Her grandfather helped convince Dr. L. Nelson Bell to become a medical missionary to China. The Bells served with the American Southern Presbyterian Mission in Qingjiangpu from 1916-1941.

Suspicions about foreigners and outright hostility made life difficult for missionaries like James Graham, as he traveled from village to village with the gospel message. “They didn’t trust foreigners in the beginning,” Reid recalls. “They pelted him with rocks when he entered a town,” she says. “He came home with bruises all over his body and grandmother would wash his wounds and put medicine on them.”

Graham was undeterred, however. “That’s the way he lived,” Reid says. “He would go right back out again. He knew that’s what the Lord would want him to do.”

Gradually Graham won the confidence and love of the people, and planted several churches in Jiangsu Province, about 50 miles north of Shanghai. They survived the Boxer Rebellion, which lasted from 1899-1901, an uprising that sought to rid China of foreign influences.

“It was a wild and wooly time of their history,” Reid notes. “We always had bandits around us.” She describes invaders who plundered local villages and carried off young girls. The kidnap victims were often sexually abused.

Reid’s father, James Jr., also answered the call as a missionary to China. “He was reputed to be the best speaker of Chinese of any foreigner, and he preached all over China,” Reid says. He later became a linguist, professor and tennis coach at Wheaton College.

A substantial distance separated Reid from her grandparents when they lived in China. “It took us three days on the Yangtze River to get there, and we visited from time to time,” she says.

During those trips to her grandparents, Reid became a friend to Ruth Bell Graham. “She was a marvelous person, even in childhood,” Reid recalls. “Her parents taught her the Bible, and as a child, she was already thinking deep things of God.”

One day the two girls walked together atop the city’s ancient walls. As they strolled along they were startled to hear a baby’s cry. When they looked down at the base of the wall into a rocky ditch – what was once a moat – they saw a Chinese baby covered with flies and dirt.

The two girls ran to Dr. Nelson Bell’s hospital to summon help. “They cleaned and fed her and she became healthy,” Reid says. “Ruth and I gave her the name Virginia Louise after our mothers.”

Eventually, the abandoned girl’s parents claimed her. “That was the last we knew of her. We prayed for a long time for her to be saved.”

Reid has fond memories of her years with Ruth, and they continued their friendship at Wheaton College. “Ruth was a very unusual person. She was spiritually head and shoulders above anyone else – very gifted.”

After the Japanese attacked China in 1937, the Grahams left. Mary returned to the U.S. where she attended Wheaton College, and afterward she married John Reid. The two became missionaries to Yokosuka, Japan in 1949, where they planted two churches. “The churches in Yokosuka are growing and prospering today,” she notes. “The believers there have a lot of opposition, which has contributed to them being strong and solid.”

Reid and her husband served 30 years in Japan. She laments the fact that many young people are unwilling to make long-term commitments overseas. “It seems like people are not that interested in giving their lives, and this grieves us a lot,” she says. “There are too many things to get your attention away from God,” she notes, “like movies and ball games.”

In the primitive area where she grew up in China, there was little entertainment. “We didn’t have entertainment, so Ruth’s parents and my parents read good books to us at night.”

“As I look back, I realize it was a wonderful experience to grow up in China,” Reid says. “Missionaries like Dr. Bell and my father gave themselves completely for the service of the Lord,” she notes. “The Lord had it in mind that this story needed to be told.”