"Entering the Lists"

"Entering the Lists"

"Entering the Lists'' ye ie is not against flesh and blood that we enter the lists . . ."

(Eph. 6:12, Knox).

Every war presumes casualties, and in the spiritual fight we may expect even more kinds of mishaps because the enemy is able to attack spirit and soul as well as body. An American general once said, ''We won the war because our soldiers were expendable." That word was discovered by Mertie Heimbach at a time when she was called upon to go up with her husband and little children and set up a Summit Camp. She had been full of questions as to what she would do if the children became sick there on the mountains, and God used this word from one of her country's military leaders to settle her. If the war is to be won, missionaries must be expendable also, she concluded, and that word from her was a blessing to all of us.

Our first casualty occurred at the end of 1952, when Allan Crane had a bad heart spell. He and Evelyn had spent very strenuous days searching for Lisu and evangelizing in the hills behind and above Advance Camp Hweiphai. They had found large Lisu villages and some Lahu, but at such a distance from one another that hard travel was necessary. So early in 1953 Allan came into Base Camp for a medical checkup at McCormick Hospital, and his cardiogram indicated a condition so serious that Dr. Buker and Dr. Guyer forbade any more mountain climbing. Evelyn could not blaze trails alone, so that meant two pioneers struck from the lists. In this spiritual thrust and parry, it was wonderful to see God silently overrule for good. The Cranes continued to live at Hweiphai but applied their talents to language helps instead of mountain pioneering. Allan tabulated the complicated language rules in a little book which he called, Thai without Tears, and which has been a great service to our new workers. They also set themselves to translate the Pentateuch into Lisu and established a bi-monthly magazine in Lisu, called Spiritual Food, which is

*"ENTERING THE LISTS'

mailed to refugees outside the bamboo curtain whom we could not otherwise reach. And incidentally, they made a wonderful contact with the Lahu tribe, as we shall see later.

The Cranes falling out of mountain Lisu work brought me into it for a while, but I must back up and give a little explanation first.

Before we knew of Allan's condition, one day at Base Camp word came that two Lisu boys were in McCormick

Hospital and that I might visit them if I cared to. John was out on a trip at the time and Frances Bailey had gone temporarily to Pakhui, so I took Edna McLaren with me, she being the only single worker available. Only one of the two boys was sick—the oldest son of the headman of Ta-Ngo village, suffering with a tubercular bone in his leg. The other lad had been sent to keep him company in a strange land.

Although only fourteen years old, both boys were hardened and unresponsive. We took them taffy popcorn balls, which they grabbed with hardly a thank you. The headman's surname was Honey, so this sick lad would be Big Honey, or Honey One, for the Lisu tribe do not use given names very much, preferring to number their children according to their sex and place in the family. If the second child were a girl she would not be Honey Two but Sister One, and so on.

I had brought pictures of our Lisu Christians in China, and while I showed them the lads were interested, but as soon as I began to speak of spiritual things they turned away with a cool, 'I don't understand you." I saw by their answers that their dialect was different from mine (although the Cranes, living so much farther south than we did in China, did not feel that Ta-Ngo Lisu differed so much from their dialect), so I did not know if it were really true that they did not comprehend the spiritual terms, or if it was just an excuse.

We did not feel we had gained much, but we had been friendly and kind, and had to leave it at that. We little dreamed that in a few days we would both be up in the home village of those two lads!

For it fell on this wise. John had told me to get ready to go with him and Don Rulison on a long hiking trip to the Miao tribe. When we first came to Thailand my husband had said to me, 'Now remember, this time you are not going to

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the Lisu. You are going to help me. In China we had to be separated often, but in Thailand we are going to stick together.

Where I go, you go too.'' Knowing my deep love for the Lisu who called me Ma-ma, he feared I might be partial to them, and was determined that the superintendent and his wife must love all the tribes equally. I had acquiesced and honestly meant to put aside personal affections, so when he told me that we were going to walk to Khunjem, and from there tour the Miao villages, I was not adverse to giving myself to the Miao work at all. But I wondered how I would ever keep up to it physically, for it would be a two-hundred-mile walk of uphill and down dale and no privacy from beginning to end. However, if the Lord calls, He enables, so I just talked to Him about it, said nothing of my doubts to my husband, and went ahead with preparations.

One morning, a couple of days before we were to leave, Orville Carlson appeared at our outer door. "John!" he called.

"Is it two or three porters you wish for your trip?"

"Only two, thank you," I heard my husband reply. "Isobel does not know it yet, but she is not going. I decided in the middle of the night that I will send her, with Edna, up to Ta-Ngo instead. The Cranes feel that Ta-Ngo needs immediate visitation."

Inside of me I turned into a small girl. "Whoopee!" I wanted to shout. "Lord, how did You do it? Many thanks.

And to the Lisu! His Majesty Friend Husband decides all by himself that I am to go to the Lisu! Only You could have done that.' Outwardly of course I had to show some decorum

—it is expected after fifty years of age.

Every commander who finds that unexpected casualties have left a gap in his front line must readjust his troops and reinforce the weak spot. That was all that John had done.

I was the only one who spoke Lisu free to go. The Petersons had not yet arrived, and Edna McLaren was the only language student on the near horizon at the moment. So it was decided that Isobel and Edna should go.

I was thrilled and appalled, delighted and frightened to a chill. No party of just women, as yet, had gone up to a totally heathen village. (Women missionaries visited Brother

Six's family from time to time. Incidentally, as the sixth son

'*ENTERING THE LISTS'?

IOI he was known as Old Six in his own family; but now we called him "Brother" Six, for he had become a brother in Christ.)

And three things were a drag and a dread to me. I am not a quick linguist, I do not have the evangelistic gift, and I was a woman. Regarding all three I had been accustomed to shelter myself comfortably beneath the overtowering rock of my husband's fluency and skill in dealing with souls.

Now I was to be thrust out into the open and take leadership. Edna, of course, did not know Lisu; she was still learning Thai, but she knew more Thai than I did and that would be a help to me when we ran into Thai nationals. As time proved, the Lord could not have picked a better companion for me. Absolutely fearless, she was ready to follow me right up to the hilt of anything I felt led to attempt. She was very quick, and learned to read the Lisu script before she left Base Camp. This meant that she could sing with me, even though she had not yet learned what the words signified. And she had a keen sense of humour which emphasized the funny rather than the grim side of events. Our chance partnership grew into a very dear friendship, and although she does not appear very often in these pages, the knowledge that she was there praying for me helped more than is apparent.

Pioneer work among the tribes is a man's job. It should never have been relegated to women. But when a gap in the ranks appeared, only women were there to fill it. The reason I tell the following story is that I hope these pages will fall into the hands of young men, prepared to offer to their Lord hearts as willing as those of Adoniram Judson,

David Livingstone, and the less known but equally brilliant and devout James O. Fraser of our own century.

For there is still a crying need for young men in the work of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship.

Edna and I had a lovely bus ride to Advance Camp Hweiphai. As our bus honked to a stop in front of The House by The Side of The Road, Allan and Evelyn came running out to greet us. "Why, here are some of the Ta-Ngo Lisu riding on top of this bus!' Allan exclaimed. Then he called up:

"Eh, nu wa bu, teuh ma nya, Lisu Ma-ma tee ro nga. Shya geh nu wa cai dseh jee ngo. Nu wa daa ma geh ngo." (''Say, you fellows.

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This is a Lisu lady teacher. She is going up to your village tomorrow to teach you!'') In China that would have brought smiles even from heathen, so I glanced up, eagerly hoping for some glint of kindliness in return. But all I saw were black scowls that shrivelled my soul.

No welcome there. They made no answer, and Allan, after chatting in his genial way for a moment longer, urged us to go inside and have a cup of tea. The cordial hospitality of the Cranes was always a blessing.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man was not their objective, but it tagged along anyway.

We had a grand talk after supper. Allan had secured three Thai boys to carry our things and stay with us while we were up there. They would haul our water, hunt our firewood, and cook for us. There was a sala in the centre of the second ridge,

Evelyn said, where strangers could sleep and we could stay.

Ta-Ngo village was on three ridges separated by deep ravines, and the headman, surnamed Honey, lived on the second ridge, just down from the sala. The Cranes had preached to them often, both in visits to their village and when they came down to market. Remember that The House by The Side of The Road was also by the side of the trail. Allan felt that headman Honey was under conviction; a man named Ah-lay had been in often to ask questions; and a family by the name of Wood had shown interest. Chinese New Year was due in a week, and if we did not return before it began we would have to stay for three days.

No one is allowed out of the village for three days after the exorcism commences. Both Allan and Evelyn advised us to return as the drinking and carousing are terrible during those days. The devil's dance at Ta-Ngo is famous, and that year some of the consular staffs had sent word they were coming up to see it—men only. This would be a help to our safety on this trip, and together with the knowledge that the Cranes were watching out for us, it was felt we would not be in danger.

Despite all this comfort and the still greater consolation that the Lord had ordered our going—we certainly had not worked it ourselves—I could not sleep all that night. The vision of those evil heathen faces scowling down on me from

'"'ENTERING THE LISTS''

the top of the bus had done something to my nerves. I had never experienced such looks from Lisu before, and memories of their atrocities to women haunted my pillow. In vain

I prayed, lectured myself, and '"'counted sheep." The Cranes had a clock that struck the hours, and I heard each hour dingdonged out in the darkness until five in the morning, when it was time to arise. But, as we all know, courage is not a necessity for action. Someone has said about Columbus and his crew,

"Tf seasickness or terror were sufficient reason for turning back to the port from whence they sailed, America would still be in the hands of the Red Indian."

So, after an early breakfast and a sympathetic prayer by Allan Crane, we started up the trail by the side of the house.

Two weak women accompanied by three strange Thai carriers made up the small procession. David's pebbles could not have looked more ridiculous to Goliath than we two women looked to the host of evil at Ta-Ngo. In fact we nicknamed ourselves just that, David's Pebbles, fortifying our hearts with the memory of that wonderful victory granted to a mere boy because he came in the name of the Lord of hosts.

For the first hour we threaded our way through rice fields and passed a couple of little Lao villages. At a turn of the path we suddenly encountered some Lisu women coming to market. Quickly I called out, '""'Where are you going ?"' leaving out the kwa and lo as Allan had instructed me. To my joy they answered back immediately, ''Market'""—with the casual indifference of those who do not know that a linguistic feat had just been performed on them! I had been so afraid that no one would understand me. (Being married to a language-wizard can produce a complex.) Gathering courage, I tried a second sentence on them. "'Are you coming back tonight?" I called out. Again they understood for they shouted over their shoulders, ''Coming back!" which is the Lisu way of saying yes.

Then they added, "'Shya shya jee!' That was new to me. I said to Edna, "Now what did that mean?" In China we said,

"'Ah-zra-zra jee,' which is "Go slowly—take it easy!"—a common farewell to departing friends. But at least they were polite to us, which is more than the men on the bus had been.

"What could shya mean?" I wondered. "'It must be the shya of clear. Go clearly! In the precipitous Salween if you did not go

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slowly you would be apt to slip over into the abyss; and in the jungle thicket of Thailand, I suppose a clear path ahead is a good wish. Hm! Very interesting!"

The Cranes had told us that it was about a four-hour trip, and we had left early so as to get to the village in plenty of time to pick our place to sleep and get settled. We would likely be mobbed with crowds wanting to stare at us, so we wanted to leave plenty of time. But those porters just wouldn't keep up with us. My diary has it: ""The carriers are named Sidi,

La, and Nu (Rat). Two of them are lazy. Walked fifteen minutes and rested ten. Got here at three in the afternoon."

The frequent rest periods were annoying when we wanted to get there and see what we would have to face. But as we did not know the road we could not forge on ahead in safety. So we decided to utilize our rest periods for prayer. In the quiet of the mountains, with the great treetops above us catching any stray breeze and sheltering us from the hot sun with their lacy green foliage, the prayer-rest was so pleasant that we adopted it for a permanent part of our climbing programme thereafter.

We prayed unhurriedly for every member of our North Thailand family and for the inquirers in the different tribes.

Just as the path began to climb upward, there was a cleared space in the woods and a tiny stream. Evelyn had packed a delicious lunch; crunchy crisp lettuce in a plastic bottle, sandwiches, and a wonderful cake, baked in her own style.

A vacuum bottle of hot water added to powdered coffee or tea made it like a picnic. But from there on, we climbed steadily.

Thailand mountains are like billows: after you climb to the top of a hill, you dip down again and push up the next crest and over. After ascending for about an hour, we crossed the crest of the mountain and began the billow-walking. Wondering how much farther it could be, we suddenly came to a crest, and there before us lay the final dip. On the top of the opposite crown were some little bamboo shanties on stilts! Ta-Ngo village, Ridge One.

On our side of the dip was a sala where we sat down to get our breath and have our last prayer time before the great moment of arrival. Would they receive us? Would they understand the message? Would any believe? Oh, the heartbeats of the pioneer!

'ENTERING THE LISTS''

Rested and refreshed, eagerly we pressed on. Some women were sitting on their porch, which is a roofless stilted bamboo platform approached by a notched pole-ladder.

"Oh, Auntie has come!' I heard a voice say. Women.

Lisu women! I did not feel afraid of them. My heart eager to love them, I turned to climb their porch and sit with them. But with a scurry of panic they jumped to their feet, exclaiming in alarm, ran into the house and closed the door! Then men drifted around the corner and asked what I wanted.

"TI am a Lisu teacher," I replied. ''I have come to tell you a message from God."

"Well you can go to the next ridge to sleep," they responded gruffly, as they saw the Thai porters coming over the crest carrying our things. ""Headman Honey lives over there,"' said one, indicating the Second Ridge. A ravine, some eighty feet deep, separates the two hills, but standing where we were, we could see the little black shanties outlined against the sky on that next crest. Not a house offered to receive us, and it was disconcerting to behold all the women run away from us. I did not want to talk to the men. I had come for those of my own sex.

But anything strange in the village is always dealt with by the men first—another reason why this missionary pioneering is a man's job.

So on to Second Ridge we went. The sala was in the middle of the slope. It proved to be a flimsy structure with a grass roof.

Half of it had no floor, but jusi bare earth, and it had obviously been used as a stable lately. The other half had a very high floor of bamboo matting, which we call a platform, and this is reached by the notched pole-ladder. Most salas have no walls, but this had two, one across the back and one at the farther side of the platform. A bamboo-mat partition extended from the back of the sala toward the ladder, making the third side of a corner at the back of the platform. This corner we chose for our sleeping space. Placing the carrying baskets from the end of the partition to the side wall, we barricaded ourselves in—not securely, but so that we did not sleep side by side with the porters. The porters slept on the other side of the baskets, which were so low that raising myself on my elbow, I could see over them. The sala faced the east, which was one of the open sides,

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and it was from here that I saw the sunrise described on the first page of this book.

While we were arranging the baskets and getting out our sleeping bags, the Thai porters were sweeping out the straw and manure and setting up three stones for our stove—for we must cook there. Then they disappeared into the village to hunt for firewood and water—the water had to be carried up that eighty-foot embankment.

We had hardly fixed our baskets in place before Lisu men began to saunter up and children came running to look at us, but did not dare to come too close at first. One young fellow in his early twenties opened the conversation. I had no sooner explained the purpose of our visit than he said,

"Good. I am going to believe in Jesus some day. I know Mr.

Crane."

'What is your name?" I asked, greatly encouraged.

"Wood Six," he replied. '""My family live over there"— indicating the end of the ridge with his chin—''but I don't live with them. Some of us have split off and moved over there"

—again a chin gesture to the direction from which we had come. "I live in New Village now. Come over there and preach to us, will you?"

Thrilled, I readily assented, but of course urged him to decide for Christ immediately. It is Satan's own snare to whisper "'tomorrow," thus easing conscience of its convictions.

Wood Six nodded his head as if half decided to do so, and our hopes rose high. We had yet to learn that the reason Wood Six did not live with his family was that he was too lazy to work, and that his word was utterly untrustworthy. Part of the heartache of all missionary work is the bright promising convert who turns out to be a mere puff-ball, crumbling like a macaroon under the least pressure. Our Lord warned us that one-fourth of the Seed would fall into rocky soil with no depth of earth, but does the missionary ever get accustomed to it? "'Give us the hope no disappointments tire" must be our daily prayer. And it is right to hope, for some of the Seed will find good ground.

My heart was drawn to Wood Six because in outward appearance he resembled our Junia, mentioned in Nests Above the Abyss,* but in character he was not like him.

* By Isobel Kuhn, China Inland Mission, 1947,

'ENTERING THE LISTS''

At dusk the villagers come home from their fields, some driving their cattle before them. Ta-Ngo had no stables.

The men let their cattle loose at night. There were two big bulls who were anathema to one another, a white one and a black one. Whenever these two caught sight of each other they would rush at one another and push with their horns.

Of course the animal who was standing on the upper grade of the hill had better foothold, so the one on the lower slopes would have to yield. Often during the night Blackie and Whitey ,would have a fight, rushing furiously at one another and bumping into our flimsy sala with a force that threatened to knock it over. But they never did actually ham it.

Before dark many people had gathered around the sala, and someone called out, "Play your phonograph."

"TI did not bring it," I answered, "but we will sing you Lisu hymns." I deliberately had not brought my Gospel

Recordings. The Cranes said they had played them often to the people of Ta-Ngo, so I felt I wanted to introduce something else. Choosing gospel songs not yet recorded in Lisu, I first carefully read the words and explained the message of the song. When I felt they understood the spoken words of the song, Edna and I sang it together in soprano and alto. This was deliberate, too. I had heard no Lisu singing since I arrived in Thailand, and the lack of it astonished me. Everywhere along the Upper Salween in China one can hear the heathen yodel their songs, and part-singing has formed a most attractive part of Christian community life. Why didn't the Thailand

Lisu sing? Would musical harmony attract them or repel?

I was told that in another part of the Far East, part-singing was neither understood nor appreciated. On hearing a choir sing beautifully, a national was asked how he liked it. "All right," he answered, "'but it would be better if they would all sing the same tune!" To him singing should be confined to the melody only. Were the Thailand Lisu like him, or were they like the Lisu of China? So, after reading and explaining, Edna and I sang together, ''Men of the Household, Repent," and as our voices blended together I saw some of those hard evil faces soften, and some eyes even grow moist! They were the same race, sure enough!

In the East, for unmarried women to sing is usually taken

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as a bad sign, but the Cranes had explained the Lisu hymnbook and sung a bit to them, and the explanation of our songs made our purpose clear. I never found singing any hindrance, and often it touched hearts to invite us into their homes. Music deeply stirred them, and they asked for it again and again.

When it grew dark we stopped and announced that we would not sing or talk any more that day; so we retired to our corner and to our sleeping bags on the platform floor.

No good Lisu woman would be outside her home after dark, and although the idle evening hours were the best opportunity to talk with the men, the women listening in the background, we had to forego it because there was no married couple with us to chaperon such a gathering. Here again was proof that tribal pioneering is a man's job. Night teaching in China had played a big part in the growth and development of the church.

My experience on arrival had shown me that there was no use calling to the women and then expecting an audience. I must catch them by craft. So right after breakfast Edna and I went over to First Ridge, leaving the porters to guard our things. The women began to run from us again, but I ignored them, and addressing the first'man I saw I called out, ""Where can I buy a crossbow?" People appeared as if by magic, for bargaining is one of their passions.

"How much will you give for it?'? someone called out. I had no notion what one was worth, but really did want to get one for Danny, as he had been so disappointed that we could not bring his own beautiful polished walnut bow from China. Quickly I reckoned what it would have cost in the Salween Canyon of Yunnan, mentally exchanged the amount into U.S. money, and from that into Thailand ticals.

"Ten baht," I answered.

"You can have this one for fifteen!' called out a man, holding out a cheap bamboo model. If he only raised my price by half, then my price had been good!

"No," I replied in a firm voice. "I cannot pay more than ten." But some girls had slipped up behind the men and were listening—I was going to get an audience after all! "I have a little boy in America, who was born in Lisuland, and I want to buy it for him. He is praying for you folk that you

"'ENTERING THE LISTS'

will soon come to know the Saviour of the world. . ."' and from then on I got in a little message. As soon as they showed signs of tiring I shifted my position and went toward a lad whom I had seen slip into a house and come out with a bargaining look on his face. Two girls were sitting behind him on a porch, sewing.

"Fifteen baht is too much for that—it is only bamboo. In China we had beautiful polished hardwood crossbows.

I won't give more than ten." And I made as if to return home.

The lad edged up to me quickly and said, ''Wait a moment, I can get you one," and disappeared back into the house. We smiled up at the girls, one of whom was his sister and so would be anxious to help on the family trade. I said, "Sewing on your

New Year's dress?'' They looked at one another and then the sister said impulsively, '"Yes, come on up and sit with us!"

Just what we wanted! So up the notched pole we went and sat down with them.

Young brother shortly appeared with a polished teakwood bow, much finer than that bamboo one, and I gave him ten baht very cheerfully.

It had bought me more than they realized. We admired their pretty new dresses, for every Lisu has a new suit or dress for New Year, and talked back and forth for a while. Then the girl who was not the sister reached forward and stroked my skin.

'How white you are!" she murmured. "It is beautiful."

Here was my chance.

'Little girl, there is something still more beautiful. It is more beautiful to have a white heart, and the Lord Jesus paid the price to give you one.'"' Then I made the way of salvation as clear as I could. They looked at one another meaningly, but turned the conversation.

"Do you know anything that would make my teeth white?" asked Miss Fish, the one who admired white skin.

"Yes, but not as long as you chew that betel nut." (This filthy habit was such a trial to our flesh. They spit the dark bloodlike red stuff all over their floors; it makes their teeth black and their lips like tar.) "Oh, I''d stop chewing if you gave me something to clean up with!' she said merrily, so we promised that on our next visit we would bring her something. On a later trip we brought

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her a toothbrush and some paste, and the laughing bargain was made. She had never heard of nor seen a toothbrush in all her life!

In later visits I only had one more contact with this girl for her family moved away and she with them. It was on this later visit to Ta-Ngo I felt an urge to try to find Miss Fish, so Edna and I went one afternoon up to First Ridge to look for her. We found her at the edge of the crest where the trail drops down, down, down, and through green treetops you can see the plain stretched out far below you.

There she was at the door of her shanty, her teeth almost white now, and her lips a natural pink. But quickly the men of her clan gathered around to prevent our influencing her.

"Sing something!" she called out. So, standing on the ridge top, looking off to the cloud-flecked sky (which brought Him whom we love very near, for the clouds are the dust of His feet), and with my arm around Edna's neck, we sang together, '"Men of the Household, Repent!' When we turned to her again, her eyes were moist with tears. "It pierces my heart," she said, wiping her eyes in embarrassment. "It makes me love-long."' But her father began to scoff and we felt it better to leave. I did not know this would be our last contact with her.

A longing for whiteness. Tears at the music of His call.

Do you wonder that the pioneer missionary's heart beats high with hope and also with compassion? Where would you or I be today, if missionaries had not come to our ancestors at great cost to themselves? There is no other way for His salvation to reach lost men.

But now back to our first visit again. After procuring the crossbow and visiting with the two girls on the veranda, it was noontime, and we wended our way back, down to the water hole in the ravine bottom and up that steep eighty-foot climb to the sala. Here we mixed a bowl of noodles and cheese, stretched out for a few minutes on our sleeping bags, and then had our prayer for North Thailand. When I opened my eyes a few minutes later, a man was crouched silently watching us on the other side of the baskets. His face lit up, as his eyes met mine, and he whispered, "Now I know how to worship God!"' and he went through a pantomime of bowing with folded hands and eyes closed—evidently mimicking

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TTT what we had been doing. He leaped down the ladder almost immediately, saying as he went, "Now I know! Now I know!" and every few minutes he would put his hands together and bow to Heaven. He was simple in his head, and because of a later hilarious experience with him, we finally nicknamed him

Mr. Cabbagehead. He is younger brother to headman Honey.

But all that we learned later. This little experience reminded us that we were being watched all the time and our every movement was important.

After our prayer time we decided to visit Third Ridge.

Allan and Evelyn had warned us that there was an old witchdoctor in Ta-Ngo who liked to involve the missionary in useless arguments, and they warned us to beware of an old man with an earlobe stretched to twice the usual size, probably by having worn heavy earrings. But as yet we had not seen him.

On Third Ridge there were women on their porches sewing and children playing around, but as usual, as soon as they sighted us they gathered up their things and fled indoors. The only way seemed to be to take someone by surprise.

So we slipped up behind a shanty, skirted it quietly, and then without warning suddenly turned the corner, walked up the ladder and sat down beside the seamstress. We blocked her way to her door, so had a very short chance to speak lovingly and kindly before she could get inside. In the meantime, men appeared from nowhere and surrounded us. A circle of them stood on the ground watching us, others clambered on to the small porch until we were pressed against the wall, so to speak.

I noticed two old men on this veranda with us, and one of them had a big ear. But it was the other old one who spoke first: let us call them Big Ear and Old Sly.

"Wu-sa Ma-ma," began Old Sly. "Who is this? Your daughter?" pointing to Edna.

"No, she is just a friend," I answered.

"Is she married?" These questions were always asked me everywhere, and from people who knew the answer quite well.

'No. She has given her life to telling God's message. Married women cannot leave their homes and children."

"Are you married? Where is your husband?" And so on.

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On a later trip, when John came too, I took him around and introduced him to all these people.

Then Old Sly leaned forward, and indicating Edna said, 'Sell her to me. I will give you a thousand dollars for her.

I want another wife."

"She is not available,' I replied. ""We are here to tell you that God, the Creator of Heaven and earth, loves you and sent His only Son to die for your sins." And then I presented the Gospel. But I was not allowed to say more than a few sentences before Big Ear interrupted.

'We don't understand you,"' he jeered. "You speak sha sha words. We are Lisu here. We don't understand sha s

"That man over there understood me when I said I would not sell this girl to him," I replied, ''and there are others who understand if you do not."

*"Oh, no, they don't! They just try to guess what you mean.

We aren't sha sha here, we are Lisu.'' And the listening circle of men snickered.

I saw that he was trying to prevent me from giving out the message, so I ignored him, raised my voice, and addressed that outer circle.

But Big Ear did not intend to give up the centre of the stage. '"Sha sha words!" he jabbered. '""We don't understand!

We don't understand!"

"Well, suppose you be quiet a moment and let us see if those over there can understand," I replied.

A man in the crowd laughed, and said audibly, "'He can't get the better of her!' This infuriated Big Ear. He grabbed hold of my arm, pushing his face into mine, and hissed, "I know people on the plain who would kill you!"

Now I knew that it is Lisu custom that a man may never handle a woman, so I became indignant. Temper is not courage, but it can make one reckless. 'Take your hands off me!"' I cried, unhooking his skinny fingers one by one from my arm. Then in desperation that the message might get out in some form, I turned to Edna and said, "Let us sing."

A movement behind the bamboo wall had told me that the women and children were there, listening. So we sang, "'Jesus

Loves Me," which I felt had the simplest words and would be understood the easiest.

'ENTERING THE LISTS''

With a growl, Big Ear got up and jumped off the porch, muttering furiously all the way to his shanty. Old Sly had gone when the crowd laughed, and in a moment we were deserted—alone on the little porch. Yet the consciousness that there was an unseen One with us, who knew all about the jeerings of men, was very sweet. And He gave me a little gift. As the crowd was dispersing, I heard one man say to another, "'She does speak Lisu."'

We sang and talked to that hidden audience for a while, and then we got up and wended our way to the sala on Second

Ridge.

But news of the encounter must have spread, for that evening as dusk was falling a group of young men pressed into our kitchen, almost surrounding the sala. They looked like the town rowdies and I knew they meant to make sport of us. The afternoon's experience had taught me that it would be better for me if I could control the conversation and that meant taking the initiative, so I went forward and sat with my feet on the top notch of the ladder, Edna sitting behind me on the platform. This lifted me above their heads and also barred the way to our sleeping quarters. I had taken up our pictures of the Christian Lisu in China, each of which was pasted on a piece of cardboard, and I used these to manipulate our talk.

"It is very nice of you boys to come and see us," I began with a friendly smile, and spoke as graciously as I knew how.

Polite manners cow the boorish as much as anything. "In these paris you have never seen Lisu turn Christian, but in the Upper Salween, in China, thousands of Lisu have accepted the Lord Jesus and would never turn back to demon worship again. I have brought some of their pictures here for you to look at," and forthwith I held them out. They were rudely snatched from my hand and grabbed from one another, while they called out a word I did not understand. That was what had been my greatest fear—that I would not understand them.

Then someone shouted, ""Ho! Look at their clothes!"

"Yes," said another, a thoughtful boy, '"'but they ave Lisu!"

"The women's dress is nearly the same as your women's,"

I said quickly, knowing that the men's was not. And in truth, of the three distinctly different Lisu costumes with which I am acquainted—those of Luda, Oak Flat, and Muchengpo differ

II4

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greatly—the Thailand Lisu women's dress is almost exactly like ours at Oak Flat. But one young fellow did not intend to be ingratiated. "Ha," he jeered. "Listen to what she says for picture!'? and again he used the term I had found unfamiliar, which showed me in a second that that was their term for photograph.

"Yes," I maintained stoutly, "but your word is not real Lisu and mine is! Listen:

Tso-byeh. Tso is the tso of la-tso (man) and dyeh is, of course, image. Tso-byeh—a man image.

Isn't that what it is ?""

The thoughtful boy turned around with an air of authority.

'She is right. She knows more Lisu than we do."

From there on they stopped baiting me, and we had a friendly talk about what it means to be a Christian.

When it grew dark, I had to put an end to the interview.

I explained that as it was night now we must retire, but that we would be glad to see them in the morning. With that Edna and I turned and went to our nook between the outer walls and the kitchen partition, and we began to put up our mosquito nets.

Then I heard a voice behind me. The cheeky fellow had sprung up the ladder and, pushing his way behind the baskets, was in our '"'bedroom."' This was what I had feared most, and I grew cold inside, but scowled the more fiercely at him to cover it up. '""What are you doing here?" I growled.

"T've come for medicine,'"' he answered with an impudent grin.

"You know we do not give out medicine at night!" I bluffed. "You get right out of here. You know perfectly well you have no right where we sleep!' Then I turned my back on him, as if of course he would leave. And to my amazement, he did! What I would have done if he had not, I do not know.

Let me say again, this pioneering is a man's job. But we never had any more trouble with evil intruders after that.

Early the next morning, while we were eating breakfast, I heard a low voice call, "God's daughter! God's daughter!

The baby has cried all night. Have you any medicine for him?" There on the ground, her eyes coming to the level of the platform, stood an old Lisu woman with a big goitre on her neck.

'ENTERING THE LISTS''

"Surely," we answered. We had prayed that God would order our steps that day, so very gladly we packed a bag and set off with her. .

. This woman we later nicknamed Martha Washington, and she turned out to be the mother of Wood

Six. There are so many families of the same clan or surname, and so many people of the same number, that it grew hard to distinguish them. She started out as Goitre Wood, this was shortened to G.W., and then Eileen O'Rourke suggested that G.W. were the initials of George Washington, so George and Martha they became!

. Martha poured out her pitiful story to me as we walked over to her shanty, the last one on the ridge to the south.

Her daughter had died, leaving a lovely baby son only a few weeks old. Martha could not get a wet nurse—the Lisu do not have that custom—and she did not know how to feed such a small baby, but she was passionately devoted to him.

Could we help? Rice gruel had been given, but now he would not swallow anything. We took an eyedropper and some canned milk, and showed her how to feed him with the dropper, and left it with her. Of course her shanty filled with villagers, wondering what the strange white woman would do to an infant, probably expecting a sort of incantation such as their own witch doctors would try. This was an excellent preaching platform, and so we began to speak. George and Martha had six sons, as the name Wood Six would signify, and the twenty-four-year-old-one, Wood Four, was especially cordial to us.

"T would like to believe in Christ,"' he said, "but I am an opium addict. I smoke a lot every day. Could you help me break it off?' Even as he spoke he was preparing a pipe, and while we continued our service he lay down in an adjoining cubicle and puffed away at the drug. "Please sing for us," someone requested, and this we did, always reading and explaining the words first. Wood Four (later nicknamed Taddie) especially liked the song, "Now None But Christ Can

Satisfy,' and punctuated our singing with remarks, like this:

"T tried the broken cisterns, Lord," we sang.

Me, too, came Taddie's comment from his opium couch.

"But ah, the waters failed."

That's right, they do!

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"F'en as I stooped to drink, they fled."

Exactly!

"And mocked me as I wailed."

How true! and so on.

We left, finally, thrilled with the hope that Ta-Ngo was a ripe field, just waiting for harvest. But hope soaring, hope dashed, the fate of the pioneer awaited us. Later that day

Taddie sought me out and spoke to me alone in a low voice.

"TI know fifteen families that want to believe,' he confided to me. "If you will give five dollars apiece, I can get them for you right away.' The quick swing-down of hope almost nauseatec. me, but gripping myself, I looked him straight in the eye and answered, ""We never pay anyone for believing in Christ. We get nothing out of it if you turn Christian. The gain is all yours if you accept God's salvation, and the loss is yours if you don't."

He looked a bit ashamed, and answered quickly, "Oh, I intend to believe some time. But I must break off my opium first." Saying this, he slunk away.

Deep under this disappointment, how glad I was that we were working with indigenous methods. If that proposition had been put to a hired native preacher, one who knew that the missionary down in the big city was expecting to hear of quick results, and that the said missionary would probably never do more than pay a hurried visit to such an uncomfortable place (they can dress folks up and coach them to put on quite a good appearance for the visiting missionary just over night) would it have not been a temptation? '"These poor families need five dollars to help them get started"' would produce such a small sum quickly. I was interested to see, in the biography of Walker of Tinnevelly,* his own estimate of this matter, after seventeen years of ministering faithfully and fervently to the Church in India. He said, away back in 190g, in a letter to the Church in England on the subject of "Spiritual Life in the Indian Church,"' that one of the causes of weakness had been

"the evil of financial dependence.' He goes on: "From personal experience I do not hesitate to say that our most living congregations are those which have received the least

* This One Thing, by Amy Carmichael, pages 135-143.

'ENTERING THE LISTS''

financial aid; and the converse is also true.' In that excellent paper, this scholarly man puts first on the list of causes for the weakness of their native church, the use of hired evangelists, many of whom, he says, are obviously not godly, perhaps not even converted. I quote: "Are we never influenced by what the world would call 'the exigencies of the case'? We have a vacancy to fill, and we appoint the best applicant available, perhaps, though the applicant in question may be an utter stranger to the life of Christ.'' What would such a one do, with an offer like the one Taddie made to me in secret? It is hard for the white person to live among these people and do the initial evangelizing. But it is the only way to obtain a real work of God, and we are not interested in the mere appearance of Christianity.

We spent all that day on Second Ridge, going from house to house. Where they would not invite us in, we stood outside and preached and talked. But our medical help and the previous work of the Cranes had softened the hearts of the people on this ridge and doors were open more. We visited every house but one, and that house, being near the sala, we left for the next day, but the morrow's events unexpectedly precluded our visiting there. Yet it was in that house of the Wood clan that God worked first, as we shall see.

All this time we had not met the headman, Honey. He was not home—he had gone to Chiengmai to bring his son back from the hospital, people told us.

And all this time we had not seen Wood Six again. So the morning of our last day there we decided to accept his invitation to New Village and go over and look him up. If he was sincere in saying he wanted to be a Christian, why had he not come to see us again? Incidentally, it would be an excuse to preach in a new place. We had to go back over the billowy road almost to the spot where we thought we had reached the top of the mountain. Right there a slight path slipping through the grass to the left is the only indication that there is a new village being planted on the other side of the crest.

It was a lovely walk through the tree-shadowed mountains, and a little sala is invitingly placed near to the road branch, so we could sit a moment and cool off. Altogether the walk to New Village took us almost an hour, and to have the little

ASCENT TO THE TRIBES.

path end in a newly hewn glade was a pleasant surprise.

There the shanties were, a shiny golden yellow against the dark green forest. Bamboo houses are yellow when new, but the bamboo gradually fades to a dirty grey, then into black with soot and dirt.

We had learned not to blurt out our message first thing, so when the women jumped up to run away at sight of us,

I called out, 'Where does Wood Six live? He asked us to come and see him.'"' That brought them back and his dwelling was pointed out to us, right near the top of the village. He was staying with a relative and he was sick—that is why we had not seen him again. The house filled after us—women, children, and men providing a good audience. Wood Six's symptoms were easy to diagnose; it was malaria, and we had fortunately brought some atebrin with us. The American government furnished this free to Thai medicals, so we explained the goodwill gesture of our government when we administered atebrin. When it was our own drugs we used, we asked the patient's family to pay either in money or vegetables or firewood. This was not for our advantage, but to instil self-respect in them. And for their spiritual protection. To use Walker of Tinnevelly's words: '"The poverty of many of our Christians is a fact beyond dispute. And yet it seems clear, on careful consideration, that financial dependence upon others is to a large degree detrimental to real spiritual life (italics mine). It teaches

Christians to lean upon the arm of flesh instead of depending 'directly upon God. How many eyes in India are looking to the Mission, which ought to be turned, in living faith, to the hills from whence cometh our help. How much energy is paralyzed because foreign subsidies obviate the necessity of its active expenditure." From the very beginning we wanted to teach that they must not lean upon us, and no family was so poor but that they could go out and gather us a little firewood. But they usually gave us vegetables from their gardens. In China, the custom was an egg for a pill, regardless of the value of the pill! But in North Thailand the hens often die off from a paralyzing disease, and eggs were almost impossible to procure at Ta-Ngo.

As Wood Six felt a little better after the aspirin and atebrin had taken effect, we asked him to lead us to other houses in the

'ENTERING THE LISTS"'

village. In this way the women did not run from us and we secured the audience we wanted. Reception was not cordial, but neither was there any unpleasantness. And then we came back home to our camping place.

As we climbed Second Ridge to the sala, a Lisu woman sitting on her porch beckoned to us and called out, 'Come and sit with me!" It was our first spontaneous invitation from a Lisu woman in Thailand, and only the Lord knows how our hearts were beating with gratitude as Edna and I mounted the notched ladder and sat down beside her.

She was alone, so I lost no time in telling her of God's love for her and the salvation offered in Christ Jesus.

"Td like to enter your church," she said, ''but I may not, unless headman Honey gives me permission. I'm his second wife, you know, and he will beat me if I displease him. Oh,

Ma-ma, you don't know what trials we Lisu women have."

She now began to speak with emotion. ""We were two sisters, left orphans; I was the elder. Little sister was married to a man at B.... He treated her cruelly and I could do nothing to protect her. We had no relative to whom I could flee for help for her. And just last year her wicked husband beat her to death. My little sister!"' The tears were now streaming down her cheeks, ''Oh, my little sister! And I could not help her."

After a few minutes' pause to gain control, she continued: "I was married, too, but my husband died and left me with a young son. Then Honey took me as his second wife. I don't want to be his wife. His first wife hates me and tells lies about me and then he beats me unmercifully. I have begged him to set me free, but he won't. He has power and I am unprotected.

If he wanted to beat me to death he could. There is no one to stand up for me or call him to account. I would like to be a Christian, but if he says I may not, I would not dare."

This gave me a wonderful opportunity to present One who is Saviour and Kinsman-Redeemer as well. She listened wistfully but shook her head when we urged her to decide for Christ.

"T will pray to Him in my heart," was all she would venture.

And she remains thus to this day. Her name is Ah-ka-me-ma.

At length we felt we ought to get back to the sala and get a bite to eat, as it was long since we had taken any nourishment. Once we were stretched out on our platform, we pulled

ASCENT TO THE TRIBES

off our shoes and cooled and stretched our hot and aching feet.

It was a luxurious feeling, for often our feet blistered. "Ah, this is what Tiggers like!' I sighed in satisfaction and fun. Edna looked at me questioningly so I said, "Don't tell me, Edna, that you have not read the Pooh books?"

"No," she admitted, "I have not. Tell me about them."

So that began a delightful source of relaxation that no one can enjoy as much as the pioneer whose emotions are stirred so deeply, all the world's anguish pressing one out of measure.

Prayer is the only outlet for that, but after having committed it all to Him to turn to a good book relieves tension. Intensity of soul needs relaxing, even as violin strings must be loosened between use. To swing into the clean, sweet, funny world of a child's fancy is a splendid change and we merrily recognized

Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, or Eeyore in ourselves on various occasions.

Another companion was Wind in the Willows, especially the smell that Muskrat could not identify at first, but acknowledged that it conquered all other smells. When he got that scent he just had to drop everything and follow it; then as he got closer he suddenly knew what it was; why he had had to leave his first purpose and answer the call of this particular smell. 'Oh, I know now," he told his complaining companion who had wanted to go in the other direction. "I know what the smell is now! It is the scent of home.'? Whenever, on our returning journeys, my pace unconsciously quickened, Edna would tease me, "Is the smell getting stronger, Ma-ma?'' The other end surely had a pull, especially the times when John had not been able to accompany us.

As we were drinking that wonderful cup of tea which also accompanies ''what Tiggers like,' two familiar boyish figures bounded up our ladder and stood facing us with the sudden bashfulness that overtakes the young male of the species when he is actually face to face with his desire. It was Honey One and his cousin. "Oh, so you are back?" we greeted them warmly. "Is your leg all better?" And then, with friendly chatter about the hospital we again told him of the Lord

Jesus who loved him and wanted to lead him into life abundant.

But even while we were talking, suddenly from a large wooden house below us appeared an apparition. A man in his early thirties dashed up the hill toward us and began cursing and

'*ENTERING THE LISTS''

scolding the villagers. His handsome black eyes flashed with anger and his hands gesticulated excitedly. He was obviously lashing himself into a fury and there was real power and tyranny in his every movement. He never glanced at us, had apparently not yet seen us, but he was directing his fiery tirade on some men villagers who had been loitering around. His angry orders had something to do with the care of his horse, and with sullen but subdued looks the men began in obedience to move toward the animals.

"What is all this about ?"? whispered Edna.

"If I am not mistaken," I replied, ''this is an exhibition put on purposely just for you and me, to show us who is the boss in this village! I reckon this is headman Honey."

Even as I spoke, the firebrand "happened" to look our way and saw us. The transformation was impressive. He started, looked very surprised, then melted in a second to such a nice, gracious host. Bowing to us, with still an air of hauteur, he advanced up the hill and spoke pleasantly.

"Oh, Auntie, you have come!"

**Yes," I replied steadily, "'we have come to tell you God's way of salvation."

"Oh, yes, yes,' he replied as if anxious to get a necessary evil over quickly. "Are you related to the Cranes down on the market?"

"Not related, but we are friends, fellow workers. You, I take it, are the headman here?' Oh, what a beaming smile

I received!

"Yes, I am the father of Honey One; it was nice of you to give him candy in the hospital—he told me about it." Then, with one of his lightning changes, he turned on that boy and said sharply, ""Go down and get Auntie some meat and vegetables!' Maybe he suspected that I knew it was the duty of the headman to entertain strangers. The son shot us a sullen, angry look, but not daring to disobey, shunted off slowly down the hill.

"That is my house,' continued Honey, flashing his brilliant smile at us, and indicating with his chin the house from which he had issued. "Come down and sit awhile. If there is anything

I can do for you, let me know!" And with an affable nod of the head, he was gone.

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"Hm! I remarked in English to his retreating back.

"Quite a show you gave us. If I were an unscrupulous person, wouldn't I pull the strings of that vanity for my own purposes!"

The whole pantomime had revealed quite a lot. Honey was very definitely a powerful character. He had a natural charm and warmheartedness about him that was really very winning.

If he had only offered himself to the Lord Jesus what a lovable human being God would have made of him! As I remembered what God had done for Me-do-me-pa in China I shook my head with longing over this man. The very power and influence he so thirsted to obtain, God gave to dear Me-do-me-pa who had begun, just like Honey, as heathen headman over a very few villages; but ended up as a byword for wisdom for many days' journey all over the canyon. Truly Honey :-ved his life and—lost it. We can but weep over him, for despite his evil ways, we all of us like him. We saw generous impulses as well as greed; gentle wistfulness at times, as well as vanity. When

Honey wanted to be nice, nobody could be nicer.

Allan Crane had had many loving talks with him as Honey dropped in to the house by the trail on his way to market.

Besides his vanity and love of power, he had a great greed for money. In our later visits we watched that greed warring with the Holy Spirit for his soul. As Allan had told us, there were moments when you literally watched him melt toward the message. He would ask questions and his heart seemed tender and yearning. He would never deign to come and listen to us women preach, but often after speaking in a house in the village we would turn to find him with that gentle look on his face, listening at our elbow. There was a time when we had hoped that he would accept the Saviour. But there must have been a day when in his soul he definitely said No, for gradually he became, not just indifferent, but hard and inimical toward the Gospel messengers. When he worked himself up his temper was frightful; I myself believe he became demon-possessed. No wonder poor little Ah-ka-me-ma felt she could not face being clubbed to death by him.

That afternoon we had planned to visit the one remaining house, the home of the Wood family, which we had not managed to canvass the previous day, but an unexpected event hindered. As we were about to start, suddenly we saw a long

'ENTERING THE LIsTS''

file of men carrying small oblong packs each the same size and obviously very heavy, because the size was much less than the ordinary manload of grain. They had armed guards with them who strode right into the house of Father Wood.

"Who are they ?" whispered Edna to me, for we were frozen to a standstill.

"I don't know. I am afraid they are opium smugglers.

Only opium would weigh what those small packs must," I whispered back. From the sala we watched; the armed men stood while the carriers filed past them, and the guards shouted orders in Chinese. On and on came the carriers, who were Thai in the main—twenty, thirty, forty, fifty we counted and still some came. The guard standing on Wood's porch ordered them to scatter to the various shanties on the hill, and in a surprisingly short time they were all gone.

Melted out of sight! Then the Chinese head guard saw us, scowled, and began advancing toward us. Inwardly I prayed for wisdom, but the Lord was guarding us. Up the hill came headman Honey, who eagerly called out to them, and a conversation in Chinese (Yunnanese) followed.

'Who are these ?"' asked the chief guard grimly, nodding to us.

"Only missionaries,' answered Honey. "Don't be afraid of them. They have good hearts."

The guard continued to scowl as if he would not trust Honey's word too readily, But a companion guard came up.

'""Have they any medicine?" he asked Honey. By this time they had approached our sala and were leaning on its fence, staring at us, who were seated on the platform. I felt I had better speak up.

"Yes, sir, we have a little medicine. Are you sick?" I spoke as politely in Chinese as I knew how. Honey's eyes opened with surprise. "Oh, Auntie, you speak Chinese, too?" he said.

The second guard smiled with pleasure, came up to me and spoke almost reverently. "Madam, two of our men have malaria. Do you have any paludrine?" and he used that name in clear English.

"No, but I have atebrin,'' I replied. Remember, no one had said they were smugglers, and besides, malaria, if it is not checked, will spread to others of the population.

"Atebrin is just as good," said this Chinese courteously.

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"Jt is the American drug, is it not, and paludrine is the English ?""

"T do not know," I answered, and gave him enough pills for two men, as he had asked He held out a five-baht note

—much too much in any case, but of course I had to tell him it was not for sale, but the gift of the American government to help stamp out malaria in Thailand.

"Never mind, you just take it for yourself," he urged, and seemed very impressed when I refused. He appeared to be an educated young man and I explained the Gospel to him in his own language. He listened respectfully and would have asked questions if the head guard had not called him away.

That head guard's evil look showed definite animosity. As there was not a shanty which was not hiding these men, we felt we should not attempt any house visitation but confined our ministry to preaching to the crowds who came to the sala.

That evening, under cover of dusk, Honey One slipped up on to the platform by himself. "If I became a Christian, will God heal my leg?" he asked wistfully. We assured him that God would, if it were best for him, but that God sometimes uses sickness to give us other gifts instead. He knew his leg would likely break out again with the poor diet of the mountains, and, having experienced countless cases like it in China, I knew we could not promise miraculous cure.

Then as it was dark we turned to our sleeping bags.

But I could not sleep—life had been too exciting that day.

It must have been about midnight when stealthy footsteps approaching startled me into a chill. I had been pondering

What was happening under cover of night in this village?

So when I heard that sinister approach I was frightened.

Edna and the Thai boys were sound asleep, to judge by their breathing, but every bit of me was alert. Then I heard a voice growl in Chinese: '"Where are these foreigners sleeping ?

I want to see—here!"" And a powerful beam from a flashlight was directed on us. I lay quietly as possible but my heart was thumping so loud I wondered if he could not hear it.

The light lay on us for a moment, then it was flashed off with

''ENTERING THE LISTS''

a grunt of relieved disgust.

A moment later the same voice called out: "Ho! Old Chang—have you any lard to sell?"

Our next door neighbours answered back sleepily, then I heard the smugglers enter his house, and a muffled conversation followed. Relieved that we had been passed by, I relaxed and finally fell asleep.

The next day was the last day before Chinese New Year celebrations shut the village in for three days, so we had to return home. The Lisu were incredulous that we would deliberately miss seeing the famous devil dance.

"How could I enjoy seeing you worship the Devil? He has been no kind master to you, ever," I pointed out.

"Oh, well, just stay, Ma-ma, and we believers will dance to God!' said one of the would-bes.

"You cannot mix up Devil worship and the worship of God," I answered. '"We shall come back again when it is all over." And so we left.

No one had been converted, but the Seed had been sown...

. The women's fear of us had been broken. From then on they came to us, especially with their sorrows.

. Certain of the young men had been taught respect for us...

. Just a weak little wedge had been thrust into one of Satan's strongholds.

But God was kinder to us than we expected.

One morning after the devil-dancing days were completed, down in The House by The Side of The Trail at Hweiphai, an awkward, slow-witted Lisu youth pushed in through the doorway. In his excitement he had not noticed the sill and, almost falling headlong into Evelyn Crane's arms, he blurted out, "Ngwa nu nu wa du la ni shih!" (We want to enter you!)

It was the ignorant way of saying that they wanted to enter the Christian religion. Evelyn and Allan could hardly believe their ears. The lad was Wu-be, good-natured but phlegmatic son of Father Wood of Ta-Ngo. He spoke the truth. A break in the Lisu tribe had come at last!

Weary was our heart with waiting, And the nightwatch seemed so long, But His triumph day is breaking And we hail it with a song.

God's child does not enter the lists in vain.

Summit Camps TRICTLY speaking, we establish a Summit Camp only when converts in a certain village invite a missionary to take up residence among them and offer to build him a shanty.

It really costs the tribes very little labour to put up what they call a house, and it is a pledge of their real interest in the missionary who must sacrifice so much of human comfort in order to dwell among them, minister to their sicknesses, instruct them in the Gospel, and teach them to read and write.

The tribes are nomadic to some extent, and the fact that they discard their own houses so easily, frequently moving to another place and putting up new ones, is proof that a shanty is not a thing of great toil or worth to them. It is not imposing on them for us to expect such a small pledge that they should house the missionary they are inviting. Since I began to write this book, two of our Summit Camp villages have moved! One village dissolved entirely, different families moving to different points; the other village moved en bloc, a whole day's journey away. So the Summit Camps mentioned here must be regarded as typical of what forms the tribal missionary's life, rather than a work of permanent continuance.

The work continues, but the village sites may be deserted.

Camp Ta-Ngo (Lisu) Our first Summit Camp was not formed within the principles we hope to reach, but it was set up with the best use of facilities, personnel, and circumstances within our grasp. It was not a pattern for other Summit Camps to follow, but rather the exception which has proved the rule is wise.

It was a full week after Edna and I had returned to Chiengmai before we learned that a family by the name of Wood

(surname translated, of course) had sent word that they wished to become Christians, if only someone would come up and show them how. Allan and Evelyn felt that the time element was important, for if we delayed, the Woods' neigh-

SUMMIT CAMPS

bours might persuade them to change their minds. So while the Cranes sent word to us to come, they themselves set out to try and hire horses, so that Allan could go up in person, and his heart muscles not be overstrained. They obtained them immediately. Note that fact, because on later occasions when they tried to get horses they were unable to do so. But this time there was no trouble whatever, and off up to Ta-Ngo they went.

Down in Chiengmai this unexpected news arrived before superintendent-husband had returned from his long trip among the Miao. We could not consult him, but it was obvious what the Lord wanted us to do. So, prayerfully, we made our preparations to go back up to that same Lisu village. Who would be appointed permanently to the Lisu was a matter the superintendent could decide later.

This time, in preparing, Edna and I knew better what to take. Among other things we included some Gospels and other literature in Chinese, a few Lisu catechisms, a small supply of paper and pencils for those who might want to learn to read and write their own language, and a wider variety of medicines than we had taken before. When we reached Advance Camp Hweiphai, Evelyn and Allan had already returned and had a thrilling story to tell us.

"The Wood family have burned their demon altar!" they called out to us shortly after we had clambered down from the bus. Can you imagine how this news thrilled us? And the high beating of our hearts? Early that morning (my diary tells me), before we had left Base Camp, the Lord's word to me had been from Exodus 34:13, "Ye shall destroy their altars." I had known nothing of what happened up the hill. Among the Yao, Brother Six had already believed in Christ for some months, but his demon altar was still up in his home. Though he did not use it himself, others in the family did. So we had no reason to think up such a word by ourselves. It is wonderful to have God talk to you like this, as Person to person, in the holy stillness of your heart's sanctuary. And when you see the fulfilment, you just retire there and praise Him. Oh, it is wonderful to belong to His army and to share His counsels!

After we had washed off the dust of bus travel, we all sat down to Evelyn's snowy white table for a cup of tea, and to hear the rest of their story.

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Wu-be had told them that his father sent him to ask Allan and Evelyn to come up and help them get rid of their evil spirits. They had headman Honey's permission to do so.

Note this point, for it concerns all the tribes. Honey never would give permission to any other family to destroy their demon altar, and the tribal economy is so interwoven with the headman's power, that for one family to break away is social suicide. We will see this principle working in the Wood family as our tale proceeds.

Allan and Evelyn rode up to the village and made their camp in the sala. The Lisu family on the kitchen side of the sala we have named The Blind Honeys (to distinguish them from the headman's family—they had a little daughter who went blind). The family on the platform side of the sala had shown much promise, and the father's name was Ah-lay.

Both these families had half promised to turn Christian.

Down the hill from Blind Honey's house was the bamboo hut of Father Wood. (We called him Father Wood to distinguish him from the many other Wood men in the village; it was a long time before we found out that he had another name, which no one ever used.) Down to this shanty sped the eager missionaries. They knew it well, for they had been here three or four times before, and Father Wood had seemed to be on the point of believing.

He had arthritis and was an opium addict, and anything but a promising object for the Lord Jesus. Even now, as Allan and Evelyn entered at his own invitation, he looked nothing to be proud of. So crippled that he could not walk, he sat beside his fire all day and night, or lay down beside it to smoke his opium pipe. Dirty, unkempt, old and crippled—who would want him?

Surely only the Lord, who died on Calvary for man's sin, would ever give such an object a second thought. Yet his face lit up when he saw the two white people, and he asked them to sit down. Villagers crowded in and the Cranes had a wonderful opportunity as they again made clear the Gospel message, and what was involved in becoming a Christian. Long into the night they talked; Allan being present, Evelyn might stay with propriety.

Father Wood was a thinker, and, confined to his one spot on the floor, he had pondered over the new message and the

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old bondage. He and Mother Wood had had nine children in all, but now only two were left. Wu-be was twenty-three years old, and there was an older married daughter named

Ah-mee-do. For every sickness they had sacrificed their pigs, chickens and animals, but even with such propitiation to the demons, their children had died. And now this disease had settled on the father himself. Paying sorcerers for many costly incantations, they had been reduced to poverty but had received no profit. Serving the demons was of no avail.,

Would this Jesus Christ prove more powerful? Father Wood had decided to try Christianity, and it was obvious that the whole village looked upon it as a test case. Many doubtless expected immediate calamity the moment his ruthless hands might touch the demon shelf. The missionaries said that Christ was more powerful than the demons—was that true? Could anyone be stronger than the evil spirits who had ruled their race from time immemorial?

To make the healing of Father Wood's arthritis the test of the efficacy of Christ's blood to atone for man's sin was not our desire. We know that God can and does heal miraculously.

But these tribes need their sins dealt with much more than their bodily infirmities. None of the tribes have any sense of sin or of the holiness of God. To them, no sin matters unless one is caught doing it, then of course the ensuing punishment matters.

The tribe cannot be lifted out of their degradation until they are made to know what is sin, and what is sin's remedy. So Allan carefully put this to Father Wood as the real issue. Yes, the old man said that he believed that Christ died on the cross for his sin, and that he wished to receive Him as his personal

Saviour from sin. Whether he got better or not, he was going to be a Christian, and tomorrow they would do it. Now let us hear Allan tell it in his own words:

The next morning, before breakfast, we all gathered in his hut again. The whole village, except Honey, was there. The strange thing about these gatherings in the hut, both the evening before and that morning, was that the other villagers, although they crowded in, kept clear of Father Wood's side of the fire, and all remained on the other side and near to the door. It looked like a Great Divide! I read some verses from the Gospels and explained them; read also from the catechism and AT E

1g0

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explained; Evelyn and I sang a hymn or two and explained.

We prayed, and then Father Wood prayed. It always amazed me the way he could pray, right from the beginning; he just talked to the Lord, but his language was classical Lisu, if one might use that term. It was full of those four-word expressions which abound in and enrich Lisu poetry; they just seemed to flow from him, the Lisu language at its highest and best. Then

Father Wood hitched himself around on that dirty old pallet of his, tor the demon shelf hung up on that side wall right behind where he sat, and he called out:

"Go away! We've had enough of you. We have served you faithfully, we and our forebears have nourished you all these years, and I the best of all, because of our many troubles and sicknesses. But did you cure us? No. Now we have heard the words of God and the Lord Jesus. From now on I, Father Wood,

Mother Wood, Ah-mee-do, Wu-be and Be-be (the grandson) are turning to God. We do not want you here any more. Be one!"

: He then turned around toward the central fire again and prayed, asking the Lord to help and keep them from all evil.

I think at this moment a cloud of horrible fear came over him, but the Lord helped him to do the right thing. Everybody was watching, and after his prayer, Mother Wood and Wu-be got up and tore the shelf down, as Father Wood told them to do. We did not touch a thing, except perhaps when Evelyn helped carry a piece to be burned outside. It was all sent up in flames out there in what was almost the centre of the village.

The company was very solemn and I think they really expected a calamity. They stole out of the shanty and were very quiet all the rest of that day. Evelyn and I had to come back with the horses, but of course the family needs teaching now, and so we sent for you two to return.

This little story kindled our hearts, as you may imagine, and we arose to prepare for our second visit to Ta-Ngo with joyous expectancy. Early that next morning as we were arranging our loads for the porters, Evelyn came up to me and held out a much-bethumbed piece of paper, covered with laboriously printed Lisu letters—the first attempt at writing, of the first Lisu Christians in Thailand. "It makes me cry,"

I said to her, wiping away a tear. Her eyes brimming over, she replied gladly, "Me, too." Both of us were thinking of the little smudged notes we used to receive from new converts in

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Ig!

China, delighted to have a way of telling out their heart's love and gratitude to their esteemed missionary, even when distance separated them. Was God going to give us that again, in Thailand?

So it was with very thrilled hearts that David's Pebbles went up the hill again. My diary tells us that two of our

Thai carriers this time were surnamed Kam, and the third, Kiaw. Kam means gold and is as common as our Smith.

Again we camped in the sala, but as soon as possible made our way down to that one shanty which we had not visited: we went in and met—Father Wood.

Every Lisu shanty, on stilts or on the ground, has a central, open wood fire; and with it plenty of ashes constantly deposited on everything within sight. In China, the Lisu slept on low planks for a bed, but in Thailand they copy the Thai, who curl up on a mat spread on the floor. There was no furniture but a low circular table which was hung against the wall when not in use, and grain bins or sacks. A Lisu house usually looks like the worst of junk shops! Sitting on a dirty pallet on the other side of the fireplace was an unkempt, unwashed man of about fifty years of age. He was hugging his gnarled knee, for the right foot could not be straighened out due to an enlarged arthritic joint. Soot and dirt were caked in the wrinkles of his hands and neck, but he smiled when he saw us and ordered his wife to give me their only seat—a small square of wood about two inches from the floor. Mother Wood was a round, kindly faced woman, fat in an unhealthy, flabby way. She was probably swollen with beri-beri, from which she had suffered a lot, and consequently she, as well as he, was a heavy opium smoker.

Of course none of them could read or write. Until the missionaries came no one had ever heard of a Lisu being able to read or write his own language! Such a possibility never seems even to have entered their imaginations.

The hut was immediately filled with heathen neighbours who wanted to see what we were going to do now. Always the sub rosa whispers were sent around that these white people had a hidden motive and purpose which would only gradually be revealed and which would mean tragedy for the ones who had received them. Why else did they come? Just for love of the Lisu and to help them? Who would be such a fool as to believe

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that? They meant to steal their children and carry them off to America to make soldiers of them—this press-gang report was a common lie spread about all the mountains. It was told also among the Miao and other tribes. I could not help suspecting that its origin was communistic. In China people had lied about the pioneers, too—said that they had come to steal their land, that they wanted their children's eyes with which to make their strange medicines, and so on. But to make them into soldiers in America was too red; that propaganda did not come from the Thai or the tribes. And so the missionary battles an unseen foe all the time.

Then there was the question of what to do next. Here was the first convert—a dirty, old, illiterate opium smoker. Where are you going to start? The pioneer's heart sinks before his difficulties many a time. But a potent word from Campbell

Morgan has often helped me. He said: ""The whole difference between faith and fear is that of the difference of putting our

'buts' before or after God. God commands, but there are difficulties. That is paralysis. There are difficulties, but God commands. That is power.' So we shook off our paralysis and deliberately placed the but before God.

First we must get acquainted with them all; so we chatted away, asking about the family history, the reason for their burning their demon altars, how old they were, and so on.

This was pleasant. The tribesman is a frank, genial body with the simple, open curiosity of a child. He loves to tell you about his family and his history as far as he knows it, and never ceases to be thrilled to hear about that Alice's

Wonderland called America. But we only use such to relax tension and put folk at their ease. My diary records that on that first visit we went over the great fundamental truths of our faith, feeling for the amount of knowledge that had been assimilated by these poor opium addicts. We also tried to explain the joy that the Lisu Christians in China had received from learning to read and write, urging them to attempt it also. I had little hope of Father Wood learning to read, but young Wu-be, even though he was obviously dense, should certainly be able to. All of us who have used the Fraser script with simple tribespeople would never use any other. There are other scripts that are more intricately

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worked out, but to my mind they are far too complicated for the tribesman to learn. Wu-be had already made a start at the Lisu alphabet, under the Cranes' tuition, so we began to build on that. Remembering stories from Mr. Fraser's own experience of the unlimited patience the pioneer missionary needs in these initial steps, I gritted my teeth, and the next day we began to teach. Here Edna was able to help and carry her share, for she could read Lisu now, although she had not yet learned the meaning of the words nor the structure of the sentences.

Father Wood proved to have a keen mind, though you would never have guessed it to look at him. Not to be outdone by his son, he also began to go over the first lessons, and as he had plenty of time to spare, not being able to do anything else, we did not discourage him. In China we had known only two men of fifty years of age who had learned to read, and none older than that. Father Wood was fifty-three.

But there was another very obvious place where they must be helped—in their health. Right from the start we spoke gently but firmly about the need to bathe and keep clean.

This was usually greeted with chuckles, as a funny idea!

But it was a great encouragement to see Father Wood, the next morning, heat some water, pour a little into his small teacup and dribble it over his hands until the soot ran off in black rivulets and the colour of human skin once more began to appear. Besides this good advice, we gave them medicines. Neither Edna nor I had taken any nurses' training, but any educated white person knows that vitamins, liver and iron shots or pills will build up health, and aspirin helps relieve rheumatic pains. Then, too, I had learned that every Lisu has some malaria in his veins, so we added atebrin to our pharmacopoeia. Experience had taught us that the tribesman will not obey medical orders. He reasons like this: If two pills every four hours will help you, then twelve pills all at one dose will make you well six times as fast! It is no use trying to explain our dosing system to them. They will smile sweetly and nod in wonderful understanding and even repeat the words after you—but as soon as your back is turned, likely as not, down go all the twelve pills at one time. So I laid the burden of remembering on myself, and every few hours I placed the pills in Father Wood's

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hands and stood over him until he had swallowed them. At the end of that week, while Edna and I were seated in the sala eating our lunch snack, one of us cried out, "Say, do my eyes deceive me? Is that Father Wood below his house picking up firewood ?" It was. He, who for so long had not been able to stand up or walk, at the end of a week of such simple remedies was able to take a little stiff-legged stroll along Second Ridge!

Hope of a cure, when real medicals could come up and care for him, soared high in our hearts.

Every day we taught him to read the catechism, pointing his fingers at each of the words (he was really memorizing it, of course, but that was what we wanted—to get the truth into his heart and mind). Every day we preached new truths to him, and from time to time we made excursions to other ridges to preach and evangelize. We were astonished to find that no one wanted to learn to sing! Wu-be and a friend tried one afternoon, but that was all, and Wu-be soon gave up learning to read as too difficult! He was obviously being ridiculed at his slowness by his fellows, and he could not endure it. Old Father Wood laboured away, but was constantly held up by the little words to, at, and the verb-final Jo which his dialect did not use, and which were so hard to explain, as the Jo has no meaning in itself. The patience of his teachers was sorely tried, and we wondered if we were wasting time trying to teach him.

The weather also became a trial, for it clouded over and began to rain. The sala roof leaked, and everything was sopping wet. We had to spread plastic sheets over our sleeping bags and pull the basket lids over our heads in order to keep dry at night, and the Thai porters just picked up their blankets and moved into Father Wood's house, leaving us alone after dark. As I lay there, cold, and feeling the dampness all around,

I recollected a similar experience in China which had given me lumbago, and I knew if that recurred I would never be able to walk home. I would be marooned up there! So I said dismally to Edna, "If this keeps up, I wonder if we should not cut short our visit and go back for this time."

"O Ma-ma," she said immediately, "run away because of a little rain and discomfort? Oh, we couldn't do that!"

And then I knew she spoke the truth. It was once more a

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case of the whereabouts of BUT! It was raining, but God... !

The courage and faith of a young worker can often be a blessing to an older one. So we stuck it out.

We had other adventures, one of them not at all pleasant.

The tribes do not use or make toilets. The shelter of a tree in the nearest copse is the most privacy you can hope for, and in the heavy rain it can be miserable. It was during this time that I had an experience which, although I came to no actual harm, entirely unnerved me. When I got back to the sala I said to Edna, '""We must pray the Lord for a shanty of our own. If women are to come and live here, they must have the protection of a little privacy now and again.

If we had our own shanty we could arrange it—I am going to pray for a place of our own.' This was the reason that Summit Camp Ta-Ngo was established before the people had invited us, or were prepared really to help us. It is again, basically, because we were women, not men. Men would have been in no danger from the above circumstance. But I am getting ahead of my story.

Sunday afternoon the weather cleared—we were due back in Base Camp on Tuesday. As we were eating supper, looking out over the beautiful mountain ridges in that eastern expanse, I noticed a man in white come up over the crest of Ridge One. "O Edna, look! I cried. "A white man is coming. Who could it—7ohn!"' In two jumps I was down that ladder and waving enthusiastically to the approaching traveller!

Only twe people in the world have that walk—John Kuhn and his son. The Lisu, hearing my shout, gathered around curiously, so I had great pleasure in telling them that this was the person they had been asking about—my husband. On returning from his Miao trip, he had learned the good news from the Carlsons, and immediately started out again to visit the first Lisu convert. Oh, what fun it was to greet him as he pushed up the steep slope toward our sala! He was a lot thinner—had lost some twenty or thirty pounds on that Miao trek, but felt it had been good to get down in weight to better hiking trim.

Oh, how the tongues wagged in the shanty as we told our story and he told his! We had not seen one another for thirty days. Then there was the joy of taking a man down to Father

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Wood's house, and once more basking in the uncomfortable shadow of my husband's easy Lisu and watching the two of them get acquainted. John slept there that night. Whenever he came to Ta-Ngo he was very particular not to sleep where the single women were, as the tribes must be taught chaste living, and they would not have believed it otherwise. Second or third wives are quite common with them.

So, after a time of prayer with the Wood family, and a promise from John that the two Pebbles would be allowed to return to them in a week or so, we took our departure.

Here I would like to give you a translation of the first prayer I ever heard Father Wood make. I had jotted part of it down when I got to the sala. Remember, these words came from one whose body was still in its grime and soot, but whose soul had just been washed in the blood of the Lamb.

He prayed: '"'O Thou who dwellest in the High Place, we have entered Thee. I and my wife, my son and my daughter, and my grandson, have entered Thee. Spread Thine arm over us, brood us under Thy wing as a mother hen her chicks..."

"And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord

Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.' Dare ye then despise those of earth's dust who have never had an opportunity to be washed ? Ye feel yourselves justified, the élite of the universe; do ye not owe a debt to your poor earth-bound brother, who could love his Creator as gratefully, as devotedly as you, if he were told how?

We sped down through the woodland trails, on our way home, and we made them ring with our song:

From the glory and the gladness, From His secret place, From the rapture of His presence From His radiant face:

Christ, the Son of God, hath sent me Through the midnight lands; Mine the mighty ordination Of the piercéd hands.

The ideal thing, at this point in the work, would have been to have a single man to make periodic journeys up to Ta-Ngo and teach the converts. We had none such available.

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Charles Peterson spoke Lisu but he had not yet arrived in Thailand, and after arrival he must learn some Thai. The next best thing, as John saw it, was to send Edna and me up to instruct them from time to time. There was no other young worker who had passed her Thai examinations and was ready for an appointment to the Lisu tribe. We were all of us so new in this land.

It was fifteen days before Edna and I were free to go again.

Then John took a survey trip with Orville, and I was allowed to make a trip to the Lisu. It was at the end of this third visit that headman Honey came to us and told us that he had sold the sala to a Chinese refugee, a Moslem—four of such had recently moved into Ta-Ngo. When we came back the next time we must sleep at the Woods'; there would be no sala. This precipitated my desire for a shanty of our own. I began to make inquiries if I could not buy a shanty on the Second Ridge. To sleep at the Wood house meant sleeping with heathen men, side by side on the floor, for there was almost always a trader staying with the Woods. For us women, it was not desirable without a missionary man present. I had not inquired long before a bright young fellow popped up the ladder and offered to build me a new shanty for some four hundred baht (about sixty-five U.S. dollars). Under the indigenous policy no such move should be made without consulting the local Christians, so I took the matter down to Father Wood and I saw in a moment that he was troubled—the price was too high. But to my astonishment I had an unexpected offer! In the corner, not noticed by me, headman Honey lay smoking his opium pipe, and he had heard all we had said. Suddenly he sat up and opened his mouth: "'Ma-ma, I will build you a shanty free," was his astounding offer. "'Can you vaccinate ?"'

Yes, we had often done it for our Lisu in China.

"You vaccinate the children of this village free of charge, and we will build you a shanty of your own—just wherever you want it—free. Why, last year a Thai came up here and charged us four or five baht a child, and it was no good— never took at all. Now you bring good vaccine, and we will build for you, as a thankoffering."'

Perfectly thrilled at the idea of a little place of our own, on our return Edna and I presented the matter to Superintendent John. He was not enthusiastic.

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"That is not the indigenous way," he said quietly.

"But we are not paying anything for it!' we replied, astonished.

"But that is not the point,' he continued. "To get something for nothing is not our purpose.

A Summit Camp should not be established until the people feel their spiritual need of the missionary. You are really paying for this hut with work and vaccine instead of money. I do not think it will turn out happily

—they are not asking you to come in order to learn of Christ and the way of salvation."

"That is true," I made answer, "but if you must have the perfect indigenous way, then give us men to go! If women have to go, there must be some place where they can be private occasionally, and that is only possible if they have a room to themselves with four walls around it! There is no such place unless we accept this offer! And if girls are to be the Lisu tribe's only hope of a missionary, they have to live somewhere until they learn the Lisu language—do they not? They cannot learn Lisu living among the Thai—that does not work out well, as we have experienced."

'All right," said Mr. Superintendent. "Since the situation is as it is, go ahead. Just remember you are not building according to our pattern. I hope it will not be so with the other tribes."' And it was not.

So we sent back word to the Cranes, who were to relay the message to headman Honey that he could go ahead and build us a shanty, and we would be up to vaccinate by a given date.

It was three weeks before we were able to go again, and this time John planned to go with us and investigate this planting of a possible Summit Camp. But when we arrived at Hweiphai, we found that Esther Cooke was there and ill. She must get to medical care in Chiengmai, and the only person able to escort her was John, so he had to turn right back and take

Esther, leaving us to go up the hill alone again.

Edna and I will never forget that day. We had the vaccine with us, but would Honey keep his word? Would there be a shanty for us? And a little outhouse which we had explained must be included? We could not sleep at the sala this time— that Chinese Moslem was in it. What awaited us?

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As we reached First Ridge and the Lisu called out to us— for they were friendly now—we asked ther. :f our house had been built. "Yes, it is going up,'' they shouted back, and our hearts beat high with joy.

As we turned the corner from where Second Ridge would be visible our eyes eagerly searched out the hillside. Yes, away off to the left of the cluster of shanties a new one was going up. It was not quite where we had asked for it, but in an even better site, as time proved. The walls were up but the roof was not on. Ah-ka-me-ma was one of our nearest neighbours, so we went in to talk with her for a while. Headman

Honey was not long in coming over.

"T've built the house for you—have you brought the vaccine?" he asked. Yes, we had brought it and, more than that, we had brought an enlarged snapshot of himself and also one of the Wood family, each framed and ready to hang on the wall. Didn't his eyes glitter with vanity as he beheld himself, a good likeness, and framed in silver-painted moulding! He was exceedingly friendly and warmhearted that visit. But he had gone back on his word that the shanty would be free. He said that as headman he must "tax" us for this new place— four hundred baht. Father Wood was furiously indignant.

'There is no such tax," he growled. "His underheadmen planned this. They are three, and with Honey they will each get one hundred baht. I told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself."

No one will ever know the joy we experienced that night as Edna and I climbed into our sleeping bags, with four walls around us (no roof yet, it was true, but God's own brilliant stars twinkling down on us). A place of our own, where, whenever we had to come, we might be sure of occasional privacy— it seemed the height of luxury. Our dear Lord had given us more than He had allowed Himself—a place to lay our heads.

Lord of night's jewelled roof, Day's various tapestry, Lord of the warp and woof Of all that yet shall be, > Tis wonderful to me That I am loved by Thee.

Amy CARMICHAEL

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How often I whispered that little verse to Him as I snuggled down to sleep.

John had done the valiant again and had made Ta-Ngo in one day from Base Camp; he arrived that night but spent it, of course, in Father Wood's house. The next day the roof was put on our little fifteen-by-seventeen home, and as we surveyed it all, we nicknamed it Higgledy-Piggledy. I will quote from our circular of those days.

We call it Higgledy-Piggledy because of its appearance.

How else could you describe a wall that starts off being made of planks (old warped ones) then extends itself with a length of bamboo matting, and finally (that not being long enough either) ends up with bamboo poles stuck upright and strapped together? That is the south wall of our new shanty at Ta-Ngo.

But that is not really the way to look at it! Life is all in the way you look at things. Try this angle! The Lisu built it for us in exchange for our vaccinating their children free of charge.

The headman accepted some remuneration ("'ate our money" as they would say) but the workmen did their part for nothing, and when they look at the house they will have a feeling of possession—''I got that bamboo and tied on that edge, so that my Johnny would be saved from smallpox.' And with the feeling of possession may come an interest in the occupants and their message, for there is still only one Christian family in the village.

Higgledy-Piggledy House is built at the edge of a knoll of grey rocks, where some day flowers are going to grow, and where every stray breeze creeps up and fans us. It has no furniture at present. We sleep on the floor and fold up our bedding in the morning, and the bedding roll is our only chair all day long. Our stove is three stones set upright on mother earth, and we eat out on the veranda with the whole village spread out before us. On clear days, through a dip in the hills ane Ridge we even get a glimpse of the Thai plain far, far elow.

Draw from your far-horizons, beauty and ecstasy, Treasure to deck a palace, housing my Love and me.

And please could you spare one sunset to hang on this grey north wall?

Your brush must have painted millions; you can't be using them all.

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14!

I could use some draperies of twilight, in a certain amethyst Unt tins Far horizons, sunset, amethyst twilight—we have them all.

So you see, it is all in the way you look at it—the HiggledyPiggledy House.

We vaccinated about one hundred people that visit, and almost all of them took. John helped in the teaching of Father

Wood, but it was discouraging. Chinese were pouring into and through the village. Four stores had been set up since our last visit, by Chinese Moslems—probably blinds for opium trading.

People popping in and out interrupted Father Wood's concentration, and his patience and ours was tried to the utmost.

John, of course, was specially helpful in giving Father Wood personal instruction, and discovering the vagaries of his local dialect.

Father Wood was an interesting man after you got to know him. He spoke five languages fluently—Lisu, Lahu, Akha,

Thai, and Chinese. He was a good talker and chatted the Gospel to all who came to the house. As soon as he learned a point of doctrine, he would turn and teach it to the man nearest him. He also became very fond of us, greeting us with a wistful, 'I was love-longing for you to come back." We have found the Lisu Christian to be a person of deep affections, although he does not show it on the surface. I have been much surprised to discover loving loyalty where I had not even suspected much interest. In China their deep-rooted love for their missionaries often humbled me; they would pray with such tenderness for missionaries whom they had not seen for a decade or so! Never forgotten. Father Wood would not appear to you to be one such. He had a gruff manner, and when his pains hurt him and discouraged him with thoughts that he would never be well again, he could be really grumpy. Yet on visit after visit he would let loose occasionally some of those sweet little tender remarks which a Lisu uses only when his emotions have been deeply touched. His arthritis returned with the rains, and cleared up partially when the weather was hot and dry, but it never really left him.

On this particular visit, with John present, we instituted a Sunday service in Father Wood's house. We also paid a

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visit to Ban-Nai, on a mountain range behind Ta-Ngo, and preached, though there again the people ran from us.

All this time there were no missionaries who could be appointed to the Lisu tribe for the establishment of a Summit

Camp. Edna was under appointment, but had not yet finished her required Thai language study. But the Lord was laying the Lisu tribe on another young heart—that of Nurse Eileen

O'Rourke. Eileen had been doing her Thai language study at Advance Camp Chiengrai. But when she intimated that she felt the Lord would have her work among the Lisu, the Mission appointed her to be Edna's fellow worker and moved the two of them up to Advance Camp Hweiphai to live until they should finish their Thai examinations. Here they daily saw

Lisu and from here they were allowed to make occasional trips to Higgledy-Piggledy when an escort who spoke Lisu was available. This continued through 1953.

It was not until February, 1954, that Edna and Eileen were free to move up to Ta-Ngo village, and thus really establish that place as a Summit Camp. We arrived just before the Chinese New Year celebration (for I was their escort) and possibly you would like to read the letter I wrote on returning home.

I have just returned from helping to plant two precious corns of wheat on a mountaintop, and had to leave them there to "die," according to our Lord's directive word in John 12:24.

Do you wonder what I mean? The first of February I escorted Eileen O'Rourke and Edna McLaren (Nurse Lilian

Hamer also went along to confer with Eileen as to possible treatment for Father Wood, but she returned with me), our two girls who were moving up for permanent residence among the Lisu tribe at the village of Ta-Ngo. It is a hard assignment.

Physically their home is only a small shanty, fifteen by seventeen feet, divided into four sections. Their bedroom, one section, is so small that when they pull out their mattresses at night and spread them on the floor, the mattresses almost fill that section.

And Eileen is six feet tall. Living conditions are so primitive that it hurts to think about it. Another section of the house is for dressing, bathing, study, and a medical dispensary. (They put a second inner wall around this so it could not be peeked through.)

Their kitchen is the third section, where they cook on a wood fire on the floor. (Later they used charcoal.) Worst of all, the

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only water supply is down a steep eighty-foot embankment. I tried in vain to get a Lisu to promise to draw water for them, even though we offered a good wage. You see, heathen are not co-operative, and the only active Christian in the village is an arthritic cripple. There will be plenty of daily dying for our precious corns of wheat, and the "'dying"' is not at all romantic

—smoky fires, sooty hands, crowds of people pressing in to watch you, and the oppressive atmosphere of demon bondage.

The week we went up was Lisu New Year, when the famous devil dancing takes place. It is a worship of Heaven and earth, the sun, their headman, and their necromancer. Each family cuts down a tree and sets it up in front of their house. As they offer food and liquor to it, the dance commences. The inner circle around the tree is of men, who do a heavy stamping twostep, leaping into the air and shouting as the drink inflames them. The outer circle is of women, who, hand clasped in hand, walk around them sedately with a very simple polka step. A native bagpipe sets the time—there is no tune but a catchy rhythmic throb-throb, throb-throb, which somehow quickens your pulse. All are dressed in brilliantly coloured clothes which flash in the sun—red, blue satin, yellow bands, aqua and pink, silver-studded black satins and even velvet jackets! (Lisu in China were too poor for such.) The gleam of colour, the spell of the rhythm, the occasional shouts and spasmodic gunshots have a strong lure for the flesh. The dance went of night and day. Tired dancers falling out were immediately replaced with fresh ones, so that the dance itself did not stop for two days and two nights, and then three days and part of the night. At daybreak there was a short intermission, so it was not a full twentyfour hour stretch. The steadily rhythmic figures in the dim starlight were eerie to watch, and the cattle of the village herded uneasily around our silent shanty. The two corns of wheat were a little pool of quietness in that sea of drunken, demon-led human flesh.

But the girls did not call themselves corns of wheat. Eileen is of Irish extraction, with all the fervent devotion yet witty sparkle of the Celtic nature. She and Edna tackled their hard living quarters with a spirit that was a joy to watch.

They organized that little bit of space to an amazing degree of comfort. And when it rained and the earth flooded, or any other calamity befell them, one of them would cry out,

"Hi, E—, take a snap of this missionary martyr, will you?"

144.

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A pantomime would ensue which never failed to bring laughter.

And as they set themselves to learn this new tongue—remember, neither of them could speak Lisu when they came; Edna had some phrases but had not had time to give herself to Lisu

—the element of Irish proved a good asset. Of course the Lisu poured in to see them, and in regular tribal style, talked away to them as if Lisu were the universal language of the whole earth. Eileen's friendly soul could not endure to wave them off, so she would pretend to understand and chatter back in English, with such a loving sympathetic smile and nod of the head that the speaker was encouraged to go on. But what she really was saying was convulsing to her fellow worker. It is too bad that no one took down verbatim one of these early clinics of Eileen's, but here is a type of the charming nonsense she produced. The word for rain in Lisu is, roughly transliterating, mih-ha-ha; and the phrase for my bones ache is wo-do na. Behold then, the scene!

An old Lisu woman: "'A nyi mth-ha-ha taa, ngwa go-deuh pah leo. Ha meh au...' (Yesterday when it rained I got wet and now...) Eileen, smiling warmly: "Yes, yes, come right in. I've heard of Minnehahah."'

; Old woman: '"'Mith-ha-ha taa wo-do na.' (When it rains my bones ache.) Nurse Eileen: '""And Wodin comes after Minnehahah? You don't mean it!' looking very sympathetic and concerned.

"And here ve been thinking they lived a whole ocean apart!"

Old woman, not understanding the reply, thinks it is because Eileen is a bit deaf, so she begins to shout: 'Nu naa-tsi ma jo wa? Wo-do ah-keh na!" (Don't you have any medicine? My bones ache terribly!) Nurse Eileen, nodding her head with compassion: ''Shocking indeed! Just a moment until I report it. Edna, what is

Wodin after Minnehahah for?"

Edna, not daring to laugh, as the old woman is watching her, answers briefly: "Rheumatism; she got wet."

Old woman yells at Eileen: "'Wo-do teuh ti to na!" (My bones ache here)—pointing to her shoulder.

Eileen (consolingly): 'I'm against Wodin, too. But don't

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you worry. I have complete confidence in Hiawatha and I am sure that he is going to send Wodin packing! Here!"— and she pulls back the woman's dress and rubs a liniment into the shoulder indicated. Maybe also gives her aspirin or such and indicates that this is to be swallowed.

Eileen, with her loving smile and a kindly final pat: "Now run along, dear, and next time Wodin annoys you, you just bring him to me! We'll settle him!"

Old woman departs muttering: "The Big One talks the funniest kind of Lisu I ever heard, but she does seem to get the point if you yell loud enough! Ugh .

. that shoulder feels better already."

And so life at Higgledy-Piggledy rippled as well as rumpled.

Those first few days, the nurses' fame spread so fast that the small hut was crammed with visitors, well ones along with sick ones. The male sex were not absent either, and the simple-minded brother of Honey took a fancy to these white girls. There being no florists in Lisuland, and "'roses are red, violets are blue'? not having been translated into their tongue, his admiration took the form of vegetables.

Early in the morning when they opened their door, there would be this nitwit Honey with a foolish grimace and holding a bunch of greens or a cabbage in his hand which he immediately thrust into theirs, and stood beholding their charms. They would thank him politely and after a while he would disappear, but only to return shortly with a new offering. As their stack of vegetables grew, and also their desire to have a quiet time with the Lord, they finally locked their door and had family prayers in the dressing-room section of their fifteen-by-seventeen mansion. It was the only section that had an inner lining and could not be seen through; but alas, they had forgotten that Higgledy-Piggledy's walls did not reach to the roof. And their ardent Honey, searching for his charmers, traced the low murmur of their voices, in prayer, to that side of the house, and the first thing they knew, a cabbage head shot through the opening where the wall did not reach to the roof and descended upon them.

Maybe a turnip followed that—I forget the details of his offering that morning, but at least he, like Sentimental Tommy, had found a way. And that was how he earned his name of Mr.

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Cabbagehead, although I think his rightful one of Honey was not inappropriate!

With all the admiration they had excited, the girls still could not get anyone to promise regular help, such as hauling the water up that eighty-foot embankment! They had to trust the Lord for such help all during the year and more that they were in Higgledy-Piggledy.

Study of the Lisu language and medical calls as well as their primitive housekeeping occupied much time, but they were also able to teach Father Wood to read and gathered the children around them whenever possible, teaching them Gospel choruses and simple verses. They also helped Father Wood, and later,

Mother Wood, to break off their opium, and their fame for this spread around the hills. But we will leave them at their task until a later chapter.

Now let us go back to the Yao tribe.

Camp Maesalong (Yao) In December, 1952, Mr. Cooke escorted John and me up to see the first convert of the Yao tribe—headman Brother

Six. Perhaps a quotation from the letter of that time will tell the story more vividly. q Two white men and a white woman were labouring wearily up that last hill climb, when a new believer (with the marks of an opium sot still recognizably upon him) casually turned a corner of the trail and then stopped in open-mouthed amazement. The astonishment changed to joy—'"'Oh, Brother Cooke, you've come! Do you know, last night I had a dream you were coming today! Going to Brother Six's? I'll go too. Yes, I dreamed .

. —eh? Oh, yes, Brother Six still believes. He is going to build a house for you, you know. He has given orders that everyone has to help, heathen and Christian both. And..."

—so flowed the village news as we followed the billowy trail after this man. He was chattering happily, quite unconscious that the Holy Spirit was guiding his garrulity to inform us of things which we needed to know before we arrived.

We looked at one another. So the promised shanty was to be built by forced labour! Brother Six was going to use his political office as headman to gain this for us. That was, and is, a common heathen practice; but "'be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind"—Brother Six must be informed that the

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147° standards of his new Master were different. Maybe we had just arrived in time—and we had.

But first we must be friendly, for the dear man meant well. Maesalong looked like a rather squalid village, but the tribal shanties were larger and roomier than the Lisu build.

The wood fire on the mud floor was familiar, though, as was also the very low stool which Brother Six pushed toward me as I was introduced to him. Familiar also was his first question concerning myself: ""How old is she ?"' This to John, as if I could not hear. But I was delighted to find that I understood his

Chinese (tribal Chinese is frequently so garbled that I can't).

"Suppose you guess my age?'' I answered for myself. Then didn't he laugh! Oh, he wouldn't dare do that. 'Yes,' I insisted, "'you guess mine and I will guess yours." So the ice was broken and we had the same merry fun as we used to have in Lisuland. Incidentally, I won the guessing match; he politely guessed me far too young, but I placed him at forty-five or forty-six the first try. Grey-headed, this visible even though he shaved his head, his face was round and unwrinkled, and he had the tribal love of laughter. This does not mean he had no depth, for the conversation swung easily into deeper channels with that childlike straightforwardness which is one of the lovable traits of the tribes. "It was my sins which brought me to the Lord,"' he told us gravely. "'I could not get away from the burden of them. . .

. Mine was the hardest heart of any in the village, at the beginning, yet I was the first to believe!' To me this was a marvellous thing, for although I have known hundreds of converted tribesmen, Brother Six is the very first I have known, personally, who came to the Lord because his sins bothered him.

We had three nights and two days at Maesalong that time, and three more men expressed faith in Christ. At this date

Brother Six's wife and sons were still heathen, so the demon altar had not been removed. But Brother Six had cleaned up his own life and had broken off his opium smoking.

Gradually the men folk talked around until they came to the matter of a house for a missionary to be permanently resident in Maesalong.

Brother Six was quite crestfallen that his beautiful scheme of forced labour would not do! He felt he could not build a shanty by himself, yet he also felt the need of daily help with unexpected situations which constantly arose.

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The result of our visit was that Brother Six enlarged his own house, putting aside a room for women missionaries to live in. Then our women folk, two at a time, came up and stayed for two weeks, instructing him through Chinese or Thai while they strove to learn the Yao language, the only media through which the children and the women of a tribe can be reached. Brother Six's wife—we'll call her Sister

Six for clarity's sake—could speak some Chinese and Thai, so fellowship with her also was possible. Esther Cooke, Lilian

Hamer, Sylvia Lombard, Mary Baldock, and Eileen O' Rourke were all living at Advance Camp Chiengrai, and took turns in coming by twos. This arrangement was followed for some months. During that time, Eileen was called to go south and fill in during an emergency at Advance Camp Pakhui; she never got back to the Yao work, for she felt called to the Lisu during that time away. Sylvia and Mary became more and more convinced that the Yao were the tribe to which the Lord wished them to minister. But a call from another direction, of which I shall soon tell, took the Allyn Cookes into Lahu work.

Thus the Lord gradually sifted workers and revealed the places of His appointment.

Au this time reinforcements were coming steadily. Older workers who had been in China felt the Lord leading them to Thailand, and a few new workers were also apportioned to us. Among the China workers soon to arrive were Mr. and Mrs. Eric Cox, who were sent to Chiengrai for Thai language study. Both of them speak Chinese, of course, and Eric also had some tribal experience, so it was natural that he should accompany Allyn Cooke on a trip to Brother Six's home.

Living right with the new convert was not working out too happily, because the rest of his family continued to trade in opium and do heathen things, which the missionaries, being on the spot, could not miss observing. Sister Six began to change in her cordiality, especially after the pig incident.

Pigs. What have pigs to do with the Devil? Evidently quite a bit, as in olden time the demons preferred to be sent into swine rather than to the abyss.* It is a queer thing, but on that first visit, as I was being shown over the place,

I noticed a huge sow which was the prize pig among many *Mark 5:12.

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that Brother Six was raising. He was pondering this economic question. If a Christian should not trade in opium, which is the principal crop of the tribes of North Thailand, how then would he make his living? The trade in pork is good, so we had suggested that to Brother Six. Maybe this was in the back of my mind, but that afternoon as I stood in front of this enormous sow of which the Six family were so proud, and remembering the demon propensity for pigs, I had a premonition that the Devil was going to use this particular mountain of fat to try to uproot Brother Six's faith. So, as I stood contemplating the sow, I prayed inwardly, committing it to the Lord for protection. I did not tell anyone, for even my fellow missionaries might have laughed at me, especially the inexperienced ones!

Yet the struggle for the Six family centred in that particular sow! Away back in Base Camp we heard about it:

Driving his pigs to market, Brother Six had the misfortune to lose his big sow, the most valuable of them all. It ran into the bush before he could stop it, and though he has searched and prayed, and we have all prayed, the pig remains lost.

Sister Six has become almost hostile toward us since and says that only demon worship will bring it back. Do pray.

Well, of course, we did pray. Imagine groups of missionaries, in this city and that (for those in Chiengrai were equally concerned) down on their knees praying for the safety of an old sow! But that is only secing the surface. Satan knows the Achilles' heel of every one of us; and their pigs are a very tender spot with the tribes. So we prayed, and the Lord apparently did not answer—even though I had covered that fat sow with prayer long before!

Sister Six was furious. Ordinarily she would sacrifice to the demons in her own house, but here were these missionaries all casting anxious, reproachful looks at her! Besides this, the demons do not like the presence of Christians—they will not be exorcized if Christians are present. So Sister Six trots herself off to a neighbour, and has an incantation to bring back the pig. And the pig was found immediately afterward! Now what is the missionary going to say ?

And what was the use of all that prayer the missionaries made? There is a seeming defeat allowed at times, which God quietly erases later. It was Hugh Redwood

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who said: "Does prayer die? . . . if with all my heart I offer a prayer for some friend or loved one, have I, in fact, not done something creative and linked it on to the immortality of God "

Those prayers about the pig were in essence prayers that it might not be allowed to turn this soul of Brother Six's back into darkness. And that prayer essence was answered. I cannot explain it; I may only record it. Considerably shaken for days over it,

Brother Six finally righted his ship and set the sail again toward the Christ. And his wife and family later were saved also. So the heart exercise, so important a part of missionary life, was not wasted. The battle in the heavenlies was won perhaps at the price of an earthly defeat.

But it was now obvious that some other housing for the missionary was advisable. So in April, 1953, Eric Cox superintended the building of a long shanty which could be divided into rooms for privacy. He did some of the building himself, the Yao helped, and it turned out to be an ideal rustic dwelling for a small family. It was not wholly done by the people, but it was exigent that the missionary family have some place apart from that room in Brother Six's house. As a matter of fact that room was just an enclosed double bed, so short that when tall Eileen slept in it, her feet protruded into the small hall! Eric is six foot three, so it would have been more hopeless for him. As it was, Eric and Helen were able to move up to Maesalong that spring, and they started to learn the Yao language while teaching in Chinese. They had a spare bedroom too, for the use of the ladies who came up for periods. With his experience of tribal living in China, Eric had the foresight to pipe the water right into his kitchen, with bamboo tubes. (Of course in a place like Ta-Ngo, where the water was eighty feet below them, this could not be done.) Everything was planned shipshape, handy and neat—for Eric holds a sea-captain's licence, Although always flimsy and in constant need of repair, a tribal shanty can be made surprisingly comfortable. The Summit Camp at Maesalong is an example of this.

Four months later, Nurse Lilian Hamer was pushing out into another Summit Camp; and down at Maechan, Mary

Baldock and Sylvia Lombard, while finishing their Thai language exams, were also making periodic trips to other Yao villages. Every now and again all the Yao workers met at

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I51 Maesalong, for there the important decision of which script should be used for the Yao tribe had to be decided, and language finds were pooled.

Meetings continued. Nurse Lilian's fame as one who could help break off opium was spreading over the hills, and in general there was continual growth. Letters written at my next visit (for John, of course, visited oftener than I) will reveal this, so I quote:

December, 1953. The Lord, and loving comrades at Home Base, suddenly released me for a trip into Yaoland. It was a wedding anniversary gift, for the morning we started out

John and I had been married twenty-four years. David Hogan of Gospel Recordings was with us, and the main purpose was not to give the Kuhn family a twenty-fourth honeymoon, but to make recordings in the Yao tongue.

To the home of Brother Six we went, just about one year from the last time I had visited them. But now what a difference! A long airy shanty stood at one side of the village—a missionary's home. (We much regretted that Helen and Eric

Cox were away at this time, but they were welcoming their new little daughter into the world—Elizabeth Ann was born in a Bangkok hospital.) Next to the white man's long shanty stood a large square building; its windows were wire-screened just like the missionary's house, but this was—a church! Brother Six's own shanty had bulged out with what looked like a lovely sun parlour— lovely for a tribal house, which is often so dark. How quickly the intelligent tribesman can learn new ways when properly taught! Brother Six had enlarged his guest room and put in wire-screened windows through which the morning sun streamed in clean, golden glory.

Saturday night prayer meeting revealed a further difference.

A group of seven or eight men, with Brother Six leading, were grouped together. All of them had broken off opium smoking, or were in the process of it, except Brother Six's son, and all of them had stories to tell.

A year earlier we could not get the women to sit down at such a meeting; they would have dissolved into giggles at the suggestion, tittering around the rim of the prayer meeting and finally making a dash for the door in a jumbled exit. This time they entered of their own accord, and at Brother Six's order sat down quietly. A group of girls coming in later, on discovering that someone was in the midst of

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praying, stopped where they were, drew their aprons up to their faces, and stood in reverent silence until the one praying had finished.

All this training spelled patient, hard work, and how sorry we were that the crowning joys that we were given to see were not beheld by the dear Cox family, who had sown the seed!

The year before, Sister Six had been politely evasive, inwardly fighting surrender to the claims of Christ. Then came the pig incident when she turned almost hostile for a short period. But that Saturday night, when John gave an invitation to publicly confess the Saviour, out came Sister Six to the front of the meeting, her old mother and four other women with her. They knelt down and audibly expressed their faith in Christ. As a matter of fact they had been trusting Him for some time, but had not publicly acknowledged it. So now she is Sister Six, not only as the wife of Brother Six, but herself a sister in Christ.

That brought up another matter. As John told them of our gladness at seeing the great progress they had made, their faces beamed with joy until he said, ""But there is one thing about which I am not happy. You who are Christians, have old demon altars still up in your homes. Maybe you do not use them, but they are there. 'If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.' Why don't you get free completely

"Oh, we will, gradually," said Brother Six.

"You told me that last year! You say 'gradually' again this year! Will you be saying it next year? And the year after?

Come—let's get it down now!"

It was only the Spirit of God who could have brought them to decision, for you cannot know the inward fear, bred of centuries of faith in demon power, that binds the heart of every tribesman. I thought of the prayer of all the friends at home which have been piling up, so to speak, apparently unanswered all these months. Yet not so. They were gradually gathering force, and on that day, Brother Six was pushed over the top.

I had a septic toe, and was not going to attempt to walk to his house, but Nurse Lilian would not have me miss it. Quickly she grabbed a pair of old shoes, slashed out a hole for the bandage to stick up through, and helped me walk it. I am ever so grateful, for it was the only burning ceremony I have ever seen.

San Ching, the Sixes' clever young twenty-year-old son, had not then taken his stand for the Lord (he has since then), but he had agreed to let the altar come down. So had Sister

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Six, who stood in a back corner, none too near. A younger brother of the headman, a big burly fellow who was contemplating turning Christian, sat down opposite the fireplace.

Lao Kung, a Chinese married to a Yao in another village, and who had but lately become a Christian, was also present. He had burned his altar himself, so he said.

The demon altar was simply a high wooden shelf nailed to the wall opposite the door. From it dangled some paper charms, a few bones from old offerings, smoke-blackened eggshells into which the spirit of a sick member of the family had been called back by incantations, a few arrows, and shapeless bits of dusty junk. To strengthen their faith, John wanted them to tear the altar down with their own hands, so Brother Six went up to it and pulled it from the wall. San Ching sprang forward and wanted to salvage something on it, but when John shouted,

, *"No, all of it must go,"' he sank back and nodded his head in consent. Down it came with a crash, and John indicated the fireplace as a good place to dispatch it. "'Not here, not here!" cried Younger Brother, springing to his feet, his face white with terror. "'Don't burn it here, or they will be left behind!"

At this point everybody seemed so nervous and uncertain that John called out, "'Lao Kung, you are not afraid, are you?

You have burned your demon altar—won't you help Brother Six's family take this stuff outside and kindle it?"

Lao Kung immediately grabbed the broken boards, Brother Six helping, and together they took the demon shelf outside and Lao Kung set a match to it. John, anxious to get all of it into the flames, jumped on the strong wooden stick which had supported the shelf and smashed it into small pieces; and so it went up in flames.

As the mysterious bits of paper, arrows, and what-not caught fire, the old grandma caught me by the hand in tense excitement

"To my house," she cried, pulling me up the ascent to her shanty. I thought she meant to burn her altar, too, but she said that must wait until her grandson came home. She was trembling all over, but aglow too, and just wanted the protection of my presence for a while. We sat and talked together in Chinese, while the men went with Old Nine, another brother, and burned his demon altar also. Oh, what a glorious moment, when the Son of God really sets these slaves of centuries free!

Although I have seldom felt demon presence in the homes of young converts, I have heard so many testify that the demons must leave when the missionary comes, that I believe it is true.

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I was told that in China by Lisu who had never met one another, in points far distant from each other, and now in Thailand there is the same word. How little we know what

Christ has done for us! We do not know that there is an aura of His holiness enwrapping us, all unseen and unconscious to us, but keenly felt by demonic powers. We are free indeed, unless by deliberate disobedience at some point we lay ourselves open to their malicious entrance. Free indeed. As Robert Murray

McCheyne put it:

When I stand before the throne Dressed in beauty not my own, When I see Thee as Thou art, Love Thee with unsinning heart; Then, Lord, shall I fully know— Not till then—/ow much I owe.

After the excitement had subsided, the serious business of capturing the Gospel message in the Yao tongue began— the purpose of our trip.

Brother Six was chosen as the one whose voice should be recorded.

There is no privacy in Yaoland, so of course Brother Six's neighbours stopped in to see this miracle of a Yao voice being captured on a narrow tape, and then from its unwinding spool the sound of his voice being thrown out into the air! Behold a circle of them around Brother Six, with a microphone in his hand, beaming but slightly embarrassed, waiting for the first sentence. David Hogan had written it out in English for John, who turned it into Chinese. While Brother Six was mouthing over the Yao counterpart, opposite to him sat his only son, this San Ching of the foregoing paragraphs, almost on the edge of his seat with eagerness to have a try at this thrilling new experience. He is quick as a flash and had the sentence thought through before his father had hardly grasped its meaning, for San Ching knows Chinese and can read and write it. It was a delightful scene. Brother Six was conscious that this was an exceptional honour, to be the first Yao tribesman to have his voice recorded, so he beamed into the microphone, his prematurely silver hair making him a picturesque figure. His live-wire son leaned forward, eagerly telling him how to say each phrase, and the outer circle of neighbours

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nodded their heads as, sentence by sentence, the message was framed in clear, lucid Yao terms. When a story-illustration came into the script, John insisted that Brother Six speak it vividly, with feeling, and not like a schoolboy reciting his lesson. Was it a dialogue where neighbours jeered at the new Christian?

John sneered out the words with such realism that the circle fairly doubled up with laughter. After some ludicrous efforts to imitate, Brother Six suddenly caught on to the idea. When he had practised a few times the switch was turned on, the tape reels began to wind, and the recording was made. But the real excitement came when his voice came out of that box just the way it had gone in! No one enjoyed the playback more than

San Ching. He simply itched for the privilege of hearing his Own voice come out of that box. His microphone technique might have been better than his father's, and certainly he would have put more sparkle into the recording—he has so much character and is bound to be a force wherever he is and whatever he does—but we were adamant in our refusal to record his voice, for he was not a Christian. What would the heathen say if they heard his voice coming out of that box, counselling them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, when he had not yet done so himself? He must wait until his life matched the message.

And so we had to come away. San Ching is now a Christian, but not a consecrated one. He is tempted by a heathen widow much older than himself, whom he thinks he wants to marry.

We fear also that he is giving way to the temptation to make easy money in opium trade on the side.

A year later I had been invalided home, and John went up to Maesalong for Christmas, taking some other workers with him, so that in all there were ten missionaries and the two

Cox children present for the celebration.

John added that he had noticed real growth in the work; the Yao were now conducting services in their own language, whereas a year ago it had to be in Chinese, which not everyone

° could understand. A Lisu Christian had come for the festival this year and, some Lahu also being present, our missionaries had an interesting audience with the various tribes.

Two months later, Miss Joan Wales on her yearly vacation paid a visit to Summit Camp Maesalong and wrote me her impressions:

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We had scarcely arrived at our destination before I heard strains of hymn singing coming from the wee bamboo chapel.

It was the Saturday evening prayer meeting in progress— thirty-two present, and not dependent upon whether a missionary was there or not. Sunday morning at half past nine the bell rang for church, and my heart sang for joy as I saw Yao men and women, and boys and girls, literally running from all directions, the wee chapel being the focal point. The service was in Yao, but Mr. Kuhn preached in Chinese on '"'Abiding"

—which incidentally Brother Six passed on to the folk in Brother Two's village the same afternoon. After an early lunch we set off for Tsa-Ba, and the afternoon service, of course, was in Lisu.

Miss Wales, having served among the Nosu in China* was much interested in tribal work.

The Yao tribe had nothing in their own language of Christian literature, of course, so the missionaries will be busy for a long time getting the New Testament and hymn-books translated and published. The Bible Society, some years ago, had sent a native evangelist to the Yao tribe to learn their language and translate the Scriptures. He worked on the Gospel of Mark in Yao, but died before it could be printed and no one could read his manuscript. He had used Thai symbols which are not adjustable to represent all the Yao sounds. This same thing occurred among the Miao also. So with both these tribes the missionaries are faced with a monumental translation task.

Now we ought to explain how one lone Lisu Christian attended the Yao Christmas in 1954! This brings us, by a very roundabout route, to Summit Camp Tsa-Ba.

During the days when Sister Six was feeling elbow-pinched in her heathen practices, a chance word she let fall sounded as if she were provoked at Lilian Hamer. Those were the days before Sister Six had turned to the Lord, and while the girls were living in her home.

As soon as Lilian heard of it, although she could not understand how she mignt have offended, she made a special trip up the mountain to apologize with tears to Sister Six.

That lady's heathen heart was touched, for genuine humility is never practised outside of Christianity, and Nurse Lilian

*See Strong Man's Prey, by Dr. A. J. Broomhall, C.1.M.

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and the Six family became close friends. Spurgeon once said, "The man who never makes a mistake, never makes anything." It is not the mistake that makes him, it is what he does with his mistake! When God wants to do a new work,

He often puts the worker through a self-crucifixion experience; we have seen this again and again. And part of that agony is that the suffering one has no inkling that God is going to use that very trouble to bring a new blessing! As Oswald Chambers points out in his book on Job: "'Job is suffering because God and Satan have made a battleground of his soul, without giving him any warning or any explanation." It would have been no test at all if God had explained to Job that this was only a trial and that afterward he would receive twice as much as now he lost!

The point of the battle was that God should not explain His purpose to Job until it was all over. My husband has often said to me, ""There is a baptism of suffering for every new work that God is to begin.'' We have had personal experience of the truth of that, but it does not follow at all that the worker has not really made a mistake. The hardest test is when you know you were wrong, and that it is your own fault, because that brings the temptation to despair. But even if the self-crucifixion has been brought on by oneself, the way out and up is down.

Down into humble confession. It may not always result in the other's heart being touched, as was Lilian's good fortune; but it does lead out and up.

So this friendship resulted in Brother Six offering to build a shanty for Lilian if she would come up and live among them and heal all their diseases! Summit Camp Maesalong was not entirely Yao work but Summit Camp Middle Ridge was, for Middle Ridge came before Tsa-Ba. I told you it is a roundabout story!

Shine twenty minutes' walk uphill and down dale from Maesalong village is a second Yao village presided over by headman Lao Erh. This village was heathen, but friendly to Brother Six, and it was here on the brow of their ridge that the Yao built Lilian her shanty. We called it Middle Ridge because it was accessible to both villages. Lilian wrote us:

I have been in my new home, built by the Yao, for just over a week. I stayed a day or two in the Coxes' house before moving over. The water supply has been installed—the bamboo pipe is

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just outside my front door and I keep a bucket under it—when the pigs do not knock it over!

} The house is really just a one-room shack, with open splitbamboo walls and thatched roof which at present lets in the rain. The floor is mud, and I have lots of ants and rats to keep me company. I am very happy in my own little place. I have divided the room into two by using a rug and pieces of plastic.

This does not mean that I have any privacy, for everything has been examined with minute care by visitors from all over, including Lisu and Lahu. I have hung my one and only remaining rug in front of my bed in an effort to get some sort of privacy and make a bedroom. This half of the room is used for cooking, sleeping, washing, and eating, and everything is in a jumble. The other half I use for a dispensary. The bamboo table is convenient for spreading out my few medicines and equipment. I am glad to have this place of my own and have fixed up a bamboo seat at the end of the room where patients have to be treated. The patients are increasing daily and it is good to have contact with the folks of Lao Erh's village. ...

Please do pray for several who have asked me to help them break off their opium. I have the necessary medicines but am stipulating that I shall help only those who are believers.

Yuan Wang and another have begun today. Please pray them through. ...

I was lost in the jungle for two hours on my way up, two weeks ago. The trail was a sea of mud and I somehow missed my way. When I got out, I could only get to Tea Village before dark, and I had nothing with me but a tribal bag. I stayed there overnight. I did the climb alone and met the carriers coming down the next day.

A three-foot snake hung over the beam above my bed in the Coxes' house the two nights I was there. I did not know what it was, thinking the noise was made by rats. Then I saw the biggest snake I have ever met at close quarters. Brother Six and the others came and shot arrows at it, killing it after a wild chase up and down the roof. How the Lord protected me when I was oblivious of its presence for so long! Here come my two opium patients so I must close. . . .

Lilian had been one of the nurses in our Tali hospital in China, and she had helped Dr. Powell when that skilled medico treated opium addicts until they were cured. Lilian had learned the technique and put it to use now, so that her opium patients suffered as little as possible. Her fame spread

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for this as also for her midwifery skill, and we could fill pages with her errands of mercy up and down mountains to other tribes as well as Yao.

Camp Tsa-Ba (Lisu) One of her opium patients was a Chinese who was married to a Yao woman but lived in the Lisu village of Tsa-Ba, about two hours' climb beyond Maesalong. A rough transliteration of his name would be Li-jo. He was so impressed with Lilian's skill that, unknown to her, he persuaded the Lisu village where he lived to build her a little shanty and invited her up among them! Li-jo had become a Christian, and he urged one of the leading men in Tsa-Ba, named Khun-ba, to confess

Christ also and break off his opium. Others too were interested, so down the mountain trotted a delegation to invite Nurse

Lilian up to preach to them! Not suspecting their hopes, Lilian consented and went.

Imagine her surprise when they led her along the winding path into their village, and there by the side of the trail was a tiny house on stilts. ""This is yours!" they told her with delight. "It was built just and only for you, and we want you to come and live with us. Many are wanting to break off their opium and become Christians!'

Well, to a white woman, a house to herself at night, rather than lying down on the floor side by side with heathen, is a tempting luxury. It would not tempt her away from her duty, of course, but Lilian saw no reason why she should not occupy both houses, and have a ministry among two tribes! She speaks Chinese well, some Thai, and had quickly picked up Yao medical expressions and did not mind starting on the Lisu language. It was true that all they had provided was a tiny house on stilts, with a fireplace in the centre. It was so low-roofed that she could not stand up straight much of the time, but Lilian was thrilled with the opportunities it presented. There were Lisu villages and Lahu villages all around, and some Akha.

That first evening everyone wanted to crowd in and look at her (by the way she is not at all hard on the eyes! Naturally curly hair, nice skin and features.) While she was in the process of playing one of the Gospel Recordings in their own tongue, she was startled by a rending noise! She looked up from the phonograph horrified to feel and see the whole floor descending

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toward the hard ground. For one horrible second it was terrifying and then as they gently came to rest on mother earth's broad and substantial bosom they all broke into laughter.

Everybody else had looked so funny! Lilian's gaze had fallen on a young fellow leaning against the wall in front of her, nonchalantly strumming a native guitar. His drop-jawed amazement as he felt himself sinking, his fingers still raised for another twang, was too funny for words. And actually no one had been hurt. The crowd had been too much for the bamboo ties, but the descent was only some three feet, and there they all were, still on the floor but the house up around their shoulders!

"Oh," they laughed, "'we can soon fix that. Don't you worry!"

That is one thing about Tribesland—house repairs are not expensive!

Their cordial hospitality was a heart-warmer to Lilian, for though Middle Ridge was besieged with people from dawn till dusk, it was mostly for what they could get from her, and the spiritual response she had hoped to see in Lao Erh's village did not appear. She remained in Lao Erh's village for some six months, and then, as those requiring to have her skill in breaking off opium at Tsa-Ba seemed more promising, she moved up there.

Months of hard work in that tiny shanty where she could not stand upright were passed by Lilian, all alone. The Coxes, two hours' journey away, did everything they could to give her help, and always she was welcome to come down and share their spare bedroom if she became too tired or too lonely.

But one day Lilian had joyous news for us. The Lisu were building her a new and bigger house! At first they offered to let her choose the site, but there was a great fuss over that when the heathen found out! Twice the beginnings of a shanty had to be torn down and carted over to another spot because the witch doctor of the village said that the demons were not pleased! As most of the village was still heathen, the Christians and inquirers could not insist on Lilian's choice, so she had to be content with what she got. It was, however, a great improvement over Tiny House. And the latter was left up for her use, as a storeroom, or guest room, if needed.

Come up and see my new house! [she wrote us eagerly].

It has four little rooms, all high enough for me to stand upright.

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I cook in one, sleep in another, will put you in the second bedroom, and dispense medicine and teach in the fourth! They have built me a couple of benches for the children to sit on while we have school each morning. Khun-ba and Li-jo both come to school, and many others, for various periods of time, shorter or longer. Li-San brought me a big gong, which I beat to let them know when school starts and when Sunday service is about to begin. Lahu and Yao also visit me, and I have been invited to Akha villages, which they say are not too far distant.

I think if Mr. Kuhn came, maybe Khun-ba would burn his demon altar. I am learning Lisu as fast as I can but have so much to do in medical and teaching lines that I have not got very far with it yet.

About six months after Summit Camp Tsa-Ba had been established, John and I were able to go together and pay them a visit. Coming and going we had to pass through Summit Camp Maesalong, and this time the Coxes were home. I will quote from a letter written at the time:

The first time I made this trip was in 1952 (this was written July, 1954) and before we had reached Maesalong we had met

Lisu on the trail. They were surprised to see a white woman who could speak their language but were also proud and indifferent. I, who for so many years was always so lovingly treated by Lisu, cringed inwardly before the callous hardness of their faces. Now, on this third trip, we again met heathen

Lisu on the trail; heathen still, but what a change! Their faces lit up at the sight of us and they smiled warmly at Ma-pa and Ma-ma. Only their witness of missionaries' Christian living could effect such a change in the attitude of heathen.

Helen and Eric did not know we were coming, for, of course, telegrams cannot reach them quickly. When we appeared over the brow of the hill, and coo-eed,* Eric was in the chapel teaching, but Helen heard us and ran out and gave us—oh, such a welcome! It was all joy that night to see the progress that had been made, with a group of fine young people daily studying to read and write their own language and learn to know the doctrines of their Lord.

(See Progress Report on the Yao, p. 254.) But early the next morning, with two Christian carriers to carry our bedding and some tinned food we had brought for Lilian, we started up the hill to the Lisu Summit Camp. Up, up through the silent trees and woods we climbed gently, and *Australian bush-call.

AT F

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! after about two hours John called out, "There it is, Belle Sure enough, to our right the brow of the opposite hill fell away in the familiar slope of cleared ground, with bamboo houses clustered at the top and also scattered over the slope.

My heart beat fast as we turned off on to the trail that led to the village. There, somewhere, was an English girl, living all alone—except for a loving Presence of course, for "where there is one, there are Two."" What was Lilian doing? We gave the Australian bush-call which we have always used in the mountains, and soon a short, curly-haired figure, with a very fair skin appeared in the doorway of the new long little shanty at the end of the trail and waited there beaming at us!

It was a very happy meeting. Lilian was thrilled to have us and we were thrilled to be there. Her new little house was just about ideal, despite the fact that another snake had the same opinion and had tried to share it with her, lacing itself along her roof! Water was piped in bamboo tubes to a short level distance from her door; a little outhouse was down the hill; and Tiny House, stored with rice and pumpkins, carrying baskets, and so forth, stood in between. She even had some furniture! The Lisu had built her two bamboo beds, one for each bedroom. Cupbeards and a desk were brought up with our party. She had a food cupboard, a little Thai stovebasket, a table to eat at, and even was able to find us a chair or two. I was put in the bedroom and John slept at Li-jo's house.

These were beginnings and we are always very careful to prove that the single girl worker is not a second wife. Li-jo's was just next door, so when we called, "John! Supper!'' he came—well—in time!

We stayed for the week end and John preached several times.

Maybe you would like to hear what a "'raw" congregation is like! I quote from the letter on that visit:

Sunday morning the congregation begins to gather. Quite a few heathen come too, to see what it is like, you know! And they were wandering around, in and out on impulse, when

John stood up to speak.

"Now," he began, "I do not want any running in and out during the message. Those who wish to be outside, go out now, and don't come back in. Those who wish to be inside for the meeting, please sit down and don't go out until it is over. Does

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everybody understand ?" Several rows of faces solemnly nodded that this was quite reasonable.

"All right," says the preacher, "I have written on this paper the words of Jesus. He says. . .""

Up jumps a small boy on the front seat and dashes violently for the door, outside which he could be heard getting rid of mucus from his nasal passage with loud noises. Almost instantly he dashes in again and sits down with such an awed and reverent expression of countenance that the preacher really cannot scold him. The lad was utterly unconscious that he had broken the rule as soon as it was made. When a fellow's nose needs to be blown (with the fingers, correct tribal custom), what else can he do? And, of course, the faster he gets out, the sooner he gets back! Pastor ought to appreciate that, certainly!

So the preacher heaves a sigh and goes on: "'Jesus said, I am the way, the..."

Mrs. Khun-ba sits scowling at him. She had turned Christian because her husband had. He had been an opium sot for thirtyseven years and had just been delivered, so of course one must show gratitude, but she has no sympathy with this new-fangled idea that you must stop work one day in seven! Lay off work for a whole day while all the heathen were getting ahead of you?

She has come to the service because Khun-ba said she had to, but the scowl on her face says plainly, "I'm agin the government!" And here she was to sit and listen to a white man say that Jesus is a road. Ridiculous. A person is a person and a road is a road. She waits for no explanation, but turns to the woman next her and declares loudly, "'I don't understand his meaning! Say, I've got a lot of work to do at home. I can't stay here all day!"

John hears her and quickly slips in an illustration on her level, with a bit of fun mixed with it, and before she knows it she is sitting on the edge of her seat enjoying herself.

Then Khun-ba stands up and begins to stretch his back and arms luxuriously. A farmer is not accustomed to sitting still for an hour. John, still preaching, eyes him. Should he stop and deliver a lecture on church etiquette, or just ignore it?

What's a fellow to do when his muscles need stretching?

Animal instinct wins, and the message goes on.

Two Yao women, heathen, appear at the door and declare loudly that they have condensed milk to sell. There is a scuttle as one of the heathen decides his life depends on purchasing milk immediately. And so it goes.

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As they finally troop out the door, the missionaries pray inwardly, "Lord, it is the Incorruptible Seed; cause it to bring forth."

Oswald Chambers says: ""You can never give another person that which you have found (spiritually), but you can make him homesick for what you have."

The results of our visit, humanly speaking, were not much.

The two men who had talked before about burning their demon altars if a white pastor came to help, took panic, and one of them turned back. Khun-ba said he would burn his altar after he "escorted his ancestors' in the seventh month, and, although we thought it only a delaying excuse, he really did so and gave up ancestor worship. We were able to help Lilian with the Lisu language and with some suggestions for teaching children, but that was all. You cannot force growth in any species and get a strong plant. But the tribes especially are timid children who take fright if they think you are pressing them to break with old customs. It must be the pressure of the Spirit of God within them to do it before a break is successful. Maybe this is one of the hardest things for the missionary to deo—to give the new convert time to grow. Indeed, if we think back on our own experience, it took us plenty of time—did it not?

So we came away, leaving Lilian at her front line outpost.

John was determined to secure a fellow worker for her as soon as possible.

It was quite some weeks before anyone was available. Jean Chalker had finished her Thai examinations and had several months before her marriage to Peter Nightingale would put her under a new appointment, so she was sent to Tsa-Ba to be companion to Lilian and learn a bit of tribal language. The Akha tribe understand Lahu, and perhaps some of them speak a bit of Lisu, but really to reach anybody's heart you must speak the language of his hearth.

Of course Peter, stationed at Summit Camp Ban-Wo, became intensely interested in surveying the territory between Tsa-Ba and Ban-Wo! Allyn Cooke was smilingly sympathetic, and so it fell out that upon a morn he led Peter out over the trails in the direction of Jean, and the search for Akhz was really

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under way. They found and preached in several villages; but the end of their trail, in Peter's eyes, was of course Tsa-Ba!

We shall let Jean tell about it, because if you are to listen to our heartbeats, that includes a wide variety!

Last Saturday, while my arms were deep in the wash-tub after breakfast, we heard some strange tongues floating down the trail. I put my head out of the back door, and while my mouth was still open Mr. Cooke got a quick click of his camera!

Not really fair play—but never mind, he was followed by Peter and four laughing Lahu. The latter had apparently teased

Peter for days about this stop on the way. It was a real surprise —we had not expected them until days later. They all sat down to gallons of tea, fresh bread and apricot jam—with a large, interested audience of Lisu. Their second great need was for a wash! I didn't like to ask when the last had been—but we installed them in the kitchen, with basins, soap, and water, where they fished clean clothes out of their carrying baskets.

Lilian and I sat very obviously in the clinic so that all the Lisu could see us. I heard Mr. Cooke say to Peter, "I hope no one can see through this plastic curtain!' So did I, but I didn't dare look to see.

Li-jo gave them his sala to sleep in, and the Lahu boys slept at Khun-ba's house. They cooked their own food, but Peter and Mr. Cooke ate with us, in the open, in the clinic; there we ate, talked and prayed all week-end with an interested audience.

Mr. Cooke took the Sunday services and Peter and I spent a romantic Sunday afternoon—not romantic by the worldling's standards, but I decided it was quite romantic for the missionary. We sat on the steps of the sala, surrounded by a crowd of Lisu children, and planned our wedding. There is something to be said for a language barrier! It was the only time we could get, for at dusk, of course, the men retired to the sala. The Lord prospered us greatly and we got a lot talked over—a good thing, because we probably will not meet now until just before the wedding. ...

Mr. Cooke and Peter had a very happy trip and met with friendship among Akha, Lisu, and Lahu.

. Among the Lahu with them was their Ban-Wo language teacher, a rather sad man that particular week-end, for he had a heavy cold and an eye infection; he was wearing a distinctive pair of purple silk trousers...

. Mr. Cooke said that Peter and I are to complete a section in the Lahu language before we start on Akha, and he

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apparently spent some midnight hours trying to plan how this man of the purple garb could give some time to teach Jean a little Lahu!

Where to get a language teacher is one of the difficulties that beset all our mountain workers, for with the one exception of Allyn Cooke, none of them could speak any of the tribal languages. Evidently the solution did not occur to Mr.

Cooke until the party had already departed, for after describing their farewell, Jean goes on to say:

On Friday morning, I was sitting in the sala, with a Lahu primer, trying to produce glottal 4's and fricatives and wondering if they were anywhere near right, when I suddenly saw upon the trail a familiar pair of purple trousers, and a much happier face above them! It seemed as if he had just dropped from Heaven. It was the Ban-Wo language teacher, accompanied by one Lahu boy. He will be here until December 6th and Iam to study five hours a day with him. They are to meet Mr.

Cooke on the way back to Ban-Wo on the 6th. Larry Peet has gone to Lahu villages in the Wing-Ba-Bao area with his two lads. Peter has left for Bangkok (he had to substitute for the Mission's local secretary, Mr, Fred Hatton, while the Hattons took their vacation). Mr. Cooke reminds me of a general sending out his forces, but I am surely thrilled with the two that have come here.

This is Peter's account of his journey:

I was thrilled to enter my first Akha village: twenty grassroofed houses nestled around the perimeter of a bare, desolate ridge. Shortly before noon we emerged from the tropical jungle through which we had trudged all the morning, since leaving the Karen village where we had spent our second night out of Ban-Wo. For an hour we marched along the smooth level trail through tall grass before the track dropped suddenly to reveal a gateway of rough timber festooned with tokens of demon worship, and beyond this lay a patch of dry, red soil.

A bamboo platform outside the headman's house proved an ideal base for a phonograph and for the audience which quickly surrounded us.

(See Progress Report on the Akha, p. 263.)

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But we must back up in time, now, in order to tell about the founding of the third Summit Camp among the Blue

Miao tribe farther south. Strictly speaking, that was founded before Tsa-Ba, but the latter is so linked with Maesalong that we felt you would see it more clearly, if we just followed

Lilian's movements.

We must now return in thought to the end of the tuningfork handle, to Advance Camp Pakhui.

Lisu, Lahu, and Miao tribes came down beside the doll house which was home to the Scheuzgers, and while waiting for the river ferry to pull up it was natural for them to climb the steps 10 the veranda of the white young people, where they were sure of a welcome. Adri and Otto had each spent two years in China, but they felt that the tribes of these more inland parts of the country did not understand so much Chinese, so they have used Thai as a medial language, finding it more successful.

The sound of the phonograph was almost sure to bring a tribal group up to their veranda for a chat and to listen to the Gospel records. Friendships were formed which led to invitations for Otto and Adri to visit tribal villages in the hills. One of these friends was a clever young man of the Blue Miao tribe named Du-sang. They discovered that this attractive young fellow could read Thai, a rare accomplishment among the tribes, so they gave him a Thai New Testament, which he read eagerly and professed to believe. It was he who invited them up to Yellow Creek, his home village.

The only data I have for the opening of the Scheuzgers' work are the notations for prayer in our Base Camp prayer book. They made trips repeatedly into the mountains around

Pakhui, and although the Lahu tribe were very friendly, and begged them to come and live in their village, the Scheuzgers felt more and more that God was calling them to work among the Blue Miao. I suppose the fact that Allan

Crane and Allyn Cooke both spoke Lahu, while none of our members spoke Miao, might have influenced them. But merely to read these early prayer requests will give us an idea of the thrilling reception this dear young couple had at first.

Village of Pha-Phong. Young Phang believes in the Lord Jesus and is reading his Thai New Testament daily. He has

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taken upon him the burden of teaching his relatives and fellow villagers. He has had wonderful answers to prayer and is continuing in the Lord. Other men and young people believe and are very helpful in the work.

Village of Maelamao. The Lo family is making a good stand in the Lord. Pray also for Re, who reads Thai and seems to' witness to his faith. Pray for Lo Six who knows much about the Gospel and helps us a lot in making Christ known.

Village of Pa Kha. The new headman is a younger brother of Lung who was killed by the Chinese a few months ago.

People generally indifferent.

Village of Lao-Yang. Some men are interested in the Gospel.

Village of Ang-La. A very large Miao village with many people professing faith in Christ.

Village of Umpiam. Twenty houses and a poor population.

Very friendly people and great interest in the Gospel.

Village of Qi. Headman Qi has not yet made a confession of faith and, although a number of people showed interest in the Gospel, none have made a stand.

Miao visitors to Advance Camp Pakhui. We have had visitors from the Miao villages in the Mae Kon district. Some took the Lord by simple faith and went home to burn their altars and tell others about Jesus. Du-sang went to that district, taking along posters and Thai literature.

Some visitors from Wangcao, a distant place, heard the Gospel while with us and confessed faith in Christ.

The Kao family of Konsamat have a Thai New Testament which the father and one of the sons can read. They got it when the young man visited us in Pakhui. The other day the father visited us and asked many intelligent questions on what he had been reading. He tells us that he and his family truly believe in this Good News.

A White Miao village seems to have turned to the Lord.

We have good contact with some of the leading men there. They promised to burn their demon shrines as soon as we can go to their village again. There are real signs of new life in some people there.

The Village of Yellow Creek. Headman Ying is a nice friendly young man, interested in the Gospel, professing faith and of great help in the work. His father, La-nang, is a dear old man eager to help us and to witness to Christ.

Du-sang is the young man who has read the New Testament through twice and is helping us much. He is very proud and

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lazy but willing to help and eager to make others know the Gospel.

Thao and his family are truly believing and have marked their change with a poster which he bought and is preaching to all who come to his house.

Shu-ki and his family. He has made remarkable progress in the knowledge of Christ and in transformation of life. He also has marked the change of heart with changes in his household. He teaches us whenever he has time and helps us in translation work.

Pang Tshang with his family has made a clear break with his old life. He is the man who made our door, and he comes every day to help us in the spoken language and advises us like a father. La is his youngest son and is able to read Thai. He is very nice and has a very good testimony.

Pray for Yellow Creek, that soon all will break off their opium smoking and burn their demon altars. [This was written in July, 1953, and by November five families had done so.]

Camp Yellow Creek (Blue Miao or Meo) These simple items cover an immense amount of work and hardship; they reveal that all these villages, scattered over the mountains, had been visited and witnessed to. Especially for the white woman is it difficult to walk in the heat and then have to sleep in the same room at night with heathen men, even if her husband is beside her. The apparently warm reception which they received, however, made up fo" che difficulties. But of all the villages which had invited them to come and live among them, Yellow Creek impressed them the most.

For one thing, it was geographically strategic, the gateway, so to speak, to mountain trails which led to other Miao villages.

It was also strategic linguistically. The Scheuzgers had to learn the Miao language and they felt they should do it through the medium of Thai. Eight or ten years ago, a Thai government school was set up at Yellow Creek and continued for two years. Several young men learned to read and write Thai, making this village unique among the Miao of Thailand.

Third, the Miao of Yellow Creek were prepared to build the Scheuzgers a house, if they would only come. In June,

1953, that shanty was completed and the Scheuzgers had established a Summit Camp. This was the first zdeal Summit

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Camp we had. As previously pointed out, Higgledy-Piggledy was not our ideal, and Maesalong had not been exclusively a tribal work. Summit Camp Yellow Creek was entirely built by the Miao, Otto lending a hand and expressing how he wished the house planned, of course, but the material was all given voluntarily. It was a one-room shanty with a little corner partitioned off for a small bedroom, and in this shanty

Adri had to cook, wash, administer medicines, and study Miao -—and they had to teach in that same little place, of course.

They could get no one to help them. They not only had to cook over an open wood fire, but they also had to find their own firewood and haul their own water. Meanwhile they were trying to learn the language of the people. Both are quick linguists, and when they had been there only about six months they had learned enough to compile a simple catechism. Then came the vexed question of what script they should use.

Years before, the evangelist sent by the Bible Society to learn and reproduce Yao had also learned Miao and translated the Gospel of Mark, using the Thai script. But the Thai symbols had not proved adaptable.

Now it happens that there are many Miao converts in Indo-China, where some brilliant linguists under the Christian and Missionary Alliance have worked out an orthography for their Miao Christians. As there is travel back and forth, Otto and Adri felt that they should use the same script as the Miao in Indo-China, so that is being used. And the two young people, among their many other duties, set themselves to put this

Gospel of Mark into the Miao orthography.

In all this work, Shu-ki helped them a great deal, and rose in the affection and estimation of Otto. Du-sang was so proud and so lazy that he was obviously not going to make a satisfactory Christian; but Shu-ki had ability too, and was much more hopeful.

After the Scheuzgers had been some six months in residence (an imposing word for shanty-life!) among the Blue Miao of Yellow Creek, there came a climax. Up to this point, all these people who professed to believe in Christ still had their demon shrines, and most of them were opium smokers. The Scheuzgers had quietly been pressing the claims of Christ.

"How long are ye hobbling at the two forks of the road?"

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is one free translation of Elijah's potent challenge to apostate Israel. Another scholar puts it: "Will you never cease to waver between two loyalties ?'? And that was the substance of the missionaries' charge. There can be no virile Christian life, trying to serve two masters. There is no satisfaction in it, let alone regenerating power. But to pull up the roots of a centuriesold custom is a shattering thing! It tears a lot of other things down with it—heathen festivities, licentiousness, and all the pleasures of the flesh. No wonder the tribesman hobbles between the two forks of the road! But he has to make up his mind, and the cleaving time had come.

Don Rulison tells of that day:

There were several meetings of householders and influential village members to decide whether or not they would become

Christian. Finally some humble folks broke through traditional barriers and stepped across the line by burning their demon worship gear. Others followed, until eleven homes had taken their stand. It was a climactic hour, with excitement throughout the area.

It was a moment long prayed for and waited for by the devout young missionaries. How could they ever have expected it would also bring them heartache? And yet it did.

The Devil used that handy instrument of his, pride of life, and mowed down the most promising of the converts. Shu-ki had been away in his fields the day when the humble ones pulled down their demon shelves. When he returned and heard it, he became angry that his "noble" family had not been given the privilege of leading the van in this new departure from old ways. Dear old La-nang also was smitten, because he had made. up his mind that he was going to be the first one to do it, and now one of the "humble" ones of the village got ahead of him. He did, though, tear his down, but later it was put back up. Du-sang and La-nang also joined the wing of resentment. All the clever ones of the little group of professed

Christians turned upon the humble ones because they had taken the lead, and with a fling of pique they aligned themselves on the side of heathendom again. This just broke Otto's heart.

His dear Shu-ki, fellow worker on the Gospel translation, and amiable language teacher—to turn the Lord down out of mere jealousy! Otto went into their little alcove bedroom, flung

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himself on his bed, turned his face to the wall and sobbed out his heartbreak.

Did you think the missionary path was all glory? Then you have never read of God's greatest Messenger to earth, who sat and wept over Jerusalem, crying out, "I would... but ye would not." There is a filling up of the sufferings of Christ, for the pioneer. It was Carlyle who said: "On the beaten road there is tolerable travelling; but there will be sore pain, and many will have to perish in fashioning a pass through the impassable."

Shu-ki, Du-sang, headman Ying, and others of the village leaders grouped together to form a barrier and cry, so to speak: '"'Impassable!" From then on, the missionaries had to pass through, on their knees, and with sore pain of heart.

But there were true ones left to them. A widow, Grandmother Sing-shua, with two young daughters, and various menfolk—seven families in all. To these Otto and Adri patiently ministered, setting aside their own eager studies on the language and translation whenever one of these converts found time to come over and try to learn to read and write his own tongue. And so the little group continued until

May, 1954. Otto and Adri had not been home for six years, and their brave sufferings for the Gospel's sake had taken toll of their health, so it was decided that they should leave for furlough on the Continent.

Their farewell was an occasion for unexpected fun, among their tears. Those lies had reached this part of the mountains too, that the white missionaries' secret purpose was to carry off tribal children to America and make soldiers of them. Some of the heathen at Yellow Creek also had believed and circulated these lies. So when the Scheuzgers were leaving, it was an admirable opportunity to prove the falsity of such stories. The Christians could not resist the temptation to make the most of this.

"Say, Mother X, I thought you said that the white people were going to carry children off with them to their homelands! Better look sharp. Maybe she has your daughter in her pocket!"

"Hey you, Old Three, better investigate those saddle-bags!

Did you lock your baby up at home? I'd look in the saddle-bags

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just to make sure anyway!" And so on. The heathen grinned and looked sheepish, for the Christians had the laugh on them; though truth to tell, they were not feeling like laughter, to have to bid good-bye to their beloved teachers.

The women had made Adri a most beautiful Miao costume; a real love gift, for such takes months to embroider and cannot be bought for money.

And so the Scheuzgers went away. But a year later, their furlough over, they went back to Thailand, taking with them a new little gift from God, a bonny small son named Hanspeter!

They had asked Don Rulison to leave his work at Advance Camp Khunjem and come over and shepherd the little group of Christians at Yellow Creek until their return. This was the call which caused Don to shut down Khunjem. But the Lord had given him a helper there, a Christian Karen named

Dee-gay-tu who acted as cook, fellow traveller, and evangelist with Don in his journeyings. Dee-gay-tu offered to go along to Miaoland and went with Don.

To Don, who had spent some two years touring the mountains and preaching to heathen Miao, it was a real thrill to have Miao wanting to learn of the Lord. Let us listen to his prayer letter, written a couple of months later:

Another day at Yellow Creek is ending. Old Grandmother Sing-shua has just gone home across the valley by the light of her glowing bunch of hemp reeds, after her hour of study and prayer with me. Dear old soul! She can "'read"' pages in her little catechism primer, but can scarcely actually recognize a single word by itself. In other words, she can memorize better than she can read. Praise God, for her zeal and patience. Her two teenaged daughters, Ku and Ga-Ving, are among the few children who can come daily for an hour or two of study. That they may be truly saved and kept from sin is the main burden of that dear widowed mother's heart.

Yesterday was the Lord's Day. The heathen Miao here had a big annual affair called "killing the demons," with animal sacrifices, feasting, and spirit worship. But praise God for the testimony of one who spoke for the Christians: "Previous years we have always participated in this affair, but this year we are going to the teacher's house and praise our Lord Jesus instead." So we had several blessed hours together, feasting on

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the Word of God as it so perfectly fits the needs of these recent Miao converts.

Before the service, they helped me to translate into Miao the chorus:

I have decided to follow Jesus, No turning back, no turning back.

The world behind me, the Cross before me.

No turning back, no turning back.

The emphasis of the day's teaching was concerning what it means to follow Jesus. Now that they have taken their stand on His side and have been born again into His family, I can ask no more urgent request than that these Yellow Creek Christians may go on with Jesus, step by step. They have come out of the darkness into the light, but the darkness has not yet all come out of them. Pray that God will give them a conscience sensitive to sin—both a recognition of sin and a hatred of sin, along with a greater love of God and His Word. A fellow worker remarked,

**A Miao village is a cesspool of iniquity." This is a mild statement. I hope I do not shock you too rudely with an incident from yesterday's church gathering. When pointing out sin, I asked, ''What about promiscuity between men and women— is it sin?' One of the leading Christian men answered, * For married people it is sin, but for the unmarried, it is not sin."

According to Miao standards, adultery is sin, but fornication is not. Perhaps this will give you a greater burden for the Miao young people and for us who teach them. ""The world behind... the Cross before" is obviously the only way of deliverance for them.

Don and Dee-gay-tu, two young bachelors, lived on at Yellow Creek among these dear ones just issuing from their lifelong darkness. About six months later, Don writes:

This evening Dee-gay-tu is teaching reading to those who come to study, while .

. I just relate to you some of the happenings of one day; and today will be as typical as any, I presume.

After breakfast this morning, I was on my way out to some of the homes to see if the children were coming to study when I was met by Njru-seng and his children; they were bringing us a present of two nice big, freshly boiled turtle eggs. Yesterday, as he and Dow-xhay were out setting traps for jungle fowl, they came upon a big turtle which they brought home. It must have

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weighed one hundred pounds and furnished a good deal of meat, as well as about three dozen nice big eggs. Incidentally, turtle egg is very delicious, as I found out by this, my first taste. Later three folks came to study for an hour or two. Most of those who have been studying are now busy finishing up the threshing and hauling home the rice crop.

Two boys today finished the last page of their primer so well that I let them start reading I John [which Don had translated into Miao] trusting that they will press on in this, at the same time hiding God's Word in their hearts that they may not sin against Him. Incidentally that chorus (Ps. 119:11) is one of their most recent favourites.

Then Vang-vu came in, having just returned after eighteen days' visiting in other villages where his wife's relatives live.

He had taken my little record player and Miao Gospel records with him to three villages which had never been visited by a Gospel messenger before. And, according to Vang-vu, the message was favourably received, with request to know more.

Vang-vu professed faith in the Lord in December. He told me the record player didn't work just right, so it was the desire of all present that we investigate the trouble. Open it came, to find that the thin steel springs of the governor had broken.

After one futile attempt to substitute strips of old razor blades, Njru-seng furnished the needed technical advice, that we should take the temper out of the blades first, in order that the steel would not be so brittle. He performed this operation in the fire, which was smouldering there on the floor, and it was with cheers of success that we soon were listening to the Gospel in Miao over the old record player, with untempered razor blade steel for the governor springs!

Today I did not get help to refine any more translation because of the phonograph interlude and because Njru-seng spent the afternoon out looking at their traps, but I was able to finish a rough translation of the rest of Mark 7 by myself; so it is now ready to read to the Miao who will help me make the necessary corrections and fill in the gaps. I have not mentioned the several calls for medicine, the opportunities to pray with several, nor Dee-gay-tu's rapid progress learning to read, write, and speak Miao.

At five o'clock, with my axe over my shoulder, I headed for the jungle, for my favourite recreation, chopping wood. Again today I was thwarted in felling a tree where I intended because of the vines which had the top tied fast to other trees. I had

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to cut three trees to get one down, but they will all make good fuel.

So the growth of a church goes on, a day at a time. Someone has said: "This day was so precious that it was just given to us a moment at a time." And this is how a little church grows—a day at a time.

The best way to teach converts is to live before them. How we ourselves meet trouble is a much more potent lesson to them than explaining from the pulpit how they should meet it. I have never forgotten an illustration of this which I heard from the lips of a Chinese Lisu. It was Aristarchus, preaching a Sunday sermon to a chapel full of Lisu Christians. When we left for furlough, Aristarchus was just a servant—the mail boy and gardener. When we returned to the field he had applied for the ministry and attended Rainy Season Bible School to get training. During that sermon he explained why.

While we were on furlough, he had been acting as carrier for J. O. Fraser, and heard that wonderful man preach many good sermons, echoes of which he passed on in his own ministry later. But none of them stirred him to desire to pour out his life for the Lord. It was an affliction which did this.

Mr. Fraser and several Lisu carriers were travelling through lonely parts of the Salween to visit a southern station, when at a turn of the road they met robbers who stripped them of money, clothing, and bedding. Mr. Fraser himself had nothing to sleep in that night, for the robbers allowed them to keep only the clothes they wore. But after the robbers had fled over the mountain crest, Mr. Fraser gathered the frightened, distressed Lisu around him and said simply, "The Word of God tells us to pray for our enemies; let us do so." And there on the trail, with their empty carrying baskets flung on the ground around them, he offered up a prayer to God for those who had despoiled them. Then they went on their way, without food or the money to buy it, and the missionary station still a couple of days' journey away. Aristarchus said, "Up to that moment I had been thinking only of my own personal loss. My blanket, my better clothing, and my money were gone.

But after that prayer I thought of the Lord, and how He had suffered to bring salvation to us, and in my heart I decided to

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er] give my life to the ministry." He never thought of telling Mr.

Fraser that! He never thought to tell us. I merely happened to be in the audience when he made this plea for others to consider dedicating their lives. But as I sat there I thought again: our most potent lessons are unconscious ones; they are, in actuality, allowing the Lord to live out His life through us.

What Mr. Fraser lost that day—and it was a goodly sum of money—was well worth it, when it gave birth to such an evangelist for the Lisu church.

Don Rulison sums up the needs of the Blue Miao this way:

As to the needs of the Miao church in the Yellow Creek area, many could be enumerated, such as:

—conversion of young men; —raising up of responsible spiritual leaders for the flock;

—more interest of adults in learning to read, so that it may be a Bible-nourished church; —missionary reinforcements for an expanding field with a score and more of unreached villages.

But I personally feel that our need can be well summed up in one word; this word being one of the oft-occurring metaphors of Scripture. We need fire. Not wild fire, of course, but that pure, illuminating, consuming, energizing, propelling, propagating, healing unction that is the church's rightful inheritance from the Lord. Calvary fire that will burn out the flesh, leaving the church for God to fill. Illuminating fire:

— illuminating the Word of God in our hearts; —giving vision and direction to us, Miao Christians and missionary alike; —making us lights, like John the Baptist, who was a "'burning and a shining light"; that we may all become "pyromaniacs,"' in the sense that we shall set Holy Spirit blazes wherever we go; detonators, setting off Holy Spirit explosions wherever we go; —fire that will illuminate God's face to them, imparting faith that will enable them to turn their backs on former ways of doing things, counting on the Mighty One who is their Saviour.

By this way there will be:

—deliverance from evil habits, such as opium, wine, and so on;

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—deliverance from evil traditions associated with courtship and marriage, and in regard to home life and relations to others.

The above prayer requests will stand as needed for many years to come, for evil traditions are not uprooted in a day.

But now we must go on to the establishing of another Summit Camp.

* * * About 1952, a band of Lahu Christians living in a remote corner of Burma escaped over the border into North Thailand and put up their flimsy shanties at a place called BanWo. Persecution was the reason for their flight. A pleasant hilltop in the Land of the Free was the site of their new village, and from it one can look down to the plain of Fang, far, far below.

At first their thoughts were consumed in putting up shelters for themselves, and clearing out rice and corn fields for themselves from the jungle mountainside. But there came a day when their leader, a grizzled, middle-aged man named Bo-mo, stood on that hilltop and sent up a prayer to the blue heavens above. All around him, unseen to a stranger's eye, were other tribal villages, tucked into folds of the mountains, hither and yon, and they were all heathen. Down on the plain at the foot of their trail was a little Thai market town named Maesao. On that market they had met Lisu and Lahu, but were told that there were no tribal Christians in Thailand. That was 1952. In that straggling little town there was a Thai church, but no white missionary had ever lived there, and seldom, if ever, had a missionary even visited them. As the physical side of their lives began to take comfortable shape, Bo-mo's thoughts had turned upon the spiritual.

He had three fine sqns, the youngest about fourteen, the oldest married. What was going to happen to them, with the pressure of heathen life all around them on those mountains? None of them knew very much, for in Burma they had lived in too remote a spot for even a native teacher to visit them frequently.

They did have a few hymnbooks and New Testaments with them, and some of the young men could read these and sing.

But the younger generation had never taken Communion nor

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was there anyone to baptize them (so he thought)—what was to be the spiritual future of his children? Concerned, he turned to the ever-present Refuge, who, praise His Name, had not been left behind in Burma. "'O God," he prayed reverently, "please send us a missionary!" He had never heard of the Overseas

Missionary Fellowship, and of course he did not know that we had entered North Thailand. He just had committed his heart's burden to his ever-present Refuge in times of trouble.

About this time, the Allyn Cooke family were arriving in Bangkok. They had never been in the land before, but somehow Allyn felt his heart stirred toward that place on the map called Fang. He could not explain it, but he said to Esther, "I think we ought to settle at Fang.'' God answers prayers directly, but often the manifestation of the answer cannot appear immediately. Brother Six in the Yao mountains was also upon God's heart, so the Allyn Cookes were sent first to Advance Camp Chiengrai.

But there was a second man who also spoke Lahu—Allan Crane. You may remember it was just at the time of this unknown prayer that the Cranes were not able to rent a house at Bandak, and turned their endeavours toward Fang.

God made the connection by means of the Thai church.

At Advance Camp Hweiphai there is a very small Presbyterian church, and of course the Cranes attended there. Now the old elder's son had business at Maesao which kept him over a week-end, so he attended the little church there, and behold! tribesmen appeared at the back of the hall with hymnbooks. They could not understand the Thai language that much, but the tune of "Jesus Loves Me" or "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" caused them to turn hurriedly over the leaves of their books and soon they were singing joyfully in this unknown tongue! Dear old Bo-mo had urged his boys to attend Christian service down at Maesao, even if they could not follow the Thai sermon—and these were they.

The elder's son had been acquainted with the Lisu of Ta-Ngo only, so he hurried back to Hweiphai and made a point of visiting Evelyn and Allan. "There are Lisu at Maesao!" he exclaimed. "And they have books in their own tongue!

And they can sing our hymns!"

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Well, bless his heart, he did not know what a flutter such news would be to a Lisu missionary! Evelyn and Allan had been trying to get in touch with their former fellow worker,

Teacher Joshua, whom they knew had fled as a refugee into Burma. Of course they thought it might be Joshua, for affection can send hope shooting up in wild directions. The result was a quick packing of baskets and the Cranes setting off for Maesao, up to Fang by bus, and then across the hot wide plain to the little market town at the foot of the trail.

Sunday service in the little chapel, where everybody sits on the floor, brought the '"'Lisu'?! One glance at their costumes and the Cranes knew the mistake that the Thai had made.

These tribesmen were Lahu! Lahu from the A.B.M.'s big Lahu work in the Shan States. It was Lahu books they had, but the finding of white missionaries who could speak Lahu was miraculous in their eyes. ""Oh, you must come up to our village!

Bo-mo has prayed for missionaries," they said.

And so up the thirteen-hill-billow climb went Evelyn and Allan. They could see that the little group were very poor.

They had left Burma secretly and could not bring many things with them. Their shanties were hastily constructed shelters, but their welcome to the Cranes was as warm as ever Lisu had given them. '"Why, they insisted on giving us chicken or meat every meal," said Evelyn. '""We knew they could not afford it, and expostulated with them. We told them that we were only too happy to eat just rice and vegetables. But it did not matter what we said, at every meal we sat down to meat of some kind. So we felt we should cut our visit short until we could return and make other arrangements for eating.

I am sure that when we left, there could not have been a chicken left in the place! But oh, wasn't it good to be so loved and wanted again!'? Only the Lord knows how good that was. Only He who was shunted off the Samaritan village and ordered out by the Gadarenes knows what the love and welcome of a Martha's home means.

"But you will come and stay and live with us, and teach us?" they cried. "'We will put you up a house.''

"Put up a chapel first,' said Allan, "and then we will see.

We will be back! And you come and see us—we are on the motor road at Hweiphai!'? And with that they left, but they

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were not able to go and live there; Allan's heart condition came after the finding of the Ban-Wo group.

When the Cranes found that mountain travel was forbidden to them, they built a little bamboo shack behind their house by the road, and invited Bo-mo to send his young men to live there so they could teach them. Two came. I will never forget our meeting with these dear Lahu Christian boys.

Their faces lit up in the shy, sweet glad way like the Lisu we remembered so fondly, and then they turned to Allan. '""Why are these two going up to Ta-Ngo to the Lisu? The Lisu do not care! We would give anything to have missionaries— why cannot they come to us?" It was a difficult question, and painful for us. I have never lived among the Lahu and did not speak their language. I was only a filler-in in the Lisu work anyway. The Lisu tribe had to be reached also, and there was still Allyn Cooke who spoke their Lahu well. Allan explained about Mr. Cooke and even sent (or took, I forget which) two of the lads over to Advance Camp Chiengrai to meet Allyn.

How often the missionary wishes he could double himself and go to two places at the same time!

Camp Ban-Wo (Lahu) It was September, 1953, more than a year later, before the Cooke family were free to go to Ban-Wo. It was still the rainy season and they had their little son John, of pre-school age, but the Lahu had waited so long that the Cookes bravely attempted it. Esther tells that story:

"OQ Mamma, I'd like to live here forever!" were John's last words before he fell asleep as I tucked him in his mosquito net the first night after our arrival. That was a week ago today.

The dear Lahu people came down, about thirty or forty of them, to meet us last Monday morning. Even little boys John's size came, with their carrying baskets for a load to carry. We got off just after noon with a little flurry of rain to try to scare us, but after ten minutes or so it blew over, and the rest of the climb was a dry one.

We had stayed over Sunday in the Christian Thai home of Elder Dang. Allyn attended all the three services at Maesao with John, but I rested in the home, as the six-hour trip from Fang the day before had been a bit strenuous for one as out of practice as I was. I do not know whether I shall ever be in

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practice ploughing through mud above my knees, and water in many places up to my thighs. At one time, for a whole hour we were not out of the water. We went barefoot two-thirds of the way; it was easier.

In spite of the difficulties of travel this time of year, by coming now instead of Christmas time we shall be able to get three full months of teaching in before then. It's worth it, praise the Lord! If study progresses as it has begun, we shall have much to praise the Lord for. The sight of the blackboard, chalk, and eraser, and an armful of slates and slate pencils inspired the young fry. The blackboard was put up and they began work.

The Lahu alphabet of forty-two symbols was written on the blackboard in large letters and using a long bamboo to point out each letter Lahu Daniel pronounced the sounds with eighteen boys and girls bawling them out after him. Six of the older boys tried out the slates and wrote out the alphabet, bringing the finished product for examination and correction.

I have never, anywhere, found children more eager to learn.

They are here at sunrise and go on all day until four o'clock, when they have chores to do. (Later: That was the first week only; since then they have been coming only in the morning as we were not able to continue such long hours.) In the evening all the village comes for Bible study and singing class. The children spend the time memorizing Scripture verses in the afternoons. Today marks the fifth day of school. Saturday and Sunday were not school days. They all came Saturday evening for singing and prayer. There were three services yesterday and a singspiration last night, when a crowd of heathen Lahu from one of the lower villages came in to listen.

Three heathen Lahu from Burma came on Saturday and stayed for all three Sunday services, listening with marked interest to the message of life. Every day last week heathen

Lahu from round about visited us. Since Wednesday we have had Thai visitors from Maesao as well. For the benefit of Thai visitors we have posters displayed on the wall of the chapel, tracts to offer them, and records to play, all in their own language.

I have been amazed at the children's concentration on their lessons. No one and nothing seems to distract them from the steady bawling out of the letters they are learning. Much as they like the phonograph they don't stop their lessons to listen to it. The visitors likewise seem oblivious to the school children, and hear only the phonograph! If one of the children bawls out

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the wrong sound, all the others jump on him and scold him, and the Thai visitors or heathen Lahu, whoever they may be, unconscious of the opposing noise, ask for more records.

You may be wondering what our house is like. Well, as we came before the people could build a house, they added another part on to the chapel and partitioned off half of the building for us to sleep and bathe in. To the side of the chapel they had a good start on a shack that will serve as kitchen and diningroom. This is going ahead fast today, and by tomorrow or the next day we should be able to set up our cook stove and put up a sink arrangement with a bamboo drain. Then we shall be using the chapel only for sleeping. After the rains, the people will build us a bedroom so that the whole of the chapel will be free again.

. We are happy to let them make their own arrangements.

Their new, early rice is harvested, so we have rice to eat.

There are cucumbers, melons, and squash in abundance, and some eggplant. They have brought us a kind of wild chestnut, wild ginger, garlic, and wild figs, all of which help out in the diet. The Thai visitors brought us gifts of pomelo, and today

I was able to buy a bunch of bananas from some Thai peddlers.

So far we have not had any fresh meat, and only a few eggs. This whole village of Lahu is a refugee village from Burma and they need their chickens and eggs to set, just now. Corned beef being the cheapest canned meat, we serve it in different ways and manage all right. We should be getting some wild game soon.

The village of Ban-Wo is high on a long ridge overlooking the Maesao-Fang plain, which stretches right across to Elephant

Mountain. Behind us rises ridge after ridge of beautiful mountain country, all populated with heathen Lahu and Lisu.

To another side is a beautiful bamboo ridge and a lovely stream. From every direction, we look out upon magnificent scenery. [Then Esther proceeded to ask prayer that they might be able to inspire these Lahu Christians to go out and witness to the thousands of Lahu heathen scattered throughout North

Thailand.] How easy it would be, in the warmth of this Christian fellowship and the hunger for the teaching of the Word, to evade the Cross. Pray for a mighty moving among us.

The village finally decided to build another chapel and let the missionary family have the whole of the original building.

Allyn Cooke is a master craftsman at using native materials and fixing up a comfortable home; he is also an excellent

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gardener, so Ban-Wo soon became a model tribal station to which we liked to send the young workers, in order that they might note just how the work could be done! Not only did the Lahu build another chapel-schoolroom for themselves, but they also built a tiny guest house beside the Cookes' shanty. One window of this lovely rustic nest opened out over an abyssal ravine, the green mountain slopes off the opposite side being Burma. That was how close they were to the border.

Off the one bedroom was a tiny bathroom with bamboo-pole floors, so that the guest could just pour a pail over himself and the water would run between the poles, thence to the ground some three feet beneath, and from there merrily off down the hill! And its being at the very edge of the village, and raised on stilts, no black eyes peering through the mat walls were likely to dismay the occupant. Bamboo beds cost next to nothing and were very comfortable. Everybody liked to have an excuse to visit Ban-Wo!

I find a little notation about Christmas at Ban-Wo (1953):

The Lahu Christians wanted to make their missionaries a Christmas present. "'Silver and gold have I none"' was true of them also; but they had—what? Love, which thought up a way. Toil, which counted not the sweat drops. Willing backs, which bore patiently the ache and strain of carrying a heavy load up a steep hillside. And that Christmas season the Lahu

Christians each brought in a load of firewood and threw it on their missionaries' woodpile. A gift it was, and their own idea.

By January the chapel was finished and ready for dedication. John and I had the privilege of being the special speakers for the occasion, with Allyn interpreting. It was a memorable visit, and we were thrilled with the whole set-up. The new building, golden and sweet-smelling in its freshness, was built at the back of the missionaries' home, still leaving them at the end of the village, for their '"'front'' faced the Burma border mountains and that deep valley. Again I quote from Esther's letter:

The Saturday evening meeting was one of praise and expectation. Mr. Kuhn spoke at the Sunday sunrise service and again at noon, the noon service being followed by a Communion service at which the deacons officiated. At sundown there was another meeting when Mrs. Kuhn spoke, and this service

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closed with the dedication of three new babies. The parents of the babes were so happy to know that God was pleased to have them present their children to Him in this way. It was a new thing to them, but when asked if they would like to dedicate their babes, they had responded gladly. A Sunday service in a Christian tribe's village is so unconventional and unpretentious, but refreshing indeed. In the evening the time was given to testimonies and songs of praise. Thus closed the happy dedication day.

Early the next morning, just as the sun was coming up, the villagers all turned out of their homes to bid farewell to the visiting teachers. A pig was being skinned in the middle of the ridge as a parting memory for John and Isobel! They boarded an oxcart at Maesao, after descending the mountain, and reached Fang, where the jeep was awaiting them, and thus reached Chiengmai that evening.

For those of us who remained, the daily routine began with school at nine o'clock. Allyn appreciated the larger schoolroom which the new chapel afforded, with three big blackboards to work on. The week of study progressed nicely until Friday morning, when Philip slipped into our house early before breakfast to announce his brother Daniel's wedding. "It is to be today and we want you to marry them!"

"Well," says Allyn, "'this is rather sudden notice. Are they to be married this evening?"

"Oh, no, right after breakfast! The wedding is planned and we want a Bible wedding. We have never seen one."

'How were the rest of you married if you didn't have a wedding according to the Scripture ?"

"Oh, we didn't know how, so Ca-k'aw just said something he thought up, and it was over," said Philip. "And it is time we learned to get married as a Christian should."

Allyn heartily agreed to this last remark, but wished they'd given him a little more time for preparation. After a hasty breakfast, he translated the Lisu wedding ceremony into Lahu, and swished through a shave. But before he'd had time to change his clothes, the gong was sounding forth and the bride was entering the chapel in a purple silk skirt and a red and black jacket which was half hidden by a big white bath towel. The latter she wrapped around her head and shoulders, completely hiding her face. The school children had already roamed the hills and returned loaded with wild blossoms and greenery, which Philip used to decorate the chapel.

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Allyn sent word to hold everything until he got some clothes on. When he finally arrived, the chapel was full, but no bridegroom was in sight. No one seemed to dress up for the occasion and when asked the reason one of the girls said, "Oh, there's no feast today. The pig isn't fat enough yet!" So that was it!

By this time the wedding was well under way, and the teacher was reading the exhortations from the Word, to husband and wife respectively. All went in order and everyone listened attentively until the question was put to the groom,

"Do you take Neh-la to be your wife, and do you promise to love and care for her in sickness and health, in poverty and riches, until death do you part?" But the groom sat on in stony silence and it was only after being urged repeatedly by the father and Philip that he finally answered a feeble "Yes."' The bride, from behind her towel, quickly answered a muffled

**Yes" when her turn came.

At last they were pronounced man and wife, and everyone rose up to shake hands with the newlyweds. A very red-nosed

Neh-la appeared from beneath her turkish canopy and offered her hand in turn to each guest. According to Lahu custom,

Daniel had to go to her home for two years, and they immediately began to do honours to the respective families by carrying in loads of wood. They carried and carried wood for the rest of the day—Daniel for his wife's family, and Neh-la for her husband's parents. The following day they went fishing with all the young folk of the village. We are still waiting for the pig to get big enough, and when it does we shall have the completion of the wedding, when all the guests will come in their best clothes.

The past month has seen about fifteen young people baptized and partaking of the Lord's Supper with the rest of the believers.

Allyn is about to make another trip to try to reach the Lahu ina big heathen area. Three of the villagers will accompany him when they plan to meet Larry Peet and proceed together on a seven-day trip... .

Stop Press! Snowed Under! Sixty-eight Christian Lahu have just arrived as refugees from Burma. They have come to stay! Our school has doubled itself over night. Details next letter. Pray for them and us.

And so the day-by-day work went on. The Cookes found the villagers really very ignorant of scriptural teaching and Allyn had a wonderful teaching ministry. There was also a considerable medical ministry carried on by the Cooke family,

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and as their village site proved to be right across a mountain highway into Burma, they had constant streams of visitors— traders and such like—to whom they witnessed, and if there were those who could read Chinese, Thai, or Lahu, they received Christian literature in the indicated language.

Almost a year later we find a new departure. Again Esther writes:

The Christian women made their first advance toward reaching their heathen sisters last Sunday morning. They went right to the witch-doctor's home of the nearest heathen village.

There, surrounded by the drums and beeswax paraphernalia used in demonolatry, we witnessed for Christ. We expected only women for our audience, but all the village men who could crowd into the house joined the female audience. The witchdoctor sat out in front. We asked him if they all would like to hear us sing in Lahu. He said: ''Yes, go ahead!' The women had chosen '"Take the Name of Jesus with You," and as their voices rang out in that demon-worshipping place, my heart just thrilled, especially when they came to the chorus, "'Precious

Name, oh how sweet, hope of earth and joy of Heaven."

When we finished singing, one of the young women wanted to testify for her Lord, but struggle as she would, no words got past her lips. She felt the opposition of the Evil One, for this was to have been her first testimony. We suggested that perhaps the friends would like to hear us read in Lahu. Each of the women opened her little catechism and slowly, in union, we read questions and answers on the doctrine of God. When we reached the question: Jf God is our Creator, is it right to worship the demons? and the reply: No. Since God is the Creator of Heaven and Earth it is not right to worship demons, I wondered for a second if the demon-worshipper would allow us to continue. But as no opposing voice was heard we proceeded to extol the Name of the Most High God and defy the powers of Hell to question it.

As we read on, the young woman who had struggled to speak previously without success broke forth with liberty and victory, going over the points which had been read, and urging all the listeners to hear the Word of God. We sang in closing a simple hymn set to Chinese music, proclaiming the Gospel in words which all could understand. Need we urge you to cover this witness with your prayers?

The Cookes were with these dear villagers for more than a year before they went home on furlough. Mr. and Mrs.

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Larry Peet were appointed to Summit Camp Ban-Wo as new workers who, with Thai exams behind them, had to tackle the Lahu language. Peter Nightingale also spent some months there before his wedding, as we have seen. But shortly after Verda and Larry took over, the whole village decided to move to another site. They claimed the heathen were persecuting them; also, being on that mountain highway, they had one constant stream of guests whom tribal hospitality required that they feed without payment. Being only refugees themselves, this was a difficulty no one cared to voice. So the whole village moved a day's journey north. They moved the missionaries' shanty and furniture also, Larry and Peter helping them. But they had not been established on their new site very long before an unforeseen circumstance occurred.

The Chinese Nationalist guerrillas who had refused to leave Burma when others of their number had been repatriated to Formosa were being attacked and bombed by the Burmese.

They were thought to have backed into Thailand, and Thai troops were sent to drive them out. So the American and British consuls ordered all missionaries living on that particular stretch of mountain to come down to the plains until the trouble ended. Now it so happened that this nest of guerrillas was planted only a few miles from the Lahu Christians' new village site, and this prevented Larry and Verda from returning there.

(See Progress Report on the Lahu, p. 267.) * * * Camp Nam-Khet (White Miao or Meo) The story of Summit Camp Nam-Khet begins with a heart prepared. Let us picture the scene as best we can with the brief details given to us.

It is a rainy, dreary night in a little Miao village tucked away in the folds of almost unexplored mountains in North

Thailand. From the thick forest which still closely encircles the little shanties, one had proof that human beings have only recently hacked out a clearing from primeval growth. Big jagged stumps jutting up amidst the shanties, still fresh looking, tell us where they got the materials for their wooden huts, with their long shaggy grassed roofs. But a scourge has struck the little settlement and all day long the gong! gong! of demon

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exorcism has been going on. Not a house in the village but is calling on the demons this dismal night. Let us look into one.

A young Miao man and woman sit on opposite sides of their little wood fire, cooking something in a big iron pot.

In the corner of the floor lies a small figure, moaning. The wife anxiously addresses her husband: "Aren't you going to call on the demons for him? Can't you see how sick he is? Everybody is dying—aren't you going to propitiate the evil spirits?"

The young man shifts uneasily and answers with impatience, ''What good does it do? Didn't they offer sacrifices for all those children who are now lying out in the forest in their graves? It does no good, and only kills off our animals.

We are poor enough now. There must be another way'"—and he broods on, gazing into the fire.

"But he is our only son! We cannot lose little Toong.

What other way is there, anyway?" The Miao knows no other way than to propitiate demons with sacrifice.

"Be quiet," growls her mate. "I'm trying to think. There ts another One whom the Miao in Indo-China are learning to know. I can't think of the Name. Let me see. They pray to Him without animal sacrifice.

I don't remember all. I wish now J had listened. But if I could remember the Name..."

Deep concentration while the little figure on the mat in the corner moafis with misery, and outside, the wet night drips its tears ceaselessly in soft splashes.

"Ah," cries the young father. "I have it now. The name is Jesus!" And then in his ignorance, he probably seized the gong and beat it with the regular boom! boom! which the tribes use to call the demons down. "Ho! Jesus!" he would cry,

"Come down and heal our child! Jesus! I don't know how to talk to You, but please come down and heal our son."

He did nothing else. He had reached out in desperation and in little faith, using the Name that does not require animal sacrifice, the only Name given among men under Heaven whereby we may be saved without our shedding of blood, because His most precious blood was shed once for all.

Once for all, O sinner, receive it, Once for all, O brother, believe it; Cling to the Cross, the burden will fall,

Christ hath redeemed us, once for all.

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Yes, done in ignorance though it was, his burden fell, for the child was better the next morning. Those over whom demon incantations had been made died, but little Toong over whom the Name had been cried lived on. The father did not forget that.

But we accept our gifts easily. Sunshine and life returning, the little family went on their busy way, and thoughts of spiritual things were pushed back out of sight.

Now, down their trail and around over another mountain, and down that trail to the plain you may go, and you will come to a little Thai market named Lomsak, where two

Finnish missionary families have been living, witnessing, and labouring—the Heinigienens and the Raassinas. These devoted missionaries had noticed Miao coming to their market to buy rice or supplies, and they decided to hire guides and go and preach to these Miao villages hidden in the hills. It was about 1952 when they made a trip and found a cluster of five villages up there in the mountains above Lomsak. They preached the Word and were given a warm welcome. Some Miao families burned their demon altars at that time and Mr. Heinigienen and Mr. Raassina returned to their homes full of joy and hope.

But they had seen what a physical toll mountain travel and life among these primitive people would take, and both being middle-aged men decided that they could not add that to their already full days, with a little church coming into existence at Lomsak. Somehow they heard that the China Inland Mission had entered North Thailand for tribal work, and they had written to the Scheuzgers, telling them of this wonderful opportunity at Petsaboon district, and offering the Miao work there to us. Otto and Adri were not able to go in person, but they wrote to Base Camp and asked if someone there would not go and investigate this promising and open field. Ernie and Mertie Heimbach were already at Chiengmai studying Thai, but with the Miao tribe definitely in mind. Peter Nightingale was also a Thai student, so when the urgent request came,

John suggested that Peter and Ernie take a short recess from language study, go down to Petsaboon district, and make a preliminary survey of the White Miao villages there. They went in November, 1953.

They returned to us full of enthusiasm. The mountains

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Ig! were virgin forest, prolifically fertile and beautiful beyond description. Sure enough, there were six or more villages of the White Miao (Yellow Creek is Blue Miao, you remember) tribe, only three of which they were able to visit. But they felt that the White Miao population comprised two to three thousand people—quite a sufficient parish for a missionary oe Ernie's brief notes in the Prayer Request Book run us:

Tham-Bugs is a village of about twenty houses. The people were friendly and hospitable. We stayed one night and they listened well to the Gospel. [Ernie speaks Chinese very well and Peter would have to manipulate in Thai, never having been in China.] Some gave verbal assent to the message but none gave evidence of saving faith, although this was the village where the Finnish missionaries had reported some shrines burned. [Of course no one had visited them since, after almost a year.] The headman was not at home, but we found no houses without demon shelves, as far as we could see.

Pa-Ya has about forty houses. The headman, Mr. Yi, seemed aloof the first night we were in his home but was more responsive after we had given his child some medicine. Many heard the Word with interest, but a Mr. Lo, perhaps fifty years of age, seemed most responsive, asking intelligent questions in Chinese. In private conversation he expressed his desire to believe, but he fears the headman and others.

Khi-Tao also has about forty houses. We were here only about one-and-a-half hours, but were in the home of a Mr.

Hsieh who said that he and a few others had believed the Lord since the Finnish missionaries came. He knew almost nothing of the Lord. We tried to instruct him further but cannot say whether or not his faith amounts to saving knowledge of Christ. Further contact will reveal that. Pa-Kho,

Hung-Ka and Nam-Khet are large villages not visited as yet.

[And in Nam-Khet was the father of little Toong, who had reached out and prayed to the unknown Jesus.]

All along, the hearts of O.M.F.ers have felt the urgency of a possible short time in which to work—for obvious political reasons. This has precipitated us into pushing up into the mountains before the time was fully ripe, I feel. But we can only echo the cry of the psalmist of old, "O Lord, remember how short my time is!" In any case, the preaching of the Gospel

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is an urgent matter, so it was decided that the Petsaboon opportunities should be followed up again as soon as possible.

So in February, 1954, Ernie Heimbach, accompanied this time by Don Rulison and his Karen helper, Dee-gay-tu, went back to the Petsaboon White Miao, to the villages as yet unvisited.

Don, by now, could speak quite a bit of White Miao, and Deegay-tu had been learning some also. In all these journeys the Finnish missionaries at Lomsak were kindness itself and their fervent devotion to the Lord and earnest interest in the work was a blessing and inspiration to our workers. It was they who found carriers and guides for all these early trips.

The prayer notes record the visit to the village of Pa~-Kho first. I quote:

Here there was great friendliness and warmth of reception.

We stayed two nights and a day, and part of two other days.

Li Nieh-sung and his friend, Wang Nchai-ong (our host), both expressed faith before we left. They talked of burning their demon shelves, but we did not over-encourage this and they decided to wait until we return.

The reason for this caution was, of course, based on the experience of what had happened to those who cast out their demons when the Finnish missionaries had visited.

With insufficient knowledge as to what was involved in such an action, our men feared a repetition of Matthew 12-44, 45:

Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.

The notes go on:

Here we met Fei-shoong, a man who says he has been worshipping Jesus for about eight years, along with his wife, as a result of a vision. The spirit-shelf was prominent in his home but was apparently used differently, that is, in worshipping "'Jesus."'

When they told us this experience, Ernie said it reminded

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him of the Goomoo incident, told in Wests Above the Abyss.* It is astonishingly similar.

Just as the Gospel was being pushed toward their community, a family of demon worshippers received a vision in which they are instructed to cast out other gods and worship only one, named Jesus. In the Goomoo incident, you may remember that those who received the vision had never, consciously or unconsciously, heard that Name before. It was a direct revelation from demons. The Petsaboon case I have not been able to investigate in this one matter. Fei-shoong evidently recognized the matter as just a different and a more powerful demon, named Jesus, who was asking for his worship, so he continued to use the demon altar and paraphernalia. This new demon, calling himself by the precious Name, promised freedom from sickness and calamity—the greatest drawing card that can be offered to ignorant tribespeople who have no medical help or knowledge. The demon's assumption of the Name caused confusion, the obvious object of the Devil's purpose. Under the demon Jesus, human life without end is promised you, with freedom from sickness, and—you may sin all you like. Wallow in fleshly pleasures if you wish. Just keep up your demon worship, that is all that is required. One can easily see what a subtle snare this is.

For those of you who have read Nests and have often wondered about later developments, I would like to say that dear Mark has finished his course. But before he died, he had deliberately learned to speak Maru-Kachin in order to win that neighbouring tribe to the Lord. And when he passed on in 1946, he left behind him one thousand Maru-Kachin

Christians; these in addition to the many Lisu of his own tribe whom he won! I do not believe that the Devil can see into the future, but he must have sensed a large defeat ahead of him, in order to take such pains to try confusion regarding the name of Jesus. Many of the dear prayer partners, who helped pray the Goomoo group through to victory, are now in Heaven.

Will not some others among our readers take up the cudgels in this terrific unseen warfare for souls?

And now we come to Nam-Khet, the largest village of the Petsaboon group at the time of this visit. Don, Ernie, and *By Isobel Kuhn, C.I.M.

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Dee-gay-tu entered this clearing in the forest with their carriers and, as always, wondered what home would be open to them.

They had Gospel posters with them, and putting these up at the first convenient place they began to preach their message.

Somehow word came to Tsung-ma, father of little Toong, that white men were in the village preaching about one Jesus, the very same Name which had raised up little Toong from a deathbed. Our men did not know that, of course, but they were very pleased when a fine, warm-hearted young Miao said to them, '"'Come to my house! You must stay with me. I want to receive this Jesus. Come, come." So, inwardly rejoicing, they made Tsung-ma's shanty their home for that visit. He was truly a soul prepared, it seemed. He assented right along, and kept saying, "I believe, I believe!' and by the second day he was calling his neighbours in to listen to the message.

They accepted the message so eagerly and so readily that our men were apprehensive that possibly they did not understand that this meant a complete break with heathenism.

They obviously were very ignorant. For instance, asking one Miao man, after they had taught them carefully, Where ts God? "Oh," came the unexpected answer, '"'He lives down on the market at Lomsak."' Carefully the missionaries backed up and began their teaching all over again. Who God is, Jesus

Christ, His death on the Cross for all men—they went into it thoroughly. But still Tsung-ma and others smiled and said,

"We believe; we will burn our demon altars." After teaching them, Don, Ernie, and Dee-gay-tu began to question them to find out how much they had comprehended; when an answer was incorrect, they again went over the point which had been misty, and then they questioned again. They did this until the answers came forth like crystal. ""Where is God?" they questioned again. "He lives in my heart," came the answer with such sweet confidence and simplicity that the missionaries' eyes grew moist. It was only then that they countenanced the burning of demon altars.

Three families burned their altars, Tsung-ma being the first. Cho-sang was second, and Ba-chu third. Then came the urgent invitation to the white teacher to come and live among them and instruct them more perfectly! Others indicated that they too wanted to join the Christian group. In short, the three

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missionaries came back to Base Camp feeling that they had been allowed to step into the pages of the Book of The Acts for a brief few days.

Who was to go and establish Summit Camp Nam-Khet?

Don had promised to oversee the Yellow Creek work while the Scheuzgers were on furlough, so he could not go to stay.

The only others under appointment to the Miao tribe were the Heimbach family, so they gladly accepted the post.

It was more than a month before anyone could get back to the new babes in Christ. Then Don once more accompanied the party. He wrote of that trip:

After the transfer of my belongings and residence to Yellow Creek, Ernie Heimbach, Dee-gay-tu and I kept our promise to return to White Miao at Nam-Khet the first part of April.

We found that the three Christian families had been held up by the Lord through severe testings in the form of sickness, accidents, slander, and rumours.

One had suffered a severe axe wound in the back. He told me he would have turned back and called the demons had not his older brother's faith been strong enough to keep him from it.

There was serious sickness in another family, but prayer to Jesus alone availed. The Evil One circulated a rumour that we missionaries were in prison. Yes, Hebrews 7:25 was true for them: 'Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them."

Ernie stayed a week, during which time we completed tentative plans for the house which the Miao agreed to build for him and his family to come and live in. During that week two more families burned their demon stuff. Then Ernie left us, just after Dee-gay-tu had passed the crisis of a fever that sent his temperature up over 104. His convalescence was slow and is now being completed in Chiengmai. .

. The following three weeks were among the richest and fullest in my experience, with daily ministry to the needs of dear White Miao people, giving them the precious Gospel and also aiding them in their many physical distresses. Easter Sunday was a memorable day, two families (totalling nineteen people) taking that first outward step with the Lord by burning the implements of their old religion. The largest of these families later was severely tried through the physical relapse of the elder son, but God brought them through it.

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There were also days of labour on the new house—felling trees, grubbing out stumps, and levelling ground—then a grand day of house-raising when thirty men and boys helped. All the labour was freely given by the Miao without any pay and the materials came from the surrounding magnificent jungle forest.

Evenings were spent sitting on the bamboo mat (which was my home) on the dirt floor in Tsong-ma's home teaching some of the young people the Miao script; the first step in teaching them to read the White Miao Bible which does not yet exist!

We also sang choruses in Miao and prayed. What blessed times! As I told Mr. Kuhn, who came back with Ernie for a few days before we left Ernie there, ""The hardest thing for me the whole month was /eaving."? But how blessed to leave some souls trusting Jesus and leaving them in His care. He who saved them will do far greater things there and in that whole area through their testimony, as they are led on to know their

Saviour as Lord, through the life and labours of Mr. and Mrs.

Heimbach and their children, Danny (4) and Ruthie (2) who will soon be making Nam-Khet their home.

But the transfer was not made so easily. "'For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries" is true now as it was true in the days of Paul, all the more true because these adversaries cannot be seen with the physical eye. You never know where and when they will suddenly spring upon you and throw you down.

To take a little family up to a raw mountainside, far from stores and medical help, is no small matter. Living would be primitive in the extreme and the Miao will not act as servants; they would not even guarantee to carry food supplies up and down the mountain. Not living on such themselves, they cannot conceive why this is a necessity to white people. Their children do not drink milk, for instance. They nurse from the mother as long as possible—I have known a tribal child of six years of age, still nursing!—and the undernourishment of their children would be attributed to demon power, if to anything. The pioneer must battle with native ignorance as well as superstitions. So preparation took the Heimbach family longer than anticipated.

When at length they arrived at Lomsak, they were cordially received by the Raassina family. There was no extra room in

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their little house, so a portion of the long dining-room was screened off and the Heimbach family of four slept there.

Ernie had decided to go up to Nam-Khet before his family.

It'was now well into the rainy season, and he must make sure that the house had a roof and walls on it. It had not been entirely finished when Don left. While Ernie was gone up the mountain, little Danny fell ill with a high fever, a strange fever. By the time his father returned, he was a bit better, but then Ernie came down with it and was very, very ill.

Ruthie also contracted it, and there in that tiny space behind the curtain Mertie had to minister to them; the Raassinas, of course, were kindness itself, but they too were being cramped for space. And it was hot. During that miserable sickness God spoke to Ernie of the price of pioneering.

Again and again we have turned to Amy Carmichael's words:

The working out of the law of pains for the pioneer: was ever one who was not tested to the uttermost, beset behind and before, crushed and milled till nothing was left for the eye of man to find beauty in, or any power? And so it is that when the work is accomplished, the excellency of the power is shown and known to be of God and not of us.

The law of pains for the pioneer. When Ernie at length got up from his sickbed he knew that he must spend more time in prayer and fasting, for '"'this kind goeth not out" by anything else.

Our circular of that summer of 1954 reads: "The Heimbach family moved up among the White Miao on July 31.

There they found that the Devil had been busy with an epidemic of bad dreams of death and disaster, forebodings which worked on the simple tribal mind until one family went back and put up a demon altar again. And Tsong-ma himself was faltering."

The only person who does not believe that the Devil is a person is someone who has never attempted to combat him or his ways. Such a one is easily hoodwinked into believing that he is a myth; or as C. S. Lewis has so clearly pointed out in The Screwtape Letters, he whispers to such a person that he is too intellectual to believe such a thing, and thus lullabies

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that one's mind into inertness. The simple tribesman going through his animistic incantations is wiser than such a drugged intellectual. He, at least, knows there is a Devil; and he has ways to appease him temporarily. The drugged intellectual is the fool in such matters. These are not mere words.

Once when I was a young missionary in a far corner of the earth, I received a note from a stranger asking for shelter for a few nights. He was a young American news reporter, since become so famous that I dare not now mention his name.

We opened our home to him, of course, and he felt he had to tell us why he had appealed to us for hospitality. He had been travelling through those parts with one of the world's famous intellectuals—a man with many university degrees, a contributor to The National Geographic Magazine, a scholar who told himself and the world that he was studying animistic demonology just from an anthropological point of view. As one of our modern intellectuals, he of course laughed at the idea that there was a personal Devil. This is what the young reporter said to us. ""As Dr. X knows many languages, I asked to travel with him, but the man ts haunted! He sleeps with two pistols under his pillow every night. He sees demons or men or something approaching his bed every morning at about four o'clock and outs with his pistols and shoots at them! I see nothing, but boy, I don't care to have pistols blazing around my head before I'm properly awake in the morning! I made up my mind that I'd appeal for help to the first white people we came across, and I heard of you. That's why I am here. I'll never share a tent with him again, you can bet on that.'' Here was "a drugged intellectual' who had come to the Devil's domain with the intent to pry curiously, and perhaps sometimes laugh. But it was the Devil who had the laugh on him—a very grim one. After that, when we heard Dr. X's name mentioned in missionary circles, we asked questions, and found out that others had had the same experience with him; that he was really haunted, and did continue to sleep with pistols and shoot them off in terror in the early morning hours. But, of course, his magazine articles never breathed of such things.

The pioneer missionary must take the power of the enemy of souls into consideration. He is going to meet with opposition on grounds where he cannot get hold of the trickster to grapple

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with him. Dreams of foreboding. Dreams are very important things to primitive animistic people, and to many educated people, too. Charlotte Bronté relates that Jane Eyre always met with misfortune after dreaming she had an infant in her arms— relates it, as if she herself believed it. So the dreams of bad luck in the mountain, and the knockout sickness that came to the missionary at the foot of the mountain, just as the little family were about to climb and enter in, were related to each other and they all came from the same source. Ernie and Mertie recognized their enemy and faced him in the Name from which he always flees. Not so the poor terrified tribespeople. They recognized the source clearly enough, but they had as yet no experience of the power of the Name. So they backslid and put up their demon shrines in frightened re-allegiance—at least one family did. The other waited, wobbling. Prayer partners, you should always cover the dreams of new converts, until they are established.

Frances Bailey, down at Advance Camp Lomsak, wrote how her heart was moved to watch the little family start off with their Miao carriers on their trek to establish a Summit

Camp in the middle of the rainy season. And then silence enwrapped them. The rains flooded down and the intervening streams swelled so that contact was impossible. For a month it was not possible to get word down to us, or to get new supplies up. But as soon as she did hear, Frances wired us at Base

Camp of their safety and well-being. Oh, the throbs of the work!

When young workers are brave and devoted, we thank our God, but it is always with moist eyes. We do not take lightly the sufferings of the flesh, not if we have ever known how the flesh can suffer. We do not let our eyes or thoughts dwell on that, for that cannot help and is very weakening; but no commander should call his soldiers to suffer, to toil, to bleed, with his own eyes dry or his heart indifferent. General

MacArthur said he wept over the dead of Korea; and when the brave commander of Dien Bien Phu was released to freedom, he entered it with the tears streaming down his face.

But our little family in Summit Camp Nam-Khet did not weep over such things. Mertie set to work at the primitive housekeeping of the long wooden shanty, and Ernie kept the woodpile in stock. Both had to begin to learn White

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Miao, using what helps Don—himself just learning—had been able to give, and otherwise to fall back on Chinese or Thai. For food, other than tinned goods, they had to depend daily on the Lord to send it in. There was no variety, but the tribes plant and eat mustard greens, beans, and corn, and sometimes they killed game in the forest and shared it with the missionaries. The two children loved roaming over the village with the Miao children as guides, and of course they were soon chattering in the same tongue as their playmates.

The real heartache of the pioneer is the lapse of his spiritual children. Soon rumours drifted to Ernie that Tsung-ma had not been faithful to his wife. That, of course, is common among heathen; polygamy is common also. But Tsung-ma had accepted the sacrifice of Christ's death for the atonement of his sin, and he could not continue in sin and expect to have the benefits of his faith. He must be taught, and Ernie had to do it.

Dear sunny-faced Tsung-ma, who had welcomed them with such love into his shanty, and had opened his heart to the dear

Name with a child's simplicity and trustfulness had been ensnared through his affections. Satan does not always attack our weak places; he knows how to turn our strong points against us. Tsung-ma had a fleshly affection for a girl in the village and did not wish to give her up. He would not say that to Ernie's face; he probably did not even acknowledge the sin; but from that time on the light left his countenance, and it was only a matter of time and a different excuse until he too had backslidden.

Dr. Eric Sauer says: "Throughout centuries God spoke the word 'Repent' into the history of salvation—this is the meaning of the law of Moses. Through one thousand five hundred years it was an education in repentance."

"Someone has believed!'' thrills the pioneer to his prayer partners. Then to himself, '""Now what do we do?" Now begins the education in repentance. The tribesman has to be taught how God looks at human life and behaviour; he has to learn what sin is. "Oh," says the child of centuries of Christian background, "'that is very easy. His own conscience would tell him what sin is.'? Oh, no, it won't! Conscience is trained by background, until it is yielded to the Holy Spirit. One of our difficulties in Thailand came when

SUMMIT CAMPS

we found out that the Thai had quite a different conception from ours as to what that word sin means. Buddha taught that to take life is sin; killing a chicken or a snake is sin. Promiscuous living, such as Tsung-ma was guilty of, is just unwise;

I even heard a Buddhist argue that fornication should be classed as entertainment, but not sin. And so the education in repentance must begin.

The teacher can educate nobody. He can only point the way. Education is attained when the way pointed out is accepted and the feet walk it. So with the missionary. He can convert no one.

Like Evangelist in Pilgrim's Progress he can point the way to the Wicket Gate, and he can depict the burning of the City of Destruction, but his power ends there. So dear Ernie had to watch the very man, whose heart God had prepared by that miraculous healing of his little son, choose darkness rather than light because his deeds wanted to be in the other camp. This is heartbreak. Now you may watch the pioneer weep.

Why did God allow it? Maybe we can find an answer from the camp of Satan himself. Screwtape (a demon) writes:

"The enemy (i.e., Christ) allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when lovers get married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life, it marks the transition from dreamy aspiration to laborious doing.' Every pioneer must learn that blood and sweat of our own are not in themselves payment enough to redeem sculs. No souls are won without them, but they are not in themselves the payment. Redemption is God's gift. The glittering peaks of Everest look beautiful in a magazine, with its dazzling snow crest and the blue, blue sky above. But the climber has to tuck that vision in his heart and climb on when there is no beauty visible, only the bitingly cold blast whipping against him, the slippery ice imperilling his foothold, and only tinned food in his stomach. From dreamy aspiration to laborious doing. The doing of the pioneer is to go on enduring privation, and preaching when the preaching of the Gospel seems foolishness. C. S. Lewis says in another book:

"Tt is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill, and settle down to the sober interest, who are the most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction."

ASCENT TO THE TRIBES

The pioneer has to come to the place where he is willing to go on without thrills. And the drumbeat of the Lord that calls to that monotonous plodding is also challenging prayer partners at home. Can you be faithful to go on interceding for these lost tribes without the thrill of glamorous reports ?

"For the drumbeats of His army are the heartbeats of our love."

The last word from Summit Camp Nam-Khet is that only two families of the original nine are standing fast in the Lord. But Nurse Bailey and Nurse Dorothy Jones have moved up to join the Heimbach family in their ministry of love and pleading for Christ. They too must have a place where they can learn the White Miao language, but of course their hearts beat high with the hope that more than just that will be given them.

Am I saying, then, that we should not look for glamour in our missionary lives? No, it will be given, even as Mr. Lewis says, in an unlooked-for direction, when the path of duty is soberly chosen. And there is one species of glamour that is ours to hold fast to our hearts through everything, even as the climber of Everest held the vision of the sparkling peak tucked out of sight in his plodding body. I can best explain it by telling you a story from my first days in China. Fraser of Lisuland, my superintendent, was taking me somewhere through narrow Chinese alleys at night. Little hovels lay in kindly.muffled shadow on either side of the street, and through their poor cracks twinkled little lights—the centuries-old oil lamp of Bible days, a saucer of oil with a lighted wick floating in it. Mr. Fraser said to me, '"'Miss Miller, never lose the glamour of your calling! I have been in China some twenty years but I still thrill all over when I tell myself, on nights like this, I am in China for Christ."

The glamour of comradeship with Him outweighs the toil and tears, the disappointments and frustrations, the sickening of hopes deferred, and steadies our life.

Above the din and hurt of war and strife, To hear through storm His voice which bids you

''Fear not,"

And take from Him the gift of steadied life.

R. W. WHEELER

(See Progress Report on the Miao, p. 268.)

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