About This Edition

Cyril H. Brooks was the missionary who invited Ken Engle to the Philippines. Ken lived in the Brooks home in San Juan from March 1951 until his wedding, and to the end of their lives he and Mary Lou called them Dad and Mom Brooks.

In 1985 Dad Brooks finished this book, his own account of sixty years in the Philippines. Ken chose its photographs and wrote the captions, and Mary Lou offered to proofread. Ten copies reached Abilene on 24 October 1985. Dad Brooks went home to the Lord four months later.

Every place where the Engles appear is marked with a red rule in the margin, with a note pointing to the same story elsewhere in the series. Ken’s own corrections from his copy are in those notes too.

The story of the Brookses, their letters to the Engles, and Dad Brooks’s articles are in Volume Eight: Cyril and Anna Brooks.

Introduction

Two years of combat duty in France in World War I – deliverance in moments of danger. In hospital with pneumonia and pleurisy – the doctor’s verdict, “He won’t live through the night!” Years of missionary service in the Philippines including facing starvation during Japanese occupation and internment camp. Dramatic rescue shortly before planned assassination by the Japanese. Experiences like these have made up a full life, a life full of God’s goodness and grace.

Folks often have said, “You should write a book!” The stock reply was, “When I have nothing more important to do!” Now as an octogenarian, my strength and ability for some of the important tasks is limited and it seems there is time to record this testimony to God’s faithfulness.

If possible, I would like to avoid the frequent use of first person pronouns as I don’t want to be that kind of an “I specialist.” But to write in the third person seems a bit devious. If there is any value in this testimony, the honor and glory belongs entirely to God. Like Paul, I can only say, “By the grace of God, I am what I am.” Had I only been more submissive to the Lord’s leading and power, His grace could have done greater things in and through me. Oh, the wonder of His patience and longsuffering in displaying His love and grace to one so undeserving of it! Like Jacob of old, I say, “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant” (Gen. 32:10).

Many years ago, it was my privilege to spend a day with two godly servants of the Lord, Mr. and Mrs. Jansen, at the Culion Leper Colony. When I thanked Mrs. Jansen for her kindness and hospitality, she remarked, “Don’t rob God of His glory by thanking me.” So to any who may read this story I want to say, “Please don’t rob God of any glory by attributing any credit at all to us.”

Chapter 1

Where It All Began

“The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.…Her children arise up, and call her blessed.” (Prov. 20:7; 31:28)

Lingfield is a pleasant Surrey village with quaint, old timbered cottages. It lies about 25 miles southeast of London, England; its only attraction to the world being a race course. But the activities there did not interfere with the placid life in the village as both race track and railroad station were outside the village. In the center of the village was a pond and as a young boy I thought that it was there the saying originated, “You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.” Across the street was the blacksmith’s shop where we watched with fascination the horses being shod. In later years when I had to memorize Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith,” I would think of Mr. Huggett, the burly blacksmith. I also knew him as the Sunday school superintendent at the Mission Room.

This chapel was just behind the day school and had been opened for services on June 9, 1875. On Sunday mornings after the children were dismissed from Sunday school, the older folks would gather and quietly take their seats around the table on which had been placed the bread and the cup for the Lord’s Supper. The benches had been made for adults and the backrest was just a bit high for a small boy. He either had to sit up very straight or was in danger of sliding out the back of the seat. Across the fields was the Anglican church. It still has one of the few extant chained Bibles. When Bibles were first printed some were chained to the pulpit so they could not be borrowed by eager parishioners! When the church bell stopped pealing at eleven o’clock a brother would rise to announce the opening hymn. The reverence and devotion in those meetings left a lasting impression.

During the summer months an open-air meeting was held beside the pond. At one end of this pool stood an old stone building under the shade of a large tree. This small building was called “The Cage” and had once been a prison. It was there the Gospel was preached

and on a quiet summer evening the preacher’s voice would ring out over the whole village. There was little need for a sound system when there was no noise of traffic or radio. Among those active in the local church meeting in the Mission Room were Harry and Ellen Brooks.

Harry was 25 and Ellen 23 when they were married on December 20, 1886. At the turn of the century they lived on a large estate called Felcourt some three miles from the village. Harry was head gardener and their home was part of an ivy-covered house that was round in shape. They had four children. Ethel Annie, who after she married Richard Weller in 1911, lived in Western Canada; Florence Lillian who never married but also went to Canada and for 25 years worked in the Dept. of Agriculture of the government of British Columbia; George Arthur Stanley remained in England where he took up horticulture and was for several years in charge of a large seed growing company. He was named after two of his uncles, George and Arthur, but the third name was taken from a great pioneer missionary in Central Africa, Frederick Stanley Arnot. There was a gap of seven years before their fourth child was born on December 11, 1898, and named Cyril Harry. The second name, of course, was after my father but the first name was from Cyril Bird, a missionary who died from fever in Angola in 1896. Many years later I became well acquainted with his widow and her second husband, Dr. Andrews.

Naming their sons after missionaries would indicate that Harry and Ellen Brooks were very missionary minded. At one time they had a desire to be missionaries themselves in Spain but the Lord did not open the way. Instead they did missionary work in Surrey. For some years in Lingfield, baptisms were held in an iron tank in a field beside the Mission Room. In 1901 the brethren worked together to install a baptistry inside the Mission Room. Harry Brooks was one who helped in that project.

Looking through his small diary for 1905, his last year here on earth, it seems that quite often he was away preaching on Sundays

in small assemblies that he could reach on his bicycle. It was in that missionary spirit that they offered their youngest son to the Lord for missionary service even before he was born. I only learned of this after I had personally responded to the Lord’s call.

Naturally my memories of those early years in Lingfield are vague. Walking through the garden with Father and being given a small ripe tomato, popping it in my mouth to get the entire delicious flavor as it broke open! Lying down to rest after lunch but sneaking out the front door with my sisters in hot pursuit. One day when Mother was baking I sat on a loaf of bread; it had to be reshaped before it could be baked! There is still a scar on my knee, the result of a fall…. Seeing an automobile for the first time. Evidently it was in the fall because I was amused to see the leaves chasing the car in its excessive speed – probably 20 miles an hour!

A tree near our house had been cut down, and a cross-section of this placed beside the kitchen stove was my favorite seat, especially for family devotions each morning. Even before I learned to read I had my own Bible, like the big folks. Such daily family devotions have been maintained all through life. At the Mission Room they had Sunday school both in the morning and in the afternoon. However, in the afternoon I stayed home with Mother to hear Bible stories and learn Bible verses. It was easy to learn Isaiah 53:6 for all around were flocks of sheep. I knew how they would go astray in their own way. So at a young age I learned that Jesus bore the iniquity of us all. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t believe that.

Many Bible teachers and missionaries visited Lingfield and were entertained for a meal in our home. I soon learned that little boys are to be seen but not heard! Most of these men had beards and, to me, seemed such good men. I was sure that old people had no difficulty living a good life and staying out of mischief. They seemed to be very strict when they frowned on any misbehavior on my part. To my childish mind God the Father was like those men and I was scared to pray to Him. But Jesus was my Friend who loved me and had died for me, so it wasn’t hard to pray to Him. On one occasion,

so I was told, I was seen riding on a wooden sawhorse and lustily singing the chorus of a missionary hymn, “Speed away, speed away on your mission of light.”

The last entry in Father’s 1905 diary was for October 24, but for the next day Mother had written, “His 44th birthday. Annual tea at Staffords Wood, good time, his last meeting.” It was no doubt fitting for he had often preached there. Right after that he was not well and Dr. Austin was sent for. The good doctor was a leader in the assembly and a close personal friend. I still have a book that he gave to Father. A specialist was called in from London and an operation performed. I really don’t know what the trouble was. Possibly his life might have been prolonged had modern medical knowledge been available.

Thursday evening, November 30, I went in to kiss Father goodnight. The next morning when Mother awakened me, she said, “Jesus has taken Daddy to heaven.”

During his illness someone sent a card with this simple message, “Your Father knoweth.” It was a great comfort to Mother in her sorrow. She wrote in the diary, “Dearest H. fell asleep in Jesus. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Mother told someone that in almost twenty years of married life there had never been an angry word between them. They loved each other but even more they loved the Lord Jesus Christ.

I heard some older folks say, “He’s too young to understand.” I don’t recall shedding any tears. In childlike faith I believed he was indeed with Jesus in heaven. Yet I did miss my Father for I knew he loved me. Looking back over my life, I realize I missed a great deal by not having a father during my formative years. He was laid to rest in the cemetery near the Anglican church on December 6, just a few days before my seventh birthday. It was a double funeral for a close relative was buried close by at the same time.

Chapter 2

Boyhood Days

“A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.” (Psa. 68:5)

What is a widow with four children to do when, the day after she has buried her husband, she receives notice to vacate the house they had lived in for years? Of course, free rental of the house was one of the perquisites that went with her husband’s work on the estate. So the owner was within his rights. Nevertheless it was a situation in which the widow proved the truth of the above verse.

The two girls, Ethel and Florrie, were away in domestic service. Ethel was working for Mr. Scott in Dorking, a partner in the Christian publishing company of Morgan and Scott. Florrie was working in a house where her cousin was cook. George had received a scholarship and was boarding at Reigate Grammar School. So at the age of seven, I was the only one left with my Mother. Because of these circumstances I was not only without a father but was also deprived of the usual companionship of my sisters and brother. It was almost the same as being the only son of a widowed mother. Apart from schoolmates, I had few playmates. No doubt, life would have been different, if my Father had lived, but God makes no mistakes.

I was shy and rather timid and not too robust in health. One day coming home from school, a rough boy from the slums knocked me down. He got some fun out of it, but I didn’t! He also took my cap. I was scared of him, but I was more scared to go home without my cap. So I followed him at a discreet distance until he left my cap on a gatepost and ran off.

Mother was in her early forties and needed to find a way of supporting herself and providing for me. God again proved to be a “defender of widows.” In a short time she obtained a position as a housekeeper for a gentleman bachelor. Mr. A. C. Knight was a director in a large soap manufacturing company. As a Christian who attended the Congregational Church, he was interested in boys and

an active leader in the Boy’s Brigade. Thus, it was possible for me to remain with my mother in his home. In World War I Mr. Knight served as an officer and was killed in the ill-fated Gallipoli landing. By that time we had moved to Canada.

Early in 1906 we moved to Blackheath, a suburb in southeast London. A large heath or open space for sports activities lay between Blackheath and Greenwich Park. I became well acquainted with that park in which was the Greenwich Observatory, the place of zero longitude and source of Greenwich Mean Time. Nearby was a Naval museum and the Thames River.

About the time of my eighth birthday there was a fall of snow. As my Sunday school teacher escorted me home, she asked, “What is whiter than snow?” That really puzzled me! I thought of white things – writing paper, sugar, salt, mother’s laundry (no tattle-tale gray for her!) – but snow was whiter than all these. Mother dropped a hint that I should think in another direction. So I finally learned what the hymn said, “Wash me in the blood of the Lamb and I shall be whiter than snow.” I could rely on the word of God, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isa. 1:18). I am sure that I was saved then for I cannot remember a time when I didn’t believe that Jesus died for me. However, I didn’t have complete assurance.

There was a lot of emphasis those days on the second coming of Christ and I had learned about the Rapture. Sometimes I would look out of my bedroom window at a gorgeous sunset and wonder if Christ would come before morning! But sometimes I was not so sure. One afternoon I came home from school to find the door locked. Mother was out shopping, no doubt. No problem! Just sit on the doorstep and wait. But it seemed to be an awfully long wait. Then the thought – maybe the Lord has come and I am left behind! How can I find out? I know! I’ll watch the people walking down our street. If I see one person I believe to be a Christian (that, of course, would have to be someone from our chapel!) then I’ll know the Lord hasn’t come yet. Even then I was well-indoctrinated – no partial

rapture theories had come my way. To my great relief the first Christian I saw was Mother entering our gate.

From time to time I was bothered by this lack of assurance. One Sunday evening (I can’t remember when it was) I determined to do something about it. It may have been something the preacher said in the service, I really don’t recall. Anyhow, as I kneeled to say my usual bedtime prayer, I added something. “Lord, if I never really trusted in you before, I do now believe and accept you as my Savior.” Immediately I was assured that I was really saved and the assurance has never left me. No doubt I was truly saved before but it needed that definite act to assure me. Later on I learned that assurance of salvation is not based on our experience but upon the promises of God’s Word.

About a quarter of a mile from where we lived in Blackheath was Alexandra Hall. In some ways the assembly there was different from others. Most of the members were upper-class people and only a few of the poorer class. There was one woman who was a charwoman but rather outspoken and uncouth when she poured out her scorn on the snobbery of some ladies there. Mother’s ministry was to befriend some of the old ladies and I was not enraptured over such guests! She also took an interest in young women in domestic service who were away from home.

When we first moved there, the congregation at Alexandra Hall was quite large. Some two to three hundred would meet each Sunday morning to observe the Lord’s Supper. Without fail one brother, Mr. Luck, would read a chapter from the Bible without comment and Easter Sunday it would surely be Luke 24. There would be some five hundred at the evening service. Dr. Robert McKilliam was the recognized leader in the assembly and always preached when he was home. Though a medical man, he was a great Bible student and also editor of a monthly magazine, “The Morning Star,” which emphasized the Second Coming. The choir, mostly of older persons, sat on the platform. One gentleman had his favorite seat by the railing and during the sermon he would lean on this

railing and enjoy a little sleep.

The assembly regularly held a brief 15-minute open-air service on the steps before the evening service, summer and winter. Then in the summer there was an open-air meeting in the center of the town after the service. Later when numbers were dwindling they held an evangelistic campaign. The invited preacher was an eccentric man by the name of Hodson. His zeal for the Lord was accompanied by a sense of humor and a quick repartee. On one occasion, so I am told, he carried on a tent campaign in an English village. Sunday morning he went to the Anglican Church to hear the parson. Being sadly disappointed by the sermon he asked the parson, “Do you call that preaching the Gospel?” It seems that in retaliation the reverend gentleman persuaded two village thugs to beat up Mr. Hodson and burn down his tent. When they accosted Mr. Hodson in front of his tent and stated their intention, he, being a big husky man, picked them up one by one and tossed them over the hedge. The parson who had been standing at a distance, approached and haughtily asked, “Mr. Hodson, do you call that preaching the Gospel?” To which Mr. Hodson replied, “No, I call that casting out demons!”

Perhaps the dwindling attendance was in part due to the fact that there was no Sunday school and very few young people at Alexandra Hall. After we left there Dr. McKilliam passed away which further contributed to the decline. During my war service in World War I, visiting Blackheath one evening I found about twenty believers meeting in a much smaller hall.

As there was no Sunday school there, I went on Sunday afternoons to a Sunday school in a rough area of Lewisham. My chum, Willie Peacock, went with me and our teacher was a fine man, Mr. Bernau. In that slum neighborhood the windows were protected by heavy wire screens. Almost every week some boisterous boy was forcibly evicted for making trouble, but they would invariably return the following week.

My schooling started in Lingfield with a year or so in Primary School before Father died. When we moved to Blackheath I went to

Northbrook School at Lea Green, a 20 minute walk each way. There was no such thing as school buses in those days. I enjoyed the teachers there but very much disliked the principal. For me, Mr. Fluke had an appropriate name: For one thing he smoked! One day in class he misunderstood an answer I gave (deliberately I suspect) and made fun of me before the class. It seemed to have been due to my stand as a Christian, even though that was a weak one. During one vacation I was waiting to get a haircut. Mr. Fluke came in and took his place in the barber’s chair ahead of me, with some snide remark to the barber.

Coming home from school one afternoon, one of my two companions found a shriveled up potato in the gutter. It looked quite rubbery and my chum said, “wonder if it could bounce!” No time was wasted speculating on the “bounceability” of an old potato regardless of surroundings. At a busy crosswalk where three streets met, my chum flung the potato to the ground. Oh, did it bounce? On the rebound it struck the bonnet of an old lady who was approaching and would have completely dislodged it but for the ribbons by which it was tied. (In those days little old ladies wore bonnets, which were high in front above the forehead and were fastened with ribbons tied under the chin.) I caught a glimpse of hands raised to retrieve the bonnet and heard a scream. We did not linger to hear the tirade about juvenile delinquency in that “modern age.” Three boys decamped in three different directions with speed that surely could be in the Guinness Book of Records had they been recorded.

Later I was transferred to Greenwich Central School, the equivalent of High School. It was a 45 minute walk from home but we didn’t think anything of that in those days. The headmaster there, Mr. Wood, was strict but considerate and well respected. Monday morning assembly was devoted to Scripture reading and prayer. These schools were for boys; none were co-educational then. Each Monday morning the two class monitors had to arrive early and fill all the inkwells on the desks (no such things as fountain

pens or ballpoints!). One morning my classmate and I were carrying a tray of inkwells down the stairs when a latecomer dashing up the stairs collided with us. At the next assembly there were some caustic remarks from the headmaster about the carelessness of boys who spattered ink on the stairs!

Somehow I managed to stay out of trouble so was never sent up to the headmaster’s office for misbehavior. A notation in his black book meant no recommendation when leaving school. I doubt that I deserved what he wrote on April 25, 1912 – “that progress has been very satisfactory and that he leaves the school after having gained the esteem of his fellow pupils and of his masters.” This recommendation was given shortly before I left that school to go to Canada. The teacher and the class kindly gave me a monetary gift as I was leaving.

Vivid in the memory of my boyhood days are the summer holidays. Mother and I usually visited her relatives and since there were many of them it meant going to different places each summer. Mother’s family was so large that her youngest sister was an aunt already when she was born.

Cromer is a seaside resort on the east coast of England. A Japanese Lantern was thrust into my hand so I could participate in a lantern procession and I won third prize. Any inflation of my ego was dissipated a few days later. While digging in the sand, one of my shoes was buried and lost. Scolded by Mother I was mortified to have to walk home barefoot.

One of Mother’s brothers lived in Cardiff in South Wales where he worked in the drydocks. I was fascinated to see a ship in drydock. One of my cousins also worked there and later was killed by a fall into a drydock. One day we went on an excursion steamer across the Bristol Channel to visit picturesque spots like Clovelly. This small place in Devon was then only reached by boat and the houses were perched on the steep hillside beside the sea. A stop at Ilfracombe for a lunch that for a boy was memorable – roast lamb with young potatoes (cooked with a sprig of mint) and fresh green peas. The

dessert was a dish of raspberries topped with Devonshire cream, a very thick, rich cream.

Littlemore was a village a few miles from Oxford where Mother had been born and where her oldest brother had a blacksmith and carriage building shop. It was interesting to see how they fitted an iron rim on a wooden cartwheel. A trip on a small boat through some locks on the upper Thames River took us to a garden party for residents of the area on the large estate of the Earl of Harcourt. Another day we went through Oxford University without absorbing any knowledge from that noted place of learning.

One summer Mother and I went different ways and I stayed with the family of Ethel’s fiancé, the Wellers. Dentures were new to me then. I was amazed that Richard, who was to become my brother-in-law, took his teeth out at night. It was impossible to remove mine, I found. Sixty years later in 1969 Anna and I visited Rich’s two surviving sisters living in the same house. Naturally they had aged but the house seemed to be just the same.

Mother’s youngest sister, Aunt Millie, lived in Folkestone on the south coast facing the English Channel. Her husband was a retired army man and they had two daughters about my age. On one of our visits there the Red Cross and Ambulance Corps were holding some sort of maneuvers. They called for some boys to volunteer with a promise of sixpence. We were taken out of town on a truck and told to lie down scattered over a grassy field. Tags were placed on us to describe the kind of wounds we had supposedly suffered. Then the nurses came to bandage us and take us back to school, which was to be the hospital. Many of the boys were “ambulatory patients.” With bandaged heads or arms in slings they had to walk back to the school. As one of the more seriously wounded I had the good fortune to be trundled back on a stretcher. Housewives seeing the procession of wounded and not knowing it was a maneuver came out to commiserate with the unfortunate victims of an accident. For their benefit I tried to look as miserable as possible under the circumstance. At the “hospital” a treatment of lemonade and

cookies effected some “miraculous cures” so our bandages were removed and we were sent off home.

Mother thought there would be better opportunities for me in a young country like Canada. World events didn’t concern me then but there was already talk of war with Germany. My sister Ethel left for Edmonton, Alberta the day after her marriage on June 1, 1911. A year later, Mother, Florrie, and I were to follow. George had obtained a second scholarship to the College of the Royal Horticultural Society and so decided to remain in England.

At the age of thirteen the matter of baptism arose. There was no baptistry at Alexandra Hall and I don’t know what position the assembly there took on baptism. However, with considerable trepidation I went to Dr. McKilliam for an interview. He was very gracious as he talked with me about my faith in Christ. So I was received into fellowship at Alexandra Hall shortly before leaving. It was arranged that I should be baptized at Lingfield in the baptistry, which my Father had helped to construct. That was on the 7th of May 1912, and was for me a very happy occasion. The Lord impressed upon my heart, John 13:17, “If you know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” So, though I was very nervous, I was also very happy. There was much about baptism that I didn’t understand, but I knew it was something the Lord wanted me to do.

Even in those days I was keenly interested in missionary stories. I don’t recall a great deal of missionary interest at Alexandra Hall but more than once I would walk to King George St. Hall in Greenwich to hear some missionary, especially if he was from Africa. One of the thrills was to be allowed to go to the annual missionary meetings in London in October 1911. They were held then at Devonshire House, which was packed for the evening meeting. I sat on a step up in the gallery and listened to Dan Crawford, then home on his first furlough in over twenty years.

A few days after my baptism on May 16th we left Southampton on a Cunard ship, S.S. Ausonia, definitely not one of their best. We were traveling with an emigrant party arranged by the Salvation

Army, mostly of women. First morning out I was one of the few brave souls that showed up for breakfast. The menu in steerage class was Irish stew or boiled eggs. Irish stew for breakfast – perish the thought! And the stew too! So I had two hard-boiled eggs which I soon regretted eating! I was seasick for a week and for years wouldn’t touch a hard-boiled egg. Years later we learned from our good friend, George Maslen that he traveled on the Ausonia on the previous voyage. The food was so terrible, the steerage passengers almost rioted!

Out in the middle of the Atlantic we were surrounded by icebergs and moved forward very cautiously, with good reason for just a month before that the Titanic had been sunk. I remember the news headlines, “The unsinkable ship sunk.” This ship had been built with watertight compartments to make it unsinkable in theory. On its maiden voyage with many celebrities aboard it struck an iceberg with a loss of hundreds of lives. We thanked God for a safe trip.

Landing at Quebec on Sunday evening, bells were tolling. I thought they were church bells until I discovered that every train engine had a bell and also a cow-catcher in front. For some days we journeyed by train to Calgary. The train would stop at intervals to change engines and crew, while the passengers made a wild dash to the station restaurant for a quick snack. Trains there were quite different from English trains and different too from present day train travel.

In Calgary we stayed overnight before proceeding north to Edmonton the next morning. The Salvation Army took us to their citadel where a testimony meeting was in progress. Various members there took us home for the night, which was very kind of them. I was rather amused by the testimony of one man as he told of his new joy in salvation. In his elation he was jumping up and down on the platform, and rubbing his stomach exclaimed, “I have such a good feeling down here!” Remembering the misery of our seasickness a week before, I rather disrespectfully whispered to my sister, “If he had been where we were last week, he wouldn’t have

such a good feeling down there.” It is to be hoped his assurance of salvation was not resting merely on his physical feeling.

A train ride the next day brought us to Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, then more like a growing frontier town. There we were welcomed by my sister and her husband.

Chapter 3

Life in Canada

“And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.” (Psa. 107:7)

Life in Canada was quite different in many ways. Before leaving England I had become the proud possessor of my first (and only) bowler hat, that very typical Englishman’s headgear. It didn’t take long to learn that in Canada a bowler hat soon became a target for things more solid than ridicule.

Our home in Edmonton consisted of two tents, with rough board floors and boarded sides. A large canvas covered both tents and provided further protection from the weather. One tent served as parlor, dining room, and kitchen while the ladies slept in the other. A small shack served as a bedroom for my brother-in-law and me until winter came. Then we moved into the living tent and slept on the table near the kitchen stove. The shack then became cold storage for sides of beef and pork. One day my sister went to cut off some meat in the shack. Without thinking she put the key in her mouth for a moment. In that excessive cold it lifted the skin from her lips. Walking down the main street one day, a man stopped her and said, “Excuse me, but is your nose frozen?” She hadn’t realized it!

We lived on the flats beside the North Saskatchewan River and so had running water nearby. In summer we also found some edible berries to vary our diet. In winter we had to cut a hole through two or three feet of ice to get our water. Just down stream from our tents the high-level bridge between Edmonton and Strathcona was being built. During the winter a lot of scaffolding was built on the ice. Then in the spring came the break-up as the ice broke and began to drift downstream. Huge chunks of ice as big as the side of a house would be toppled one over another, carrying everything before it. Earlier in the winter, ice was cut in blocks and stored away in large warehouses for use during the summer.

Money was scarce for us in those days so on arrival in Edmonton

we had to find work. Florrie got a job in domestic service and Mother did odd jobs of practical nursing. That summer Ethel had her first baby, a girl Beatrice (Tricie). Ethel’s husband Richard was a house painter in England but had to take different jobs in Canada. Thirteen years old, my first job was as a messenger in a jeweler’s store. It also included being the janitor. Saturday nights the store stayed open till ten. As I made my way home one Saturday night there was a terrific thunderstorm. Getting off the streetcar I walked the rest of the way, past the new Alberta Parliament buildings under construction and past an old Hudson’s Bay Fort. Between the flashes of lightning it was impossible to see anything. The road turned to the right to go down a hill to the flats. If I missed that turn I would tumble down a steep embankment onto railroad tracks below, which could mean broken bones or possible death. As I groped my way in the dark there was a brilliant flash of lightning. Just before me was the edge of the embankment. I was aware that the Lord was watching over me as I made my way down the hill.

That summer there was a succession of jobs. The jeweler was not satisfied and fired me. To me, it was a terrible blow. But then a sister in the assembly gave me a job of putting insulation on water pipes in the basement of an apartment block she owned. For me it was a good job while it lasted and for her it was cheap labor! During the annual fair at the fairgrounds I worked as a busboy in a restaurant, hard work but plenty to eat. Next I worked as a messenger in a dress shop. It was managed by a man and his wife who were constantly bickering. Getting tired of being caught in the crossfire, I quit.

Then I went to the Canadian Pacific Railroad to work as a telegraph messenger. I didn’t have a bicycle but I could move fast and I knew all the empty lots and short cuts around town. When I discovered that the other boys didn’t want to take the morning delivery to the west end of town, I volunteered. Offices in the Parliament Buildings were opening up so there were always plenty of messages to be delivered there and all close together. We were

paid according to the number of telegrams delivered. On that run I was able to go home for lunch before going back to the office. I averaged a dollar a day, which wasn’t too bad then. I could get a good substantial meal in a clean restaurant for 25 cents! One day I found a meal ticket from a better restaurant. People would buy a ticket for a lump sum at a discount. Most of the slots in this ticket were not punched out. I had visions of scrumptious meals – for free. At noon I made my way to the restaurant. Funny! Nobody inside at noon! Then a sign on the door caught my eye, “Gone out of business.” I learned that in this world you don’t get something for nothing. So typical of much this world offers – bitter disappointments and unfulfilled promises.

Winter was hard. Plenty of opportunities for skating but I wasn’t athletically inclined and never took to ice skating. One night in a blizzard I escorted Mother home from work, at 30 below zero Fahrenheit. As we struggled through the snow I wondered if we would make it. Another morning down by the river the temperature dropped to 52 below. I used to pick up our milk in bottles at the Fort on the way home. It would be frozen with the caps resting on frozen milk an inch above the top of the bottle. One evening I had a bottle cradled on each arm. At a little slope on the road both feet shot out in front of me and I sat down suddenly and sorely. I saved the milk at the expense of some pain and effort in getting back on to my feet.

Often I wished that I could go to a place where it was always summer. Not that I ever expected my wishes would be granted for then I had no idea that I would spend most of my life in the tropics. Those days I was not doing very well spiritually. I was a weak Christian, not only because I was young but mainly because I hadn’t been taught to feed upon the Word of God. We attended the assembly regularly but there were not many young people. There was little help for young people because of the sad condition in the assembly. Shortly after our arrival in Edmonton, the hall was moved to a new location. It was something new to see such a building being slowly moved down the street!

There were two factions in the assembly. One older brother who owned the hall had a few friends with very rigid views about fellowship with other believers. On Labor Day there was a conference at which many gathered, including quite a few preachers. The two factions had each invited preachers favoring their own views. It was an open platform, no pre-arranged program. On the hot afternoon meeting, crowded together in a rented building, one brother droned on endlessly. In politics it would be called “filibustering.” He was trying to keep the platform from a preacher with more open views on fellowship. Finally an old brother who had pioneered in the Lord’s work on the prairies, got up to read 1 Corinthians 14:30 and told the speaker he should give place to his brethren.

Then one Sunday soon after that episode it was announced that the assembly had been given notice to vacate the hall. However, word had been passed by the owner to his cronies to stay on. Thus the assembly was split with a good deal of bitterness and hard feelings. Such an atmosphere and such unchristian spirit didn’t tend to foster spiritual growth in a young believer like myself.

Those days there was a real estate boom on the Pacific Coast. Agents were extolling the claims of British Columbia, which is indeed a beautiful province; but not all the agents’ claims were credible. Some friends bought farmland very cheaply due to the glowing report they received, only to discover later that their farm was on the slopes of a steep mountain! Nevertheless, we decided to move away from Edmonton to a milder climate. In April 1913, Richard, my brother-in-law, went ahead to Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The rest of us followed a month later to the small house which he had purchased. In the Oaklands district, close to a new school, we found congenial neighbors. Out of ten homes in that block where we lived, there were at one time believers from the assembly in nine. Next door was a missionary family that had served the Lord in South India. Two of the boys were slightly older than I, and I became very chummy with Frank Maynard. Through the help

of another neighbor I got a job in a large department store, David Spencer’s.

Shortly before our arrival a new assembly had been formed in the Oaklands district, a hive-off from the large assembly downtown, Victoria Hall. They were then meeting in a rented hall above some stores at the corner of Hillside and Cedar Hill Road. One evening at prayer meeting, we boys saw a barn burning down the road a mile or so away. We thought the brethren would never close that meeting so we could dash out to see the fire!

In 1914 the Oaklands assembly was able to purchase a piece of land next door to where they were meeting and start building. A lot of the labor was volunteer. Some of my spare time went into that project. In August of that year Frank and I had our holidays and decided to hike part way up Vancouver Island. The war clouds were looming but that was no concern of ours then. By the first afternoon we were starting the climb up the Malahat. Today the Malahat is a scenic drive north of Victoria. Then it was a one-way gravel road with places here and there for the occasional vehicle to pass. It was a steep climb, and a few bragged they could make the climb in high gear. That was extremely unlikely! Evening was approaching and we were beginning to look for a suitable place to sleep out for the night. A motorist in a model-T open Ford offered us a lift. Frank climbed in the front seat beside the driver and I clambered up on some baggage in the back seat. Then the driver took off on one of the most exciting rides I have ever had. Up and down, round the curves along a cliff-hanging gravel road, he didn’t let up until he pulled up in front of a saloon in Duncan. He promised to be out in a few minutes, just long enough to fortify his spirits with liquor. A few miles further on he stopped again at the saloon at Horseshoe Bay. We decided not to imperil life and limb any longer with such a driver. Anyway, it was getting dark. So we hiked off the road, made a bed of pine branches and bracken fern, and curled up in our blankets.

Next day we hiked a few miles further north and then retraced

our steps. Frank had a friend at Cobble Hill with whom we spent two delightful days boating and swimming. From there we went to Shawnigan Lake (very few houses there then) and after a night there hiked to Goldstream by way of Sooke Lake. It was a lonely trail but very beautiful. We didn’t see a soul all day but did see footprints of bears and panthers.

While we were on the hike, World War I had been declared. The department store where I worked was between two newspaper offices. The latest war bulletins were posted in the windows so people would stop to catch up with the war news. I was not much involved with such things as I was only 15.

My Christian life was quite nominal; I still hadn’t learned to feed on the Word. Going to meetings, to Sunday school, and in summer attending the open-air meetings downtown was the extent of my spiritual activity. But there was neither real spiritual growth nor any clear witness for Christ. I was saved but not being challenged, or else ignored what challenges there were.

By 1915 the call for men to volunteer for military service was more insistent. I wasn’t really interested in going overseas and my family certainly didn’t encourage any such thoughts. There was a difference of opinion in the assembly about military service. Some joined up but others took the stand of conscientious objectors and suffered for their stand. One brother was very outspoken in his criticism of those fellows who had enlisted. For me, his criticism carried little weight because he was earning good wages making war supplies. What was the difference between making bullets and firing them?

What did attract me was the possibility of enlisting in a local regiment guarding the Pacific Coast. This regiment was part of the regular Canadian army and different from the Canadian Expeditionary Force preparing to go overseas. This would afford me a bit more money than I was earning, and I would be stationed near home. There was also a youthful desire to get away from home and see a different side of life. There was no thought of praying about

such a step or asking the Lord about His will.

Changing my age from 16 to 18 was dishonest but I rationalized it was for my country. Recruiting officers were only too anxious to build up their quota and I was big for my age. So I became a private in the Royal Canadian Garrison Artillery and was stationed at Signal Hill, overlooking the Naval Base of Esquimalt. Being regular army we were issued dress uniforms in addition to the regular uniform. Arrayed in my bright red uniform I supposed I would make some impression on young ladies when I was on leave on Sunday. Troops training for war service got no such uniforms but they saluted my uniform, supposing only an officer would dare to wear such regalia. In a few months I was promoted to lance-corporal and got my first stripe. That added more to my pride than to my efficiency. Certainly I was not doing well in the Lord’s service and was not a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Looking back I marvel at His grace – I deserved a dishonorable discharge form His service. How amazing is the longsuffering and patience of our wonderful Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The winter I was stationed at Signal Hill was unusually severe for Victoria. Usually there are only a few inches of snow during the season but that year there was about three feet in one storm. I was in town when it started and before long the streetcars were not running. That meant plodding three miles through a foot or two of newly fallen snow. Next day the troops were called out to help clear the snow from the streets but that did not include our regiment. Victoria is famous for the tourist slogan “Follow the birds to Victoria,” because of the sea gulls. That winter the birds were hungry. Some of the fellows tied pieces of fat bacon on opposite ends of a string and had fun watching the tugs of war between flying birds.

We had a trumpeter to sound calls. He was never in uniform in time to sound the call half an hour before parade each morning, so he would open a window and raise the trumpet through it to sound that call. One morning one of the fellows climbed up on the roof

with a jug of water which he poured into the trumpet just as the call was beginning. There was great amusement as the call died out in a gurgle and a splutter!

Increasingly there was talk about going overseas. Some men deserted to join outfits headed for action in Europe. Very foolishly I agreed with one of my chums to be absent without leave. Over in Vancouver we enlisted with a construction company that was going to France. We even went back to Victoria to say goodbye to our families. But on our return to Vancouver we were arrested by the M.P. and sent back for courtmartial. We were sentenced to 30 days in military prison. One evening there I picked up the Bible and read Psalm 51 and on my knees confessed my sin to the Lord. A day or so later our Commanding Officer offered us a reprieve if we would volunteer for overseas service with a detachment being sent from the Battery. On my release I asked my family’s forgiveness and also went to confess to some of the elders of the assembly. It is an episode of youthful folly that I would like to forget but I take comfort that when God forgives, He forgets. It is no pleasure to record it here except that it does magnify the grace of God.

Chapter 4

Service in World War I

“What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” (Rom. 6:21)

The answer to that question is so obvious! NONE! If it were not for the wonderful goodness and love of our gracious Lord during the experience of military service, it would be better to draw a veil over those years. One of the most unhappy people in the world is the believer who is not living for God. He gets no joy out of his Christian experience for he is out of fellowship with his Lord when he is disobedient. He is not allowed to get any happiness out of the world because of his guilty conscience and the working of the Holy Spirit in his heart. As I was one of those weak and sad Christians, I did many things of which I am now utterly ashamed.

Some years later, after the Lord graciously restored me to Himself, I found much comfort in the prophecy of Joel. While the interpretation refers to Israel, there was an application that I could and did appropriate. “And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25). An earlier chapter tells of the havoc and destruction caused by a plague of locusts. How much better it would have been if there hadn’t been any locusts in the first place. Yet the God of all grace has restored what the locusts ate. Though assured of my own salvation, I was a weak believer, so weak that those around me didn’t know I was a believer.

The military authorities decided to form a battery of artillery from among the Royal Canadian Garrison Artillery. So I was one of the detachments from the West Coast. A journey of 3000 miles took us across Canada from the Pacific in the West to the Atlantic in the East. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, we joined detachments from other outfits and were stationed in the Citadel. This is an old fort on the top of a hill overlooking the city and Bay of Halifax. One of my buddies had a brother who, in the Navy, had charge of a launch there. Once or twice we went on the launch for a cruise around the harbor. It is a spacious harbor; in fact, it is two harbors connected

by a narrow channel. Some months later, while we were in France, an ammunitions ship collided with another ship in the channel. The resulting explosion destroyed a large part of the city.

One night while there we were called to fight a fire at the docks. We dashed down the hill, through the town to the docks. A ship was on fire but we could do nothing as we had no firefighting equipment. One man was trapped and tried to wriggle through a porthole. He died before a torch could be brought to cut a larger hole. Often I wondered why portholes on ships were not made a little larger.

Church parade on Sunday mornings was compulsory. Our colonel suggested that the whole battery march to a different church each Sunday, rather than going off in small groups to the church of our choice. Since I didn’t know of any assembly in Halifax, I went along. It was a standing joke that after the parson welcomed the battery to their midst that morning, he would announce, “We will now take up the offering.”

A huge Newfoundland dog was our mascot. He marched down the dock with us when we embarked for the Atlantic crossing but was not allowed on board. The dog did not intend to be left behind. At midnight when everything was quiet he started up the gangplank. The lone sentry could not restrain such a large dog, so he stowed away. He got out of quarantine in England just in time to rejoin the battery when it crossed over to France. The mascot disappeared when we first went into action and we heard reports that a large dog had been seen up in the front lines.

In the south of England we were moved to different camps for various stages of our training. Occasionally I got a weekend leave and was able to visit my brother and his wife and some of our old friends. In the depth of winter we were at Lydd, a bleak spot on the south coast. There we were trained in building gun emplacements. One night with snow on the ground I attempted to jump over what I supposed was a narrow creek. While still in mid-air I realized it was wider than I thought! I went through the ice up to my hips in cold

water! A breathtaking discovery! But it had its compensations—I was ordered back to barracks to get hot soup and dry clothes and was excused from further duty.

At our last camp on Salisbury Plains we were supplied with our guns—six-inch (155m) howitzers—and other equipment, including steel helmets, which had been introduced the previous year. One chap entered the barracks wearing his helmet. Behind the door was another soldier, with a push broom, which he brought down on the steel helmet with a resounding whack. He almost knocked the fellow out but pleaded, “I just wanted to see how good they are!”

An overnight trip on a smelly cargo ship took us from Southampton to Le Havre in France. On the previous trip, it had carried horses and mules, much used for carrying supplies to the front lines. Nobody seems to have bothered to clean up afterwards. After a short while in Le Havre we traveled north by box cars to the front. Our guns were in place just in time for the opening barrage for the battle of Vimy Ridge on Easter Sunday, 1917. Being quite far back (befitting greenhorns as we were) the Germans were soon pushed back beyond our range. Vimy Ridge overlooks the coal mining district of Lens and the Douai plain. On a clear day Douai can be seen, the place where the Roman Catholic version of the Bible was published in 1609 A.D. The Canadian infantry soon cleared the ridge of Germans and pushed forward to the plains beyond. They probably could have broken through the German lines and gone on to Douai, but the generals were not prepared for a fluid war. For them it was a static war of armies in the trenches facing each other. It was not long before the walking wounded were filtering back through the village where we were. From one of them I learned that my chum, Frank Maynard, had been killed in the assault that morning. It was quite a shock because I was hoping to see him again soon.

During the summer of 1917 we saw considerable action as we were located in a village at the north end of Vimy Ridge. German planes knocking down our observation balloon, a disabled plane

skimming over our heads to a crash landing, dog fights as those planes did barrel rolls and loops. One day we saw a red plane which we guess may have been the famous German Red Dragon ace, Baron von Richtofen. When I see our modern planes I wonder how the contraptions they flew then could stay together.

My job as signaler involved mostly repairing and installing lines between the guns and headquarters. During two years of combat I never once fired any kind of gun. Our quarters were in the basement of a ruined house. One day in the next village we saw a stove, which had been removed from a house and was evidently destined for some officer’s mess. That night we “acquired” it for our own use. As I was reading by the light of an oil lamp one night, my buddy knocked it over. I jumped up to beat out the flames from the kerosene on my bed. My buddy roared with laughter as he said, “Look at your hair!” I couldn’t see my hair but I rubbed my hand vigorously to extinguish the flames shooting up from my hair. He thought it was a hilarious sight! Fortunately no damage was done apart from a free hair singe; it was just the kerosene that burned. I got even with him a little later. One day he said, “I smell something burning.” With a laugh I replied, “Yes, it is your moustache.” He was burning his cigarette to such a short butt, it was singeing his moustache.

Soon after arriving at that village it was my turn at noon to collect our food from the cookhouse. The cooks were in a ruined house. Since I was busy on a job one of my chums from Victoria offered to go in my place. The Germans had evidently been watching men gathering at that spot. That day a shell struck the cookhouse killing seven of our fellows, including my chum. Another fellow from Victoria lost his leg at that time. I realized that God was taking care of me, even though I didn’t deserve it.

That same afternoon two of us signalers were ordered to accompany a lieutenant to a forward observation post. The road we had to take was one of those French hard cobblestone roads, and the Germans were dropping a shell on it every minute. Our lieutenant

never thought of taking a detour apparently. We started up that road. A shell landed and as the fragments flew overhead we ran as fast as we could, loaded down with equipment. Then the whistle of another shell coming! We dived into a trench beside the road long enough to avoid its fragments. Then up and on the run again. We were very expert in judging the size and approximate destination of any shell by the sound it made. A leisurely hum could be ignored but not a sudden rush. The problem was that the nearer the shell was coming, the less warning time.

One September night the Germans shelled the village with small shells. We called them “whiz-bangs” because there was a whiz, then a bang. Among these were some gas shells. The gas sank into the hollows so we avoided the ditches and shell-holes. We had gas masks which we seldom used. It was impossible to communicate with a mouthpiece, and the eye pieces were of mica, which clouded up. (That was before clear plastic had been invented.) A lot of our lines were broken so we were out all night repairing communication lines.

With daylight the shelling stopped and it was a beautiful sunny clear morning. Before getting some rest, Martin and I volunteered to go to the cookhouse for our day’s rations. Returning to our billets we were approaching the main intersection in the village. We heard the screech of a large shell coming fast and close! I dropped and flattened myself on the road as the shell landed and fragments flew. Sometime later I found a small piece the size of a split pea had penetrated the leather patch on my riding breeches and just lightly scratched the skin. Relieved that I had not been hit I jumped to my feet and called to Martin to come on. He was lying face down on the road and didn’t move. I turned him over—a fragment had torn into his chest. Already his uniform was soaked in blood. I rushed to get help but knew it was no use. He was a fatalist and venturesome, so I doubt that he even tried to fall flat. For a while my nerves were a wreck. Again the Lord had graciously delivered me. Yet I didn’t change my ways. Strange but true, that often the fear of men has a

stronger hold on us than the fear of God.

Soon after that episode we were transferred north to the cathedral city of Ypres in Belgium. The cathedral and most of the town lay in ruins. We were billeted in the basements of ruined houses. Our guns were located about five miles out of the city towards Passchendale Ridge which our forces were trying to take from the Germans. Every other morning we walked out to our battery position for a 24-hour duty; we passed through places where there had been villages but not a brick remained. Off the main road it was nothing but mud, knee-deep and thigh-deep. The mud had its compensations for it smothered the fragments of bursting shells.

At that time I was teamed up with a typical old soldier, usually grumbling and complaining about everything. However, we seemed to get along well together. One day we were sent to check on telephone connections installed in an old German gun emplacement. The doorway faced the German line and the door was a wet blanket soaked with mud. Ever thank God for a wet blanket? I had just entered, trying to adjust to the candlelight inside, when a German shell burst just outside the door. The blanket smothered any fragments but the candles were all extinguished. I was shook up and the fellows inside were cursing me for attracting that shell. What about Brown who was just behind me. I called to him. He shouted back, “I’ve been hit!” I dashed outside—he had been thrown 20 feet to the other side of the emplacement. He was feeling himself to find out where he had been hit. Actually he wasn’t, but was badly shaken and that ended our duties for that day.

The Canadian infantry captured the ridge with much loss of life. We were pulled out for a rest over Christmas. The Canadian Commander, General Currie visited us on the farm where we were resting. Before the war he owned a real estate agency in Victoria and I often delivered packages to his house. In his speech he said the capture of the Ridge afforded us a jumping off place for the spring offensive. That spring of 1918, the Germans took the offensive and pushed our troops off the Ridge back almost to Ypres.

At that time we were in position on the southern end of Vimy Ridge. We didn’t get news but we knew by watching the positions of the observation balloons that the Germans were advancing both north and south of us. We were in a dangerous salient. Our officers were edgy for they knew it would be difficult for us to retreat. The code word was “Ottawa.” That meant blow up the guns and get out as best you can. Fortunately we didn’t have to run for it. With the arrival of American reinforcements on the Western Front, the German drive was halted and turned.

That summer and fall we were out of trench warfare and more constantly on the move as the Germans were being driven back. We would hardly get into position before orders came to move again. We were advancing through terrain which had not been so badly destroyed. We stopped in villages that had only recently been evacuated by the inhabitants. The danger here was booby traps left by the enemy. A soldier entered a home where there was a piano; as he struck the keys it blew up. During that advance we ran into some poison gas but it was fairly well dispersed. Apart from runny eyes and noses it didn’t seem to bother us much. Not wanting to be thought of as a malingerer, I didn’t bother to report it. Later I realized it would have helped me to have a sick call on my record. Also I reaped some consequences after discharge.

One evening one of our buddies killed a rabbit with a lucky throw of a stone. We gathered some vegetables from some Frenchman’s garden and had a good rabbit stew, a welcome variation to bully (corned) beef and hard biscuits. Then in November came the glad news of an armistice. I still have a message form that came to our battery, “Hostilities will cease at eleven hours on November 11th… there will be no intercourse of any description with the enemy.” In a village in Belgium at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we embraced each other and rejoiced that at last the fighting was over. Sometimes it had seemed as if it would go on forever! We moved into a town near Mons and were there for some months. This was where the British “Ol’ Contemptibles” first faced

the Germans in 1914.

Some of us got a pass to visit Brussels just ten days after the Germans left that city. We splurged on an expensive meal in a hotel on the main square. On our way there we passed through Waterloo, reminder of an earlier war. The army set up some practical courses, which would be a help in returning to civilian life. Early in 1919 I went on a pass to visit my brother in England. On my return I passed through Folkestone to get my boat across the Channel. Some Canadians were demonstrating, demanding an immediate return to Canada. The delay gave me an opportunity to visit with my uncle and aunt there. When I got to France I was again delayed at a base camp but finally got on a train, riding a freight car. It was headed for Cologne, Germany, and I was tempted to go all the way. However, since I was already AWOL I decided to hop off near Mons. I feared if I stayed away too long it might delay my return to Canada.

In the spring we transferred to a camp in North Wales to await our departure for Canada. At the beginning of May we boarded the S.S. Mauritania at Southampton. It paid off to have a name beginning with “B”—I was assigned to a cabin, instead of a hammock in the hold. The Mauritania was a sister ship to the ill-fated Lusitania which had been sunk by the Germans early in the war. For years it was the fastest ship across the Atlantic. Our trip was no exception. Leaving Southampton on Sunday evening we arrived in Halifax early Friday morning. Disembarkation went off without a hitch. Those going to the West Coast disembarked first on to a waiting train. Thousands of men were off the ship that morning and at noon it left for New York for a return trip.

At many towns on that 3000-mile journey welcoming crowds greeted the returning veterans. Only on the last part of the journey did the authorities foul things up. We had to have just one more experience of the army’s “hurry up and wait.” From Vancouver to Victoria they chartered a slow boat when we could have easily been accommodated on the regular daily sailing.

The inner harbor of Victoria is one to the most picturesque in the world. It never looked better than on that evening in May as we filled the forepart of the ship. As the ship approached the dock, right ahead was the beautiful Empress Hotel, ivy-covered and surrounded with lawns. To the right were the stately Government Buildings with trim lawns and beautiful flowerbeds. But the best sight of all was the loved ones waiting on the pier and waving frantically as we came in sight. Home again safe and sound! “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” It surely was only because of super-abounding grace that I was back from the horrors of war.

Chapter 5

Call to the Mission Field

“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.” (Psa. 32:8)

During the months prior to returning home I faced up to the need of a change in my lifestyle. Getting out of the army and away from army life seemed like a good time to get right with the Lord. Anyway I was tired of the way I had been living, tired of treating the Lord so despicably in spite of all His wonderful grace in keeping me safe through years of combat. After the armistice I had given up cigarettes and had switched to a pipe. Even then, long before warning about lung cancer, cigarettes were called “coffin nails.” Crossing the Atlantic I tossed pipe and tobacco into the ocean. I had cleaned up my life but was not yet getting into the Word.

Soon after arriving home I was invited by Brother Fisher to spend some time with him at Deep Bay. He was a brother of one of the pioneer missionaries to what is now Zambia. Mr. Fisher had a few acres of land on the waterfront where he grew asparagus and black currants to augment his retirement pay. Working in the garden and going fishing was a restful change from war experiences. He gave me a Scofield Bible, which was a help as I started the habit of daily reading of the Scriptures.

Also, soon after my return it was announced that C.A. Swan would have three meetings at Victoria Hall in downtown Victoria. As one of the pioneers in Central Africa he had thrilling tales to tell. He first went to Africa in 1887. In 1904, for health reasons he went to Portugal and during the war had worked with Portuguese troops in France. This was of interest to me because for some time we had had some Portuguese attached to our battery in France. In boyhood days I had been keenly interested in hearing missionaries, especially those from Africa; but at this time I was going more out of curiosity, little dreaming the impact those meetings would have on my own life.

I remember very well where I was sitting at the third meeting.

Before giving his address, Mr. Swan prayed. He prayed for those who had been bereaved during the war—for those women whose men would not be returning. More than 60,000 Canadians died in World War I. Then he thanked God for those who were returning and said, “Lord, show them what they have been spared for!” I have not the slightest idea what else he prayed for or how long he prayed. His request was instantly answered in my case. The Lord spoke to me. It was not an audible voice; no one else heard it. But it was as real to me as the voice of the preacher. “I have spared you to go to the mission field!” Foolishly I tried to argue with the Lord—that is always a wasted effort. “But, Lord, I have just arrived home after being away three years. I don’t want to leave again right away. I have a widowed mother and I need to stay here, build a home, and provide for her.” Again I heard His voice, “You left home for king and country, are you not willing to leave home for Me? Don’t you believe I can take care of your mother?” What is the use of trying to argue with the One who has all the answers? Before Mr. Swan finished his prayer I also had prayed, “All right, Lord, if that is what you want, I am willing.”

God is a God of infinite variety and He uses different methods to call His servants. It is not often that He speaks so directly, but I am thankful to Him for that definite call. During our first furlough, I met Brother Swan again in Victoria and related to him how God had instantly answered his prayer that night.

One of the first priorities before going to the mission field was to build a home for my Mother and sister Florrie. We were able to buy two lots, L-shaped around my sister Ethel’s home. One of the jobs I had was working for a brother who was a builder. In my spare time I dismantled a small house on the lots we bought. With the help of our builder friend, plans were drawn and a start made on building a house. Good progress was made during the summer of 1919. Many evenings young fellows from the assembly would come and help build.

I had found a new joy in walking with the Lord and feeding upon

His word and in realizing His grace in calling me to be a missionary. Often I was singing while I was working. One day up on the roof laying shingles, I was singing and suddenly realized I had just sung, “Some day this earthly house will fall.” The humor of it struck me. As far as I know that earthly house is still standing after over sixty years. After Mother passed away, Ethel and Richard sold their house and moved into that house, and after Ethel’s home call it was sold.

The Canadian government was offering educational opportunities to veterans, especially for those who, like myself, had enlisted in their teens. I submitted an application for the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, but it was turned down because it was not in Canada. At that time I didn’t know of any Bible school in Canada though there was one in Vancouver. So I applied for a commercial course in a business college in Victoria.

Through the fall and early winter I was working hard, studying days and working on the house at night, unless it was a meeting night. Dr. Harris Gregg held a series of Bible lectures, which I attended at noon and in the evenings. These were a great blessing in my spiritual life, but the pace was beginning to take its toll.

Early in January 1920, we had a very cold spell. I was getting dressed one morning and saw flames reflected in the mirror. I dashed out to see a neighbor’s house on fire and rushed over to see if I could help. The owner was coming out of the basement and said no one was in the house. While I was about to see if any of his belongings could be saved, the roof caved in and nothing more could be done.

Shortly after that, I had bronchitis, which developed into pneumonia and pleurisy. When I was admitted to the Jubilee Hospital I didn’t realize how serious the condition was. All I could think of was the stabbing pains in my rib cage with every breath I took. About eleven that night the veteran’s chaplain came in to pray with me. I wondered why he came at such an hour. I appreciated his concern though I don’t think he was a saved man.

That evening a businessman from India was booked to give a Bible study at the Oaklands Chapel. Just before he spoke it was announced that I was seriously ill in the hospital and that the doctor didn’t think I would last until morning. I didn’t know that until later. The guest speaker suggested that instead of a Bible study they give themselves to prayer. “But prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.” (Acts 12:5). “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick” (Jas. 5:15). That doesn’t require instantaneous healing—in my case it was a long process.

The doctor tried to draw off the fluid in the pleural cavity by inserting a needle. This was unsuccessful because the fluid had turned into pus. That called for an operation, cutting between the ribs to insert a drainage tube. Mother came to see me before going into the operating room and said, “If anything happens, it is all right, isn’t it?” “Of course,” I replied, “but nothing is going to happen. I am going to the mission field and this must be part of the training.” Dr. Wace, one of the best surgeons in Canada operated, but my confidence was not in him but in the Lord.

Coming out of ether (what a retched smell!) I was greeted cheerily by the head nurse on the ward, Miss Harman. She was a keen Christian and later was a missionary in the Congo and was martyred in the rebellion there. The Matron of the hospital was a very different type. The nurses were terrified of her as they heard her storming down the hospital corridors. Mother had brought me a few violets, the only flowers in the garden. They were too small for any available vase so the nurse had put them in a small dish. Miss McKenzie came into the room, spotted the violets and with an indignant swoop carried off my violets, saying, “Violets in my salt cellar!” Weak as I was, I just had to laugh, though the nurse saw no humor in the situation.

My roommate was Mr. Enoch from Ladysmith. He was not like his Biblical namesake for he was not a believer. My visitors and I had many opportunities to witness to him about the Savior. He seemed to be near the point of decision but one day said, “I don’t

have the kind of faith you have.” I replied, “What do you think faith is, something that comes in 57 varieties?” It is not the kind of faith or the quantity of your faith that counts—what is vital is the object of our faith. When he left the hospital he had not put his faith in Christ.

Two or three months later pus accumulated again and so another operation was scheduled. This was done by Dr. Russell Robertson, who was also a very fine surgeon. He was a tall, dignified man with penetrating eyes. He would stand at the foot of a patient’s bed, read the chart, and look at the patient. Some of them said he didn’t need an X-ray for he could look right through you. The physician in charge of my case was Dr. Baillie with whom I developed a fine rapport.

That summer I was transferred to the military hospital in Esquimalt, overlooking the harbor. The surroundings there were much nicer but it was a long way for my visitors to come. The Matron there was very different. She maintained strict discipline but never raised her voice and never corrected a nurse in front of the patients. She was a lady who won their respect by her fairness.

There it was discovered that my kidneys had been affected and I had nephritis. That meant seat baths and a restricted diet. It was strawberry season and I didn’t object to a dish of strawberries every meal. The doctor prescribed a bottle of Guinness Stout as a tonic every day. I didn’t object on conscientious grounds since it was prescribed as medicine, but I didn’t like the stuff. All the other patients wanted the same prescription!

One of the orderlies there was a short, stocky man with long arms. The guys called him Tarzan. He wrecked more than one bedside table which did not easily adjust. The nurse at that time was an unusually large girl, almost six foot and well proportioned. One evening Tarzan brought in the supper trays without the dessert which was stewed apricots. The nurse ordered him to take out the trays and add the dessert in the ward kitchen. To Tarzan it was simpler to bring in the large bowl of apricots and ladle them out on

the trays. It was a battle of wills. She ordered him to take out the trays. He threatened to throw the apricots at her. She had the authority but he had the power! He hurled the bowlful of apricots, right on target. She was apricots from her cap all down her uniform. She ran out in tears to change. Tarzan hastily departed amid the indignant shouts of the patients. He didn’t return!

In October the Matron kindly arranged for an ambulance to take me for a day with my family. It was an act of kindness that was greatly appreciated. Towards the end of November I was discharged from the hospital—almost the entire year spent there. My application for a new course was turned down because the Board said my illness was not service related. If only I had gone on sick call when I got that whiff of gas in France!

The first Lord’s day back at the Lord’s Supper after all those months of absence was a precious occasion. Someone gave out the hymn “Awake, my soul, in joyful lays.” I asked them to repeat one verse:

“When trouble, like a gloomy cloud,
has gathered thick and thundered loud,
He near my soul has always stood
His loving-kindness, oh how good!”

A few months after my release from the hospital I was offered a job which afforded a wonderful opportunity for recuperation. Our friends, the McGees, were in charge of a small leper colony on D’Arcy Island, a few miles from Victoria. Mrs. McGee was going to England for a few months and her husband needed companionship and assistance. It was really like a vacation for the work was minimal. Besides five lepers, all Chinese, there were just the two of us. We lived on Big D’Arcy and we could walk all around it in half an hour. Nearby was Little D’Arcy, which was uninhabited. It had a cove, which was an ideal spot for bootleggers to hide. Those were Prohibition days in the U.S. and we were only a few miles from the border. Since we had no means of communication or protection, it was prudent to ignore what was going on around us. There was time

to think about the future and pray about being a missionary. One day the Lord showed me very clearly that wherever He sent me, I would have to learn to love the people, even if they seemed unlovable in some ways. Then I had no idea where He wanted me to go. I had some thoughts of Africa and also of Portugal to help brother Swan.

During those years of waiting for the Lord to open the door, I received great help from Brother Duncan McKerracher. He taught a class of young fellows and we drew upon his knowledge of the Scriptures. Sometimes after prayer meeting we would stand under a street lamp with our Bibles looking for answers to our questions. He introduced me to good books and helpful writers, like Sir Robert Anderson, Dr. A. T. Pierson, and others.

One evening we called on Mr. Cecil Hoyle, then an old man, who had been a missionary in Spain from 1876 to 1907.

Sometimes I thought about the elders at Oaklands. Some of them were still in their thirties, but ten years or so older than I. In ten years would I have the ability in preaching, teaching, and leading an assembly? It was another challenge to apply myself more diligently to the study of the Word of God.

One of the older men, Billy James, a bachelor, was a bit eccentric. But he really loved the Lord and was exuberant with the joy of the Lord. He was a chimney sweep and never seemed to get all the soot off his face. But at the worship service his grimy face would just beam with his simple-hearted love for Christ. Mother would often invite him home for lunch on Sunday, in spite of her feeling that he could do with a good bath!

Saturday evenings there was an open-air meeting on Government Street outside a mission called “Stranger’s Rest.” Billy would come straight from his work, his face black with soot, and declared to whoever was in earshot, “My face is black but my heart is white, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.” One day he said to me, “Did you notice the Greek owner of the candy store across the street? He sat

in his upstairs window listening all evening. Let’s pray for his conversion.” On our first furlough we were visiting in a home in Long Beach, California. Our hostess had a Christian lady help with her laundry. As the latter was ironing I learned that she was from Victoria. It turned out that her husband, Mr. Phillips, was the Greek owner of the candy store. He had been saved, had given up his business to go into full-time work among Greeks in the U.S.

Billy James would often eat a simple noon lunch at the Stranger’s Rest. He invited me to join him there and spend some time in prayer together which I was happy to do. I learned that previously John Lamb had met with him for prayer and went to Venezuela where he served the Lord from 1920 to 1932. He was followed by Dan Baillie. Dan was from Ladysmith, up the Island, but was living in Victoria. He spent five years (1921-1926) in Manchuria as a missionary. It was my privilege to follow and to kneel in prayer in a corner of the mission with this dear brother. He never went to the foreign field himself but helped pray others out.

Chapter 6

Preparing for the Mission Field

“The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O LORD, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands.” (Psa. 138:8)

In the early months of 1921, Mr. Tom Baird visited Victoria. He had formerly been a missionary in Malaya (1893-1906) and was a forceful speaker, much addicted to alliteration. One of his sayings (quoted from memory):

“Oh! Will my will to will God’s will, then willing will be well.
The willing will that wills God’s will, within God’s will will dwell.”

Through him I learned about the Missionary Training School in Brooklyn, New York, under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Hill. (The daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Baird was married to Rowland Hill, a brother of Richard.) The Richard Hills had been missionaries in Persia and Turkestan from 1908-1918, and had started the school to help prospective missionaries.

It was very naïve for me to pray that the elders at Oaklands Chapel would be unanimous in their willingness to commend me for missionary work, and primarily to spend some time at the Missionary Training School. Now that I am wiser in the ways of elders I would not have the faith to pray such a prayer. But very graciously they did commend me, and if there were any dissenters I was not informed. The counsel of Duncan McKerracher was a great help and blessing in those days. In August I finally received a reply from Mr. Hill welcoming me to the School. After receiving his letter I read Psalm 138 with great blessing, assured that the Lord would fulfill His purpose in me. Still I had no guidance on the field of service though my thoughts turned toward Africa or possibly to Portugal, realizing that Mr. Swan needed help there.

On my way from Victoria to New York, I stopped for a day in Port Hope, Ontario, to visit my Aunt Millie and two cousins. She was my Mother’s youngest sister and had married a retired army

man. He was a professing Christian who regularly attended a Baptist church. The members there were probably not aware of how shabbily he treated his family. Shortly before my visit he had been working on the railroad and had been in an accident. It was really a relief for my aunt to be spared his meanness.

Approaching New York on the train from Montreal, I was getting shaved. In the mirror of the washroom, I saw a passenger open his case and lying on the top was a Bible. Supposing he was a Christian I was wondering how I could strike up a conversation. He was evidently a traveling salesman acquainted with another passenger in the washroom. The latter remarked, “What’s that—a Bible? I didn’t know you believed in that stuff!” The man replied, “I don’t, but it helps getting through customs!”

Landing in Grand Central in New York and trying to find the way to Brooklyn is quite an experience for a stranger. As I grabbed my suitcase, a fellow offered his help which I declined for I suspected ulterior motives. I found a subway train marked “Brooklyn” but got off too soon, still in downtown Manhattan. Up on the surface in the square at City Hall, I asked a man how to get to Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn. He replied, “See that tall building? That’s the Woolworth Towers, the tallest building in the world (at that time).” I wasn’t interested in a tourist spiel; I wanted to get to Brooklyn. He continued, “Go over there and below that building you will find a subway for Flatbush, Brooklyn. Seventh Avenue runs off Flatbush.”

So before noon I located the school but the only people there were a family of missionaries home on furlough, Mr. and Mrs. Asa Moore. She was a sister of Richard Hill. They shared their lunch with me and told me that everyone was at the conference at Sea Cliff, Long Island. So by mid-afternoon I had found my way to the conference at Sea Cliff. A meeting was in progress, a question and answer meeting with C.F. Hogg and Harold St. John on the panel. One questioner wanted to know why believers from various assemblies could fellowship together there but when they went

home, there was no fellowship between some of their assemblies. Mr. Hogg raised his hands and replied, “The inconsistencies of brethren!” Another question was that old perennial about baptism for the dead. Both Mr. Hogg and Mr. St. John said they had seen many interpretations, none of which satisfied them. They didn’t know the meaning. After the meeting I approached a group around a brother who seemed to think he had the answer!

After the evening service I located a cot on the upper floor of the chapel, the regular meeting place of the assembly in Sea Cliff. The young men billeted there were rather noisy and boisterous. No one seemed to be in charge. I was tired after a long exciting day full of new scenes. After eleven o’clock I thought it was a poor testimony for the assembly among the neighbors. So I went to the head of the stairs and over the din demanded they quiet down. Next morning I noticed furtive glances in my direction. None of them, of course, could identify the stranger—and I didn’t enlighten them.

Since I was handy at carpentry and had some of my tools with me, after the conference I was asked to help with repairs at the Sea Cliff Yacht Club. This building, facing on the shores of Long Island Sound, had been purchased by the conference committee. After work on Saturday afternoon I went down to the pier for a swim with George Fraser who was preparing to go to Venezuela. He dove in with his glasses on and lost them. Repeated dives failed to locate them, and he was sorely handicapped. Next morning early, after praying about this need, he went down to the shore as the tide was out. There he found his glasses intact without a scratch in spite of the tossing of the water on the pebbly beach.

There was also work to be done on the school building in Brooklyn as we were settling in. The fellows were on the top floor and I roomed with Leonard Bewick from Kansas City. Horace Davey from Ottawa and Tom Mornan from Buffalo were in another room. Also on that top floor was the only married couple in our class, William and Margaret McKellin from Paterson, New Jersey. On the

floor below were the girls, Carrie Saunders from Peterborough, who in later years married Horace, Margaret (Peg) Fleming, later married to Mr. Kramer of Guatemala, Margaret (Meg) Dryden of Seattle, later married to James Buckley, and Irene Stedman, Len’s fiancée, and Anna Carson from Buffalo, who roomed together.

Soon after classes started in September there was a Saturday conference at the Richmond Hill assembly on Long Island. Several students planned to go but one by one dropped out so that only Anna Carson and I went. In the meeting, Scott Aspinall, an elder from Brooklyn, was sitting a couple of rows ahead of us. His head was nodding but not in agreement with the longwinded preacher! Gently I nudged Anna’s elbow to call her attention to his vain effort to stay awake. There was no platonic interest in that nudge. Actually then I thought she had a boyfriend in Buffalo. Back at the school, I happened to mention the incident to the fellows, and it was their subsequent teasing that did arouse my interest. Later they told a joke about a black man who was buying a cigar, but wasn’t sure what brand to buy. He was also uncertain which girl to marry. The salesman suggested “Havana,” to which the customer replied eagerly, “That’s what I’ll do—I’ll have Anna.” However, I wasn’t seeking that kind of guidance! But before telling how the Lord guided, let me digress to tell about Anna Carson’s background.

Early in the 1890’s a young carpenter, Samuel Carson left Ballymena in Ulster, N. Ireland, for Buffalo, New York. He was disappointed to find only one assembly there since he was aquatinted with Belfast where there were many. In Buffalo he met an Irish lass, Rose Logan, who came from a village about twenty miles from Ballymena. They were married and had two children in the U.S. before returning to Belfast. In fact they crossed the ocean more than once. Of their nine children, the two eldest and the two youngest were born in Buffalo, the rest in Belfast. The middle one of the nine was Anna who had two bothers and two sisters, both older and younger than herself.

When Anna was four or five, they left Belfast to return to Buffalo and Mother Carson refused to make the trip again.

Anna was a bit of a tomboy who would eagerly leave her dolls at the chance to play baseball with the boys. A visiting friend asked her how long it took her to walk to school. She didn’t know, as she never walked to school. “I can make it in three minutes when I jump the back fence and go through the vacant lots.”

Brought up in a Christian home and attending Sunday school regularly, Anna knew the way of salvation. Her Sunday school teacher was Jeannie Mowat and one Sunday she asked the girls if they were saved. Anna replied, “Yes—I think so.” Later on, Gavin Mowat, Jean’s husband, was the speaker at the Sunday evening service. On the way home he asked Anna, “Anna, are you saved?” This time she was able to answer with confidence, “Yes, I know I am now.” She had believed before but had lacked the assurance of salvation.

So Anna spent her school days, elementary and high school, in Buffalo. Her interest in missions was stimulated by her friendship with Gavin and Jeannie Mowat. Jean’s brother George Gibson marred Sarah, Anna’s eldest sister. The Mowats went to Central Africa (1911-1927) and then to South Africa (1928-1950). No one could attend Assembly Hall in Buffalo for long and not be made aware of missions. Edward Fairbairn, a leading brother, was a dynamic missionary enthusiast even though he was a businessman in Buffalo.

When Anna expressed her desire to be a missionary, Mother Carson could not bring herself to be willing to part with her daughter. She was a very dear Christian but found it hard to face such a sacrifice. Meanwhile, Anna was teaching a Sunday school class of little boys, among whom were Lyndon and Laurence Hess and William Oglesby, who all went into the Lord’s service in later years. Anna refused to go against her Mother’s wishes, confident that if the Lord wanted her to be a missionary, He would incline her

Mother to give her consent. The delay of a year or two was a testing time, part of God’s preparation. Finally in 1921 Mother gave her consent and Anna went to Brooklyn. She has often commented since that if she had had her own way and gone earlier, we probably would not have met.

As interest in Anna deepened into love, I realized the need to be very sure of the Lord’s will in this matter of a life partner. When I first arrived at the school someone gave me a leaflet on “The Will of God.” What impressed me in this leaflet was the truth that God had a plan and purpose for the life of every believer. I determined to study what the New Testament taught about the will of God. With the help of a concordance I looked up every reference. Not an easy task because often “will” is used as an auxiliary verb. One of the great lessons I learned was concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. In the four Gospels, only about three times did He mention His own will and each time it was for the blessing of others.

So I began to pray earnestly that the Lord would show me His will regarding Anna Carson. Naturally the more I prayed and thought about her, the more intense became my desire for her. But there was no green light from the Lord, no assurance that this was His will for me. Weeks passed by—times of spiritual struggle. Once I decided to try something that I knew was not right. I would let my Bible fall open and see what verse came up. Naturally the Bible fell open near the middle, at the book of Job. Before my eyes were these words, “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?” (Job 31:1). That was not what I wanted! It was even more discouraging as I read on, “If mine heart have been deceived by a woman” (v.9). However, as I prayed about this, I was convicted of the error of handling God’s Word in such a way. The guidance I then received was not about a life partner but on how to apply the Scriptures to my present circumstances.

Several weeks went by in this heart-searching, seeking to know the Lord’s will. Then in our class one morning as we studied the life

of Christ, there was a sentence at the bottom of the outline. “They forsook all and followed him” (Luke 5:11). It challenged me! Four fishermen had just made the biggest catch of fish in their career—what a price they would fetch in the market! But they forsook all, fish, friends, fortune, and family to follow Him. Then I realized I had not forsaken all, even in my earnest desire to know His will. Deep down in my heart was the unexpressed wish, “Lord, I want your will but please let it be what I want.” I was not fully yielded; I had not forsaken all. As the class closed with prayer, I prayed my own prayer, “Lord, if You want me to go to the mission field alone, I am willing to do Your will.”

It was not an easy lesson to learn. There has to be complete surrender to His will without any mental reservations. “If any man will do His will, he shall know…” (John 7:17). We must be willing to do God’s will before we know what His will is. (To know God’s will we must be prepared to do the very opposite to what we desire.) Then I learned how wonderfully gracious is our God! It seemed almost immediately after I reached that point of full surrender (and really meant it) that the Lord granted me my desire. The assurance came to me that it was the Lord’s will for me to ask Anna to share my life.

For appearance’s sake in the neighborhood, students of the opposite sex were not allowed to go out in pairs. We were not circumventing that law when we met later. So on December 3, 1921, Anna and I went out and rendezvoused. Then I told her for the first time that I loved her and found it was reciprocal. Sixty years later we are still telling each other of our love! We went through Prospect Park (it would probably be unsafe now) where I told her how the Lord had been leading and that I wanted her to have first place in my life after the Lord. Miss Annie Hill had asked Anna to get some argyrel for her but in our excitement we asked for arsenic! The look on the face of the drugstore clerk made us realize our mistake. Miss Hill never learned how our romance had endangered her!

Our class did a lot of things together, and there was a good spirit of fellowship. We often went together to conferences, to farewells for other missionaries, and to our weekly medical lectures by Dr. Baldwin. Most afternoons were spent helping in a hospital outpatient department. The mornings were devoted to Bible lectures. John Hill was a favorite instructor with most. Formerly a businessman he had a methodical mind and his outlines were a help in our studies. He was interested in the students and arranged trips to such places as museums or the 42nd Street Library where we were shown some rare Biblical manuscripts. Richard Hill was different than his brother in that he was more of a devotional speaker. Everyone had a great respect for George Aldrich because his rich spiritual teaching was backed by a godly life. His reading of part of I Corinthians 15 was unforgettable—this was at the funeral of Mr. Faulkner, father of Mrs. Richard Hill. Brother Aldrich had formerly been an Anglican clergyman and his diction was beautiful.

A Wall Street businessman, Charles Bellinger, came in one evening each week to teach Galatians. He asked questions which forced us to think for ourselves. Even if our answers were correct he would sometimes oppose them to see if we would hold our ground. Some of the students were awed if not terrified! But he was a real friend of the students and keenly interested in missions. We also benefited by the visits of other preachers and missionaries. We shall not soon forget the visit of Charles Kramer from Guatemala. He spoke little English but would lustily sing in Spanish, until one day the police informed us the neighbors were complaining.

School life was not without its lighter sides. There were some who seriously doubted our fitness as prospective missionaries. But I pity the missionary without a sense of humor. Harriet the cook was a sister from the Black assembly in New York. Her room was immediately below our bathroom on the top floor. Coming in one evening, Anna and I discovered water dripping in her room. Harriet was away for the weekend. I ran upstairs and saw the bathtub was overflowing so I turned off the water. In Tom’s room a discussion

was in progress as usual, on election or predestination. Casually I inquired who intended to take a bath. Tom raised his hands in horror—he had completely forgotten he had left the water running. Not long after that we repainted the rooms upstairs. Len Bewick did the bathroom. Since it was hard to get behind the tub he moved one end slightly and broke the waste connection. Again Harriet’s room got an unwanted shower.

In some ways the conditions at the school were not ideal. We were made to realize that we were “only students” and learned to accomplish the lowly task. However, there were benefits in the teaching we received and also in the many contacts with people and assemblies, particularly in the New Jersey area.

Another advantage was getting to know many of the Lord’s people in the assemblies in that area, especially over in New Jersey. It was our privilege to get to know some of the leading men of God, and we still treasure the memories of those men, most of whom are now at home with the Lord.

Usually we fellows would pair off to visit some assembly on Lord’s Day, very often by invitation. It was our mutual arrangement that one fellow would pay both fares going and the other would pay coming home. One Sunday Len Bewick and I set out for New Jersey. As I was short of cash I let him pay the way going there. What money I did have went into the offering. Quite often someone would slip some money into our hands on such occasions. But that day I had received nothing and I doubted that Len had enough to pay our homeward fare. Secretly I was praying about this—not even Len knew about my predicament. One of the brethren drove us to the train station, but how would we buy tickets without money? Then as we got out of the car I felt a bill left in my hand as I parted with the brother—more than enough to pay our fares. We learned many lessons of faith and of what it meant to trust God in those days.

Chapter 7

Guidance Regarding the Field

“Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.” (Psa. 25:4)

During the year at school we were much in prayer for guidance as to the sphere of service the Lord planned for us. Anna’s thoughts had been towards South America while mine were toward either Africa or Portugal. One morning in December, the student body was in prayer together as was the daily custom. It seemed as if the Lord said to me, “Go to the Philippines!” I didn’t even know where the Philippines were but I guessed they were somewhere off in the Pacific like Hawaii. To my best recollection I had only once heard of those Islands. Just previous to that in a letter from John Thomson, one of the elders at Oaklands Chapel, he had told about the visit there of Mr. and Mrs. George Wightman. They had formerly been serving the Lord in Mexico and were then on their way to the Philippines. When I stopped by a second-hand bookstore in Brooklyn a few days later I found a book on the Philippines. Usually I haunted such stores to look for Biblical books but that time I was looking for something different.

That Christmas I had been invited to visit an old Victorian friend who was farming in New England. It was a mild winter so I really enjoyed the opportunity to get away from the city and from studying. There wasn’t much I could do to help on the farm so I went for long walks. One afternoon I arrived at a sandy beach and walked up and down beside the sea. It was my prayer that the Lord would bring the Philippines before me again if that was the place He had chosen for us. That evening sitting before the crackling fire, Joe and I chatted together. He mentioned John Lamb in Venezuela, remarking that they spoke Spanish there. Then he said one of his neighbors spoke Spanish, having picked it up in the Philippines when he was in the army. Joe knew nothing of my exercise about that country. However, the mention was so casual that I asked the Lord for further confirmation.

Back in Brooklyn, I was at the watchnight service held at the

school. The next morning, I went to the 13th Avenue Gospel Hall for the Lord’s Supper. On the table were several copies of a new issue of “Voices from the Vineyard.” Glancing through this missionary magazine, I noticed a letter from George Wightman. But what caught my eye was the editor’s note in bold type right above the letter. It stated that for almost a quarter of a century the Philippine Islands had been under United States rule and yet so far there was no missionary serving the Lord there, commended from a U.S. assembly (Wightmans were from Scotland). That was the answer to my prayer for guidance. Further confirmation was that the same issue told of A. G. Ingleby going to Portugal to help Mr. Swan. It was as if the Lord was telling me He had someone else picked out for Portugal.

On my first furlough I related this incident to Richard Maclachlan, editor of Voices. He remembered that editorial note and said he could not recall doing such on any other occasion.

There was no doubt in my mind that we were to go to the Philippines but Anna wanted her own assurance as to the Lord’s will. She was not satisfied with my argument—if it was the Lord’s will for us to be married, then He wouldn’t send us to different fields. Basically she was fearful of the criticism that she changed the choice of field of service for my sake. There was one student who had signed an autograph book “Yours for India” but at a later date another entry said “Yours for China.” Eventually she went to Central America! One night Miss May Van Dine stayed with Anna and Irene as an overnight guest. While having her devotions next morning, she turned to Anna and said, “Anna, have you ever thought how sometimes we allow what people may say to divert us from what God wants us to do?” She too was unaware of what Anna had been thinking. That convinced Anna that she could accept going to the Philippines as the Lord’s will for her too.

Many times through the years we have been most thankful for the conviction we had that the Lord sent us to the Philippines. Our first term was particularly difficult with unforeseen discouragements

and repeated financial trials. Once it was suggested to us by a fellow missionary that we were in the wrong place and should seek another field of service. It would have been easy to become a missionary dropout! But we had this assurance that the Lord sent us there with clear and definite guidance. Therefore, we would need equally clear guidance if He should want us to leave.

As our first year at school drew to a close the question arose whether we should return for another year. We were not altogether happy with the situation there so questioned the advisability of returning. Another question was whether we should be married before going to the field. There were some very strong views about this. Responsible brethren in Great Britain and America were insisting that engaged couples should spend a year or two at least on the field before getting married. This would give time for cultural adjustment and language study before assuming marital responsibilities. The one exception would be when the missionary on the field recommended marriage first.

In our correspondence with Mr. Wightman, he suggested we should go as soon as feasible and that we should be married first. Since they were the only missionaries of our group there, it would be difficult to arrange suitable housing for singles. Naturally we were happy with his advice and the elders in Buffalo agreed to this. The next question was what to do in that summer of 1922 in further preparation for missionary work.

A good friend arranged for Anna to take a course in midwifery in Buffalo, believing that this would be of service on the mission field. So her summer was spent with medical studies and assisting a Christian doctor who lived across the street. Thus, she was able to get the required number of delivery cases, along with the lessons. Actually she rarely used this training in the Philippines. It was not needed since there are medical facilities available to most of the people.

Leaving the school in Brooklyn we traveled to Buffalo where I was introduced to her family. I don’t think they were greatly

impressed until I preached one Sunday evening at Assembly Hall. That was an ordeal for me and I really worked hard on preparation. The Lord graciously helped. Whether the hearers reaped spiritual benefits I don’t know, but I do know there were favorable reactions in the family. During the three weeks there I also helped in open-air meetings, visits to the City Mission, and in tract distribution.

Then I headed for northern Ontario. On the way I stopped at a Dominion Day conference in Hamilton where my old friend Tom Baird was one of the speakers. He kindly introduced me as an out-going missionary. After an overnight stop in Peterborough I went on to Haileybury. There I found my way to the home of Mr. Sam Taylor, an evangelist working for the Lord in that area, who was heading up a special campaign there. He was a hard worker who disciplined himself and expected others to do the same. As he opened the door I introduced myself and he greeted me, “Welcome, if you have come to do the work of an evangelist.” The emphasis on work did not escape me and I found there was indeed work to be done.

Other members of the team arrived a little later: Tom Baird spent part of the summer there. His messages and Bible studies and private conversations were a real help; Arthur Smith was a beloved member of the team with his winsome ways. He was one of the outstanding violinists in Canada and had played in some top-rate orchestras. It was always a thrill to listen to his playing though he never played just to entertain. Going into a small village for an open-air meeting, a man would look out of the saloon and shout, “Is Smitty there with his fiddle?” The saloon and pool hall would empty to listen to Smitty and his fiddle and also his attractive way of presenting the Gospel. Without “Smitty” we preached to unseen audiences—if there were any!

Then there was a young schoolteacher with his bride, Mr. and Mrs. Horace Lockett. It may have been there that he got some ideas which lead in later years to the summer Bible school in Guelph. Miss Hartshorn came from Peterborough as a pianist and soloist. To

our surprise a romance started between her and Sam Taylor. We thought he was a confirmed bachelor! Sam was no singer! One day at lunch he said to Muriel Hartshorn, “When I get to heaven, I’ll have one more joy than you—for the first time I shall really be able to sing.” Among our group also were Horace Davey who had been at Brooklyn with us and Alvin Sauer of Buffalo.

The mornings were devoted to Bible study. In the afternoons we went out in tract distribution covering the whole town of Haileybury and also in open-air meetings in isolated villages. Usually these would consist of a saloon and pool hall, a general store with a post office, and a dozen houses. It was not easy to preach when we didn’t know if anyone was listening. Saturday evening we helped in an open-air meeting in Cobalt, noted then for its cobalt mines. Sundays we would visit New Liskeard and help with the Sunday school and assembly meetings there. Haileybury is on the shore of Lake Temiskaming, a good place for swimming until some of us got sick from algae on the water.

Early in September I returned to Buffalo, but some of the workers carried on. Less than a month after the summer campaign ended a disastrous fire swept through that area. Haileybury was practically destroyed and there was a great loss of life. That no doubt included many who had heard the Gospel in that summer effort. The workers lost their possessions but were able to get out after helping others to evacuate.

On September 20th there was a quiet wedding in the Carson home with a reception afterwards in the Gibson apartment up stairs. None of my relatives were able to attend, and I was really too excited to remember much of what took place. We were married by Mr. Hugh Kame from Erie, Pennsylvania. He had formerly been a Baptist minister but had left the denomination to serve the Lord with the assemblies. Some of the young folks planned to chase us when we made our getaway. However, we climbed out a bedroom window and got in a waiting taxi and so eluded our pursuers. After a night at the Statler Hotel, we had a one-day honeymoon at Niagara

Falls. We couldn’t afford a longer stay!

The day we left Buffalo, October 4th, was a hectic time, especially for Anna. She needed one more delivery to make up the required quota and Dora Murset had her baby early that morning, very conveniently. Her board examination for midwives was that afternoon while I was home finishing up the packing. She got home in time to change and leave for Assembly Hall for our farewell supper and meeting. From the Hall, we were escorted to the station by many friends to leave on the night train for Chicago. Reservations had been booked two weeks before, but to my dismay the conductor said the berth was already occupied. The ticket agent had put the date of sale instead of date of departure on the ticket. While I was discussing this with the agents, one man noticed my Canadian veteran button. He too was a Canadian veteran and persuaded the conductor to put us in a better berth that was vacant. It was the Lord’s provision when Anna was so tired.

On arrival next morning in Chicago our hostess, Mrs. William Trotter, noticed how tired Anna was and sent her off to bed to sleep until time for dinner. We had dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Tom Bendelow and there learned about the fire in Haileybury . I spoke in the Austin Street Hall that evening and the next two nights we had meetings in Minneapolis and Duluth through arrangements made by Tom Baird. After a couple of more stops we arrived in Victoria.

It was not an easy situation for Anna, having just said goodbye to her family and then to meet my Mother and sisters for the first time. They gave her a royal welcome and received her as a sister. However Florrie, I think, had not quite forgiven Anna for taking away her brother. Florrie had an unhappy experience with a fellow who claimed to be a Christian. They broke up when it was discovered that he was only pretending to be a believer in order to woo her. After that Florrie and I had been very close, often walking to work together each morning. However, Florrie never let her feelings interfere with her support of us in her prayers and by her gifts.

We spent six weeks there visiting the assemblies in Victoria (two

at that time) and some up Vancouver Island. Through the years these assemblies have been loyal in their support through their gifts and prayers. Naturally there have been many changes. Of those who signed my letter of commendation, all are now at home with the Lord, the last of these, Mr. John Thomson, passing away in November 1980. Yet the succeeding generations have been faithful in maintaining the interest in us and the Lord’s work in which we are engaged.

We were booked to sail from Victoria on the “S.S. Empress of Asia” on November 30th. It was hard on my Mother because the next morning was the 15th anniversary of Father’s home call. It was a chilly evening as friends gathered on the pier to see us off. As the ship began to move away from the pier, I called out, “Cease not to cry unto our God for us” (1 Sam. 7:8). Our cabin was full of flowers and boxes of chocolates and candies, some from friends in Vancouver where the ship began its journey. Dinner was being served but we preferred to go to bed.

The chief steward was surprised to see us at breakfast; he thought we had been left behind in Vancouver. An old lady there had been looking for us. There was a group of Scandinavian Alliance missionaries on board bound for China, so we enjoyed their fellowship even though their knowledge of English was limited. One afternoon another missionary told us she heard an elderly lady of that group crying in her cabin. Anna went to see if she could offer some help, but as she listened she realized the dear sister was on her knees pleading for lost souls in China.

Skirting the Aleutians it was bitterly cold and stormy. Some times the deck was covered with ice and passengers were not allowed out. In Yokohama some of us went for a day of sightseeing in Tokyo. On our return we got off the train at a station marked Yokohama but soon realized it was not where we had entrained that morning. We made an effort to find our own way, walking back to the ship. Soon we were lost, wandering narrow streets and being eyed curiously by Japanese preparing their evening meal. Even then there was some

anti-American hostility so they didn’t appear too friendly and we were unable to find one who could speak English. Finally we came back to the station where we started our walk, evidently having gone in a circle. In the station were other passengers with a similar experience. Together we found someone who could give us directions in English. Less than a year later most of Tokyo and Yokohama were destroyed by a great earthquake and fire.

Stops were also made in Kobe and Nagasaki; the latter was a coaling stop. As the ship anchored in the bay, barges loaded with coal pulled alongside. A bamboo scaffolding was quickly erected on the barges and on the side of the ship, which was soon swarming with men and women who passed baskets of coal from one to another to be dumped down the chute. By afternoon the job was done and the crew was busy removing the layer of coal dust from the decks and sides of the ship.

The next call was Shanghai where the ship anchored at the mouth of the Whangpoo River. The passengers were taken up river to the city in launches—a bitterly cold ride in the middle of December. We had the address of Dr. Parrott and his wife and were thankful to see her turn on the heater. No wonder Chinese wear padded garments in winter! We enjoyed the fellowship with them that Sunday and also with Mr. Eldridge of the British and Foreign Bible Society who had formerly been the agent in Manila.

The ship left Shanghai Sunday evening and arrived in Manila on Wednesday morning. A quick jump from the cold of winter to the heat of the tropics. We made frequent trips to our cabin to change to cooler garb. We were up early Wednesday morning to catch our first glimpse of the Philippine Islands, the land of the Lord’s choice for us. It was just over a year since the Lord said, “Go to the Philippines.” We praised Him for the way He had been leading us forth.

Chapter 8

Beginning Our Missionary Work

“And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest…for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” (Gen. 28:15)

Landing for the first time in a strange land is always an interesting experience. As soon as our ship cleared quarantine a stream of people came aboard. Among them was Mrs. Wightman (Mr. Wightman was abroad just then) and Mr. Jesus Alvarez, a young brother in the assembly in the Walled City. He had previously been a law student, but after he really came to know the Lord he decided to give his life to the Lord’s service. He was helping in the work at the Walled City when we arrived. Later he went to seminary and returned to his previous denomination in which he finally became a bishop.

The first evening, December 20, 1922 (which would have been my parent’s 36th wedding anniversary), we went to the prayer meeting at the hall in the Walled City. There we were warmly welcomed by the believers and for us it was a great joy to meet them. When we complained of the heat, they informed us it was winter! So we dreaded the hot season, but it wasn’t so bad for we became acclimated as the temperature rose. Really the difference is not so great for the temperature does not vary much more than thirty degrees Fahrenheit throughout the year.

Perhaps this would be a good place to digress in order to tell about the beginning of the work here among those known as Brethren. I quote from an “Echoes Manual” that I wrote in 1929.

“More than one has had a part in the commencement of the work here along Scriptural lines, but the first who started such an assembly was Mr. William Averyt, who writes of his coming to the Philippines, thus,

“ ‘On July 8, 1911, in my room about one o’clock in Jonesboro,

Arkansas, God, through His Son, spoke peace to my soul…. He soon thrust me forth away from human props out into the harvest field. To the Philippine Islands I was sent to be stationed in the 13th Infantry at the Cuartel de Espana and afterwards at Ft. McKinley…I was very definitely led by the Holy Spirit among the high school students in the Walled City.’

“Soon after his arrival, or early in 1912, he began to visit these students in their rooms. Among the first to be saved was Sulpicio Guillen and his cousin. (Mr. Guillen was for many years a linotype operator with the Manila Daily Bulletin. After his retirement he moved to Kapatagan, Lanao del Norte where he had some farmland. He passed away a few years ago but we still correspond with his widow who is now in her mid-eighties and quite frail.)

“A little later a Bible class was started in a room on Calle Victoria, Walled City, and about that time Major (then Capt.) Moses T. Barlow was temporarily transferred from Albay and met Mr. Averyt. They enjoyed much fellowship together over the Word of God. Later, in 1913, Major Barlow was again in Manila and here I give his own account of those days:

“ ‘Bro. Averyt was a great help to both Mrs. Barlow and myself. He convinced Mrs. Barlow that she should obey the Lord in believer’s baptism and baptized her in Manila Bay. He also helped me to understand many truths.

“ ‘Bro. Averyt informed us that he had been teaching these students, and that practically all of them had made a profession of being saved and had been baptized. He told us that he had been working up to a point where he hoped to begin a regular assembly, meeting in God’s appointed way each Lord’s Day around His table in faith, knowing that He is in the midst in fulfillment of His promise. It was while we were in Manila that the meeting was begun. Mrs. Noronha and daughter were also convinced that that was the proper place for them and used to gather with us. Our understanding was imperfect, but we just took the Scriptures, and the Lord honored our request for understanding and graciously

opened His will to us, as we trusted Him to do so. Those meetings in that student's room on Calle Victoria were the most godly meetings any of us attended. There was a spiritual warmth there, an earnest seeking after God and a certain unmistakable presence of the Holy Spirit as the result. I doubt if I shall ever attend more spiritual meetings until we have the Great Meeting with our Savior in the air. The assembly at that time numbered eight or nine in fellowship.

“ ‘I left Manila for the U.S.A. on December 15, 1913, and returned June 2, 1914. While in the United States, I had been admitted to fellowship in the assembly at San Francisco and had learned many things. The little meeting was still in existence, but meeting in the home of Mrs. C. H. Noronha, Malate. I was surprised and thankful to find that my company was stationed right in the city of Manila. It was only a little over a month until it was moved elsewhere, but I frequently went into Manila, and the meeting continued in Mrs. Noronha’s home after we finally left the Philippines on June 19, 1919.’ ”

Mr. and Mrs. George Wightman, having been compelled by certain Mexican laws to leave their work in Tehuacan, Mexico, were exercised before the Lord about another field of service. Having been put in touch with Major Barlow, they learned of his prayers for someone to carry on the work after his return to the United States. Mr. Averyt had also returned to the U.S. where he took employment on the staff of the Chicago Tribune. In March 1929 it was my privilege to have lunch with him there on our first furlough. He went home to be with the Lord three years later. Believing it was the Lord’s will for them, the Wightmans came to the Islands in May 1919 arriving just a month before Major Barlow and his family left for the U.S.

Realizing the opportunities afforded among the students in the Walled City, and the absence of other work there, they rented a hall. This hall, directly opposite the Roman Catholic Cathedral, was opened in July 1919 and used for two years. Then a move was made

to the corner of Victoria and Magallanes Streets, also in Intramuros. These buildings had to be renovated to make them suitable for meeting places. There were then about 14,000 people living in that section of the city. Many of the old-style Spanish residences were occupied by large numbers of students. But there was a strong Roman Catholic influence with several of their churches and institutions in that area of a little over a square mile.

Major Barlow was an active worker, and he encouraged the holding of services in the barrios around Fort McKinley. This was where the Filipino enlisted men and their families lived. In the spring of 1920 a simple bamboo structure was purchased in Masilang and the Wightmans continued the work there. This was about six miles from the city but easily accessible by an electric streetcar.

There were two problems opposing building up a permanent work in both the Walled City and Masilang. One was that both students and soldiers are transient. The students would move away from the Walled City generally when they had completed their studies and started to work in other places. The soldiers were either transferred to other places or were discharged. The other problem was that of language. Both of these groups came from different parts of the Islands and from different language areas. The services in the Walled City were in English as students were studying in that language. At Masilang it was mostly Tagalog, though many who attended were not fluent in that language.

Upon our arrival in Manila, while I was clearing our baggage through customs, I was approached by a Filipino in plain clothes. He surprised me by asking if I had a license to carry a gun. “No,” I replied, “I never owned a gun in my life!” He then wanted to know what I had in my hip pocket. With a smile I said, “That is not a gun—it is a sword!” He was rather nonplussed when I produced my pocket Bible. Of course, he wouldn’t have understood what I meant by a sword. He still entertained his suspicions for when I went to another building to get my hold baggage, he showed up again and

insisted on opening the cases. Perhaps he still hoped to find some weapons!

Since the services were in English I was immediately put to work. The last day of 1922 was a Lord’s day, just eleven days after our arrival. As I was asked to preach that morning, I prayed that the Lord would bless that first Gospel message in my new field of service. It was my request that in His will He would grant the salvation of a soul to confirm that He had called us to the Philippines. How good of the Lord to graciously answer that prayer. After the message a young man by the name of Joaquin dela Cruz accepted the Lord as his Savior. He had had some previous knowledge of the Scriptures, but he surprised us by asking to be baptized that day. The senior missionary was not there; it was up to me to make a decision. My training and experience had never included examining a candidate for baptism. It was my idea, however, that converts should wait awhile in order to prove the reality of their conversion. Joaquin was not to put off in that way. He clinched the matter for us by saying, “Tomorrow is New Year’s Day. I want to start the New Year in newness of life.” So that evening a group of us went to the waterfront at the site of the present Manila Yacht Club. In the bright tropical moonlight we had a little service and I had the joy of baptizing the first Filipino convert in my service for the Lord.

The Gospel Hall was the only Protestant work in the Walled City. The services were in English and attended mostly by young men who were students. Besides the missionaries there were only two married couples but no young women. Being newlyweds, Anna and I felt that was not a satisfactory situation. Those young men would look for female companionship elsewhere and we would lose them. But getting young women into the services in those days was no easy matter. They were carefully chaperoned and did not go out alone. A young man and young woman never went out together without someone else with them. The girls who came to the city to study would promise their mothers to remain true to their church.

They lacked the venturesome spirit of the young men.

We talked with a missionary friend about this problem. He felt that there was a weakness in student work in regard to building up a permanent work. It was necessary to reach the families, for when the parents were won the children would probably follow. Our efforts to attract young women to the services proved rather futile.

Since there was no Sunday school, we began one and got some of the children of the neighborhood to attend. In this, Tagalog was needed so our part was limited to teaching the children to sing choruses and to memorize verses in English. Others helped us with the teaching and one of these was Joaquin, even though he was a Visayan. The Lord worked in the hearts of some of the older children, and we had the joy of seeing some of them trust in Christ for their salvation.

Somewhat later we invited two teenage girls to spend a few days in our home. One night they had gone to their room and I was working at my desk on the other side of the thin wall. The girls were having a discussion. One said that after you are saved you will not sin any more and the other was disagreeing. I couldn’t help overhearing them. To prove her point, one girl pointed to me as an example saying that I was saved and I didn’t sin! In our devotions at the breakfast table next morning, we endeavored to straighten them out on that theological matter!

Very soon we realized that we needed to learn Tagalog. While English is widely spoken because all education then was based on English, knowledge of Tagalog, the principal Philippine language, was essential to get closer to the people. However, there was no language school and very few grammars or dictionaries. Mrs. Guillen, one of the believers, helped us with conversational Tagalog. For a while we paid an elementary school principal to give us lessons on Saturdays. It was not very satisfactory as she was not prepared and did not understand the problems facing a non-Filipino in learning the language. One day after she had given us some rules and some vocabulary, we asked her, “Can you give us some rules on

the formation and structure of sentences?” After pondering it a bit, she said, “Whichever way sounds best!” None of it sounded best to us! Yet she was right, for Tagalog is a euphonious language and there are ways which do sound best.

We were fortunate to have acquired a couple of old grammars and an old dictionary which had been left behind by Major Barlow, but a language cannot be learned simply through books. We needed to get away from Manila where English was widely spoken and where there was a multiplicity of languages. Though Jesus Alvarez was a Bicolano from Camarines Sur, he arranged for us to go to Camarines Norte, the southern limit of the Tagalog-speaking area in those days. First we rented the house of a Chinese merchant in Daet, the capital, for two months. This gave us a base to look around for another place in that province. During our two months there, a fire nearby burned down a number of houses. Awakened by the shouting we saw the fire was across the street at the back of the property. Hastily we threw most of our few belongings into trunks and suitcases and loaded them on a carabao cart in the yard. We were ready to evacuate if the fire leaped across the street. Beside the cart was a warehouse made of galvanized iron. I wondered why the Chinese were putting wet sacks on the roof. Later we learned it was where they stored their stocks of gasoline and kerosene! The fire was brought under control by tearing down some shacks in its path and by a vigorous bucket brigade bringing water from the river.

We located a house in Indang (now Vinzons) and rented the upstairs floor for ten Pesos ($5.00) a month. We hoped to be able to rent the lower part for a Gospel Hall but the owner had rice stored there. Soon we learned that this attracted rats, and we got used to seeing rats running along the rafters over our heads at night. A mosquito net wasn’t much protection but fortunately the rats were sure-footed! Traps didn’t do much good, but one evening a rice snake disposed of one rat.

There was no evangelical work in Indang and to our knowledge only one man who claimed to be a nominal Protestant. The

community was under the control of the parish priest. Every day the church bells tolled for a wedding, a birth celebration, or a funeral. A minimum charge of P25.00 for any of these was a burden to poor people. So often we were asked for a contribution to help. One day our laundry woman wanted to know where I had gone. Anna told her I was out in the barrios selling Bibles. The illiterate woman said the priest told them the Bible was a bad book and they shouldn’t read it. She also averred that the priest had made himself rich at their expense but still they went to him to confess. Yet she admitted he was not a good man because he had daughters of his own living in the church house.

We didn’t have enough Tagalog to conduct services but we did have classes for children in our home, where we taught them verses and choruses. One evening as we went for a walk, just as we passed the priest we heard children’s voices in a home singing, “The best book to read is the Bible.” We had a large blackboard on which I wrote a Gospel verse each day and placed it on a rack in front of the house. It could be seen by all passersby and yet was out of reach of children.

The first Good Friday we were there the procession passed our house. On every other house a candle was burning; we had the light from God’s Word which everyone read as they slowly passed by. Among the various images carried in the procession was the town’s lone hearse. It was the burial of Christ! In the hearse was a coffin and in the coffin a life-sized image of Christ. For a moment the incongruity of Christ (even as an image) in a coffin appalled us. Then led by the Spirit, I said to Anna standing beside me, “He is alive!” The truth of the resurrection became very real at that moment.

Itinerating on foot with a bag of Scriptures had a two-fold purpose. It was one way of spreading the Word of God, and it afforded an opportunity to hear and use Tagalog. We not only went through the town of Indang but also covered other towns. What we particularly enjoyed was traveling through the coconut groves or

across the rice paddies to isolated hamlets. We would carry a sandwich for lunch and buy a green coconut, a drink safe and sterile, bottled by nature. After a while Anna had to stay home as she was expecting our first baby. Outside of Labo was a river, so at noon I would go out of town a little to take a dip in the river and eat my lunch. The school principal in Indang lived across the street, and he warned me there were crocodiles in that river.

It was also a way to learn about the culture of the people. I learned that often the women held the purse. More than one man was convinced to buy a Bible until he asked his wife for the money—then the sale was off! Sometimes they didn’t have money so I accepted some fresh eggs or a few ears of fresh corn instead. The people laughed at the mistakes of this crazy Americano but were good-natured and, as is customary in the Philippines, most hospitable. They would look at the four Gospels—San Mateo, San Marcos, San Lucas, and San Juan—and want to know if I had San Geronimo or Santa Maria. I sold more than one New Testament by showing the letters of San Pedro!

Living was primitive. We had running water when we ran with it from the well just outside our door! Just as we were getting up one morning I heard the boy from across the street drawing water. The first plunk was the bucket but the second plunk must be the boy! Sure enough the boy was down the well. The neighbors quickly gathered and were discussing how he fell into the well. “Never mind,” I said, “let’s get him out.” So a long bamboo was put down and the boy climbed out and stood, dripping wet, in their midst while they scolded him for his carelessness. Our neighbor told our helper that Americans were dirty people—he never saw them taking a bath beside the well! She told him we had made a corner of our kitchen into a bathroom—with bamboo slat floors there was no trouble with clogged drains! He was not impressed—seeing is believing!

One afternoon we sat in our house studying Tagalog and munching on finger-size bananas when suddenly it seemed to cloud

over. Strange, because it was not the rainy season. We heard sounds of people shouting and running about; they were quickly covering the well. A swarm of locusts was coming. They covered the ground and roofs when they landed and some people scooped them up in sacks. Some ate them but others didn’t. The locusts had evidently fed elsewhere as we heard later they had ruined crops and even coconut palms in other places. I was watching a long low building across the street, when for a split second it seemed the roof was levitating but really it was the mass of locusts lifting off simultaneously.

Some months later a devastating typhoon passed over that area. In one place I later saw an area of abaca plants which had been sheared off as with a giant scythe. In the early morning the wind was strong, lifting up the nipa thatch so the rain was soaking us. Thinking it might be more secure on the ground floor, I investigated. I could hardly hold my ground against the wind. The front wall downstairs had fallen outwards, so with difficulty we took refuge there, with the rice and rats! Soon our roof was “Gone with the wind.” In mid-morning the wind and rain stopped quite quickly—we were in the eye of the storm. Knowing that soon the storm would hit us again but the wind blowing in the opposite direction, we took refuge with crowds of others in the bakery down the street. It was a substantial low building and his stocks of baked goods were soon sold out. We all huddled together there until mid-afternoon.

The storm was over. The only dry thing in our house was Leonard’s crib, which we had covered with a piece of oilcloth. At least the baby had a dry bed. The wooden parts of the sewing machine lay in a heap below the iron frame. Letters from velvet texts were plastered in odd places on the walls. A box of Scriptures which had just arrived was blown open and its contents soaked and scattered. Not the ideal way of scattering the seed of the Word! A friendly storekeeper allowed us to stay temporarily in a room over his store, where he also lived. The priest was angry with him about this, thinking this was a way to get us out of town. He also

persuaded the owner not to repair the roof, until I told the owner that his rice was starting to sprout. Then he put his own interest ahead of that of the church. That was the only time we ever had what has been called “$1000.00 salad.” A mentally deficient man in the town brought us the heart of a coconut tree which had blown down. It was very delicious. It was expensive because to take the heart kills the tree.

We had some amusing problems with language study. There is a word in Tagalog which is used when quoting what someone else has said. People would ask me the price of a Gospel. “Two centavos” I would reply. Then someone would tell the others “Two centavos daw.” I didn’t know what “daw” meant but when I used it they would roar with laughter. Then we repeatedly heard a word “Kwan.”

Every time we asked what “Kwan” meant we got a different answer. It was utterly confusing until one afternoon the light dawned and I said to Anna, “Kwan” means “What-you-may-call-it” and can be used for people as well as things. Very often we would try to talk in Tagalog (with an American accent) and it was frustrating to get the reply, “I don’t understand English.” It was a great achievement when one day a person replied in Tagalog—he understood what I was trying to say!

Some Sunday mornings I would go to the Presbyterian Church in Daet as we had gotten to know them there when we lived in Daet. They would often ask me to preach. I found that sometimes interpreters would sometimes not repeat what I had said but what they thought I should have said, according to their ideas. So it was there that I made my first stumbling attempts to preach or rather read a sermon in Tagalog. Sunday afternoons, Anna and I would simply remember the Lord in the Lord’s Supper, just the two of us. One day after our little service I had an unusual sense of the Lord’s presence. Leaving the table I knelt at a camp cot which we used as a couch in the living room. In a few moments Anna joined me there as we silently continued our worship and praise to God for all His grace. We were overwhelmed by a realization that the Lord was with

us, even though we knew of no other believer within miles.

During our stay in Indang we had to go to Manila for the birth of our first child. There were no adequate facilities then in Camarines Norte. On our way, we had to pass through Naga the capital of Camarines Sur. Fortunately there was a hotel of sorts there because we were delayed there almost a week. The ship that was to take us from Pasacao to Aloneros was in dry-dock. In Manila we stayed with Mr. and Mrs. G. B. Cameron, agents of the American Bible Society. Anna had rather a hard time with the birth of Leonard. We went to the Mary Johnston Hospital shortly after five in the morning and the baby was born shortly before midnight. Dr. Rebecca Parish was in charge of this maternity hospital—a very fine doctor and also a fine Christian. Nowadays Mary Johnston Hospital is several blocks from the water’s edge, surrounded by slums and a harbor area. Then it was on the waterfront of Manila Bay and the fishermen would spread their nets to dry on the sea wall of the hospital. A lot of land has been reclaimed from the sea.

Leonard was a good baby and rarely woke up at night. He was a source of attraction in Indang as he was the first white baby in that community. The children loved to watch him getting his morning bath, and he delighted to splash the water over them. When we took him out for a walk in the late afternoon, old ladies would say, “He has no hair.” Then as they gently stroked his head and blond hair, they said, “Oh, yes, he does have hair—it’s like hemp.”

Chapter 9

Back to Manila

“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” (1 Cor. 1:27)

The time came for a decision as to our place of service for the Lord. Should we continue in Camarines Norte and endeavor to establish an assembly work there? Or should we return to Manila and help build up the work in that area? It was evident it would take some time to establish an indigenous assembly in Indang. A few individuals had sought us out but they were from other places. Indang seemed to be too much under the influence of the priest for the adults to quickly response to our message. We were rather isolated as travel to Manila was sometimes uncertain. We were alone and it didn’t seem likely that any work there would stand on its own when it came time for furlough. So we decided to return to Manila.

At that time Brother Wightman had gone into business to support himself while he continued to carry on the work in the Walled City. We rented an apartment in Ermita within walking distance to the Gospel Hall. There were many tests of faith in those days. Before going to Camarines there had been trials. At one time we had a book of tickets to buy bread but we could only afford a few cents on a tin of guava jelly to put on the bread. On January 9, 1923, I wrote, “Funds low—promises great.” That was before the days of blaring radios, but next door the neighbor had a phonograph and a few records, which we used from morning till night. Many an evening we walked to the waterfront and sat on the rocks to watch the famed Manila sunset and get a little quiet.

When we lived in Ermita there were severe testings. More than once I would go out selling Scriptures in the morning to get enough cash to buy some dried beans for our meals. One morning we had only some bread in the house. But as we were getting dressed one of the Filipino believers arrived from the province with a “pasalubong”

(a greeting gift) of eggs and fruit. He never knew how he provided our breakfast! We knew the Lord had a purpose in allowing such trials, which seemed so difficult at the time but there is always an “afterwards” of blessing. “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11).

It was some years later that I realized the Levites who were recipients of the tithes of Israel were required to give a tithe also. Since we had been giving to the work of the Lord all that could be spared above actual living costs, we had not thought of giving a share of what we received. Indeed was not all we received being spent in some way in serving he Lord? However, we can testify that from the time we began to give a special portion to the Lord, we have never been so severely tested as we were before. Of course, some would say that this was because by that time we were better known and no doubt that was a contributing factor.

One Saturday evening we received a letter from a friend in Victoria with a postscript expressing sympathy with us in the homecall of my Mother. It came as a shock because we had not heard that she was even sick. My sisters thought that rather than giving me the shock of receiving a cable, they would write a letter giving all the details. That was before the days of airmail, and the friend’s letter just happened to catch an earlier boat. I was booked to speak the next morning and the lesson was on the martyrdom of Stephen. It was not easy under those circumstances. Some time later Anna received word of the passing away of her younger sister Mae. However, this did not come as a sudden shock because she had been ill for a long time. Nevertheless it was hard to think of that beautiful young woman taken away in her youth; but the comfort was that both of these were “at home with the Lord.”

It was shortly after Mother’s home call that Kenneth was born on May 2, 1926, at the Mary Johnston Hospital. In memory of Mother we gave him the middle name of Sheldon, which was my Mother’s

maiden name. He had bronchitis quite early and, though he got over it, it seemed to affect his sleeping patterns. He would resist our efforts to put him to sleep in the evening, even to the extent of rubbing his eyes.

Another discouraging problem of that first term was difficulties with our fellow workers. This caused a great deal of heartache. We were young and inexperienced, and there was no one else in our group with whom we could confer. Looking back over the years we now know we should have reacted differently, but then we needed counseling which was not available. The experience has taught us the need for patience and love even when faced with what we then saw as wrongdoing.

Yet there were bright spots too as we resumed work in the Manila area. In addition to the regular services at the rented hall in the Walled City, I helped out in a bookstore we had there, which afforded a number of contacts. Also at that time I began a campaign of canvassing all the homes in the Walled City. It took some time for scores, if not hundreds, were living in the Old Spanish houses, several in each room in very crowded conditions. Some lived in screened-off places on landings and stairways. Almost all morning might be spent in just one large house. One day I was talking to a group in a courtyard when a basin of water was dumped on us from above. It was apparently unintentional—the person threw the water and then looked! Later this coverage with Scripture was extended through almost all the districts of Manila, south of the Pasig River.

The work at Masliang near Fort McKinley (now Fort Bonifacio) continued. However, the bamboo and thatch chapel was so dilapidated that we decided to abandon it. On the main road leading into the camp at Guadalupe we found a storefront to rent and the work of children’s classes and Gospel preaching continued. This area was also canvassed with literature and invitations, but the response was quite meager. People were slow to investigate some new religion, as they viewed it. During our furlough in 1929 this work was dropped.

While I was taking care of the bookstore one morning, a young man who had been attending the services came for a talk. Simeon Endaya was a quiet man, a postal clerk. He told me that he had been brought up a Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy. Then the family switched to the independent Aglipayan Church, a breakaway from the Roman Church. When Simeon was a high school student in Manila he wandered into a Methodist Church. There he was received as a member and baptized by sprinkling for the second, maybe third, time. Through the testimony at the Gospel Hall he was now a believer in Christ. Did he need to be baptized by immersion? I gave him some references to study and told him to see what the Lord wanted him to do and not take my word only. He was back the next morning asking to be immersed.

One evening in his work at the registry division of the post office, he receipted for a large amount of money to be sent to the Culion Leprosarium. The ship that was going to Culion failed to sail the next morning as scheduled. On his return to the office Simeon checked and finally found the bag, empty of its contents. Outside detectives were called in and they suspected Simeon seeing he had not only received the bag but also discovered it empty. All day they grilled him but he maintained his innocence. Towards evening one detective accused him of hiding some information from them. Simeon replied, “Yes, there is one thing I haven’t told you.” They shouted, “Come on then, out with it.” He said, “I haven’t told you about my Savior. Because of my faith in Him I could not steal that money.” He was released but kept under surveillance. Some months later a janitor at the post office suddenly seemed to have a lot of money—he was the guilty party.

In giving his testimony at the prayer meeting, Simeon said something like this. “Throughout this experience I realized the peace that keeps our hearts and minds. You will say, ‘You had peace because you knew you were innocent.’ But that was not the case. A co-worker of mine, who also was innocent, had no peace. He went to the Quiapo church to pray to the Black Christ (a famous image)

but still had no peace.” Simeon had an opportunity to witness to him about the source of real peace in Christ.

Often at the times of services at the Hall some of us would stand outside and try to persuade passersby to come in. One of these was an elderly man, Lutgardo Ramos. Having been addicted to drink and gambling he was dressed very poorly and was quite reluctant to enter the hall. Soon his life was drastically changed when he trusted Christ as his Savior. His wife was very much opposed. She stopped the children from coming to the Sunday school and took his Bible away from him. Even when we visited their home she practically ignored us. This was most unusual for Filipinos are customarily hospitable. Brother Ramos continued faithfully in spite of the difficulties. The change was evident even in the way he dressed. He often mentioned this when giving his testimony. In later years he helped us a great deal when we began the work in San Juan. He loved to preach the Gospel and invariably from the Gospel of John. He went home to be with the Lord during our second furlough.

About the same time a very different type of man began attending the meetings. He was chief clerk of the Bureau of Health and well educated. In his search for the truth he had some contacts with Seventh-Day Adventists but was not satisfied. He found the truth in Christ as he came to the hall and soon was active for the Lord. A meeting was started in his home in Paco district along with the help of David Shepherd. David was a self-supporting missionary from Paisley, Scotland, managing a plate-making concern, which prepared plates for printing Bibles for the American Bible Society. As the work in Paco grew, they rented a storefront in 1931. Geronimo Mercado was burdened for the need in his hometown of Tanay, Rizal. He would leave his office at noon on Saturday and go directly there. Meetings would be held there Saturday evening and Sunday morning, often in the open air when weather permitted. Later on this testimony was extended to the neighboring towns of Pililla and Guisao. A small bamboo chapel was built in Pililla, and one of the converts baptized there was an old man at the age of 96.

Sunday afternoon Geronimo would return to Paco for the services there. Another who helped for a while in these efforts was George Burns. He was a New Englander, a veteran who was partly disabled in World War I. He lived on his pension and had a zeal for distributing tracts and personal witnessing. Brother Mercado later donated a lot for the building of a chapel in Tanay. He passed away during the latter part of World War II and his widow some years later. His daughters and their families are active in the assembly in San Juan. Geronimo Mercado had a gift of translation and translated several worship hymns and also wrote some original Tagalog hymns which are included in hymnbooks we are using still.

His younger brother, Sergio was saved in later years and after our return to the Philippines in 1949, often went with us to Tanay to help in the work there. He also worked for the Bureau of Health, in malaria control. His work often took him away from home, and it was on one of these trips that the bus he was riding on was ambushed by dissidents. Brother Sergio Mercado was one of the casualties. It was a great loss because he was a keen student of the Word and a gifted speaker like his brother.

In 1927 serious communist disturbances in Central China led two missionaries from there to join us for a time. James Buckley was from Ottawa, Canada and Fred Pucknell was from England. Jim bought an old Model-T Ford. Only oldsters will remember those vehicles by which Henry Ford put cars within the reach of the working class. They lacked the conveniences of modern cars. But they were simple enough that a mechanically minded owner could do most repairs. We took out the back seat and installed boxes to carry supplies, equipment, and a stock of Scriptures.

We would leave early Monday morning and be on the road till Friday evening. Pulling into a town we would park near the public market. One would stay with the vehicle and sell Scriptures while the other two would canvass from house to house. In Las Pinas, just south of Manila, there is a famous pipe organ made of bamboo by a Spanish priest early in the 19th century. As we were canvassing

there, and I was walking among the houses, there was some excitement with men running in every direction. A gambling game had hastily broken up because they thought I was a police official. When they learned my mission they came back sheepishly and I had a crowd for a brief witness. In another town I stumbled on a gambling session. One man made the excuse that he had no money to buy a Bible. As I talked with others he won a bet, but still he wasn’t ready to part with his money for the Scriptures.

In this way we could cover two or three towns a day. In late afternoon we would look for a place to spend the night under the canvas we had with us. It was usually easy to get the mayor or chief of police to give us a permit for an open-air meeting. In most towns there is a plaza or square in the center of town, sometimes with a bandstand. These were good spots for meetings, except that in many places the town church also faces on the plaza. We stopped in Cabuyao, Laguna, on our way home one Friday evening. The chief of police granted us a permit. As we started our service we noticed the priest promenading in front of his church. Shortly after a policeman came and informed us we had to stop by the mayor’s orders. We showed our permit from the chief of police. The policeman knew who was boss in the town, but I suggested that Jim go with him to talk to the mayor while Fred and I carried on. We preached for a long time and then offered Scriptures for sale. The crowd gradually faded away but still no sight of Jim. He kept on talking until he was sure we had plenty of time to have our meeting!

In this way we covered all the Tagalog-speaking provinces. It wasn’t always easy to find a place to camp for the night. On a couple of occasions we got permission to spend the night in the municipal building. One of our trips lasted two weeks when we crossed over to the east coast of Luzon, visiting Infanta by one road and Atimonan by another. This latter road took us over a steep zigzag road crossing the hills, which are the backbone of the Island. At first the authorities were not going to allow us to go because the grade is so steep at one point that with gravity feed the gas wouldn’t flow into

the motor. We filled the tank and signed a release and they let us through. The old Ford made the grade without difficulty but going down the other side was a different story. The brake bands were all worn out; even the reverse band was gone by the time we finally reached level road again. So we had a repair job and had to be towed back by a truck.

In Lucena we came upon an elderly man who had a Tagalog Bible, which was apparently well used. He maintained he was a Roman Catholic and was friendly when assured we were not Seventh-Day Adventists. He was evidently a believer, and before we left he gave us a little message on the three uses of “Abba, Father” in the New Testament. This showed he was conversant with the Scriptures and also his spiritual discernment. However, he couldn’t justify some of the Roman practice from the Bible.

On five such trips we visited 63 towns (only one of them twice) and held 35 meetings. About 7.000 Bibles, Testaments, and Gospels were sold and more then 20,000 tracts distributed. Many homes were visited and personal contacts made. The good seed of the Word was sown. How much of it fell on good ground, only eternity will reveal.

Each year a large fair and carnival was held on what is now Rizal Park in downtown Manila. In 1921 Brother Wightman rented a space on the temporary walls used for advertising. He had John 3:16 painted on it in large letters. That year a fire destroyed the carnival while it was in progress. Mr. Wightman went to see if he could get a rebate since the text was not there for the full time of the contract. (It must have been his Scottish thrift.) He didn’t really expect it and didn’t get any rebate. They told him his text was prominently displayed in news photographs of the fire so it had a wider audience.

The following year on the opening night I went with an armful of tracts and began handing them out at the entrance. I didn’t have to hand them out, people just took them from me. Some took a handful and stood beside me helping. In half an hour my armful was gone. I

went around to see how many had been thrown away and there were hardly any. Another year we were stopped by the police on the second night; if people threw them away we were contributing to littering. A commercial firm had hired a plane go broadcast advertising leaflets from the air. Instead of doing it in the late afternoon when the crowds were there to pick them up, they scattered them Sunday morning. It was a case of massive littering.

In later years we rented a booth among the exhibits and sold Scriptures and distributed literature. With posters and slides and with personal conversations there were many opportunities to make known the way of salvation. One evening a group of Roman Catholic seminarians came by primed for a discussion. I didn’t want this, but with a crowd around I dared not back down. I tried to use the discussion and answering of questions as an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel. At one point they referred to the Pope as Head of the Church. I asked, “Do you believe the Bible?” Since they did, I referred to Colossians 1:18, reading it out to the interested crowd. Their reply was that the Church had two heads, one in heaven and one on earth. I retorted, “Now I can understand the defect in your church. Any body that has two heads is abnormal and would be exhibited among the freaks here at the carnival.” It wasn’t the kindest thing to say, but it pleased the crowd and discomfited them as well as bringing the discussion to an end.

For five years we had carried on under what were often discouraging difficulties. A vacation in the mountains was more than we could afford, and we were getting weary. However, in January 1928, the Lord made it possible for us to spend some time in Baguio. We traveled third class by train to Damortis, Anna, Len, Ken, and I. Then by bus we climbed 5000 feet to Baguio by the Kennon Road. This was wide enough then for only one vehicle so the traffic was controlled by a system of gates. There were no sides on the bus and as I sat on the outside seat at the front it seemed as if my feet were often dangling over a deep ravine beside the road. The driver was careful but fast because he knew the road and knew he

would meet no oncoming traffic. The view from the top of the final zigzag was really impressive.

The house we rented belonged to the Methodists, beside Easter School, an Anglican school for mountain children. Behind the cottage was a high hill from the top of which we could see Baguio on one side and the Trinidad Valley on the other. This fertile valley is famous for growing vegetables and strawberries. Fred Pucknell joined us for part of the time. One morning we took a taxi to the foot of Mt. Sto. Tomas, seven kilometers out of Baguio. From that point, Fred and I followed an eight kilometer trail to the top where there was a rest house. We were tired and hungry when we arrived, so we went inside to get warm and eat our lunch. It was a mistake—while we ate the clouds rolled in. We really never had a glimpse of the view over the surrounding mountains or the Lingayen Gulf below. We met some survey men there, and they offered to lead us to an Igorot burial cave on the way down. The entrance was quite low, but inside we could stand up amid the skulls and skeletons. Chiefs had apparently been buried in a crude coffin made from a hollowed-out pine tree. Fred remarked that if he would have such a skull in his room in China he would never have had to worry about thieves! The mountain people were formerly headhunters. So to make sure we retained that essential part of our anatomy, we did not disturb anything. In later years we climbed Sto. Tomas on a bright moonlight night to see the gorgeous sunrise over the mountains. Then after breakfast at the rest house we would return home by early afternoon.

On the way home from Baguio the train was very crowded. Anna went to the restroom. Almost immediately a woman began knocking on the door. Naturally Anna thought it was someone who was impatient so didn’t respond. Then they called me to intervene. The woman was quite plump and because the train was crowded she was standing. When Anna closed the door it caught a part of her fleshy arm and she couldn’t get free. Above the noise of the train and the crowd, I at last got Anna’s attention by shouting. When the

woman was released there was a long ridge of flesh on her upper arm.

A year previous to that we had begun to buy a house five miles from downtown Manila in the suburb of San Juan. It was a newly developed area where the Wightmans had purchased a home. A gift form a good friend provided the down payment and the monthly installments were less than we had been paying in rent. One reason for the move was that Leonard had developed rickets and we needed a place where he could get out in the sunshine more. With our own place I could improve it myself, as we were able.

After our trip to Baguio we began to plan for furlough. In those days missionaries were expected to stay for a term of seven years. Some brethren in Britain expressed their concern that we were only in our sixth year. In January Fred Pucknell decided to return to China, as things seemed quieter there. In the meantime Jim Buckley had been married to Margaret Dryden from Seattle. Our family had been friends for some years with the Dryden family. They were planning to stay on for the present in Manila, so we thought it would be a good time to get away.

Continued in Part Two

The story goes on in Part Two of Grace Triumphant: Chapters 10–18.

Open Part Two

Every chapter is also listed in the Table of Contents.