later as Mother Brand had come over to these hills from England 100 years ago to live and die here, only lead at least some from death to life!
As I stood in awe before the God who created the mountains and called people to go to the ends of the earth I was perplexed at the paradox of mission-immigration today for better prospects of life in the west!
I have found the following beautiful piece about Mother Brand and sharing it here in continuation to my earlier post (https://pvarticles.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-mann-on-mountains-of-death.html) for those who did not have a chance to hear about her. (The source is acknowledged)
- Philipose Vaidyar
 |
The Lily on Kolli Hills: Mother Brand
|
“Evie Brand burst into tears. She pleaded with the mission
board, but its leaders would not yield. Rules were rules, they said. She was
too old to go back to India. She must retire.
The decision was hard for the board. Evie had long
sacrificed comforts and family to the mission. Year after year, she had lived
entirely on a small inheritance and set aside her official salary to buy land
for the mission. But ever since her husband Jesse died of fever, pioneering
with her in the Mountains of Death, the mission had not been sure what to do
with her. The one task she wanted--to open new work in the mountains--was
denied her because she was elderly, single...and opinionated.
From the board's point of view, it was senseless to appoint a
68-year-old woman to another five-year term. But years before, Jesse and Evie
had vowed to reach five mountain ranges with the Gospel. Four still had to be
reached. Evie felt God was calling her to fulfill that vow.
Evie grasped at one last straw. "Please just send me
back for one year," she pleaded. "I promise not to make any more
trouble. At the end of one year, I will retire." Reluctantly, the board
agreed. Had they known the secret plan that Evie had confided to her daughter,
they surely would have refused permission.
Then Came
the Shocker
Evie said goodbye to friends and relatives in England and was back in India by
January 1947. The mission appointed her to the plains. Evie did not mind much.
It was only for a year!
Camping in the Kalrayan range on every holiday, she plotted
her next move. Her son designed a little house for her, and she scrounged
building materials and organized it into loads light enough for helpers to tote
uphill.
Her year with the mission ended. Fellow missionaries
gathered to wish her a tearful goodbye and presented her with a parting
present: a lovely lamp.
Evie informed them gleefully that she was retiring from the
mission--retiring to take up independent work in the mountains, to fulfill
the commission that she and Jesse had undertaken years before. Her colleagues'
protests and warnings fell on deaf ears. As far as Evie was concerned, life
begins at 70.
Frilly
Dresses
Strictly speaking, life begins a little sooner. Evelyn was born in England in
1879. Her father was a well-to-do merchant; as a young woman, Evie cut a fine
figure in plumed hats and frilly dresses. Her family was involved in missions,
street work, and charities. Her father protected his daughters, even trying to
dissuade them from marriages that would take them away from him, but one by one
they started families.
Evie learned to paint. Her idol was John Joseph Turner, who
seemed able to capture light on canvas. To the end of her days, she sketched
and painted with gusto. But when she entered her 20s, she found that art did
not feed her soul.
Evie was 30 when she spent a few weeks in Australia, helping
a sister. Sailing home, she sensed a divine calling to be a missionary. Yet how
was she to break the news to Father? The arrival of a young missionary from
India helped. Evie found Jesse Brand too intense for her taste. But at a
missionary meeting, he seemed to look directly at her as he described the filth
and squalor on the mission field. She heard an unspoken question in his words:
could she, a fashionable girl, handle such things? Resolve rose within her.
Yes, with God's help, she could! And she was riled up enough to tell her father
so.
He took her announcement hard. A missionary? Aren't there
enough lost souls in London? Evie insisted that she had to obey God's call.
Finally, her father yielded. She could go, but she must allow him to provide
her entire support. At her farewell party, she wore her usual finery. "She
looks more like an actress than a missionary," said someone.
Wedding
Bells in Madras
Assigned to Madras in the plains of India, Evie discovered that Jesse Brand had
been transferred there too. She fell in love with him and with his vision for
the people of the Mountains of Death. Then she found out that Jesse was
engaged. Hot and shaking, she fled to her bathroom and poured cold water over
herself. She had made a fool of herself!
Her heart grew dry. Looking at India's flowers, blooming
brilliantly in the dry season, she prayed, "Let me be like that, Lord,
flowering best when life seems most dry and dead."
Language study took her to the hills. Jesse contacted her.
His engagement was off. Would Evie marry him? They would work the mountains
together.
Evie's honeymoon was a "perfect" introduction to
life in the hills. Dressed in wedding white, she joined Jesse in the canvas
dholi (carrier). Her bearers had gone off to hunt a wild pig. New men were
found, but thunder rumbled in the sky. Heat wilted her dress. She tried not to
give way to terror as the men lurched along steep precipices. Thorns caught her
clothes. Rain drenched the carrier. When she dismounted to walk, she sank deep
into mud holes. They lost their way in the dark.
Mountains
of Death
That was the beginning of their work in the mountains. It was not glamorous. At
the start, a dying man gave his heart to Christ. It was seven years before they saw another convert on the
Kolli range. Because Hindu priests feared losing their influence and revenue,
they opposed the Gospel. People wanted to follow Jesus because God enabled
Jesse to heal many of their diseases, but the priests frightened the people
away from the new faith.
Jesse taught them better farming methods, treated their
sickness, built houses, and fought their tax battles. He showed Evie the five
ranges of hills he hoped to win for Christ: their own Kolli, and beyond it
Pachais, Kalrayan, Peria Malai, and Chitteris.
The two went from village to village preaching the Gospel
and tending the sick. Yet the people always pulled back from Christianity for fear of their
Hindu priests. A breakthrough came when a priest caught the fever. Jesse hurried to
his aid. As he died, the priest entrusted his children to the Brands. The Jesus
God must be the true one, he said, because the Brands alone had helped him in
his hour of death.
The people marveled at a God who made Jesse care for an
enemy's orphaned children. Evie eventually became a mother to many abandoned
Indian children. Through her motherly love, a small Christian community was
born.
Still, the progress of the Gospel remained painfully slow.
Painful also was the need for Jesse and Evie to leave their two children, Paul
and Connie, in England for schooling. Evie said that something "just died
in me" the day she had to say goodbye to them. It was the hardest test of
loyalty God asked of her.
Widowed by
Blackwater Fever
In England, Paul and Connie learned that their father was dead. He had
contracted blackwater fever. Although Evie felt hollow, she prayed that the
Lord would allow Jesse's death to win more souls than his life had. Hindu and
Christian alike mourned the man who had poured out love to them, and they vied
with each other for the usually contemptible job of digging a grave and
lowering a dead body into it. Evie struggled on in the work alone until a
replacement was found. Jesse had promised to show her a shortcut to one
village. "Now he'll not be able to," she lamented. She was wrong.
Riding his horse one day, it remembered the new path and carried her along it.
After a visit with her children in England, Evie was
determined to return to the Kolli hills. Mission leaders were uneasy. Would it
work?
They were right to ask. Evie expected co-workers to do as
Jesse would have. When they didn't, she spoke up and tension resulted. She
pleaded to be allowed to start new work on one of the other ranges. Mission
leaders refused. Mountain work did not show good returns. They transferred Evie
to the plains. At times she considered leaving the mission to strike out on her
own, but circumstances always held her back...until she retired.
Fulfilling
Jesse's Dream
At 70, she began to fulfill Jesse's dream. Everyone called her
"Granny," but she felt young. Just as in the old times, she traveled
from village to village riding a hill pony, camping, teaching, and dispensing
medicine. She rescued abandoned children. The work was harder now and she was
thin. Carriers whacked her head on a rock. She never got her balance back after
that and walked with bamboo canes. Yet she was full of joy and laughter.
"Praise God!" she exclaimed continually.
Despite broken bones, fevers, and infirmities, she labored
on. In fifteen years, she almost eradicated the Guinea worm from the Kalrayan
range. Through her efforts, the five ranges were evangelized, and a mission
work was planted on each. She added two more ranges to her plans. Granny insisted
this extraordinary accomplishment was God's doing, not hers.
Wherever she was, she proclaimed Christ. In the hospital
with a broken hip, she wheeled herself from room to room (or scooted on a
carpet!) and talked to the other patients. She painted landscapes for them. Her
bones knit in record time, and back she went to the mountains to fight
marijuana growers.
When her son, Paul, visited her in the mountains, he found
her looking younger. Her smile, brighter than ever, made the difference.
"This is how to grow old," he wrote. "Allow everything else to
fall away, until those around you see just love."
Granny tore some ligaments and had to go to the plains for
treatment. Before she could return to her beloved mountains, her speech became
jumbled and her memory failed. Seven days later, on December 18, 1974, she
died. The next day her body was taken back to the hills and laid beside Jesse's
as a multitude wept. The woman who had been declared too old for India had
carried on for 24 more years, working almost to her day of death.
About Paul
Brand
Evie's son, Paul Brand, became a famous surgeon. He also developed new ways of
treating leprosy. With Philip Yancey, he wrote Fearfully and
Wonderfully Made and In His Image, two books that compare
the body of Christ with the human body. He also wrote The Gift of Pain and God's
Forever Feast.
_____________
Courtesy: https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1901-2000/evelyn-granny-brand-11630789.html
Read more on the Brands with more visuals at The Mann on the Mountains of Death
