A Stone Is Quarried 19
A STONE
IS QUARRIED
became one too, we could stand together, perhaps.
. ." But even so, what were women in this land where every female is but chattel in some man's hand all her days? Thus debating the matter, the little fifteen-year-old arrived at her home.
Many months passed. Third Sister was busy for already she was learning to spin cotton into thread and then weave it into cloth on the primitive foot-loom. This was the women's winter work, besides the inevitable gathering firewood, pounding corn and the daily water carrying.
Lu-seng had gone with Ma-pa and Ma-ma (the white missionaries) up to Village of the Three Clans where the Lord had begun a mighty work.
Olives is on the main road south to Cmnaland, so Lisu traders coming from the north often brought letters from Lu-seng to the church at Olives.
Second Sister went secretly to church and on returning home would wait until they were alone and then recount to Third
Sister all she heard.
One day, (23 March, 1940) word spread in the village that Lu-seng, Ma-pa and Ma-ma had returned and that if you wanted to hear Ma-pa preach you should come on Sunday noon.
That Sunday was a beautiful, quiet, sunny day, the peach blossoms shining pink against the new green of the mountainside, and as little Third Sister sat at her weaving, the music of happy hymns came floating down the slope to her. There was a new song, "When I see the Blood, I will pass over you."
Whatever did those words mean? But oh, the hi ting tune seemed to call to her. Years later, in giving her testimony, she told of it.
"On Sunday I heard the lovely singing in the chapel and started up the hill, but had not the courage and turned back. That night, however, I slipped in, and I remember that Tychicus and I both took a stand for Christ then/' Incidentally, Ma-ma's diary of that evening adds an interesting side-light.
It says: "Lu-seng spoke so well to-night and on short notice."
So it W£S Lu-seng again! In God's hand he was the pickaxe that was loosing this little Lisu opal from its clinging earth.
Third Sister was not yet born from above. Her testimony
STONES OP
PIRE continues: "I went on being a Christian but very carelessly."
Heathen Lisu, when annoyed, are foul of speech, and every child learns those words as they grow up in the heathen atmosphere.
It was with her tongue that Third Sister was careless, but now she had an ideal shining in her heart. The noble face of Lu-seng, with the light of heaven playing on it when he preached, was an influence which unconsciously began to guard the little girl from the mire into which other heathen of her age commonly fall.
All through the spring and summer months, while working in the fields with young heathen companions,
Third Sister was "kept". When a young man would playfully catch her by the arm, something within rose up and resented it.
All unconsciously this little stone of fire was beginning to learn, "passion held by principle".
The end of August brought exciting news. Teacher Thomas, his wife Homay, and their baby son John were coming to Olives to be the Lisu pastor and family. What rejoicing among the believers ! For seven years there had been Christians in this village, but never had they had a pastor of their own. Thomas was to live in Lu-seng's guest-house, but it was so rickety that it must be reinforced and the clay earth stamped down hard for a smooth floor. What day could everybody help? The little family were due to arrive on September 2nd so the place must be in order by then. Much water would be needed to pour on the floor before the earth could be stamped level and harden well. The girls could carry the water. Homay had cooked for the American missionary, so she was almost like a Chinese in her clean-living habits, and she would like an earthen stove instead of the Lisu iron tripod straddling a fire on the floor.
Well, clever-fingered Lu-seng-pa could make that, if some of the young people would dig clay and the others carry it to him. So a day was set and merrily the young group met, apportioned off jobs and worked together.
Teasing, laughter and witty repartee spiced the work (Jonathan and Tychicus were such wags and Lu-seng-pa was the worst tease of all), so by the set time the small home was ready, clean and neat with its hard earth floor almost like cement, and all done by free, loving labour.
A STONE
IS QUARRIED
Two or three days earlier some volunteers must go off to Oak Flat to help carry Homay's luggage.
Incidentally, they would see and hear the closing day exercises of the Rainy Season Bible School—Lu-seng was one of the class speakers that year. How Third Sister would like to have gone, but the idea of a day's journey away from home was rather terrifying. No, she would stay and help get the Welcome Arch ready. She knew where some wild orchids grew in an old dead tree and they would look so pretty among the greenery of the arch.
All day her heart beat high with expectancy. Being a Christian brought so much new interest into life. The heathen said it was a dull existence without drinking whisky or smoking or singing the Try-to-Say-It, 1 but they just did not know. "The blessing of the Lord it maketh rich and he addeth no sorrow with it."
Third Sister had seen the sorrows after a heathen night of carousing, knife wounds and brutal bruises; but the sweet blessing of preparing a home for your very own pastor, and meetings every evening such as the one they expected to have to-night
Lu-seng would be back and he would be sure to have new songs learned at the Bible School which had just closed. The Western reader, accustomed to all the fanfare of modern excitements, the wireless programmes, the flash of neon lights on highways, the ever-new magazine or book, cannot be expected to understand the delight and thrill of the simple children of the hills when a newly translated song or anthem is given to them. To them it is excitement, something new to break the monotony of the tedious daily round, and withal a new channel in which to praise God. They have no books, no shop windows in which to gaze and see a new thing, no news flashes of what the rest of the world is doing, no car or bicycle to take them to a change of scene. Life is very drab and laborious ; but a new song stimulates new effort (for everybody learns each of the four parts by memory) and lends occasion for comment on unmelodious altos or straining tenors which usually ends in laughter. All over the world, get a group ofyoung people together with something to do and you have—the spice of life. A new song is something to do!
1 Heathen songs explained in Nests Above the Abyss.