THE city of Yeong Kong, in the south of China, lies in a valley, surrounded on three sides by high hills. Through the valley runs a river on its way to the great ocean. The city has a high wall all around it, with four gates. At the gates stand soldiers, and they shut them at sundown every evening. A good many houses are built outside the wall however, and right down to the river. Now in this part of China there is a great deal of rain, and sometimes so much falls, that it causes a flood, and all the little rice fields on each side of the river are covered with water, and the houses are also flooded.
In the month of July 1922, my husband and daughters, were sleeping on the little Gospel Boat. One morning the old man who cares for the boat, pointed out a beautiful rainbow, all across the sky.
“When we see a rainbow like that, we know a flood is coming”, he remarked.
Old Ah Yik is a Christian, but a very ignorant one, and I suppose he knew nothing about Noah, and the rainbow God sent as a sign that the earth should not be destroyed again by water, or he might have been comforted by the thought that even in judgment, God remembers to be merciful.
But he was right as to the flood. That night a terrible typhoon arose; the rain poured down, and wind blew, and the river rose rapidly. When two days afterwards my husband went down to the boat, he found the country covered with water, right up to the wall. People were hurrying round, knee deep in water, carrying baskets with chickens, and kittens and puppies and even little pigs in them, trying to put them in some safe place. Many of the houses beside the river were almost lost to sight, and some, built of mud bricks, had fallen down altogether. In the middle of the river is a large island. This was entirely under water, and the inhabitants were to be seen sitting upon the ridge poles of their roofs. Small boats were floating round, where two days before it had been dry land. It was not long before my husband, and some Christian Chinese, had procured a boat, and were carrying food and medicine to the poor unhappy people.
It was while supplying rice on the island, that we found the “Faithful Grandmother”, as we have called her ever since. Hers was a hard case. Her husband was dead, and now her only son had been drowned in the flood, and his young wife killed, when their little house fell in, —all that was left for her was the little boy, two years old. As the water went down, which it did in a few days, she tried to gather up the remains of her broken down house, and with little help, got a new roof, but what a sad home it was, —all she owned washed away, and worst of all her only son and his wife gone too. She was very brave; she set to work to earn a little, by weeding the rice fields, up to her ankles in water, and with the little boy strapped on her back, she toiled on day by day. But she could not earn much. Ten cents a day is the regular pay for weeding rice, and on stormy days you cannot work at all. Ten cents a day is not enough to support two people, and, very often, all there was to eat, would be a little boiled cucumber or squash, which grew in the garden. Soon the little boy got sick and his good grandmother brought him over to the Missionaries for medicine.
Each time she came she heard something about the Lord Jesus. It sounded very new and strange to her ignorant, dark mind, to hear of a God who loved her, —loved her well enough to send His only Son to die for her. How different to the “Gui,” or devils she was accustomed to worship, who she thought were always seeking to do her harm, and had to have incense burned to them, and presents given to them, to persuade them not to hurt her.
She did not receive the good news for a long time. She had to go through more trouble and sorrow, before she would let the Good Shepherd find her. Her little grandson was her great comfort. He would waken in the night, and put his little hand up to feel if his grandmother’s eyes were wet with tears, which indeed they often were, and then he would cuddle up to her, and show his love in sweet baby ways, but if her eyes were dry, he would turn around and go to sleep.
He was a delicate child, and exposure and want of proper food told upon him, and in the summer of 1923 his little life was ended. Happy baby, taken home from this weary sad world, to be with the Saviour, who Himself said that He was “come to save that which is lost.” But for his grandmother, all was sadness. She borrowed money, and paid priests to burn incense and say prayers, and perform other heathen rites, for the little spirit, who was gone to be with Jesus. But she was ignorant, and she wanted to show her love. And now alone, and so desolate, she seemed more ready to listen to the “good news”. “Bit by bit”, “little by little”, it found its way into her dark heart. Little by little the darkness was dispelled; the idols were given up; the incense sticks no longer burned. She was a regular attendant at the meetings, and at last she confessed Jesus as her Saviour and asked for baptism.
On May 24, 1924 she was baptized, and I could not help being struck, a few days afterwards, by the change in her face, since first I knew her. The look of hardness and despair, had gone, and there was an expression of peace in its place.
“The Good Shepherd. . . if He lose one sheep . . .goeth after that which, is lost, until He find it.”
Is this a sad story? There are many sad stories in China, and many that end in the blackness of despair, for there is no one to point the sad and broken hearted to Jesus, who alone can comfort and save.
ML 09/21/1924