Eliza Agnew

In 1839 at age thirty-two, Eliza Agnew was a teacher at the first girls’ school in all of Asia—Uduvil Girls’ School. For the forty years she taught there, 600 of the 1300 students she taught graduated as followers of Jesus thanks to Eliza praying for them and showing them the love Jesus had for them. She eventually became known as the “mother of a thousand daughters.”

Not Done Yet

Eliza, a single young woman, took a post at Uduvil Girls’ School in Jaffna, on the island of Ceylon. When she was ten, she’d heard a missionary doctor speak about people who didn’t know Jesus and lived far away. Since then, they were in her mind and heart. All she wanted was to share the love of Jesus to those who didn’t know Him.

Many of the girls who attended Uduvil Girls’ School seemed to fit that category. They came from unchristian homes—no faith, no belief, no Jesus, no nothing. But this girls’ school was also considered a kind of high society.

Traditions were different in Jaffna: the women owned the land they lived on, and property was passed down from mother to daughter—not father to son.

This made the girls in Jaffna and the girls’ school a bit different, even pompous.

Maybe this was why God had called Eliza there. From the start, her heart was set on these girls, as if God had set them aside just for her to teach and show them all about His love.

The girls immediately loved Eliza. In front of them, she freely lived out her relationship with Jesus. If things weren’t going just right, Eliza would often whisper, “I’ll tell the Master,” and the girls knew that is exactly what she did.

They heard her.

Many of her students would say they had no need for an alarm bell to wake them, because Eliza’s prayers would waken them every morning at the same time. They heard and listened to her pray for the girls individually, as well as the school as a whole.

They witnessed their teacher return again and again to a home in town with a sick baby, so sick she was on the verge of death and recovery seemed hopeless. But it didn’t stop Eliza from going into this distressed home every day at 11 o’clock, where she’d go into the little girls’ room, close the door behind her, get on her knees, and pray for the child.

And the child was healed.

Through the years, most of the students who came and went under Eliza’s tutelage found Jesus for themselves.

She was so attached to her girls that as long as she worked at the school, almost all her vacations were to visit her former students who had graduated. Most were married with children of their own, and Eliza loved to spend time with them, check in on their lives, talk with them, pray for them. She even got to know their children, and eventually their children’s children—some even became future students of Eliza’s.

Still, she never stopped focusing on her current students. And with her kind and gentle way, many of the students called her “Mother.”

After forty years of teaching, Eliza retired, and when her family in the United States heard this, they urged her to come home and live out her later years with them. Eliza had never been back even once since she’d moved away. It would only make sense she would spend her retirement years back home with them.

And she contemplated it. But God was not calling her to go home to her family. And as much as they wanted her to return home, what they wanted paled in comparison to what God was calling her to do. Even in retirement, she was not done working. She was still working for God, and His voice was louder, stronger.

She wrote a letter home: “I do not know what others may think, but, as for me, I have a strong feeling that my work in Jaffna is not yet done. “Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah” is my daily prayer.”

And Great Jehovah did guide her, as He’d done since she was a child. Now, God was guiding her to stay put.

While she stopped working at the girls’ school, she was led to pack up and move closer to some of her first students, who she now referred to as her “old girls.” And among them, there was still work to be accomplished.

She stayed close to her “old girls,” even giving the final years of her life to them. Over time, some of them had strayed from Jesus, and Eliza was there for them and helped guide them back to Jesus.

She quietly continued to watch over her “old girls”—praying for them, living out her relationship with Jesus in front of them, guiding and teaching them—showing them what a life with that kind of love could be like.

“Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come” (Psalm 71:18, NIV).