BEFORE leaving Tantsah that summer to visit a new district on the Burma border, Fraser came to a decision which cost him not a little. The lack of converts in any number in his Lisu work weighed heavily on his heart. Whatever the reason, it seemed as if God’s time had not yet come for the answer to his prayer of faith. What should he do? Was it right to stay on, waiting and praying, when workers were urgently needed in other, more fruitful fields? The outcome of much thought and prayer was that he decided to write to headquarters, cost what it might, and offer to go elsewhere for a time, if Mr. Hoste approved. But first, this evangelistic journey must be made in response to recent invitations—a journey which led to unexpected developments.
For in this district under the shadow of Tapu Pum, even Fraser’s powers of endurance gave way. Coarse food and Lisu cooking did not trouble him, but in that lofty region there was little or nothing to be had, just then, but the poorest of red rice, without even turnip or cabbage to help it down. Fraser did his best, and so did the village folk who welcomed him. As long as he could hold out, he responded to their eager interest—teaching, singing, explaining the Glad Tidings they had never heard before. But after a week or so, the coarse food simply would not go down. His digestion went on strike. Illness supervened; and in a state of semi-starvation he had to make for Tengyueh as best he could. There, in the care of Mr. and Mrs. Embery, he rallied after a time, and was at hand to meet a demand that arose for help on the Chinese side of the work. A visit had to be paid to the city of Paoshan and, having been the pioneer in that district, Fraser was the one to undertake it.
The four days’ journey, once so formidable, was more like a pleasure trip after the rigours of the Lisu mountains. It was a joy to be preaching in Chinese again and to see, the influence of the young evangelist in charge of the work. Chao is really a splendid fellow [Fraser wrote to his mother, whose gift had led to the opening of this city]. He lacks in education and in scriptural knowledge, but has such An earnest spirit and the heart of a shepherd in looking after the converts. He has also a kind of shrewd wisdom in dealing with people ... I sometimes refer to you, in speaking of prayer for the work, and Chao and his wife wish to be remembered to you.
After some weeks spent with the inquirers, three of these were baptized and a Communion Service held for the first time in Paoshan. Before leaving the city, Fraser had the joy of seeing a Buddhist leader come out boldly for Christ, breaking her vegetarian vow. On the return journey a detour was made to revisit Moh Ting-chang, the cake maker at Hsiangta. What a joy it was to be in his home again and find him matured in spirit, though enthusiastic as ever!
Moh is a remarkably earnest Christian [he wrote on that visit]. It is a treat to stay with him and see the way he witnesses for Christ down in the shop. He is the kind of man who takes the aggressive in a bright, happy-go-lucky way... arguing with much ingenuity.
Just now I am writing at his table in a big, upstairs room, littered with all sorts of things―for order and neatness are not among his virtues! There are three beds, just the usual planks laid across a couple of forms and covered with straw mattresses. On the floor are big earthenware jars as high as your wrist, piles of firewood, bales of cotton brought from Burma, stores of fruit, and all kinds of odds and ends. Moh is watching me write and is asking all about you:
‘Is your Mother a Christian too? What is her venerable age? And can she read, like Mrs. Embery?’ etc., etc.
The persistent opposition of his own mother had been one of Moh’s biggest trials in leaving all to follow Christ. She was an opium smoker and lived with his brother, so that the younger son’s change of faith did not materially affect her. She keenly felt the social disgrace, however, brought upon herself and all his ancestors. In vain he explained the message of Redeeming Love and all that it meant to have a living Saviour. No, he was bewitched and casting off the family!
‘Take me up, then, and throw me into the river,’ was her bitter retort. ‘But no, you need not even do that―I will jump in myself!’ And in such a mood she might indeed have done so.
With all his brightness, Moh deeply felt the alienation of his family, and Fraser’s fellowship was so welcome that for a whole week he would not let him go. To his visitor, the hours spent in prayer together were no less helpful, in view of the uncertainty of his own immediate future. Out on the hillside, or in the barnlike room over the shop, they strengthened one another’s faith.
‘Leave God to order all thy ways,
And hope in Him whate’er betide;
Thou’lt find Him in the evil days
Thy all-sufficient strength and guide:
Who trusts in God’s unchanging love
Builds on the rock that nought can move.’
Autumn tints were already glowing on the Tengyueh ranges when Fraser set out again for his Lisu home. One more journey round the familiar district to see if everything was as barren as before, and then the letter must be written upon which he had decided at Tantsah. His heart was heavy, facing all that it would mean to leave his well-loved work, even for a time. He knew that he had prayed ‘the prayer of faith’ for his tribespeople. He knew the blessing so definitely asked, and received, would be given. But as of old, the promise was delayed in its fulfilment. He must be willing for God’s time as well as God’s way― ‘even God, Who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that are not, as though they were’. In his Journal there is a brief entry for the Sunday before he began this trial journey:
October 8. Service in the morning: I spoke on the Holy Spirit. In the afternoon―defeat. Evening after service, shouting victory in gully (outside the city). Never knew James 4:77Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7) to work better.
It was in this spirit, then, that Fraser left Tengyueh with two companions, a Lisu and his son having come from Tantsah to help him. Travelling westward, in the direction of Tapu Pum, they came the second night to a village in which the missionary was well known. Talking and singing with the usual crowd round the log fire, he was careful to avoid any appearance of urgency in giving the message so near his heart.
‘I have taught you the truth,’ was now his attitude. ‘It is all here in the book of God. It is for you to decide what you will do about it.’
Next morning he was preparing to take the road again, when his companions ran in hastily.
‘Teacher, wait a little! This family want to turn Christian, if we will help them.’
Wonderingly, Fraser gathered them together and explained more fully what it meant to ‘turn to God from idols.’ He had learned that anything short of the complete destruction of all implements used in spirit-worship did not count as making room for Christ in heart and home. That was the dividing line; once crossed, faith could take possession in a real way. So it was with thankfulness he found that his hosts had come to the point of really making the clearance that meant so much.
It was a good beginning, but what shall be said of the days that followed when no fewer than seven families destroyed their demonolatry amid scenes of rejoicing. It seemed too good to be true!
‘Oh yes,’ Fraser was tempted to think, ‘just this place or two! But it may end here.’
Travelling grew rougher as they neared the Burma border, and the Kachin huts at night were deplorable, but the joy of finding open hearts continued. Only the briefest Journal entries remain to indicate what happened, but the writer well remembers Fraser’s face and voice as he recalled, years later, the moving story. At Melting Pot, high in the western mountains, ten families destroyed all traces of demon worship, even pulling down the spirit shelf in the little temple perched above them. Further on, Fraser and his companions came in pouring rain to Cypress Hill, where their stay included the eighth anniversary of his landing in China. That was a week of wonders, for no fewer than fifteen families turned to the Lord, burning every vestige of demonolatry. And so it continued, though not without opposition from the great enemy.
‘Teacher, come quickly,’ was the call in one Kachin village, when five neighbor families had turned from demon worship, with bonfires in home after home.
‘Why, what is the matter?’
‘The devil is raging―trying to destroy my son!’
This was only too true, as Fraser found when he followed the distressed father. The young man was so violently possessed that he could hardly be restrained from throwing himself into the fire. United prayer prevailed, and before long the power of the Name of Jesus brought deliverance.
In the midst of these experiences, Fraser wrote to his mother:
Please excuse pencil again... under the circumstances in which I am now living. The one and only form this Lisu family possesses is not quite six inches above the ground. They never go in for chairs—no such luxury! and this family has not a table either. They have nothing whatever raised above the ground level, unless it be the cooking ‘range’, and I sleep just two or three inches above the earth floor. All around me, or around the log fire rather, are Lisu, Lisu, Lisu! The good woman of the house is sitting next to me, with such a quantity of beads and ornaments as would give you neckache to wear. A couple or girls nearby are watching me write and half-a-dozen boys on mats round the fire are learning to read the Lisu catechism. They are all interested in my writing, but I tell them to get on with their books.
But I am not going into further detail about the ‘comforts’ of this Lisu home, high up amid mountains and forest, as the most important thing is that my good host and hostess “turned Christian” this morning, removing all sorts of things used in their former demon worship―bits of stick, pieces of paper and much other trumpery―burning the whole lot in their center-room fire. They turned quite wholeheartedly. They told me that they had long prayed to the spirits to give them a child, but without result, and asked if they might now pray to the true God for a son. I remembered the experiences of Sarah, Rebekah, Hannah and Elisabeth, and recommended them to go ahead. But they insisted that I must pray for them too. My prayers, they were sure, would be more effectual than their own!
Two other families in the village ‘turned’ at the same time. Altogether on my trip so far (not quite a fortnight) fifteen families have burned up all their idolatry and turned to God, from four different villages.... I never, now, try to persuade the Lisu to become Christians.... I find that they are quite unstable and unsatisfactory unless they ‘turn’ with all their heart. When they really do this, I go round to each home and gather the family for a good long talk, explaining the step they are taking. Then we all stand and I pray with them, after which they go around chopping and tearing down all sorts of things and piling them on the fire.... They seem glad to make a clean sweep while they are about it. The boys rather enjoy seeing things smashed up (boy nature, you know!) and help to ferret out suspicious objects. When they have swept the place clean―soot, cobwebs and all―they take me to the next house where people intend to ‘walk the way of God’, as they put it.
Early in November Turtle Village was reached, which was to become the center of Fraser’s Western District. Here twenty-four families were ready to declare themselves Christians. Thirteen of these destroyed their demonolatry in one day; and Fraser remained on for two weeks, teaching and encouraging the converts. By that time calls from a new district turned him southward, where, in the mountains above the Burma Road, an even more remarkable response was met with. When only Mottled Hill and adjacent villages had been visited, Fraser could write of ‘forty-nine families out of fifty-nine’ which had ‘broken down their demon altars and turned Christian.’
Faced with such a situation, the lonely missionary was in difficulty. The year was drawing to a close. He had been itinerating already for more than two months and was feeling the strain of constant teaching and preaching in crowded hovels, round smoky fires, on the poorest of food and with little sleep at night. He loved the work and the people, but badly needed a let up. And there was all the rest of his wide field to care for―right up to Tantsah, eight days’ journey away. Scores of new believers needed teaching; and the older centers could not be neglected, if Christian leaders were to be raised up. What could he do! How respond to this new opening? The joy of harvest is not without its cares, and Fraser could only look up for divine guidance.
‘Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear.’ The need called loudly. And what was the thankfulness with which Fraser found the promise then and there fulfilled, and in the very way he could most have desired! For in an out-of-the-way village, most unexpectedly, he ran up against no less a friend than Ba Thaw―Ba Thaw himself, in Lisu dress, up from Burma, visiting among his scattered flock. The joy and surprise of both may be imagined, and the thankfulness with which Ba Thaw listened to the story Fraser had to tell. Yes, he would come, if Mr. Geis approved, and stay among the converts Fraser was so loath to leave. He would do his best to shepherd them and spread the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.
It was a wonderful provision, for as it proved, Ba Thaw remained on for months in that southern district, following up and deepening the work. But first of all, he accompanied Fraser to Tengyueh for Christmas, joyfully carrying the tidings of this movement among the tribes for whom they had prayed and worked so long.
A hundred and twenty-nine families won to Christ―representing fully six hundred people―rich fruitage of the journey which might have ended so differently! And the letter Eraser had dreaded was never written.
‘Thou on the Lord rely,
So safe shalt thou go on;
Fix on His work thy steadfast eye,
So shall thy work be done.
Far, far above thy thought
His counsel shall appear,
When fully He the work hath wrought
That caused thy needless fear!’