Ireland has had its saints, and Ann Preston was one of them.  Her childhood was spent in a typical Irish home in Ballymacally about a mile from the town of Markethill, Co. Armagh.  She was born in the year 1810, and lived to the great age of 96.  Holy Ann was known to thousands, and her influence was felt far beyond the limits of common life.  Here was a humble Irish woman who could neither read nor write, but who received constant answers to her prayers.  And what amazing answers they were!  Ann did not pray in a vague and uncertain way, but for definite things.  It was possible therefore to tell beyond a shadow of doubt whether the prayers were answered or not.

One of the most remarkable answers to prayer in Ann’s experience happened in the following way.  It was a long dry summer, and the well was usually dry for two or three months.  This meant that the boys in the home where she worked were compelled to bring water in barrels from a well about half a mile away.  This was very hard work.  One evening at the close of the day Ann was sitting in the kitchen telling the boys of some of the miraculous ways in which God had answered her prayers.  All at once Henry spoke up and said:  “Ann, why don’t you ask our Heavenly Father to send rain in that well, and not have us boys work so hard?  I was down in the well looking at it today, and it is just as dry as the floor.”  He little dreamt of the serious way in which Ann took his challenge.

When she got up into her little room that night she knelt in prayer and said:  “Now, Father, you heard what Henry said tonight.”  Then she went on to quote the promise, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”  She pleaded with God that the water might be sent, and finally rising from her knees she declared her faith that there would be water in the well in the morning.  Henry prepared as usual the next morning to go for the water, but to his surprise and great amusement he saw Ann take up the two pails and start for the well.  He watched her from the kitchen window as she hooked the pail to the windlass and began to lower it.  If she had done it the night before it would have hit the bottom with a bang, but there was a splash and the pail filled with water.  She pulled it up and did the same again, and with both pails full of clear water she walked up to the house.  She set down the pails of water challenging Henry for his answer.  Years after a friend visited the well and was told that the well had never been known to be dry again in summer or winter from the time of that memorable prayer and its miraculous answer.

This unique life of glorious spiritual experience and peace all began with a very sudden conversion.  Ann had no inclination whatever to religious things, until one day the truth dawned on her that she was a sinner.  All her sins from her childhood days seemed to appear before her.  She fell on her knees voluntarily for the first time in her life, and began to cry using the words of Scripture:  “God be merciful to me a sinner.”  Someone tried to hush her into quietness, but she said she didn’t care if all the world heard her, she must cry for mercy.  At midnight she got the assurance that her sins were forgiven.  She said that as she looked up she saw the Savior as He was on Calvary, and she knew right then that His Blood atoned for her sins.  Her heart and life were changed and she had become a child of God.  The awful and unbearable burden of sin had gone.  This is indeed what the Gospel is all about, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish but shall receive Eternal Life.  Not by works nor by effort, but by coming to the Savior of the world.—W. Weir.