Triple Play"/>

Triple Play"/>

Eliza Grew Jones + Anna Leonowens + Margaret Landon

1803–38 1831–1915 1903–93

The American missions movement was still young when Eliza Jones and her husband, John, sailed to Burma in 1830. It had been just two decades since the Judsons had made that same journey, and Adoniram was still serving there.

Eliza had a knack for languages, and she put it to good use after being transferred to Siam (modern-day Thailand) in 1832. First she produced a Siamese-English dictionary. Then she created a Romanized script for the Siamese language, making it easier for Westerners to learn. Eliza also wrote songs, poems, and school lessons in Siamese, as well as translating some portions of Scripture.

Her work gave Eliza a deep appreciation for the Siamese culture. She talked about Christ in ways that Buddhists could understand. And she certainly opened doors of communication between Siam and the West.

Fast-forward to 1862, when a young widow named Anna Leonowens moved to Bangkok, hired as a governess to teach Western language and culture to the multiple wives and many children of the King of Siam. Though she was asked to keep religion out of it, Anna often let her Christian faith inform her teaching. “If any germ of love and truth fell from my heart into the heart of even the meanest of those wives and concubines and children,” she wrote later, “. . . I did not labor in vain among them.”

Move on into the next century, when Margaret Landon and her husband went to Siam as Presbyterian missionaries. Hearing Anna’s story, Margaret thought it might make a good novel. She published Anna and the King of Siam in 1944, inspiring the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I.

Maybe you’ve seen that show or heard its music—“Shall We Dance?” or “I Whistle a Happy Tune”—without realizing that part of its heritage was the faithful work of these three Christian women. And it makes us wonder what the impact of our own Christian service might be a generation or two from now. Will that kid you’re teaching in Sunday school translate the book that inspires a person to help someone else do something amazing? You may never know . . . but it could happen.

You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.

2 Timothy 2:2