IN SERIOUS VEIN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 73, Issue 6283, 20 September 1946, Page 5

IN SERIOUS VEIN

WITH THE MISSIONARIES IN THE HINTERLAND OF CHINA AND AFRICA To most of us, no doubt, such places as Tibet and the Gobi Desert are almost legendary. They might exist, but a long, long way from us in our settled civilisation and western outlook. We know, probably, that one is a closed country, behind the frontiers of which live a strange race whose priests are known as “lamas” living in massive monastries in the mountainous country, and who apparently spend most of their time twirling prayer-wheels and chanting the monotonous cry, “Om mani padmi hum.” While as for the Gobi Desert, well it is a fearsome waste somewhere near China. But to three white women, now in New Zealand, these far-off places are almost “home.” These women, Miss Mildred Cable, and Misses Eva and Francesca French, have pioneered in places which to many a male traveller are too forbidding. Taking the Message and the practical help of the Gospel, they have made their home in the vastness and loneliness of the north China hinterland, returning to civilisation only at long intervals for much needed rest, which rest they find in further travelling and much speaking among their own folk, always in ithe interest of their Christian Mission work. It is with both sympathy in their work, and a natural curiosity, that many of us will await their coming to Hamilton next month, where they will address meetings on behalf of the New Zealand branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society, which is celebrating its centenary this year. From a book, “The Touch of Healing,” comes the following story. It is not exciting, speaks of no hair-rais-ing adventures, has not plot, yet it talks to every man who will listen, in his own language. “The tall grass of the African forest-fringe towered above the faint track along which a white woman made her way, slowly. She was very tired, the day was still hot with the lifetsapping moist heat of the jungle country, and home.was yet a long way off. Suddenly, this lone traveller was jolted into tense watchfulness. She had heard a sound, not of a beast, which might have-' been dangerous enough, but of a human being. A strange, muffled,' heart-racking sound of somebody in agony of body or mind, or both. All attention now, her weariness gone, the woman searched the long grass until she found a lad about ten years of age who looked up at her with fear, but who was too weak to try to escape. Hunger burned through those too-bri-ght eyes, and a fever. Her touch of the wasted body told the same story, as she carried him back to the track, and, with quickened pace, on to the village where she lived. Later, she learned that he was the son of a forest tribe, with whom the more settled natives had some trade connection, but who were yet too wild and unapproachable for any other contacts. Thinking that this illness was the dreaded “sleeping sickness,” and knowing that the cure of this disease was beyond the power of their most effective medicine-jnan, the parents had carried the lad and left him close to the track, either to dig or to be found by somebody connected with the mission. Meanwhile, to get the boy to the Mission hospital 80 miles away, and to get, him there quickly, was the woman’s problem. Travelling was slow, night was near, and who even of her proved converts would venture into the African night so far from home? But time was precious, the need was great, and the determination of their beloved “mother” shamed the fears of four of her boys, with whom she set out on hei- long night journey. Arrived at the hospital, she thankfully heard the doctor’s verdict that it was not “sleeping sickness,” but a wasting fever which could be stopped by an operation, if they could nurture the lad long enough to give him sufficient strength to stand the operation. Careful nursing, followed by a successful operation and a long convalescence resulted in the return of the boy some months later, not to his forest home, but to the village of the white woman. Two days later, while sitting quietly in the shadow of her hut in the evening, this Christian missionary heard the case being discussed by a travelling trader from a far-back tribe, and one of her “boys.” “So he has come back here, this strange one from the forest. I can understand that, for did not he have from the white medicineman something of the white-man’s magic, Yes, that is what I should do. But, this thing is strange, this I cannot understand—'what makes these white people come here and take such trouble over a boy sick nearly to ejeath. He has nothing to pay them. His people lare far away, and will never pay even one small skin. Why do they this thing-?” And she had more reward than the payment of many skins as she heard the testimony of her “boy,” himself but a few years removed from the same outlook as the previous speaker; of the same tribe, yet living in a new world. For what she heard was this, “I tell you, she and those others have heard a Voice. I too have heard it, but only yet as a baby. But to them it comes strong, so strong; and it says, ‘You have done this to one of these My brethren; you have done it also to Me.’ And the voice is the voice of the one God, who is Father of all men.”