From a Mining Town to Far Countries

By: George Hughes

My boyhood days were spent in a little coal-mining town. My grandmother had been a Christian for a long time, and my grandfather had been brought to Jesus through my grandmother’s godly life. He, too, had prayed until his sins were forgiven.

When I was just six years old, a Christian paper came into our home. My mother and grandparents read it and found out that Christians could receive greater blessings and more power for God’s service. My folks began to pray from then on for those experiences. Every morning and night the Bible was opened and read aloud and we would all get down on our knees and pray. I can clearly remember that my grandparents told me that I should pray for God to save me and take the desires for sin out of my life.

As time passed I started out to do the things that other boys did. I tried to smoke, hiding out in the berry fields with some of my friends. We made cigarettes out of discarded stubs that we had picked up. However, my heart was troubled each time I did so. I knew that Jesus would not want me to smoke. I knew every time I said a bad word, became angry, or did any sinful thing, that it hurt Jesus. I knew better than to do those things, but something inside me just made me do them in spite of myself. I tried to do better, but without Jesus in my heart I couldn’t help myself.

One day my mother and I packed our suitcases, got on a train, and started on a 300-mile trip to Portland, Oregon. We were on our way to an Apostolic Faith camp meeting. I will never forget arriving in the city. At the train depot, we were met by my aunt and cousin. We had been here hardly any time at all until I said a bad word. My cousin turned and looked straight at me and said, “When you are saved, you won’t say bad things like that.” I felt very miserable then.

When we came to the campground, we were given a little tent under the shade of tall evergreen trees. I noticed how happy everyone was there; and when the church services began I was surprised at the way the people sang—they sang with all their hearts. I knew I was far from being a Christian, and I prayed that God would save me too. God answered my prayer and made a real Christian out of me. He made a complete change in my life and it was not hard then to live right.

I had been taught that I must read my Bible and pray every day if I was to keep saved. My mother gave me a Bible and also some Bible storybooks. I set aside a certain time each evening when I read some chapters or pages in each. Every year we made a trip to the camp meeting in Portland.

God helped me to live for Him through all my school days even though I had no Christian friends for a long time. Sometimes the boys would tease me, and even the teacher would speak as through she thought it was silly to be a Christian, but Jesus was a true Friend to me. I would pray to Him for help in keeping my school grades good, and He never failed to answer my prayers. When I would get lonely because I had no Christian friends, Jesus helped me to know what to do. I was only seven years old when I was saved, and I never spent a day in sin from that time on.

As I grew older, I thought I should be more helpful to my mother and should help with the expenses. I worked after school hours and earned money for my clothes and for part of the cost of our yearly trips to the camp meeting. I delivered groceries. I went on errands for people. I mowed lawns and cleaned up yards, and sometimes carried away furnace ashes. When I did not have work, I would pray and God helped me to find some and to do the job well.

Sometimes we would get sick in that little mining town. We had no one to come in and pray for us, so we prayed alone, and God heard and answered our prayers many times. One winter, one of my friends became sick and I thought that if we prayed for her, as I saw the ministers in Portland pray for the sick, God would heal her. I told the others about it and several of us prayed at her bedside. God honored our faith and healed her.

While I was still just a boy, God gave me a job to do for Him—gathering up the songbooks at camp meeting after the meetings were dismissed, and distributing them again in time for the next service. I found out that doing things for others and helping in God’s work brought real joy and happiness. I continued in Christian work as I grew up, finding time to work for the Lord even after I had a regular job.

I was inducted into the army on December 16, 1942, and was assigned to a hospital unit which was being activated for overseas duty. I served as ward boy, scrubbing floors, washing dishes, and doing menial tasks, but God helped me let my light shine. When a new chaplain joined the unit and looked for an assistant, I was recommended.

As a soldier I had the privilege of living for God on the island of Guadalcanal. There, we slept under mosquito netting because of the diseases carried by mosquitoes. One night, a soldier came to my bed after others were asleep and woke me up and talked to me through the netting. He couldn’t sleep because he felt guilty and condemned of his sins. He said he knew I was a Christian, and he wanted to be one, too. I was glad I could pray for him and tell him how to get saved. In an open field, under a dark tropical sky, several of us boys began to gather in the evenings and sing songs about Jesus. We would testify, talk about the Bible, and then pray. Some got saved, and all were blessed by God there in the darkness around us.

As a Christian, I would sometimes be called to go to the bedside of a soldier who was very sick, or who was on the operating table. What a privilege it was to help make him as comfortable as possible, and also to tell him about Jesus. One boy asked me to take his Testament from his jacket and keep it for him. He treasured it as a keepsake because his mother had given it to him. After the operation he prayed and God saved him. When they came to take him to the United States, he pointed to the stump left in place of his hand and said that even though he had lost his hand, he was thankful, because he had been saved through coming to the hospital where he found Christian friends who helped him find Jesus.

A few years after returning home from military service, I was sent to Africa as a missionary to tell the people there about Jesus and His love for them. Though I have seen many new and interesting places and things during my travels, the scene I love the best is to see people pray. In Africa, it was a joy to see the people who had left their worship of wooden idols and clay idols, and were bowing before the true God, seeking His forgiveness and salvation. The greatest joy on earth is to tell others about Jesus.

After many years of being a Christian I can say that the best choice I ever made was that of choosing to serve God while still a schoolboy.

George Hughes was a minister and missionary for the Apostolic Faith organization until his death in 1953.