When I was a student in seminary we served a country circuit which had four churches. One of them was Allen-Lee Memorial, named in part after Young John Allen. It was located in the community of Lone Oak, Georgia.

When Young John Allen was fifteen he attended a revival at the Methodist church in Lone Oak. During the service he became so deeply convicted of the need of salvation that he jumped out of a window of the church and ran off in the woods to hide. But, he returned to the church, and gave his life to Christ. Eight years later, in 1859, he sailed to China as the first Methodist missionary in that vast empire.

I have read letters he wrote back home to relatives. I have seen the Bible he and his family read each night. And, I have thought often of how God used the life of a country b…