‘JUST back from my Lisu trenches,’ wrote Fraser from Tengyueh that Christmas.
I have been trying the last few nights to make up arrears of sleep. While at Husa (Southern District) I think I did not get to bed before 2 a.m. for ten nights in succession.... We are now enjoying our usual winter weather―clear skies, dry roads and brown, withering grass everywhere. This is the time for itinerating, so I am due for the road again, after a needed rest behind the firing line. I must revisit all these new centers with as little delay as possible.
But a higher wisdom planned otherwise. A few weeks in his Northern District, when he went as far as Tantsah and had the joy of seeing definite turning to the Lord, both here and at Cold Horse, and Fraser was laid low with appendicitis. Happily he was back in Tengyueh when the attack came on. The Indian doctor at the Consulate pressed the need for an operation, and this, together with letters from Mr. Hoste urging a visit to the coast, decided Fraser to undertake the journey. It would mean a long absence, just when it seemed that he could least be spared. But a second attack after he set out, and a night of agony alone in a Chinese inn, made it sufficiently plain that the operation was necessary. This was successfully performed at the Shanghai headquarters of the Mission, and the quiet days that followed brought welcome opportunity for rest and prayer.
If I were to think after the manner of men [he wrote to his Prayer Circle] I should be anxious about my Lisu converts―afraid of their falling back into demon worship. But God is enabling me to cast all my care upon Him. I am not anxious, not nervous. If I hugged my care to myself instead of casting it upon Him, I should never have persevered with the work so long—perhaps never even have started it. But if it has been begun in Him, it must be continued in Him. Let us all who have these Tengyueh Lisu on our hearts commit them quietly into His hands by faith. ‘He will perfect that which concerneth’ us—and these Lisu converts too. And then let us give thanks for His grace to us and to them.
When God sends His servants to reap, such a time of special waiting upon Him is all to the good, even if it seems to intrude upon the urgency of the task.
Those were revealing days that followed, not to the convalescent only, as he came into touch with the staff at Headquarters and with fellow workers from many parts of the field. The Mission at that time numbered about a thousand members, stationed in fifteen provinces, and there was much coming and going in the Home on Woo-sung Road—place of arrival for new parties and base of supply for the interior. Here Fraser met with many known only by name before, and became himself a personality of no little interest. When he could be persuaded to talk about his experiences, or pour out his rich stores of music in informal social hours, impressions were made that resulted in helpful friendships through after-years. Especially was this the case in personal touch with Mr. Hoste, who had succeeded Mr. Hudson Taylor as leader of the Mission, and whose practice of giving hours, daily, to prayer for all aspects of the work greatly appealed to Fraser. Both then and afterwards, it was among the most cherished privileges of his life to join in those intercessions, and to learn through hours at a time spent on their knees what actual praying may mean in the life of one bearing great responsibilities. Mr. Hoste’s impressions of the young pioneer were also revealing, and had much to do with the unexpected developments of his later service in the Mission. Of all this, however, Fraser was unconscious. He only rejoiced in renewed vigor, a strengthened prayer-backing and the companionship of a prospective fellow worker as he returned to Yunnan. To his Prayer Circle he wrote from Shanghai commending this young American to their interest.
I have just met Mr. Flagg who is to be my colleague at Tengyueh, temporarily and perhaps permanently. His home is in Boston, U.S.A. He is a graduate of Harvard University, and has taken the course of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. He is twenty-seven years of age, physically strong, and keen to get to work. He has been engaged in city missions and street preaching in New York, Boston and other places, and is wholeheartedly for evangelistic work.... I expect to see him develop into a fine worker, and am sure we shall pull well together.
The long journey to West China, by sea and overland, provided Flagg with varied opportunities of coming to know his senior missionary. He found Fraser to be as human, natural and resourceful as he was spiritual—essentially a man among men. Crossing the uplands of Yunnan they visited the tribal districts, north of the capital, to which Fraser had first of all been designated. Hundreds of Miao and Lisu Christians welcomed them, and after inspiring days with the Gowmans and Mr. Porteous, then in charge of the work, they struck out across country for the west of the province. Unaccustomed to horseback riding for days and weeks together, Flagg could only wonder at Fraser’s easy handling of the situation, including rough mountain ponies and dangerous tracks.
Up hill and down dale [wrote Fraser to his home folk], you never tire of it in beautiful Yunnan.... I do all my travelling now on horseback... and have become so used to it that I do not care where I ride, so long as the horse will take it. In many places the road is literally as steep as your staircase and very broken too. Flagg declares that I would ride down the steps of the Washington Monument in Boston! Only today, my pony actually turned a somersault. It was in a place where the ‘road’ runs between banks only a foot or so apart, and he had hardly room to walk. With unusual thoughtfulness he gave me notice by falling right forward with his head on the ground. I got off over his head, and he plunged and kicked around until, somehow, he was lying on his back with his head where his tail had been! His neck was twisted in such a strange way that I wondered whether he was going to get up again at all. But he did, after more kicking and struggling, and began to eat grass as if nothing had happened. Have you noticed how nonchalant horses can be?) Neither he, nor I, nor the Chinese saddle were any the worse; so I put on my right sandal which had dropped off, got on the animal and went on reading my Chinese newspaper as before.
All along the way, Fraser was at his one absorbing employ. Whether in Chinese inns at night, on city streets or with fellow travelers by day, he lost no opportunity of making known the Glad Tidings. He enjoyed preaching in Chinese, especially to the Christians where any were to be found, and was conscious of added power in his testimony. Of this he wrote to his Prayer Circle upon reaching Tengyueh
If I am sure of anything, it is that your prayers have made a very real difference to my life and service. In preaching in the various centers visited, I have experienced power and blessing not known in former years. My chief request is always for prayer for the Lisu, but much blessing and help have come to my own life as well.
Growing with his work was indeed the story of the next few years. Outwardly it was a time of much pressure―travelling almost incessantly, caring for hundreds of new believers. Inwardly there had to be a constant regirding with ‘the whole armor of God’, to stand against the wiles of the devil and be ready always for advance as the Lord might lead.
So far as I know [Fraser continued in the same letter] my Lisu work was undertaken at His bidding, which gives me confidence in asking your continued prayers. All our work needs to be, (1) In accordance with Scriptural principles: (2) In agreement with the inward witness of the Spirit: (3) In harmony with the providential working of God in our circumstances. Thus we shall have assurance within ourselves of His guidance, and shall find doors opening before us without our having to force them. Inward and outward guidance will correspond as lock and key, and we shall be saved from rendering service which, to Him as for us, is second best.
And so the young pioneer came again to all the joys and conflicts of the work he loved. Winter was drawing in, and after more than seven months’ absence he was eager to see for himself how prayer had been answered, especially for the converts it had been hard to leave in his Southern District. Down the familiar Burma Road he travelled, following the river from Tengyueh to Bhamo, until the plain was reached where the mountains stand back to the east, full of Kachin as well as Lisu villages. There he had left Ba Thaw, the friend so providentially met almost a year previously, and from whom he had not heard in the interval. Ba Thaw had already returned to his post in Burma, but as Fraser climbed to Mottled Hill and revisited place after place so much upon his heart, he found the young Karen pastor warmly remembered and his work in evidence.
The people here [he wrote] so took to him and he to them that he remained more than four months among them.... The result is that not only have the converts been greatly helped and strengthened but others have been won. So I have come back to find fifty-one families in this district, instead of forty-nine, all standing firm as far as demon worship is concerned, and thirty-six additional families of Lisu converts in places I have not previously visited.
This young Karen is quite an exceptional man. He dresses like the Lisu, lives among them as one of themselves, and wherever he goes is greatly loved. He is a better speaker of Lisu than I am, and is more capable in the shepherding of young converts. He is thoroughly spiritual, and I have no better friend among the Christians, tribal or Chinese, than he.
Following up Ba Thaw’s work, Fraser now gave himself to getting into touch with the Christians throughout that part of his field. And most interesting work it was, though attended by hardships which even he found to be severe Living in the mountain shanties that had entertained Ba Thaw, he, too, wore Lisu dress and made himself one with his hosts. From Mottled Hill, high on the ranges, he went round to all the neighboring hamlets, and down lo larger villages and markets in the plains, led on southward, ever southward, to the Burma border and beyond. Two months and more found him alone on this journey, but first of all he made a considerable stay at Mottled Hill, where a new undertaking was in progress.
For up there, high above the Burma Road, the first place of worship was being built to the true and living God―first to be put up by the Christians themselves at their own charges, in the whole of western Yunnan. It may have been Ba Thaw’s influence that encouraged them to this step, so soon after discarding their demon worship; at any rate, they were freely giving land, labor and materials to make a chapel larger and better than any of their own dwellings. The roof, of course, was of thatch, the walls of bamboo matting, and the floor of earth trodden hard, to be covered with rushes to seat the congregation. For light, as winter was drawing in, resinous pine chips were provided, and a big flat stone on the platform on which to burn them. It was all beautiful and seemly from their point of view, and the opening ceremony, as Fraser described it, was ‘a full-dress occasion’. From hamlets far and near the Christians came―over a hundred crowding into the clean, newly finished chapel, while interested onlookers stood outside.
It was not easy to get these new converts to understand regular and reverent worship. In fact, as Fraser wrote to his Prayer Circle, their apprehension of Christian truth was of the most elementary kind. They just knew that they had turned to God from demon worship, and that JESUS was the Saviour they now trusted. The prayer most often used by beginners at this time was:
‘God, our Father,
Creator of heaven and earth,
Creator of mankind,
We are Your children
We are followers of Jesus.
Watch over us this day;
Don’t let the evil spirits see us ―
Trusting in Jesus,
Amen.’
Singing was from the first a great attraction, though, as Fraser wrote to his mother, If you were listening outside, you might think some kind of comic drama was going on! It does not take much to amuse the Lisu―such merry, jolly kind of folk.
Singing lessons were always looked forward to, and Fraser took no end of pains to train the younger people especially. He tells of one occasion when in a room full of people he was going over a new hymn with some young men and boys with musical voices. Girls, gay in feminine attire, were grouped behind him, to some of whom he turned, inviting them also to learn the tune he was teaching. This led to a bashful withdrawal, so precipitate that one of those addressed tripped over a doorsill and fell backward into an inner room―tinkling chains, ornaments, bangles and all―nothing left to be seen of her but two bare feet over the wooden sill. This, of course, increased the giggling and general merriment. ‘Such is singing instruction,’ he concluded, ‘among the Lisu!’
But the hymns impressed their spiritual lessons. ‘Jesus loves me, this I know’, was usually the first favorite, followed by one of Ba Thaw’s own translation, ‘I’ve wandered far away from God’, with its frequent refrain― ‘Now I’m coming home’. Already two Christian lyrics of many stanzas were taking shape―one outlining Old Testament and the other New Testament history. These conveyed Scriptural truth in simple rhyme, easy to learn and to remember.
Sometimes Fraser was startled to find how un-awakened was the consciousness of right and wrong among these new believers. The Government had set out on a nationwide believer campaign against the growth and use of opium―very general in tribal districts. Quite openly, the Christians of Mottled Hill told of the way they had resisted this interference with their liberty. Troops were coming into the mountains to pull up and destroy the ripening corn, but the Kachin, especially, took up arms to fight them. After preparing their knives and poisoned arrows, they held a prayer meeting to ask the help of God. And prayed had been wonderfully answered, they naïvely assured their missionary, because the soldiers never came, and they had been able to make more money than usual out of their opium crops!
Happily Fraser understood his mountain children, and had behind him not a few praying friends to share the long patience and soul exercise that spiritual parentage involves.
They know my position [be wrote to his Prayer Circle], and I am telling them plainly that I cannot baptize anyone directly connected with the growth, use or sale of opium. Still, we must, I think, have broad enough sympathies to recognize genuine faith, even when it is accompanied by an almost untutored conscience. We must remember how, among ourselves, John Newton never had a conscience against the slave traffic but ‘enjoyed sweet communion with God’, as he tells us, even when on his slave-raiding editions.
There is such a thing as exercising faith for others [he had written from Shanghai a few months previously]. When others are weak and we cannot be with them in person, God may be calling us to stand with and for them in spirit. He is able to quicken into life the very feeblest spark of desire for Him, or to use for their blessing the smallest amount of truth they may have apprehended. Indeed I have seen this before now, among the Lisu. They may know, often, what we call next to nothing; yet, if in any measure the grace of God is in them, they remember the little they do know, and it seems to sustain them.... Let us all be imbued with the spirit of the Apostle who, though he had never seen the Roman converts, truly longed after them, that he might ‘impart unto them some spiritual gift’, and so far from absolving himself from responsibility, felt himself to be a debtor, ‘both to Greeks and barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish’.
Outwardly Fraser’s work at this time was making progress; the cost, however, went far deeper than daily hardship and every kind of discomfort. Almost desperate at times from lack of privacy in crowded hovels, he would go out on the mountainside alone to fight the inward battles with the powers of darkness without which no captives of sin can be delivered. The opening of that first chapel was a time of great rejoicing, quickly followed by one of these times of testing. For Christmas Day was spent at a village near the Burma border, where the heads of thirteen families met to discuss whether or not they should turn Christian. To Fraser’s great disappointment, the decision was against it, influenced chiefly by two old men of whom he had hoped better things. How he had prayed for them and now his discouragement was correspondingly deep! He simply had to be alone for waiting upon God and that afternoon went over to K’ama, a neighboring hamlet, where he found a little empty room that he was able to secure for the time being. And there the Lord met him. It was through the record of Jehoshaphat’s experience with the Moabites that renewal of faith came to him.
‘The battle is not yours, but God’s.... Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you.... Fear not, nor be discouraged: to-morrow go out against them; for the Lord is with you.’
Challenged in this way, he gave himself to prayer, alone in that little empty room. His Journal records that, about midnight, he was enabled to commit the whole situation to God, as it affected not one but several neighboring places.
Seem distinctly led [he wrote] to fight against ‘principalities and powers’ for Middle Village. Have faith for the conversion of that place, and pray as a kind of bugle call for the hosts of heaven to come down and fight for me against powers of darkness holding these two old men [names given] who are hindering their villages and perhaps three others [names given] from turning to Christ. Have a good time of fighting prayer, then sleep in much peace of mind.
Next morning, early, Fraser was in the home of old La-ma-po, who lived at Kama, and in a long friendly talk persuaded him to a better mind. Together they went over to Middle Village, where the leaders were much more responsive. A wonderful day followed, for eleven out of the thirteen previously undecided families turned to the Lord. ‘Victory, just as expected—hardly striking a blow!’ Fraser noted with thankfulness.
Next day was even more encouraging, for at Kama and in another village twelve more families were brought in. But deeper lessons had to be learned. Not so easily is the great enemy displaced. His counterattack was swiftly made, for at a place called Haitao the day ended in defeat. Late that night Fraser went to his knees again, alone on the mountainside, near Kama. There he prayed as before, even claiming Haitao for Christ as he had Middle Village. But the result was painfully different.
Going over early to Haitao the next day, he took old La-ma-po with him. Perhaps that was the mistake, or it maybe he was too confident, as he came to feel later. For bitter disappointment awaited him. Not only was the attitude of the village coldly antagonistic; old La-ma-po showed his true colors by turning utterly against both the missionary and his message. The defeat was complete, and at first Fraser could not understand it. Deeply distressed in spirit, he went back to the little room at Kama, and there again the Lord met him.
Find considerable peace [he wrote] in just leaving the whole matter of these villages in God’s hands. But the rebuff of spirit has been very severe, and I shall walk more humbly before the Lord―yes, and before Satan too, after this.
But the end was not yet. ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’ Meeting some bright, steadfast Christians from his Mottled Hill district a day or two later, Fraser thanked God and took courage, And within the following week, twenty new families turned to the Lord, and he was more than busy teaching the rejoicing converts. In all, during that Christmas and New Year season (December 1 to January 10) no fewer than fifty-six families made open confession of Christ, south of Mottled Hill where that first little chapel had been opened.