Front matter
Carolyn Canfield
THE STORY OF
ISOBEL KUHN
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THE STORY OF
ISOBEL KUHN
Bic Vision Only
~CAROLYN CANFIELD
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
and
_ THE OVERSEAS MISSIONARY FELLOWSHIP
Peg ens.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Canfield, Carolyn one vision only Kuhn, Isobel 2. Missionaries — China - Biography
Title II. Story of Isobel Kuhn 266'.023'0924
BV3427.K8
ISBN 0 340 24607 3
Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain for Hodder and Stoughton Limited, Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent by Cox & Wyman Ltd., London, Reading and Fakenham
CONTENTS CHAP.
PAGE Protocus: High in Her Mountains Part One
Tus VISION SIGHTED
Daddy's Girl All in a Whirl A New Look Bound by a Love Chain Black and White Pen Sketch Outstanding Girl Across a Wide Ocean
payee yn Part Two THE Vision PursueD (autobiographical) Anticipation .
Getting Married is not a Private Affair After All Our First Home—What Comes First?
How to Develop a Taste for Beancurd His Wonderful Cook—as Viewed by Her Speech Seasoned with Salt When We became Parents The Unwanted Assignment Beginnings at Yungping The Forgotten Cloak A Hard Day A Glimpse of Storybook Land A Parting that did not Part The Thing with the Stuff in It
Se ePyayveynn
III ~~ = em WN H .
Py . vy") ba Tt oe
CONTENTS PAGE CHAP
'Furlough without Baggage (1936)
Home Town The Ticklish Question 16.
17.
* Part Three
THE VISION REALIZED
Pen of a Ready Writer Experiences, Full-orbed Pressing On Always a Missionary Over the Back Wall With Purpose of Heart The Ruling Thing Confident In Christ's Company
OE COE as Ne nant gas ha
PROLOGUE
HIGH IN HER MOUNTAINS
my ao that trail starting up the slope?"
John Kuhn's broad hand waved our attention to a point across the valley.
We nodded: "That one winding into the foot hills?"
"That's right!"' he assented. "Keep climbing up that trail for six days, and you'll find Isobel."
"Six days through that wilderness?"
"Yes, and Danny is with her in the Lisuland shanty."
As we stood there at Wa Yao, my husband and I were far down the Burma Road in southwest China. The vividly green valley before us was scalloped with wooded hills and faced with blue mountains of great height.
So we were on Isobel Kuhn's doorstep! Her writing, like strong cords, had helped weave the primitive tribes into the affections of Christians on several continents. Thousands of people, we among them, enjoyed her letters and books; laughing, crying, and praying over det Her love for the Lisu was infectious.
- And this was our nearest point of approach to Isobel Kuhn!
Her husband's longing to hit the home trail spoke through his eyes. We understood. We too felt our hearts pushing us towards
Isobel. But six days' struggle up those heights? We could not make it! Already our fine party lagged behind schedule.
Stretching before us was the further overland journey. It was to rab several thousands of miles, partly over Communist infested roads.
So, instead of striking out on foot to Isobel, we just had to go jeeping on without even a How-do-you-do.
It was quite ae even to let Isobel know that our hands were waving in her direction. She had no telephone, no telegraph, even her post office was distant by a day's journey,
With John, our party pressed on towards Paoshan city, and
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ONE VISION ONLY
the China-Burma border where a Lisu Bible Conference was planned. Soon more than a hundred tribespeople would come filing through the wilds from their scattered villages with a great appetite for the Living Bread. John Kuhn's messages were a spiritual treat to any audience, anywhere. From his lips God's
Word poured out as readily in Chinese and Lisu as in English.
No wonder the tribal Christians received him with singing and wept when he left!
John's work as China Inland Mission superintendent for West Yunnan kept him away from home for indefinitely long stretches.
During her husband's absence, Isobel was.in her mountains, tied to the small boy as well as to the work at the mission station.
At that time, 1949, the John Kuhns with their fellow-worker, Charles Peterson, were based at Village of Olives. Their shanty, as they called it, was large and clean. But it was not much more embellished than the bamboo huts of the thousands of their parish, or of the four hundred pathetically poor tribespeople immediately around them. Their furniture evolved out oe packing cases. The water supply dribbled in through bamboo tubes.
In that rugged area there was not a wheeled vehicle of any kind, nor a stretch of road where one could be used. In many places the trails were so narrow that even mules could not travel with a pack. Almost no supplies were procurable and shops or markets were non-existent. Mail was carried only by their own special messenger. Their mountain neighbourhood was full of Lisu who were strangers to God but well acquainted with such things as opium, hard liquor and filthy lust.
When, during sree the hardship of such living conditions was commented upon by a special friend, Isobel responded, "Oh, it's a bit hard, but it's nothing compared with the spiritual luxury of the place."
Observing her manner of life, the godless nicknamed Isobel, "God's Daughter." But the Christian Lisu called her "Ma-ma," the Lady Teacher. She was all that these appellations implied: a lady by culture and a teacher by profession. She"was also an obedient child of God, keenly alert to that too frequently overlooked part of His final commission: "Go . . . preach the gospel to every creature." ... "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."
HIGH IN HER MOUNTAINS
It was Isobel's delight to gather groups of young Christians for special Bible study Sanne the es Sieniecn gave them leisure from crop tilling. She added practical instruction in righteous living, Setecnn. and child care to reading classes and well prepared Bible lessons.
When sessions of the Rainy Season Bible School closed, the students returned to their far distant villages, happily chatting over their experiences. So Ma-ma's ministry was multiplied through the mountains.
Isobel was in the midst of one of her Rainy Season Bible Schools while our party was hurrying westward. From her mountain perch she regarded the Burma Road as civilization, and it was, by contrast with her isolation! To us first-timers, however, it seemed really remote. Its exotic wild flowers, crags and canyons thrilled us. So did its multiple hazards! Winding, grinding and skidding, the jeep faltered over the dirt surface.
Our self-imposed speed limit was 20 miles per hour, necessary both for comfort and safety. But 20 miles per day was the rate at which Isobel and her husband first passed that same way, long before there ever had been a thought of the Burma Road.
Sometimes ominous loneliness clung to the atmosphere. We were approaching a national boundary where smugglers and bandits thrive, and these were no hobgoblins of imagination!
Besides, at that time, there were bands of vagrant soldiers who, with only their guns left in their hands in lieu of pay, had been discharged from regular service. To make an easy living, they preyed upon their hard working fellow countrymen.
Most to be feared of all desperadoes, however, were the Reds.
Like cayenne pepper, they had mixed themselves into the political pot of this loosely ace area. The resulting stew was such that the peaceable Chinese populace could not even distinguish its flavour. Were their towns seething with bandits, Reds or wandering soldiers? At times they did not know. They only knew the miess was hot and evil smelling!
A great time to be bumping along the Burma Road! Yet if we felt too near the hot-pot, what about Isobel? Most of the time she lived on the edge of danger twenty-four hours a day.
Far away in America, Kathryn Kuhn, then a student at Wheaton College, Illinois, wondered why no letters came from
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ONE VISION ONLY
her parents. With tears, she heard that the city of Paoshan had been taken while her father was there. Rumours started that her parents had been captured.
Rumours and more rumours!
Rumours filled the Salween and Mekong canyons in southwest China also. Like steam from a boiling cauldron, the fumes of war rose from the valleys far below the lone woman in the mountains. Soon Isobel also heard that Paoshan had fallen. Weeks added more and more suspense. No word from her husband!
"Where is John?" she wrote. ""We don't know. He apparently can't get word to us, and we can't get word to anybody ..
. we have no stamps and can only hazard a hope that the missionaries at —— (in Upper Burma) will mail these letters out for us."
"Cut off," Isobel headed that letter, explaining that contacts with the world outside the mountains had been completely severed by all the evil men of the neighbourhood, working under Red command.
Meanwhile John returned with us from the inspiring Bible conference at the Burma border. But while we jeeped back along the dangerously deserted road to the comparative safety of civilization, John got stuck in Paoshan. He was refused a pass.
Warring factions blocked his way home to his wife in the distant village. Then followed promiscuous shooting, anarchy and bloodshed. Three complete changes of government took place in quick succession. It was Tous "two months in a robbers' nest," as he called that ordeal.
Nearer and nearer the turmoil boiled up into the mountains towards Isobel. She wrote, "They (the Reds) crossed the river to our side of the Salween, just one short day's journey away. Next they announced their intention of coming to our Village of Olives, Everyone surmises that they are coming to get the white missionaries.' Of "'white missionaries" there were then only two
—Isobel Kuhn and Charles Peterson, several days' travel from their nearest white neighbours.
Circumstances had a grim face, even though Christian Lisu were quite ready to defend their missionaries with their lives.
"But our hearts are at peace," Isobel wrote, "for Philippians 4:6-7 has always been our trust." ("Be careful—anxious—for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with
HIGH IN HER MOUNTAINS
II _ thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God, hich passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.)
The tone of the whole letter verifies her claim of having a peaceful heart. Her anxious readers were even conscious of the twinkle in her eye as she wrote: "Needless to say, life is interesting . . . especially to one small boy who dreams of the Sugar
Creek Gang every night and longs for a gun to go shoot bears."
As she rode high in her perilous mountains, she kept teaching and mothering and writing. But, by nature, Isobel Miller Kuhn was full of fears—and frail bodied, besides. How did such a person manage bravely to face such a life full of mountains?
After studying her character rather minutely, it seems to me that Isobel Kuhn kept before her one vision only. Her basic life secret is well summed up in the scripture which says "Who through faith... wrought righteousness, obtained promises .. . out of weakness (she was) made strong."