AFTER a furlough of almost two years, Fraser returned to China via North America. His chief concern at home had been to call forth prayer for the neglected tribes of southwest China. In meetings throughout Britain and across the States and Canada he was much used of God. One abiding result was the formation by General Mackenzie of the Prayer Companionship of the Mission, which now numbers over three thousand members. Fraser’s appeal for definite, intelligent prayer―real partnership in the work―led to the grouping of those members in circles of ten, each group to surround one individual missionary and his work with prayer support and detailed interest.
Returning to Shanghai in September, 1924, Fraser was faced with one of the greatest and most unexpected trials of his life. Eager to be back among his beloved Lisu, he was quite unconscious that the leaders of the Mission had other thoughts for his future. A serious situation in the province of Kansu, northwest China, called for firm and judicious handling. Fraser’s personality and experience fitted him to deal with it, and no one else was at the time available. The Lisu work was comparatively well cared for―though the Flagg’s were at home on furlough―Mr. and Mrs. Carl Gowman with the Allyn Cookes being in charge at Muchengpo. Blessing was still spreading from that center, where more than a thousand Christians were longing for Fraser’s return. What it cost him to leave them and turn away to other service, words could never tell. ‘Yunnan was my first love, my Rachel,’ he said long after; ‘but Kansu became my Leah.’ For the wider fruitfulness of his life grew out of that painful experience.
So, for the next three years the Northwest claimed him instead of the Burma border―and more contrasted spheres could hardly be. But Fraser came to love the great wide spaces, the bracing desert air and mountain ranges, the nomad peoples of the Gobi and Tibet. He responded to the strong, northern character of the Chinese and Moslems of the cities, and the opportunities that came to him through educational and Bible-teaching work.
Visiting all the stations of the Mission in Kansu and many in Shensi, he came to know their problems at first hand. It was a time of great and increasing difficulty. A threatening wave of anti-foreign feeling was sweeping over China which led to the general evacuation of Europeans and Americans from all but the treaty ports. Missionaries had to come down to the coast by Consular orders, and their lives as well as those of other foreigners were in imminent danger. Fraser and his fellow workers in Kansu were shut up to a perilous journey by raft down the Yellow River, and it was largely due to his leadership that they were brought safely through the attacks of bandits and danger of sandbanks and whirlpools by the way―especially after the tragic drowning of the most experienced member of the party, his beloved friend and fellow worker, Dr. George King of the Borden Memorial Hospital at Lanchow.
From that time on, Fraser was more and more drawn into the central executive of the Mission. This meant being a good deal detained in Shanghai where office routine and correspondence could not but be a sore trial to his spirit. But there was also the urgent call for faith, prayer and endurance at the very heart of the Mission.
When at last Fraser was set free to return to Yunnan it was as Superintendent of all the C.I.M. work in that province. That journey back to the west was a pilgrimage indeed―a coming home after five years of heart hunger. And little as he expected it, it was a homecoming in another sense, as he was to prove. For only a few days before his arrival in Kunming (the capital of Yunnan) another traveler had reached that city at the close of a longer journey. Knowing nothing of Fraser, she had come out from England as a missionary to join her parents at Kunming, the Rev. and Mrs. Frank Dymond of the United Methodist Mission. Talking with a fellow worker soon after his own arrival, Fraser heard of these happenings, and the name of the young lady impressed him—Roxie Maud Dymond. Immediately a quiet voice said in his heart:
‘That is your wife―the one I have prepared for you.’
For to one who had never sought his own had indeed come God’s best earthly gift. He was no longer to be what he had once called himself, ‘the loneliest man in China’. Disparity in years―for she was a young student fresh from college―was lost sight of in a union of heart so deep that it made them one in all their outlook.
But before this friendship could ripen, Fraser spent a year in visiting all the stations of the Mission in both eastern and western Yunnan. This took him back to his own loved Lisuland, on the Burma border. And he did not go alone. Younger workers were coming to the province. He had brought the Harrisons and John Kuhn with him in January, 1928, and now in March returned to Haiphong to meet the Fitzwilliams and Castos and bring them round by sea to Rangoon, and via Bhamo to Tengyueh. Having settled in the young couples to study the language, he set out with the Lisu escort that had come down from Muchengpo to fetch him. Back over the familiar road they travelled to Moh at Hsiangta, and finally to the big welcome at Muchengpo.
Many were the changes during his five years’ absence. First the Allyn Cookes had come, when the Flagg’s went on furlough, and with their loving hearts had nurtured the growing Lisu Church. Then the Gowmans themselves had returned to the Tengyueh district, bringing all the experience they had gained in tribal work elsewhere during the interval. Gowman had great energy and a wide outlook. He found the Lisu converts just ready for missionary developments. He encouraged them to reach out to the regions beyond, organizing bands of volunteer preachers to go in all directions, exploring possible openings for making known the Glad Tidings. In this way the Gospel had spread, eastward and northward to new fields, reaching even to the valley of the Upper Salween, which Fraser had visited with Mr. Geis and Ba Thaw long years before.
To hear of these developments now was wonderful, and to be in the missionary gatherings at Muchengpo, when the Christians came together to read letters from and to pray for their absent volunteers. Fraser stayed three full weeks among them, before going on to Paoshan to join the Paynes and celebrate the inauguration of the Paoshan Church.
Reaching Kunming again in the spring, his duties as Superintendent took him down to Shanghai to attend the Quarterly Meetings of the central Council of the Mission. He was there for Easter, with its many opportunities of fellowship with others in special meetings, as well as personal interviews with leaders of the Mission and hours of prayer and conference with Mr. Hoste.
The result was that when in April he set out to return to Yunnan, it was with a large party of new workers for that province, including four Sisters of the Vandsburger Mission going to join the pioneers of that Society to whom the C.I.M. was ceding a portion of their Yunnan field.
Marriage when it came that autumn (October 24, 1929) brought only a crowning blessing to the life so fully outpoured for others. There was no provision for home or outward comfort, the bride being more than willing to join her husband in his journeyings throughout the province. He was due to visit the western stations, so they set off after a few days on the strenuous two weeks’ journey to Tali. By this time there were new developments on the Burma border that took them south to the tribal region and introduced Mrs. Fraser to her husband’s former field. Christmas at Muchengpo was a great experience, for in addition to meeting all the hundreds of Lisu Christians who gathered for the Services, there was the largest group of foreigners which had as yet assembled in the mountains. The bride had to make the acquaintance not only of Mr. and Mrs. Gowman and their children, but of the two young couples from Tengyueh, the Castos and Fitzwilliams who had joined them.
The Cookes had by this time returned from furlough, but they were six days further on, over the mountains, at the newly opened station of Fuhinshan, to which the Frasers continued their journey. A Bible School was in progress when they arrived, so that at once they were introduced into stirring scenes. A thousand Christians formed the family Mr. and Mrs. Cooke had taken over with the new center, and the house perched high on the ridge overlooking great distances, was the center of much activity. Fraser at once threw himself into all that was going on, reminding Allyn Cooke of the old days at Turtle Village, except that now he was ‘a very happy bridegroom’.
Too soon a fortnight fled away and the journey had to be resumed, but it was now a more serious matter. For the Frasers were still eastward bound, and beyond Fuhinshan there stretched a wide expanse of territory without any mission station. To face it alone would have been to Fraser an everyday experience, but to take his young wife with him thirty-five days’ journey across to the Red River was quite another matter. It was an exploratory journey that had to be taken, however, in the interests of the work, and there was no hesitation.
Out in that wide territory so devoid of Christian witness there were many cities of importance, besides countless towns and villages passed as day succeeded day. ‘In one place,’ wrote the bride, ‘the people brought out an old stool on the hillside for me to sit on, while they crowded and crowded round the first white woman they had ever seen.’ It was a foretaste of what lay before her with her husband through the years.
In East and West [she wrote, looking back upon many journeys] we travelled among Lisu, Lahu, Liti, Miao, Nosu, Kopu, Laka, Palaung, Woni, Kachin, Wa, Lolo and Shan, apart from Chinese.
Back in Kunming, after coming up from the Red River through the field of their colleague, Mr. Allen, they had a couple of months to give to correspondence and other duties before setting out for Shanghai to attend the June Council Meetings (1930). Then followed a whole year during which Fraser’s duties detained them at the coast in executive work. The birth of their first child took place in March, 1931, so that she was more than three months old when they returned to Yunnan for their next period of service.
This included a visit to the Upper Salween, where important developments were taking place. Carl Gowman was gone from Muchengpo, his lamented death having deprived the work of a great leader; but others were being raised up to strengthen the Lisu evangelists who were penetrating further and further up the gorge of the Salween. From the city of Paoshan, on the east, Mr. and Mrs. Payne had come to their help, living with them for months at a time in nothing but a small tent at Pine Mountain, their first settlement. There a number of Christians had gathered, and the evangelists had gone further afield with the Glad Tidings. The Paynes, broken down through the severity of these pioneering experiences, had been obliged to go home on furlough when Mr. and Mrs. Fraser came west again, desiring to see for themselves something of this new field. The journey out to the Salween was incredibly hard, but leaving little Catherine with Mr. and Mrs. Booth who had succeeded the Paynes, they set out. With some of the Lisu pioneers they traversed the mountain passes and dropped down into the mighty canyon of the river, making their way painfully northward to Deer Pool. Here a Sunday was spent with the first group of Christians gathered out on the Salween, Fraser speaking to them in their Lisu language. The next Sunday found them at Pine Mountain, staying in one of the homes, or hovels, of the village clinging to the mountain side. But there were Christians to rejoice their hearts with promise of a coming harvest. Over three hundred gathered at the midday Service and could scarce disperse at night for the joy of having the Teacher come to them who could speak in their own tongue.
Three months later, after the birth of their second child down in Burma, Fraser settled his family in at Muchengpo while he himself went northward on needed visits. In an ordinary Chinese inn, at the town of Chenanso, he was taken ill and could go no further. Happily there was a lady missionary there with some knowledge of nursing, who when she saw that the illness was serious, sent for young Mr. Charles Peterson from the nearest C.I.M. station. Week succeeded week, and still the traveler did not return to Muchengpo. They heard at last that he was down with typhoid fever. Then, taking the baby with her, Mrs. Fraser went up to find him―the five days’ cross-country journey giving time to prove the wonderful keeping power of the peace of God.
Two weeks later, this illness, which had lasted two months, was brought to an end by the coming of trusty friends from Muchengpo to carry the patient back over the mountains. It soon became evident that furlough was needed, after Fraser’s second long period of service―nine years on the field—and letters from the General Director in Shanghai urging this point of view decided them to go home without delay, via Rangoon. Before doing so, he wrote the following letter to the author of these pages who, with her husband, was in Kunming at the time.
Mr. Cooke, now on the Upper Salween, has just sent an S.O.S. for more volunteer evangelists from this district―fourteen days’ journey away―as they have more and more families turning from demon worship all the time. You will be interested to know that for the very first time in the history of this work we are about to send out three young women to teach in the villages near here. They are aged 16, 20 and 21. They have volunteered together, and seem to be so thoroughly in earnest that Fitzwilliam and I and the local deacons have decided to give them a trial.... We are placing them under the direction of one of the regular Lisu evangelists and his wife....
I would like you to have seen them come into my study so bashfully and girlishly—two of them only on the excitedly whispered persuasions of the boldest of the three. And they all sat there for some time, mildly squirming before saying what they had come about. But they were so evidently in earnest. Perhaps you will pray for them sometimes. Their names are Tabitha, Sarah and Ruth....
You will know, doubtless, that Lisu work is entirely self-supporting. All the money for our regular evangelists, with their food and the food for their families, is provided by the Lisu themselves, from their harvest festival offerings.
The volunteer evangelists are not paid at all, nor their families; but they are fed by the people in the villages they stay at. The work is largely self-governing also. All important matters are settled by the deacons of the whole district, at their annual meeting each December. There is also an Annual Meeting of the deacons of this district... usually presided over by our ordained Pastor Paul. This often partakes of the nature of a legislative assembly! They make rules, take minutes of the meetings, etc., whether the missionary is there or not.
I would love you to hear our Lisu singing. Mr. and Mrs. Cooke, our missionary musicians, have always taught them to sing in parts―and they do, with no organ either. It is really inspiring, and has often brought tears to my eyes.... I have heard very few congregations at home, either in England or America, whose singing is so inspiring. They themselves love it. How you would like to go to bed on Sunday night to the strains of some sweet hymn tune which they are still singing, and in parts, in one of their homes in the village nearby? Oh, how I love to hear them sing, ‘When my life-work is ended, and I cross the swelling tide!’ I must not seem to boast―but I know one poor missionary heart that has swelled with emotion and praise, listening to the hearty and tuneful singing of these aborigines of the Burma-China border.