The Trio"/>

The Trio"/>

Mildred Cable + Evangeline French + Francesca French

1878–1952 1869–1960 1871–1960

The adventurous life of a foreign missionary—that was all young Mildred ever dreamed of. She found a potential husband who said he shared that dream, but then he changed his mind, and he pressured Mildred to change hers. She refused. At the age of twenty-three, she joined the China Inland Mission.

And there she found a new family. Immediately she teamed up with Eva French, another Englishwoman who had already served in China for a few years. Later they were accompanied by Eva’s sister, Francesca. Together, they were known as “the trio,” and their exploits became the stuff of legend.

Missionaries should keep moving, they thought. Start a new ministry, encourage local believers, and then let them run the show while you move on—that was the plan. The trio kept pushing westward, from the safer coastal regions toward the untamed desert. Mildred wrote that they “spent long years in following trade-routes, tracing faint caravan tracks, searching out innumerable by-paths and exploring the most hidden oases. . . . Five times we traversed the whole length of the desert, and in the process we had become part of its life.” While other explorers fitted out large caravans for their journeys, these missionaries traveled light, with a few Chinese guides and a few pack animals to carry their Christian literature. Along the way they stopped, of course, to share the gospel. In the last city inside the Great Wall, they started a Bible school. As they crisscrossed the Chinese terrain, they were often in danger and occasionally suffered injuries, but they regularly experienced miraculous protection from God.

Who’s on your team? These three women supported one another through thick and thin. Who does that for you? This trio seemed to instill bravery in each other, working together to follow their mutual calling. Do you have friends who call out the best qualities in you? Can you do that for them?

Find your “trio” (or whatever number you have). Talk about your common calling and how you can help each other follow it. Get past small talk and start knitting yourselves together into a strong fabric of adventurous service to God.

A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.

Ecclesiastes 4:12