BOOK REVIEW by Charles Gardner, from Gateway News.
Lily Gaynor and John Butterworth, God’s Needle, 10Publishing, 2023.
Jesus was greatly supported by wonderful women in his earthly ministry, and I want to honour the passion of women today who give their all for Christ, pouring over his feet the fragrant perfume of their love and faithfulness. Among them is Lily Gaynor.
Hailing from Liverpool, Lily shared a life of joy and excitement among poor tribespeople in Africa. At constant risk of tropical disease, and plagued by rats and mosquitoes, she could have got married and enjoyed relative comfort in England.
But after inviting Jesus into her heart and training as a nurse and midwife, she heard the distinct call of God to work in Guinea-Bissau, a Portuguese colony in West Africa, though now independent following a lengthy civil war.
And so, she set up her clinic under a mango tree amid the daunting challenge of tuberculosis, malaria and typhoid cases, along with severely malnourished children.
At the same time as treating hundreds of patients each day, she translated the New Testament into the Papel language – after first getting it down in written form.
The primitive villages where she lived and worked were unsanitary, with disease at times rampant, but “God’s Needle”1 – the wonders of penicillin – enabled many to recover and opened hearts to the Gospel which had brought them such kindness.
Of necessity, she even ventured into dentistry and veterinary work, joking that she and her colleague would have perhaps done better to fly home and marry a dentist and vet. But witchcraft and voodoo proved a much bigger, though not impossible, challenge, with one witchdoctor powerfully converted.
After 35 years of unstinting hard work, supported by faithful colleagues, many congregations of believers were built up. This was perfectly illustrated when, aged 89 and long retired, she was invited to a meeting of Guinea-Bissau Christians in London, and re-united with Bilopat (later re-named Antonio) who was miraculously healed of tetanus as a young boy.
Antonio explained that it was a celebration to thank God for sending the Gospel to Guinea-Bissau and to honour the missionaries who brought it. Aged seven, he was so sick that he wasn’t expected to live, and yet – apparently on his ‘deathbed’ – he insisted that he wanted to “enter Christ” and become a believer. Everything was done medically to help him, to no avail it seemed. But God raised him up and he became a fervent Christian leader.