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Editor’s Note: Tex Williams is a long time missionary to Africa, missions instructor, and now director of World Bible School. Although he would never admit it, Tex has been influential in tens of thousands coming to know Christ as Lord and Savior and planting a large number of churches. But behind every great man of God, there always lives some very powerful women of grace, strength, and influence.

    I often reflect on what the God driven influences were in my life that led me to full time work in the Lord’s kingdom. The list is long and includes parents, preachers, friends and many others. But one person stands out in my mind. To me she was “Sister Stone,” my Bible School teacher at the Columbus Avenue church in Waco, Texas.

    The Stones ran a dry cleaning shop in Waco. Sister Stone worked at the front counter. She also altered clothes. Customers and friends were always welcome to stop and rest as there were benches in the shop where they could sit. Conversations usually led to Bible studies and several customers were led to the Lord.

    They opened their shop at 7:00 o’clock every morning six days a week, and closed at 6:00 p.m. Between the time they closed and opened the next morning, Sister Stone prepared Bible class lessons for boys and girls 10 to 12 years of age. If you went to Sunday School at the Columbus Avenue church, you were assigned to Sister Stone’s class. You had no other choice and after you were in her class, you wanted no other choice.

    She not only taught us the Bible, she was also committed to our becoming faithful, active servants of God. To those of us who were boys she would say, “Why don’t you become a missionary, or a preacher, or an elder in the church?” To the girls she would suggest, “You need to marry a preacher or a missionary or become a good Bible class teacher.” She would pick out subjects she felt we needed to study such as What Must I Do To Be Saved? She bought little booklets and laboriously wrote by hand in each one of them all of the scriptures that pertained to the selected topic, giving one to each of us students. Then she graciously and lovingly demanded that we memorize all the passages. No one dared or wanted to come to the next class without having memorized all that was assigned.

She was committed to our becoming faithful, active servants of God.

    Sister Stone also emphasized the need for us to spend time each day reading our Bibles and she prodded us into complying by offering incentives. Once she told us if we would read the Bible every day for as specified period of time she would give us a prize. I read daily and received two prizes. One was a pencil which was hard to come by in the closing years of the depression. The other prize was a cardboard sign about 8 by 10 inches in size. It was blue with black lettering that said, HAVE YOU READ YOUR BIBLE TODAY?

    I took my sign home and my mother tacked it up on the wall at the end of my bunk. She always saw that there was a Bible and a coal oil lamp on a table beside my bed. During my Jr. High School years, many nights I crawled into my bunk, looked up and saw the sign Sister Stone had given me, got my Bible and read a chapter or two. A few verses were not really what she expected or accepted.

    When I got into high school I was usually tired from playing football or working at various chores that were assigned at home. If I went to bed late, I knew that sign was there on the wall, so I would undress with my back to it, climb into bed, and turn out the light — which was electric by that time. But I could still see the sign through the dark, even though it was not the glowing kind. I guess it was indelibly imprinted in my mind. Many times I would turn the light back on and read my Bible.

    Sister Stone picked out some of us, boys especially, and would hold us after class for special admonitions. I experienced several of those! She would back me against the wall, poke me in the stomach and say, “One day I am going to hear you preach. Don’t you forget that! I also think you would make a good missionary.” She was never harsh.

    After high school I went to a state university to major in animal husbandry, intending to stay in the field of agriculture. However, Sister Stone’s admonitions along with the influence of others never left me. At the end of one year I left to attend a Christian college where other influences took hold and I ended up a full time servant of the Lord as an evangelist and missionary.

    As I recall, Sister Stone never weighed over 100 pounds and never left the state of Texas but once in her life, but her heritage lives on in me and the lives of many of her Bible class students... and hundreds of those her students have brought to the Lord!

    Please never underestimate the value of the work you do to influence others to love and serve the Lord.

“...God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted...those parts that seem to be weaker are indispensable...” (1 Cor. 12:18, 22)