What will your life accomplish?

You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live and we are not given a minute longer.

Miracle Baby

John and Betty Stam met at Moody Bible Institute while both were studying to become missionaries to China. After going there separately under the China Inland Mission (CIM), they were unexpectedly reunited and a year later were married. In September 1934, their daughter, Helen, was born. Their lives were suddenly changed on December 6, 1934, when communist soldiers arrested the Stams.

The Stams were forced to make a difficult march to the town of Miao-shou. They were horrified to hear the soldiers discuss plans to murder their baby to make the trip easier. An old farmer stepped forward to object. Little Helen was spared when the man agreed to take her place—and was shot on the spot.

Arriving in Miao-shou, Helen was taken from them. Marched to a place of execution, a local Christian doctor begged for their lives. He was condemned to die and John begged for mercy for the doctor. John, Betty, and the doctor were all beheaded.

Helen was found by a Chinese evangelist named Lo who, at great risk, was able to bring her to her grandparents in Tsinan. The news of the "Miracle Baby" and her parents' martyrdom spread around the world. Hundreds pledged their lives to missionary service. A fellow missionary wrote "A life which had the longest span of years might not have been able to do one-hundredth of the work for Christ which they have done in a day."

adapted from the The One Year® Book of Christian History by E. Michael and Sharon Rusten (Tyndale) pp 682-83