GOD had taken the leader and apostle of the Lisu J. O. Fraser. But in John Kuhn was a prepared successor ―one who had drunk deeply of Fraser’s spirit and shared his vision of a growing Lisu Church. So there was no hiatus, no pause in the work, no questioning of God’s wisdom, no loss of purpose.
John Kuhn, as leader of the tribal work in Yunnan, travelled continually and extensively ministering to missionaries and Christians alike. Isobel, his wife, occasionally accompanied him on his long, rugged journeys, though a growing family more often kept her at home at Oak Flat. It was there that she became the vivid storyteller of the Lisu work. It is impossible to measure the worldwide influence of her many books, beginning with Precious Things of the Lasting Hills in which she described the thrilling story of the Spirit’s work in the Salween valley.
The missionary team saw its task as the building up of the Lisu Church on a firm foundation. This demanded the constant labors of a succession of faithful translators, who aimed at adding the Old Testament to the already completed New Testament, using the Fraser Script.
The pattern of church growth was one of taking root downward and bearing fruit upward. Local courses of Bible study for all Christians held in the slack season, with more advanced courses at the annual Rainy Season Bible Schools, were firmly established events in the Lisu Church calendar. In this work the contribution of Carl Gowman was outstanding, while Leila Cooke was the musician and historian, greatly loved by all. Revival blessing often attended these schools and the year 1940 was notable for its changed lives, abounding joy and evangelistic zeal. From these schools have come the splendid leaders who were to continue to serve the Church after she had been deprived of her missionaries.
Fired with new love for Christ, the Bible School students invariably reached out to the lost of their own and other tribes. Converts were won and baptized by the score or even by the hundred. So the Church grew both in numerical strength and in depth of spiritual experience.
The Sino-Japanese war, which broke out in 1937, did not at first affect the work in the remote mountains of southwest China. But after Pearl Harbour and the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore, the threat grew. With the invasion of Burma, war suddenly came to Lisuland.
‘I write this sitting on China’s back fence―the mountain-walled bank of the Salween River,’ wrote Isobel Kuhn. ‘Those snow peaks piercing the lovely blue sky opposite are “Burma” on their other side and, six days’ journey down this tortuous canyon cleft, Japan is trying her best to hold her ill-gotten gains. Lisu cover these hills interruptedly for a month or more’s travel both north and south of us. Way down there behind the Japanese lines are our Stockade Hill and Gospel Mountain churches. After Japan swept in and seized the end of the Burma Road in May, 1942, the Gospel Mountain missionaries were cut off from us, as far as earthly communications were concerned, but the heavenly roads were full of prayer messengers and God turned the contest to His glory.... North of them but south of us is the scattered feeble little Hollow Tree Lisu Church. It was their territory that was directly invaded and how anxious our hearts were for them! No contact could be made with them. But at Christmastime two of their evangelists and the church treasurer slipped over high and little-used trails and reached us, not weeping but beaming.... Many of the Christians lived so high up near the peaks that the Japanese did not reach them.... In our own district of Oak Flat the work has gone on unhindered, with even some progress. Classes in the villages and the Rainy Season Bible School were held as usual.... A new advance in 1942 was the introduction of a month’s Bible School for girls only.... The work in the northern Lisu field has also gone on much as usual, though shaken for a while by the unexpected appearance of many soldiers as the Chinese army made its brave and difficult retreat from Burma.... Pestilence, which stalked grimly through the whole province after the bombing massacre at Paoshan, somehow missed the Salween Canyon, although Paoshan is a near neighbor.’
At the 1941 Rainy Season Bible School, ten tribes or sections of a tribe had been represented among the fifty students. Growth and fruit were increasingly evident. Some of this was the fruit of seed which had fallen into the ground to die, for Earl Carlson, Leila Cooke, Carl Gowman, James Fraser, ‘Fitz’ Fitzwilliam, Jack Kirkman and Sylvia Ward all lie buried on the slopes of Lisuland among the Lisu to whom they had devoted all their love and all their strength.
As the war came to an end in 1945, great and new advances took place. A printing press for the tribes arrived in Kunming. The North Yunnan United Tribes Conference held its tenth annual meeting, and an endeavor was made to bring the widely scattered churches closer together organizationally. Hope was high. But all too soon Communist armies were on the march, and by October, 1949, the People’s Republic of China was an established fact. In the spring of 1951, the last missionaries, ordered to withdraw by headquarters, said goodbye to their Lisu brethren in China and commended them to the mercies of God. Severe trials lay ahead for the Lisu Church.
Beyond China’s ‘back fence’ lay Burma. Many days north of Myitkyina there is a Lisu village called Kumu, which had once sent envoys to the Salween valley to enquire of the Truth. Now there was a Christian church there, too. In 1949, Orville Carlson and his wife paid this little community a visit before going to the hills of North Thailand in search of the Lisu known to live there. They were soon joined by two recruits―Otto Scheuzger and Don Rulison―then by the Cranes, the Cookes and finally by the Kuhns. The Cookes and the Cranes continued the task of Old Testament translation, ably assisted by Lisu informants, including Lucius Chu and Job Fish from Burma. Illness necessitated Isobel Kuhn returning home to the States, where her last years were spent in a prolific output of books. The news of her death in 1957 after a long illness brought sadness to many Lisu hearts in Burma and China as well as to her missionary colleagues.
In 1958 and 1959 John and Eileen Kuhn, Allan and Evelyn Crane visited Burma and were amazed to find how many Lisu had succeeded in escaping from China over the high mountain ranges to begin life anew in that country―in all about 10,000, so adding to the 50,000-60,000 Lisu Christians already in Burma. The Cranes actually resided in Burma from 1961 to 1963, working with the Lisu Translation Committee and finally completed the long and arduous task of actual translation before Burma became closed to foreign missionaries. They then withdrew to Hong Kong to check the entire text of the Old Testament. John Kuhn assisted with the revised New Testament before going on the furlough which was to mark the end of his fruitful life of service in 1966.
In Burma, excitement grew among the Lisu churches at the prospect of having the complete Bible in their hands soon. In anticipation of this event, building operations on new Bible Schools were started in several areas. However, without an import permit from the Burma Government, the Bible Society was reluctant to authorize the actual printing of the Bible. In June, 1967, Allan Crane made a twenty-four hour stopover visit in Rangoon on a flight to Calcutta, which was the only possible way to meet and consult with Lisu Christian leaders. They requested 40,000 copies of the Bible and were dismayed at the unexpected last-minute obstacles in the way of the project. Prayer was their immediate response. They decided to devote the first Sunday of the month to prayer for their Bible, beginning with July 1st. A few days after their first day of prayer, the Bible Society changed its mind and authorized the printing in Hong Kong of 10,000 copies―a signal answer to believing prayer.
The difficult task of making and setting the type had already been entrusted to a reputable Hong Kong printer. But before he could complete the work, he came under pressure from Communists on the mainland to print Chairman Mao’s Little Red Books. Nevertheless, surrounded by busts and pictures of Mao, the typesetters faithfully completed their work late in 1967, just as the special paper ordered from Australia arrived. Another printer undertook the actual printing and binding, and the first volumes of the Bible were delivered in August, 1968.
The Lisu Church had waited a long time for this day. J. O. Fraser had begun to translate the first Gospel in 1917-18. So forty years had elapsed before the whole Bible was available in the Lisu language. This was the fruit of the labors of both missionaries and Lisu Christians.
In Hong Kong―at last a stock of complete Lisu Bibles in the Bible House! But in Rangoon―still no import permit! So Allan Crane posted a few copies to key Christians in Burma in early October. They reached Kumu quickly and safely on October 6th. One was addressed to Lucius Chu, the Rainy Season Bible School student of 1949 who had once said, ‘I shall never be satisfied until we have the whole of our Bible in our own tongue!’
His intense joy on receiving his copy was expressed in a psalm of praise:
Hallelujah! Praise and thanks be to God our Father.
Although He is so high and great yet He loves
And pities us men of dust, and He has given us
Our Saviour.
Not only so―that He may have fellowship
With us men of earth and might be able to instruct us,
He has given us His very precious and great holy Book.
Thanks be to Him.
That which we have mourned for,
With tears and longing, hoping and praying,
God has granted, and on the evening of the fourth of October
My own eyes saw and my own hands held
His holy Word.
Hallelujah! Thanks be to God for ever and ever.
My heart is filled with joy.
My mouth is filled with song.
My eyes are filled with gladness.
My whole being is filled with satisfaction...
Lucius went on to say in his letter,
‘So filled with abounding joy were we all that we literally jumped and hopped around, because we had received what we had longed to see and longed to touch. Thanks again to God our Father and thanks to our teachers. This is the most precious thing upon this globe. Even if someone would offer me in exchange a thousand kingdoms like the whole wide world, I would never accept and never exchange.
‘Teacher, on the fourth of October during the day I wrote you a letter, but as I was returning from a meeting in Myitkyina I heard the news. I was so happy I ran all the way home and hastily opened the package and just gazed. That night I could not sleep. All sleep fled from me. Long before daylight I was up reading. Before the fourth evening of October 1969 arrives, I want to read through God’s Word completely.’
J. O. Fraser would have been overwhelmed with emotion to have heard this psalm of praise and to share the Lisu joy on the completion of a task which he had initiated so long ago. The psalmist’s words, ‘By my God I have leaped over a wall’ seemed to Allan Crane best to describe the experience of bringing the Lisu Bible to its completion. There had been times when the wall had seemed too high and too formidable. But by God’s enabling grace every obstacle had been surmounted.
Back in 1967, a Lisu by the name of Enoch had crossed from Burma into North Thailand and started a search for Allan Crane, who at that time was in Hong Kong. In the autumn of 1968, Orville Carlson, on a visit to a Thai border market, recognized a fine-looking man as a Lisu and found him to be Enoch! Almost overwhelmed and breathless with questions, Enoch asked, ‘Where can I get a Bible? Where can I get a hymnbook? Where is Teacher Crane?’
A few days later the two men met again and Carlson presented Enoch with a Bible. His delight was uninhibited and unbounded. Oblivious of all on the market, he opened the Book at random and began to read the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel.
As the news of the Bible spread, the demand grew. When Orville offered a hundred or two to a businessman from Burma, his reply was, ‘Hundreds! We want thousands!’
So a shipment of 1,500 was dispatched to North Thailand, and later another 3,000. The month of May saw the largest dispatch of Bibles to Lisuland. Being large and heavy volumes, the cost was naturally heavy, too.
June 10th was a great day for Moses and Jeru who had arranged to collect five cases of eighty-four Bibles in a North Thailand town. The rendezvous with the Carlsons took place as planned and Bibles were presented to the two Lisu brethren. That same evening the study of the Bible began and continued far into the night, with an Old Testament survey related to the New Testament with which Moses and Jeru were very familiar. Both were most eager, diligent, untiring and intelligent students. Early each morning the group of four sang, read and prayed together, and followed this with a session of study. After breakfast―a second session of study lasted till noon. Then there was a siesta for the missionaries during the heat, but it is doubtful if the other two rested at all. All day long they seemed to be reading and writing in their notebooks. After the siesta, more study till shower time and supper. And after supper and a brief walk for exercise, the final session of study lasted on into the night.
Moses and Jeru decided to start their journey back on the morning of the fourth day. But before 6 a.m. they were ready with Bibles and hymnbooks for a final session of study and united prayer before leaving. Then, the cases of Bibles were loaded on to an ox cart for the journey to the Chinese village of Banyang, and the two men left after pressing on the Carlsons a gift of fifty baht to show their appreciation. At Banyang Christian friends took the responsibility for getting 250 lb. of Bibles over the mountains by packhorse. Soon there would be eighty-two more rejoicing hearts in Lisuland!
‘Something enduring happened when the heathen Lisu turned to the Lord under the preaching and praying of J. O. Fraser,’ was Orville Carlson’s comment as he recorded this thrilling encounter with the Lisu messengers from Burma. God is being glorified in the Lisu members of His Church―both in China and in Burma.