GIRL EVANGELIST

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 135, 12 June 1929, Page 8

GIRL EVANGELIST

VISIT TO AUSTRALIA

EBMARKABLE FIGURE T ,

(From "The Post's" Representative.) O -'SYDNEY, 30th May; ■. ■ .-A. great audience in Melbourne on Sunday, listened with intense interest to .a sermon in Wesley Church by a bright-eyed, dark-haired girl of 23 years—Sister Ida \Vombwell, an evangelist who has come to Australia for three years at the invitation of the Methodist Church. Her subject was "England as I Knew It."- She is to conduct regular services in Australia, as she has done for the last six years m the English Midlands. There during the winter months she has been in thejiabit of speaking at three services on bunday, and at. one every night of the week.

_ Sister Ida is a remarkable figure, as that record alone would indicate, and the story of how she became an evangelist is. an interesting one. "When I was 16 I was converted," she said on arrival at Melbourne. '«Until then I had thought of going on the stage. I had studied elocution, and I lqvtd' reciting, and I was often called upon to recite at church and charity affairs in Nottingham. Then, when I was converted I_knew that I would have to preach My family was amused and said that'they expected that idea to last about a fortnight. Then came *he. T Goose Fair, which is a big event in Nottingham, and our church arranged a social at which I recited. When I nad finished the minister said that I ought to be a preacher. "He did not know that I wanted to be one, but my best friend went to him afterwards and told him, so he gave aea week night "meeting to speak at. Evidently he was pleased with that, for the next thing he did was to'ask me nf S to? a T Sunday: congregation of. 2000. When I did that it got into the newspapers, and from, thin on I have never been without commissions to preach."

In_her spare time Sister Ida studies —and studies hard. She deprecates emotionalism in evangelistic, work, and says that she tries to preach the Gospel with logic and commonsense. J£ first impressions count for anything. Sister Ida is .going to make her three years in Australia, extremely profitable' for her church—that is, of course/from a spiritual point of view. She is not .seeking wealth. • ■ :