How often the work of God seems to hang by a single thread! but that thread will hold if it is in God’s hand. More was at stake than even Fraser realized at this time. He was thinking in tens, God was thinking in thousands. He was cast down and yet upheld; ‘perplexed but not in despair’; sorely tried but ‘not forsaken’.
I have no further news from Six Family Hollow [he wrote to the one whose prayers meant so much]. We must just do our patient best to repair the damage done by the false step they have taken. I very, very much hope that they may be won back soon. Quite apart from the damage to themselves, this sort of thing does a lot of harm to the cause of God among the Lisu. I should desperately like to see the foundation of a real work among them before I leave.
For one element of his trial was that he knew that his opportunity in that field might be drawing to a close. He was still designated for work among the Miao at the other side of the province and, when the Emberys returned from furlough, might be called to the relief of the reapers there, who could not overtake the harvest. His own seed-sowing, meanwhile, seemed fruitless.
They tell me [he continued] that the people at Little River, who were so responsive when I was there, have gone back too. They say that after I left a lot of them fell sick, so they all veered over to their demon worship again. Whether this is wholly true I do not know. If it is so, may God forgive them, for they know not, or can hardly know, what they do.
Meanwhile a letter was on its way to the General Director of the Mission telling of Fraser’s recent visits to Six Family Hollow and other places. He was almost sorry, now, that he had written of encouragement, for his tendency was always to understate rather than paint too bright a picture. But the cheering aspect of the work had also been true. The death of Mr. McCarthy having left the province without a superintendent, it was necessary for the young missionary to send his reports to Mr. Hoste direct. Was he conscious, in the darkness of those hours, of the upholding of Mr. Hoste’s unfailing remembrance in prayer?
Carl Gowman, with increasing experience, was a helpful companion in those days. Always bright and cheery, he was the more so in the prospect of his approaching marriage. The two years of preparation over, his bride would soon be on her way to join the bachelor household. The women Christians eagerly anticipated her coming, and there was much to do and plan. Another element that relieved the situation was the visit of a young Karen from Burma, recently set apart as a missionary to the Lisu and other tribespeople. Though only twenty-three, Ba Thaw was an experienced Christian and a man of education. He had travelled widely, spoke excellent English, and had begun to translate hymns and a simple catechism into the Lisu language. Best of all he was prayerful and spiritually minded. Little wonder that his coming seemed providential and was made the most of for the Tengyueh Christians. More than this, Old Five and other Lisu inquirers spent some days with him in the city, after which they escorted him to their mountain homes on his return journey. There he was used of God to help the Tsai family and others to see how they had been misled, so that before he left for Burma things were more hopeful.
And then a letter came from Mr. Hoste that opened the way for further developments. Always ready for advance, he suggested that Fraser should follow up his recent work by making an exploratory journey to ascertain the number and location of the Lisu and other tribespeople throughout his district. Could it be then, after all, that the young missionary’s hopes and prayers were to have fulfilment? Eagerly he embraced the opportunity, leaving results with Him ‘Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.’
But such an exploration was more easily planned than carried out. It meant serious census taking as far as the Burman border, west and north to begin with, and later through the wild Kachin country to the south. Fraser was cut out for a pioneer. He loved the freedom and strenuousness of frontier life, the silence and simplicity of the wilds. But even his endurance was to be tested by the six weeks of strenuous exploration that lay before him. For the region was almost unknown as far as Europeans were concerned.
Starting from the already familiar district of Trinket Mountain, he travelled Lisu fashion, walking in sandals and burdened with as few belongings as possible. Old Five, his only companion, was able to carry their slender outfit, consisting chiefly of literature for distribution and blankets for the night. Fraser wore Chinese dress after his own pattern, usually dispensing with a gown. Jacket and breeches of dark blue cotton, well tucked into socks of the same material, provided some protection against voracious leeches, mosquitoes and other pests. Cold and hunger they expected to face at those high altitudes, remote from markets or shops. A kind of mountain rat or weasel afforded a feast at times, and when a Sunday could be spent in some larger village, eggs and even pork might be found. As it was the rainy season, swollen streams had often to be crossed, some of them on submerged planks or ‘bridges’ that called for the nerve of a tightrope walker. At other times it was a case of ploughing through mud fully a foot deep, but on mountain trails it was ‘clean mud, very different from the filthy, slimy, dark green stuff, round cattle pens and pigsties’ in many a village at night. The blinding smoke of log fires was not unwelcome on these occasions. But Fraser loved it all, or ‘almost all!’ Coming in from one long day on the heights, in view of ranges mightier than the Alps, he wrote of ‘sitting down in that poor little place among utter strangers, thousands of miles from home and several days’ journey from the nearest European, warming my wet clothes and looking out on a silent world of mist, rain and mountains, feeling just as happy as could be—even thrilled with pleasure to think of it!’
But smoky fires, Lisu hovels and mountain grandeur only formed the setting for the human contacts of those days. Fraser knew already that the Lisu were lighthearted people, but his first visit to the Tantsah district impressed this trait unforgettably. More than a hundred Lisu families were congregated in the villages of that little upland plain, and he was glad to be detained by their rough and ready welcome.
People were in and out all day [he wrote of this hospitality]. In the evening we had splendid services. The room was jammed to overflowing―men, boys and women with their breast ornaments, beads and babies, all squeezing in to listen. Attention was often rapt and response hearty.
‘Yes, yes,’ they would break in, ‘we all want to be Christians!’
Then, after the meeting, there would be a veritable Babel―a crowd round the table, trying to read our Chinese Gospels, another round the fire, all laughing and talking away... To add to the confusion, someone would bring out his guitar and get up a dance! And I would fall asleep at last, dead tired, with more people round the bed examining my mosquito curtains.
But it was not all merriment in that Tantsah district, even among the Lisu, for it was there Fraser came across a cruel manifestation of demon power. He was more and more impressed with the sinister meaning of what we dismiss as ‘animism’, with its seemingly childish observances. ‘The things which they offer to idols, they offer to demons’, was written by inspiration long ago, and the same dread power is found today behind even the worship of sticks and stones. In a village to which Fraser was taken in that district, the local priests had established a custom that held the people in awe. At times ‘a great spirit’ was said to descend, which had to be propitiated to avert disaster. This was done by sharpening a dozen or more swords until they were like razors, and fixing them to poles so as to make a ladder of upturned blades. Several men were meanwhile prepared by mystic performances, including abstinence (‘perfect purity’) and bathing for three days. Great excitement was worked up, and when the time came the victims, stark naked and with unearthly mutterings or shouting, ascended the ladder on their bare feet.
They all tell me [commented Fraser] that no man so ‘prepared’ is ever injured, though they frequently suffer from fear beforehand. They say too that no one ‘unprepared’ would dare attempt it, for the blades would just about cut his feet in pieces. When at the top on a kind of platform, they look down with glaring eyes and in unearthly tones give messages from the spirit. At times they make a huge fire also, in which they burn iron chains until red hot—then in some kind of paroxysm they pick them up and throw them round their shoulders. In this case also they say that no harm comes to them. You might suppose that onlookers regard the whole thing as a kind of entertainment but this is far from the case. They all say that they wish they knew how to get rid of the burden; but they must do it, whether they want to or not. Last year, only one man was found ‘pure enough’ to go through it. I saw this man’s father and the little home up on the mountainside where they allow themselves to be drawn into the diabolical vortex.
‘The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.’ To read of such happenings, as we do in the shelter of a Christian land, is very different from being under the actual oppression of demon power ‘where Satan’s seat is’. What that oppression can be, only those who have known it by experience, and have found its darkness lift and pass away at the Name of Jesus, can fully understand.
The joy of telling of the Great Deliverer to those who had never heard was quickened, here and there, by the response of prepared hearts. Talking with a few men in a poky little shop one day, Fraser was surprised by the entrance of a bent and suffering woman who addressed herself to him. She had caught the drift of his preaching out on the village street, and ventured in with the question: ‘If idols are false and cannot help us, what then is true?’ Very simply, Fraser told her of the living Saviour, and how to put her trust in Him. It was a joy to hear her say, as she left him, that her heart was now ‘ten-tenths at peace’.
‘Teach me to pray,’ was the plea of another, the busy keeper of an inn who had listened while serving her guests. She, too, seemed to grasp the way of salvation, and went over and over the simple prayer Fraser taught her. It was still dark the following morning when she came to him as he was preparing to leave the inn.
‘Tell it me again,’ she said earnestly. ‘There will be no one to teach us when you are gone, and I do want to remember how to pray to Him.’
From the far north of his district―where great rivers come down from the highest tableland in the world—Fraser returned by the Kachin country, to see what access could be gained to that tribe also.
They are the wildest people round here by a long way [he reported]. Inveterate robbers, their hand is against every man and every man’s hand against them. Dirty, unkempt, ignorant, everybody despises them. They are savages only and not cannibals.
Yet the way was open, and with his Lisu companion Fraser was able to approach their villages, though not without danger. The first Kachins they met were a ferocious-looking group, crudely armed, seated round a fire by the wayside, decocting opium. With quiet friendliness, Fraser and Old Five came up and joined them. There was some excitement and loud talking, but not knowing Kachin they could only make out from the Chinese interspersed that it was a question of ‘taxes’. And that might mean all they had! Happily, at this juncture, another Kachin appeared who seemed to have influence and was soon chatting with Fraser in Chinese. He had been in the service of a British official down in Burma, and in friendly asides enlightened the rest as to their visitors. After this, they were permitted to proceed without molestation.
‘But Teacher,’ said Old Five anxiously, ‘what if they rob us of our things further on?’
‘Just let them take them,’ was the quiet reply.
‘But what would you do without money?’
‘Trust in God to help me. He would not let us starve.’
And this confidence was genuine. Far from robbing them, however, the Kachin received them into their strange houses at night and treated them with real if rough hospitality―so much so that Fraser’s love for the Lisu was shared with their despised neighbors from that time forward, to be as truly returned before long.
It was from a full heart Fraser wrote his fourteen-page report of this journey. He had explored only the northern half of his district, but he had seen or located some three hundred towns and villages with a population of over ten thousand Lisu, not to speak of still more numerous Kachin, on their barren uplands, and the wealthier Shan occupying the hot, low-lying plains. It was a great appeal― ‘souls for whom no man cared’.
The hope that he might be able to remain on and devote himself to this district moved the young missionary deeply. Yet his confidence in the judgment and prayerfulness of those at the head of the Mission withheld him from pressing his own point of view. He knew that Mr. Hoste had the whole field to consider and, while burdened about the needs around him, he sought to leave the issue in Higher Hands and to a greater Love.
It was not to be wondered at that, in the weeks that followed, a time of physical reaction set in. Even Fraser’s powers of endurance had been severely tested. Ulcerated feet and legs from the attentions of an unfriendly dog, in addition to leeches and other pests, laid him up fox weeks, while recurring fever sapped his strength. Under these conditions he had to fight against depression, and occasional visits from his eager, loving mountain friends were a great help. Market days generally brought some of them.
This evening Old Five has come in again [says an October letter] .... He brings good news of his family. They all seem to want to stand firm now, with the one exception of his elder brother. They have thrown away that bunch of leaves they put up some months ago and have ‘prayers’ again every evening. And he tells me that the sick people I prayed for at Little River―and for whom I have prayed ever since, hoping very, very much that they might be spared―have both recovered. We have been talking over our recent trip together and how the Lisu gave us ready hearing everywhere....
And last but not least, Old Five himself seems to be holding fast and growing in grace, so that he has played the part of an angel in banishing the gloom from my spirit. Like Paul, refreshed by the coming of Timothy with good news of the Thessalonians, I too can cry after a season of despondency, ‘Now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord.’
If it had been hard to wait for Mr. Hoste’s reply, to take it when it came as from the Lord was harder still. For, to Fraser’s surprise, the facts reported had not modified the Director’s point of view. Mr. Hoste still felt that the prior claim was among the Miao at the east of the province and that Fraser should repair as soon as possible to Sapushan, the field of his first designation. The disappointment was too deep for words, and yet―
I was not staggered by unbelief [he could say, recalling that painful experience]. I did not know what to make of it, for God had given me such a burden for the Lisu, and a growing conviction that He was leading. So I just went on praying about it―as much and as happily as before―though a good deal perplexed.
So the autumn days drew on, bringing the long-expected wedding. The arrangement was that, on the return of the Emberys, Fraser should leave with the bride and bridegroom who were also to take up work in the east of the province. The preparations for the great occasion can be better imagined than described―the first European marriage in Tengyueh. It had to be in that city, as there was no foreign Consul any nearer to Tali, though it meant an eight days’ journey for the bride with her Chinese escort. Before dawn on November 28, Gowman and Fraser were hastening across the plain to meet a sedan coming down the Tali road with a tired traveller. But weariness was soon forgotten. The transfer to the bridal chair they had brought, with its four bearers and red silk hangings, was soon accomplished. A mile or so from the city, Mrs. Li and a number of others were waiting to receive the bride, in the absence of relatives or indeed any foreign woman. It must have been a surprise to see her looking so young and happy—no sign of the regulation tears! But she made ‘a splendid impression’, as Fraser noted, and won their hearts right away by her bright friendliness. There was only time for a belated breakfast and a quick change into her wedding gown, before they had to go to the Consulate. The Chinese marriage ceremony and feast came next, followed by a short journey to the hills where arrangements had been made for a perfect honeymoon.
Left alone in the mission house, Fraser awaited the return of his senior missionaries. They had been away three years, memorable years which had seen the inauguration of the Tengyueh church and of a spiritual movement among the Lisu. And now―but is it ever in vain to wait upon the Lord in quiet trust? The single thread that seemed about to break was still in His hands.
After the wedding but before the Emberys could arrive, the unexpected happened. Fraser did not know that behind the scenes God had been moving. The leader of the Miao work, in conference with Mr. Hoste, had generously approved of steps which changed the situation. The result was a telegram to far-off Tengyueh. Once and again Fraser read it, before he could take in its meaning. Yes, it was from Mr. Host; and it said in substance:
If you feel distinctly led to stay on for Lisu work, I would not press your going to Sapushan.
A week later the Emberys had been welcomed home and were in charge once more. The house was full and busy, for it was the Christmas season. Fraser, in search of quiet, had gone out that winter night to one of his prayer-haunts in the city, a deserted temple to which the priest in charge always welcomed him. He was not unaware of the serious nature of the decision before him. To go east, to a work in full swing by the blessing of God, would be the easier pathway. But love held him to his needy field. ‘The love of Christ constraineth us.’
I walked up and down in the moonlight [he said to the writer years later, when his ‘Lisu children’ were numbered by the thousand]―I walked up and down, praying aloud in the silence, until prayer was turned to praise. There was no longer any question. Committing myself to God for whatever might be His purpose, I decided to stay on in my Tengyueh field.