Lillian Hunt Trasher, Missionary in Egypt

Today the Church commemorates Lillian Hunt Trasher, who answered Christ’s call by making a home for children in Egypt and giving her life to their care.

Lillian was born in 1887 and grew up in Brunswick, Georgia. As a young woman, she worked in an orphanage in North Carolina. She learned to make clothing, care for babies, and teach children when there was little money to spare.

While preparing for marriage, she heard a missionary speak and became convinced that God was calling her to missionary service. She ended the engagement. Reading the account of Moses in the Acts of the Apostles, she came upon God’s words, “I will send you to Egypt,” and heard in them a summons for her own life.

In 1910 she traveled to Egypt with her sister Jennie. At Asyut, beside the Nile, she joined a mission and began learning Arabic. She had arrived with a calling, but the work that would occupy her life began with one child’s need.

Lillian was summoned to a dying mother whose infant daughter was dangerously undernourished. She took the child into her care. When the mission’s directors told her to return the baby, she refused. In 1911 she rented a small house and began nursing the infant back to health.

Other children followed. Every new arrival needed food, clothing, shelter, and someone willing to accept responsibility. Lillian depended upon gifts from friends, churches, and people who encountered the work. As the household grew, the tasks multiplied with it.

In 1916 she obtained more land. She and the older children made bricks for new buildings. The orphanage also came to shelter widows and people who were blind. The home that had begun around a single infant grew through the labor of many hands.

In 1919 political upheaval interrupted the work. British authorities required Lillian to leave Egypt. She returned and continued the ministry. During that period she also became affiliated with the Assemblies of God, which helped support the orphanage.

In 1935 seven hundred children depended upon the home. Lillian described how she prayed and sought help when money ran out.

One day she had no money for the children’s meals. A man in the street handed her fifty dollars from an unnamed donor. She sent for Fize, a helper at the orphanage, and told him to send a donkey cart into town for supplies.

Later, while nursing a very sick baby, she again had almost no money for bread. She asked the Lord to provide food while she cared for the child. Then she telephoned the post office and asked whether a money order had come. One had just arrived from South Africa, for nearly forty dollars. Lillian gave thanks to God.

The orphanage also provided education and Christian teaching. Lillian kept it open during the Second World War.

People came to call her the Mother of the Nile. She died in Egypt on December 17, 1961, after half a century of service.

The child first placed in her arms had drawn her into a life whose demands she could not have measured beforehand. Christ met those demands through her willingness, the work of her companions, and the gifts of people near and far. May he awaken our compassion and give us the perseverance to remain with those whose care he entrusts to us.