Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE UNWANTED ASSIGNMENT
a ie happy years were spent in that big beautiful home in Tali.
It was in 1931, some months before Kathryn was born that our nearest missionaries, ten days' journey west at Paoshan, gave us an invitation to come over and help them in a special evangelistic effort at their station. The call Westward Ho has always stirred our blood, so we accepted joyfully. (And incidentall the senior missionary at Paoshan could take charge of my ra: 4 oral Chinese language exam.) On such trips John usually rode a horse or walked and I rode a mountain chair.
One particular afternoon we were winding up and over mountain tops for a long time. I was wondering where we would sleep
01 night—the sun had begun to lower, yet we were still wanover wild uninhabited mountains, Suddenly John, walking a se distance ahead of me, disappeared! I got out of the mountain chair and began to walk, oping thus to speed up my slow carriers. I hallooed John but there was no answer. He had turned to wave to me just before going around the crest of a peak, so I hurried up 'te little slope, turned the corner and— gasped. The mountain fell away from my feet in a steep seen to tiers of lower hills of graduating heights, like colossal ste
Doe I There, far below was John, a mere speck on the o that circled one of the tiers before it dropped to the next
He turned to look for me, saw me, and waved!
The range had fallen away into a beautiful little green valley, at least two thousand feet beneath us, and through the valle ran a stream shining like a silver ribbon through emerald fields with a sunset glory gilding the opposite mountain bank. From the other side of the valley rose tier after tier of hills until it levelled off even with where I now stood, making me feel as if I were on top of the world. It was the valley of Yungping
i BR
ONE VISION ONLY
(meaning Eternal Peace), And we were to spend the night in the little market town huddled against the foot of the western hills.
Far below me John was signalling with his arms that I should hurry up. Reluctant to leave that most wonderful panorama, I knew by-the setting sun that I must.
The population was mostly Muslim. That night, after our supper, we went out on the street for an open-air meeting, as was our custom. But the audience was unmoved, stony-faced and indifferent. John felt depressed. As we prepared for bed in the dusty little inn, he said to me, "I suppose someone will be asked to come here and open this plain to the gospel. A missionary has never lived here, so there has never been a thorough presentation of the message. I pity the person that has to tackle this job. Maybe Mr. Fraser will ask Will to come here." (Will Allen was noted among us as always rising to the occasion!)
Neither John nor I dreamed that we would be the ones Mr.
. Fraser would assign to this difficult task. Yet it was so.
Mr. Fraser had never intended that missionaries should stay on in an old established work like Tali. The Chinese Christians should run their own church eventually, while there were still many large areas of West Yunnan unevangelized. Therefore, when the last batch of Forward Movement workers had been sent to us, Mr. Fraser suggested that we ourselves open up a new district, and Eternal-Peace was the place he named.
I have seldom seen my husband more downcast. The work at Tali he had loved. For him it had been a joy to explore the needy fields around Tali, to help in the initial preaching efforts. But now to be confined to one valley of such indifferent and difficult people as Muslims! To me the appointment was quite agreeable. *
I had fallen in love with the beautiful little plain. I was also glad to get back to life nearer the nationals. Tali was on the main road of travel, and for me as hostess there was much entertaining of missionaries of other missions, not to mention world-explorers and hunters. I had lost several of my Chinese Bible classes through the constant interruption of unexpected Western visitors.
I was happy at the prospect ol an area big enough for a lifework, but small enough that I would always get back home nightfall and sleep in my own clean bed! I did not like travel:
But I felt sorry for John.
'THE UNWANTED ASSIGNMENT
The work in the church and country around Tali had been thriving, but now blessing seemed to leave and sickness struck us. We had recently received four young men as new workers, when I came down with a fever we could not diagnose. There was no doctor nearer than Kunming, at that time a two weeks journey away. Nurse Ruth Colquhoun (later Mansfield) was summoned from Mitu. She came gladly, but she had never seen a fever like it. Searching the medical books she felt that blackwater fever was the nearest in description to what I was experiencing.
I grew steadily weaker and John became concerned for my life. As he knelt at my bed praying that I might be allowed to recover, the Lord spoke to him about his own inner unwillingness for our new assignment. There was a keen struggle. Then he yielded. I began to improve. But I was exceedingly weak when the fever left me, and almost had to learn to walk anew.
St. Francis de Sales said, "If He calls you to a kind of service which is according to His will but not according to your taste, you must not go to it with less, rather with more courage and encrey than if your taste coincided with His will."
Blessing began to flow again. So we found a definite relationship between: inner surrender and outward blessing, which is another proof of a living God.
In those two and a half years at Tali (1930-32) we received ten new workers, helped them get through their first language exams, rented premises and assisted them to get started in six different towns, including Yungping. Each place had a whole plain full of Chinese until then unevangelized. Besides, in and around Tali, souls were saved, John and I finished the required language examinations, and Kathryn was born to us.