Lisa Barry: In a society where the elderly are generally thought of as insignificant, it's refreshing to find someone who values the wisdom of the aging. All this week, Elisabeth Elliot has been revealing who the most influential people have been in her life. Today we'll meet two ladies who each had distinctive roles in Elisabeth's life. As you listen, think about God's gracious provision in your own life and thank Him for it. Now let's get started with this Friday edition of Gateway To Joy.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, telling you today about one more woman of influence in my life. She was Annie Trumbull Howard. I said "was." She "is." She's still alive. She's my father's youngest sister, and she never married, so she was always available to us grandchildren. She is still, insofar as she is able to be, available to me, because she lives way down in Pennsylvania and we live in Massachusetts.

But my dear Aunt Anne-she changed her name from "Annie," which I think was her real name given to her by her parents. She changed it to Anne many years, and she asked us not to call her Aunt Anne anymore, but just to call her Anne. Well, I learned everything that I know about flowers and many trees and mosses from my dear Aunt Anne.

There's a lovely family place in Franconia, New Hampshire that was built in 1889 by my great-great uncle, Will Priem. That beautiful place, which we call Gale Cottage, has been in the family ever since. It is still in the family. I can remember some wonderfully happy times with Aunt Anne when we were there with her and our grandparents.

She would take me out into the field and show me the Devil's Paintbrush and the little Twin flower and various kinds of mosses. We would walk down through the perfume of the balsams and the pines in the woods. I remember the excitement with which she pointed out a Ladyslipper to me. I never forgot that. I can still see just where it was, in sort of a wet place close to the little Gale River.

When my mother had babies-I'm number two of six, so I can remember the last three babies being born-it was always Aunt Anne that came to take care of us. I can remember one time when we went to her house. She was living then with my grandparents. She was fixing a beautiful table for one of their wedding anniversaries. I can't remember exactly which it was. But she, in her very delightful way, put together sort of a replica of the city of Hartford, Connecticut. She even had a little gold dome to show which was the capital building there.

And she had a little train. I was so excited, looking at all these cute little things that she had put in the middle of the table, that I dumped the coal out of that tiny little train onto the table. It got all mixed up with some of the other things in the decorations. If it had been I, I would have been very upset by a niece that was so careless. I'll never forget the way Aunt Anne, when she came in and saw what I had done, she said to me, "Oh, Betsy Bubbles, we won't do that again!" She used to call me Betsy Bubble, not Betsy Bubbles.

She lives now in a retirement place in the Mennonite and Amish country of Pennsylvania. Whenever we have an opportunity, we try to go and visit her. She has one fairly small room, but she still has many of the things that I always associate with her. Beautiful pictures of the white mountains. A picture of the cottage. Pictures of my grandparents, her parents. Various little knick-knacks and things that people have given her. She is always so interested in whatever we're doing, not thinking about herself but always asking questions about us. She always has things in the refrigerator for us. I thank God for my dear Aunt Anne.

Then another woman of influence was the headmistress of the school that I attended when I was 14 years old, a boarding school which was then in Orlando, Florida. Mrs. DuBois was the headmistress. Her husband was the principal of the school. She taught me several principles that have become part of my life.

She reiterated what my mother had taught me about doing the next thing. It wasn't until after my mother died that I learned that there is a poem about that. Apparently, it comes from a carving in an old English parsonage down by the sea. The writer says, "There came in the twilight a message for me; its quaint Saxon legend deeply engraven hath, as it seems to me, teaching from heaven. And all through the hours, the quiet words ring like a low inspiration: Do the next thing."

Mrs. DuBois spoke each evening in vespers, as it was called. Very often she would teach us things which were usable for the rest of our lives. Do the next thing was one of them. Another thing that she used to say was, "Don't go around with a Bible under your arm if you didn't sweep under the bed."

That was because every morning we had inspection in our rooms before breakfast. We did not have wall-to-wall carpeting and we did not have vacuum cleaners. We had wooden floors with throw rugs. Believe me, it was a real nuisance to sweep with a broom those throw rugs and of course the floor after the throw rugs were swept. It was a great temptation, if we were in a hurry, to sweep the dirt under the bed. What Mrs. DuBois meant by saying, "Don't go around with a Bible under your arm if you didn't sweep under the bed," was that she did not want any pious talk coming out of a messy room. We were being disobedient if we left our rooms messy, and so there was no room for any pious talk.

She also used to say, "It's those tiny little things in your life that are going to crack you up when you get out of this school." And she would clap her hands when she said, "crack you up." She was meaning that if we were fudging a little bit on our duties, and we were given all kinds of work to do in addition to our school work-for example, arranging flowers, ironing tablecloths, washing little children's clothes.

There were little children in those days. There were a lot of missionary children, from kindergarten on up to high school. And we high school girls had to do a lot of the housekeeping kind of work. The boys of course worked outside and did heavy lifting and that sort of thing. But every single week we knew exactly what our responsibilities were. If we had not done them carefully and thoroughly and faithfully, then we deserved what she said. It's those tiny little things that are going to crack you up when you get out of this school.

Well, of course we students made a joke about that. We would go around, if we noticed one of our fellow students fudging on his work, we didn't have to say it. All we had to do was to slap our hands together and put our thumb on our little finger the way Mrs. DuBois would do, indicating those tiny little things.

Of course, it's a spiritual principle. The Bible says, "He that is faithful in that which is least, I will make him ruler over many things."

Mrs. DuBois was a redoubtable figure, probably 5'10", weighing pretty close to, I would say, 190 pounds in those days. When she swept into a room, she was like a galleon in full sail. If I were asked to describe my relationship with Mrs. DuBois, I think I would have to say it was one of abject terror.

She called me into her office more than once and gave me what we used to call "reamed, speamed and dry cleaned," meaning that we were, shall we say, taken apart or dressed down. I'm sure I deserved it.

Among the many things that she insisted that I should do were write poetry to put in the yearbook or to use for a banquet that was coming up. She insisted that I was to write some of the paragraphs that were to go into the yearbook, in addition to my usual writing and schoolwork. She forced me to get up on platforms and speak, which she knew I hated to do because I was very shy. She was quick to point out that shyness was a form of selfishness. She also taught me piano lessons from time to time. There was never any certainty as to when she might summon me, perhaps even from a class. There happened to be time for her to teach, and so I would be called.

So I learned a little bit more about playing the piano under her. I learned to speak in public. I learned to write. And she in many ways corrected my wayward thoughts. I'm grateful for Mrs. DuBois and everything that I learned in that school.

There were times when she was, I would say in retrospect, unreasonable and illogical. But I remember what Mother Theresa said: "People are unreasonable and illogical. Love them anyway." I'm not sure I learned to love her while I was a student. I was so afraid, so sure that I was going to do something wrong. But the older I got, the more I appreciated the influence that Mrs. DuBois had had.

So those were two more of the women of influence in my life-my dear Aunt Anne, Annie Trumbull Howard, my father's youngest sister, and Mrs. DuBois of Hampton DuBois Academy in Florida.

Lisa Barry: Can you imagine such tactics used in this day and age? Yet look at the fruit such actions yielded in due time. One of the things that Elisabeth read on today's program was the writing entitled "Do the Next Thing." We'd be happy to send you one copy of that free of charge when you request it. You might also want a copy of this series entitled WOMEN WHO HAVE INFLUENCED MY LIFE. It contains all the talks from this week and five yet to come next week. The cost is $13.

You can send that, along with your request, to Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call toll-free: 1-800-759-4JOY. All of our offers are also available through our Gateway To Joy resource center. The address is gatewaytojoy.org. Today's program has been a production of Back to the Bible and is supported by the faithful gifts of our listeners.

Monday we'll meet more of the people who influenced Elisabeth Elliot's life, so be sure and join us then for another Gateway To Joy.