Page 23 - Malayan Story
P. 23
MALAYAN STORY
“Batu Anam, Percy? Wasn’t that the place where the girl teacher was killed?”
“Yes”, he said, “there’s nobody there now so we won’t stop, but that is the village where Hayden
Mellsop and Harold Wik lived when they first came in 1951. Batu Anam and Scudai were the first
two villages occupied by CIM workers. The original idea was for Hayden and Harold to go into
Cha’ah, but as the result of a phone call from Rex Dawson, who was the resettlement officer then,
they went to Batu Anam where he offered them a vacant house next door to the one occupied by the
Assistant Officer. That proved to be too leaky, so they moved in with their neighbour, which,
thinking about it now, was not a very good idea as it must have linked them immediately in the eyes
of the people with Government officials. Their first language teacher was a girl of 17 recommended
by the Assistant Resettlement Officer. The fact that she was teaching them soom became known to
the communist supporters, and she was asked whether the two men carried arms. She was also urged
to supply rice to them in the jungle, but this she refused to do. A few weeks later her body was
found in the jungle where she had been strangled. There was no doubt why nor by whom she had
been killed, and it was a terrific shock to us all, but especially to Harold and Hayden.”
As the afternoon wore on, we took a branch road across to Port Dickson where Jessie and David
Bentley-Taylor were having a few days relaxation with their seven year old son, Andrew, before
going on to Kuala Lumpur to await the birth of their fourth child. Jessie is Percy’s sister. At Port
Dickson there were a number of rest houses built by the Government for the convenience of
Government officials. They were cool and comfortable, with a cook and his wife in charge, and, if
we could afford to pay, we missionaries were at liberty to use them also. We found the bungalow
right on the beach with the white sand and the warm waters of the Straits of Malacca within yards of
its wide verandah. Jessie and David welcomed us warmly and, after a shower and a meal, we spent
the tropical evening on the verandah catching up on some of the events of the past year.
Jessie and David had been loaned for a year to the Presbyterian Church at Pontian on the south west
coast of Malaya. Their year was now complete and they were taking their annual holiday before the
baby’s birth and their possible move to Indonesia to which they felt the Lord was calling them.
David had not found co-operation with the Pontian Church at all easy. The leaders seemed to be
very worldly minded, rarely using the Bible, and with no evangelical emphasis in their work at all.
The Preacher and Deaconess, the only two Church employed workers had their time completely
taken up truing to run a Church and kindergarten and an English School where the teacher was not
even a Christian and did not measure up to the required standard of education. David commented on
the situation: “While we are aiming to build up Mr Tan and the Youth Leader as well as the young
people against the day of our departure, the Elders and Church workers are putting all their strength
into this other method of proving to an incredulous world that the Church is a social asset!”
In spite of these difficulties, David and Jessie had been encouraged by the response of some to the
Word of God as they gave it to them, and there were many with hungry hearts who found in the Lord
Jesus the satisfaction they had been longing for. Because of the many Tamil workers living in the
area, David haad invited Mr. GD James, himself a converted Tamil working with the Bras Basah
Brethren Assembly in Singapore, to come to Pontian and speak at the English service. He was very
well received and Mr Harold White, manager of the Kukup Rubber Estate, whose German Jewish
Roman Catholic wife had become a regular attendant at these meetings, invited Mr James to return to
Kukup and preach to the many Indian workers on the Estate. This he promised to do and David felt
glad to know there would still be an evangelical witness in the area.
Percy had booked us in for two nights, not at the “Magnolia Bay” rest house where the Bentley-
Taylors were, but at “Clovelly” further along the beach. We were tired after a long day on the road
23
“Batu Anam, Percy? Wasn’t that the place where the girl teacher was killed?”
“Yes”, he said, “there’s nobody there now so we won’t stop, but that is the village where Hayden
Mellsop and Harold Wik lived when they first came in 1951. Batu Anam and Scudai were the first
two villages occupied by CIM workers. The original idea was for Hayden and Harold to go into
Cha’ah, but as the result of a phone call from Rex Dawson, who was the resettlement officer then,
they went to Batu Anam where he offered them a vacant house next door to the one occupied by the
Assistant Officer. That proved to be too leaky, so they moved in with their neighbour, which,
thinking about it now, was not a very good idea as it must have linked them immediately in the eyes
of the people with Government officials. Their first language teacher was a girl of 17 recommended
by the Assistant Resettlement Officer. The fact that she was teaching them soom became known to
the communist supporters, and she was asked whether the two men carried arms. She was also urged
to supply rice to them in the jungle, but this she refused to do. A few weeks later her body was
found in the jungle where she had been strangled. There was no doubt why nor by whom she had
been killed, and it was a terrific shock to us all, but especially to Harold and Hayden.”
As the afternoon wore on, we took a branch road across to Port Dickson where Jessie and David
Bentley-Taylor were having a few days relaxation with their seven year old son, Andrew, before
going on to Kuala Lumpur to await the birth of their fourth child. Jessie is Percy’s sister. At Port
Dickson there were a number of rest houses built by the Government for the convenience of
Government officials. They were cool and comfortable, with a cook and his wife in charge, and, if
we could afford to pay, we missionaries were at liberty to use them also. We found the bungalow
right on the beach with the white sand and the warm waters of the Straits of Malacca within yards of
its wide verandah. Jessie and David welcomed us warmly and, after a shower and a meal, we spent
the tropical evening on the verandah catching up on some of the events of the past year.
Jessie and David had been loaned for a year to the Presbyterian Church at Pontian on the south west
coast of Malaya. Their year was now complete and they were taking their annual holiday before the
baby’s birth and their possible move to Indonesia to which they felt the Lord was calling them.
David had not found co-operation with the Pontian Church at all easy. The leaders seemed to be
very worldly minded, rarely using the Bible, and with no evangelical emphasis in their work at all.
The Preacher and Deaconess, the only two Church employed workers had their time completely
taken up truing to run a Church and kindergarten and an English School where the teacher was not
even a Christian and did not measure up to the required standard of education. David commented on
the situation: “While we are aiming to build up Mr Tan and the Youth Leader as well as the young
people against the day of our departure, the Elders and Church workers are putting all their strength
into this other method of proving to an incredulous world that the Church is a social asset!”
In spite of these difficulties, David and Jessie had been encouraged by the response of some to the
Word of God as they gave it to them, and there were many with hungry hearts who found in the Lord
Jesus the satisfaction they had been longing for. Because of the many Tamil workers living in the
area, David haad invited Mr. GD James, himself a converted Tamil working with the Bras Basah
Brethren Assembly in Singapore, to come to Pontian and speak at the English service. He was very
well received and Mr Harold White, manager of the Kukup Rubber Estate, whose German Jewish
Roman Catholic wife had become a regular attendant at these meetings, invited Mr James to return to
Kukup and preach to the many Indian workers on the Estate. This he promised to do and David felt
glad to know there would still be an evangelical witness in the area.
Percy had booked us in for two nights, not at the “Magnolia Bay” rest house where the Bentley-
Taylors were, but at “Clovelly” further along the beach. We were tired after a long day on the road
23
