Elisabeth Elliot: The missionary who lived with the tribe that killed her husband

Elisabeth Elliott was born Elisabeth Howard in 1926 – one of six children – to missionary parents in Brussels, Belgium.

Her parents moved to Philadelphia, USA, a few months after Elisabeth was born. She later described them as devout, disciplined Christians who built their family life around the Bible.

‘We grew up with the understanding that the scriptures were top priority... we had bible reading and prayer at the end of dinner every night as we sat around the table, and up until the age of, I suppose, seven or eight, each of us children was put to bed by one of our parents and prayed with, and sometimes we had the bible read to us again. so we heard the bible read aloud at least twice a day, sometimes three times a day.

‘And the other very, very powerful influence in our lives, I'm sure was the fact that my father got up himself between 4:30 and 5:00 in the morning in order to have time alone with the Lord.

And when we came to breakfast, we knew that we had been prayed for by... meaning my father was in his study for those hours before breakfast with his prayer lists and his notebooks and his bible and down on his knees praying for us.’

Elisabeth reckoned she herself came to faith at around the age of five. This was followed by a definite commitment to Christ when she was twelve: “I think I realised that if Jesus was my saviour, he also had to be my Lord, so I then committed my life and said, ‘Lord, I want you to do anything you want with me.’”

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