In celebration of International Women’s Month, we’re remembering a person who was influential on young Ruth Bell (later Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Billy Graham).

Ruth grew up in China where her parents were medical missionaries. Her father, Dr. Nelson Bell, ran a hospital in Tsing Kiang, a small, rural village. The Bell family employed a nanny (or nurse) for their children, who they affectionately called Wang Nai Nai. Ruth Graham writes in her book, It’s My Turn, of how Wang Nai Nai modeled what it means to truly seek God’s Word.

From It’s My Turn:

We grew up feeling she was a large, reliable, kind, and understanding Rock of Gibraltar. Then one day we put her on the scales. She was a reliable, kind, and understanding Rock of Gibraltar, but as for being large, even in her padded winter garments she barely weighed ninety-six pounds.

She was our amah as we grew up: our Chinese nurse, Wang Nai Nai. And we children were not the only ones who loved her. Everyone did. And with good reason: she loved everyone.

I can still see her sitting on a low stool in the upstairs back bedroom, her paper hand-bound Chinese hymnal open in her hands, singing in her plain, flatly nasal voice the Chinese words to Cowper’s famous old hymn:

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That founding in his day,
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.

And to my innocent child’s mind, she was the picture of a saintly old soul at worship. Not until years later, when we were considered “old enough to be told about such things,” did we learn how perfectly Cowper’s old hymn fit Wang Nai Nai.

For when much younger, Wang Nai Nai and her husband had been “procurers.” That was a time when baby girls were not generally wanted. So the shady business of buying unwanted girls to sell to certain houses in Shanghai was not difficult.

But one day, Wang Nai Nai heard from Aunt Sophie Graham, one of the pioneer Presbyterian missionaries, about a God who loved her but hated sin. To become a child of God one must repent of sin and ask God for forgiveness through His Son, Jesus.

It was as blunt and simple as that.

Wang Nai Nai repented and turned to God.

Mother and Daddy told how when she first came to work for them, she longed to be able to read her Chinese Bible for herself. They found her flat on the floor one night, close to the fireplace with her Bible open, trying to learn the characters by the light of the dying fire. After that, they bought her a lamp of her own. (We had no electricity then.) And so she taught herself to read the Bible.

Of such material God makes some of His choicest saints.

Find out more about Ruth Bell Graham and other women who were an inspirational part of Billy Graham’s ministry in The Journey of Faith tour at the Billy Graham Library. Plan your visit today.