IT was a very happy furlough that Mr. and Mrs. Fraser spent together in England and North America. Reaching London and Letchworth early in February (1934) the spring and summer lay before them, and after a period of rest in his mother’s home Fraser bought a car to take them from place to place for their many meetings. All too quickly the summer sped, bringing many helpful contacts with friends from Bristol to Aberdeen, as well as periods of rest and family reunion. One of these was to celebrate his mother’s seventy-ninth birthday―that dear mother whose prayer life meant so much to her son, and continues to this day.
Christmas was spent in North America, on the return journey. Well does the writer remember the arrival of the little family in Philadelphia―the strong, genial personality of the father, the sweet quiet dignity of the mother and charm of the children, aged ten months and three years old. Many were the hours of conversation on that visit that left the writer in possession not only of the main facts of the story told in these pages, but with so much of the strong, bright, prayerful spirit of the man himself that their going on across the Continent left a blank not easily filled.
It was March when they arrived in Shanghai, eager to return to their loved field before summer, but long delay awaited them. The situation in Shanghai was such that Fraser’s presence was more needed there than in Yunnan. One of Fraser’s sayings that remained with one, was that ‘there is, as it were, the flame of a burning bush in everything that is a work of God’. That flame was there, burning in his own life all through the months that followed, when―restricted largely to office work―his heart went out in prayer especially for the young workers of the mission, with whom he was corresponding all over the inland provinces.
There was one break in the absorbing claims of his position when, in July, he went up to the province of Shansi, to take part in the Yutaoho Convention. In that lovely valley, on the banks of the stream that turned the wheels of mill after mill, the summer community was gathered. They occupied the millhouses, let to them for the season, and met whenever possible in the open air. Mr. and Mrs. Houghton had come up from Szechwan to take part in the Conference, which he addressed in the morning, Fraser taking the evening meetings. The blessing given, in answer to prayer, on their united ministry was so great that the testimony meeting at the close was prolonged until well after midnight.
Mr. Gibb had just been appointed that summer to succeed Mr. Hoste as General Director of the Mission, and by the end of the year Fraser could again be spared from Shanghai. In his Journal for the last day before sailing for Hong Kong, he recorded the fact that made it significant: ‘November 21, 1935. Walked with Mr. Hoste in the morning to Kiaochow Road Park.’ It was Fraser’s last walk with the beloved leader to whom he owed so much.
Christmas in Kunming was the cheery season that marked the homecoming of the missionaries’ children from the far-away school of Chefoo. Once a year, as many of the parents as possible would come to the city to spend the too-brief holiday with their boys and girls—crowding the houses of the Mission to overflowing. Mr. and Mrs. Allyn Cooke were down this year from the Salween to receive their sons, and incidentally to welcome the Frasers. Before the parents scattered, they arranged for three days of devotional meetings, following the return of the children on their long journey to Chefoo. Fraser, with his own dearly loved little ones, could understand the hearts of his fellow workers at such a time, and entered into the meetings with special sympathy. Most of the speaking was left to him, and none who were present would ever forget the depth and tenderness of his messages. His subject was The Holy Spirit―Whose personality, presence and power came home to some of his fellow workers as never before.
‘He spoke about a life in the Holy Spirit,’ wrote Mrs. Cooke, ‘as a blessing we should claim. He showed how in life after life, in the Old Testament, an added blessing was given, lifting it to a higher plane. So there is ever new and deeper blessing for us, as we definitely receive the Holy Spirit. It has been so with me since then—daily victory that I never knew before.’
‘It was Fraser’s zenith,’ wrote another. ‘He was a Spirit-filled man.’
And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he set out from that conference with wife and children, to go back with the Cookes and Mrs. Fitzwilliam to their remote tribal districts in the southwest of the province. Mr. Fitzwilliam was there already, prospecting for a new center among the Kachin, who were much on Fraser’s heart. To open up work amongst them, he and Mrs. Fraser were keen to settle for a time right in a Kachin village as a center. Mrs. Fraser longed for the opportunity for definite work herself and, in addition to Chinese in which she was proficient, was ready to learn Kachin by living right amongst the people. The full story of this development we cannot enter upon now. Fraser himself summarized it in a letter to the writer when absent from his family on Superintendent’s work:
Mrs. Fraser and the children are with the Fitzwilliams. It would interest you very much to see them all living as they are in a bamboo house, single-storied, with a bamboo floor and thatched roof. They have a large garden in a most beautiful spot on the mountains, with Kachin villages all round (also Lisu, Palung and Chinese) and the plain of Chefang some six miles below. Longchiu in itself is an Atsi-Kachin village, about ten miles from the border of Burma.... The headman and all his family are Christians, also several other families... making about ten in all. It is a small beginning, a door ajar rather than wide open, yet sufficient to give us a good entrance.
I will not go into detail as to how the Lord seemed to make the way plain before us―how we found the framework of a house exactly the size we had wished, already waiting for us; how it was in the best yet unoccupied site in the village, belonging to the Christian headman, who at once granted us permission to use it and live there; how we prayed—in the thatch for the roofing (we were too late to get thatch in the ordinary way); how the Christian Lisu in the village of Palien, three miles away, came and roofed our house without the cost of a penny; how we got the carpenters and finished all the necessary work in an unusual spell of fine weather, just before the rain set in, etc. etc. All this is the romance of missionary life to those of us who are in it, small details though they may seem.
All through the summer, this little home was Fraser’s headquarters, he and his family occupying one of the side rooms and the Fitzwilliams the other, while the central space formed the living room for them all. Once he came back from a journey to find Mrs. Fraser and the children quite alone among the people. His fiftieth birthday was spent with them in these surroundings, where his knowledge of the Kachin language came in so usefully. When, after four months, the family were called to Paoshan, Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam remained to carry on the work.
And now a congenial task had to be taken up. Mr. and Mrs. Cooke, who had been gradually completing the translation of the whole New Testament into the Lisu language, had finished their long undertaking and were ready for a final revision. It was to help in this work that the Frasers had moved to Paoshan, and he was now ready to join them on the Upper Salween. Moses, their Lisu translator, was there. It would mean a long task and one for which quiet was needed.
Much had happened on the Salween since Fraser and his bride had been there, five years previously. Soon after that visit, the Cookes had been transferred from Fuhinshan to Pade (Oak-flat) to follow up the work of the Lisu evangelists who were reaping a harvest of precious souls. A year later they had to move still further up the great canyon, a week’s journey to the north, to the district of Luda, where the converts already numbered over a thousand. Mr. and Mrs. John Kuhn had come to Pade, so that the Cookes were free to devote themselves to the more remote field, where the Christians were suffering much persecution. Conditions had improved by the time of Fraser’s second visit and the Cookes were in the midst of a large and growing work. They had been joined by young Charles Peterson, who shared with Fraser his two-roomed shack near the simple mission house.
Here, then, in the winter of 1936, Fraser found himself engrossingly engaged with these beloved colleagues on the task of revision. Years of work had been put into the translation, by themselves and others, and unnumbered prayers were reaching their fulfilment. Meanwhile, the fellowship of that little group among themselves was most precious.
Fraser was at his best. ‘He was in splendid health,’ Peterson recalls, ‘able to do a long day’s work and enjoy it.’ Morning Prayers were very helpful times when he would bring thoughts from the Word, fresh and spiritual. He was always that way. Whenever he went to a station, he had messages from God for everyone who was prepared to receive them.
Our home life [said Mrs. Cooke] was greatly enriched through his coming. He had read widely, and his conversation was rich and varied. He would sit, between whiles, and play on our little organ― Chopin’s Polonaise and treasures from Beethoven―bringing such glorious music out of it! The Lisu would crowd in to listen.
And one thing that impressed me as the months went on―he had such wonderful control over every part of his life. He was completely master of himself. He not only wanted to live a self-denying life, enduring hardness for Christ’s sake, he could do so. To bring his life up to his highest thought seemed to be quite natural with him. And he was so practical about it.
His correspondence, for example, was very heavy. I have known him to sit up all night, answering letters. He would not let it interfere with regular hours of revision work during the day. When the mail came in, he would put the letters to be answered into envelopes addressed to the senders, and keep them on his table ready for attention.
He was very sociable [put in Mr. Cooke]. When he wanted to write letters or study, he would come down and do it with us, rather than stay up in his room alone.
No matter how busy he was [Mrs. Cooke went on], he never cut short the morning time of family worship. He would often continue with us in prayer and Bible study until nine or ten o’clock. Mr. Cooke and I were alone with him for a while, before Peterson and Carlson joined us, but Mr. Fraser was just as willing to impart his precious messages to us as to a large company. How we did enjoy them, for we had been long away from such ministry in our own tongue.
Hymn singing was always part of these times of worship, Mr. Fraser always chose the grand old-time hymns, and seemed so in his element―playing the little organ and leading us in song. His favorite hymn was: ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want,’ and he would announce it by saying, ‘Let us sing a hymn written three thousand years ago.’
But it was in work together on the New Testament that these friends chiefly enjoyed one another. Fraser was argumentative. He liked nothing better than a good tussle over some point under discussion, always in a perfectly friendly spirit. He said of Moses, their collaborator, that what he did not know of Lisu tones and grammatical phrases was not worth knowing; and his own knowledge of Greek was scholarly. In the open air, on the verandah of the mission bungalow, they would sit and work in the sunshine, moving indoors to the fireside when the altitude of six thousand feet brought a chill into the air.
Oh, what fascinating work it is (Fraser was writing one midnight, not to miss the regular mail to his mother). How I love Bible translation and Bible teaching―and how both seem to water my own soul!
From early in November until after Christmas, this was the order of the day, and then the exigencies of correspondence brought them down to Padé, a week’s journey nearer to their Post Office.
The Kuhns, left in charge at Padé, had had to take furlough by that time, so that the house was empty and able to accommodate Mrs. Fraser and the children as well, who planned to come up and join them for the last month or so. This was a great joy to Fraser who was devotedly attached to both wife and children. Before he knew that they were coming he had written to his mother:
I would love to see my babies again―if only for ten minutes! It is a real denial for me to be away from them, for they will never be the same age again. I do not want them to grow older! I want them always to put their little hands in mine when I walk with them and I want them always to prattle to me.
It seemed strange that just at that juncture an accident should have been allowed to happen that cut them off from their accustomed source of supplies. All their stores coming up from Burma were kept at the rail head, in the house of a trusted business friend, waiting the arrival of messengers sent to fetch them. What was the distress with which they learned, shortly before leaving Luda, that the house had caught fire and its contents been burned to ashes. All their supply of coal, oil, as well as groceries and other provisions, was cut off without warning, just as they were expecting a considerable addition to their numbers! But a moment’s reflection assured Mrs. Cooke that it must be among the ‘all things’ that work together for good to them that love God. Faith, at any rate, did not fail; and wonderful were the ways in which they were helped and carried through.
People began sending us things [Mrs. Cooke recalled]. Butter, tea and other stores seemed to hold out. We found that we could get some things locally. And Mrs. Fraser, when she came, brought supplies, knowing nothing of our special need.
It was touching to see the joy of that family reunion.
Fraser changed the subject at Prayers that morning, and took the beautiful story of Ruth, her love for Naomi and how they came into the line of David’s ancestry.
We took our chairs out of doors, into the sunshine at the back of the house. They sat together, those two lovers―I can see them yet.
Fraser had given much time to prayer during all those months on the Salween. Week by week he took one or more Services with the Lisu, who loved to hear him speak in their own language. And when Mrs. Fraser came, leaving the children in Mrs. Cooke’s care, she would go up with him to the chapel where they spent hours together, waiting upon God.
The completion of the Lisu New Testament was a crowning joy in Fraser’s life. All through the years of work upon it, he had been in close correspondence with the Gowmans, Cookes and others who had taken part. He had watched its progress with the keenest interest, doing all he could to forward it, and now rejoicing with the large company of Lisu Christians who were longing for its appearance.
It was a joy to him also to arrange for a series of conferences in the following year, when Miss Anna Christensen came again to Yunnan.
Miss Christensen came. in the spring of 1938 [Mr. Peterson wrote] with the hope that God would bring blessing to the Chinese Church. This was granted. Souls came into a new relationship with God; wrongs were righted; sin confessed and many received assurance of the new birth. Great blessing came also to the Lisu who heard her. Of the four hundred who attended the meetings in Paoshan, the number who understood Chinese was small―possibly only Job and the Shepherd and Titus. But Job’s heart was greatly stirred. He was certainly ‘born again’ before that time, but the truth had not gripped him. After that it was different. He returned to Fade, and during the April Bible-study week urged all the Teachers to make sure that they had the new birth. The blessing did not stop there but was carried into the Rainy Season Bible School. During that time the evening Services for an entire week were concentrated on that subject and each of our students was required to take it in the practice preaching class. Their hearts were full of it, and through them the blessed truth has been taught throughout all the Padé district.
Six days southward of Paoshan, blessing came to the Lisu at Menga (where Mr. and Mrs. Payne were stationed) through another of Miss Christensen’s missions. There were at least thirty Lisu there, and all of them received help. Teacher Luke’s experience is typical. After hearing a message on covered sin, he got a huge piece of paper and made a list of all the sins he had ever committed, as far as he could remember. Then he wrote at the bottom:
‘But I have confessed them all to Jesus. He has forgiven them and washed my heart. I know that I am born again.’
Through these meetings blessing was carried to most of our southern Lisu districts, and more than six months later our Lisu are still speaking of Miss Christensen and the blessing they received at the meetings she conducted.
By that time Fraser and his family were again settled at Paoshan. More and more his heart was drawn out in prayer. He had found and rented a room in a Mohammedan neighbor’s house where he could be alone for prayer―just a bare attic room, unfurnished, with no window, but with a few boards that could be lifted out to let in light and air. There were many coming and going in the mission house, and he would go over to his rented room before breakfast and sometimes remain there in prayer for hours. Mrs. Fraser wondered.
‘Is there any special burden on your heart that you could share with me?’ she inquired.
‘No,’ he answered tenderly, ‘just the many and great needs of the Mission; and I want to be wholly occupied with my Lord Jesus.’
After that, a few days only of most serious illness―and on September 25th, 1938, the call came: ‘Come up higher.’
‘That mortality might be swallowed up of life.’