Page 39 - Malayan Story
P. 39
MALAYAN STORY
CHAPTER 10 CHILDREN IN THE NEW VILLAGES
Beginning work in a New Village was never easy, and particularly when Percy had to settle two
single lady missionaries alone in a village which was entirely strange to them and, apart from
some preliminary excursions, to him too. He often came away after moving them in to their new
home, with a feeling of guilt that he could not stay and help them through the next few days.
Sir Gerald wanted men to move into the New Villages, but in those early days, it was women who
were coming in numbers to work there and Percy felt that this was the Lord’s strategy as the people
were more suspicious of foreign men who might be military agents. The “Emergency” was still a
very real part of our lives in those early days.
Usually the children gave the missionary the first welcome, though not always the kind that they
would have liked. The adults kept aloof and it would often be months before any adult would
venture in to any of the meetings.
One missionary wrote: “We have enjoyed the usual welcome given by the village children - tins
thrown in the well, dried mud thrust through the windows, outside window fasteners screwed out
and thrown in the grass, stones thrown on the corrugated iron roof, bamboo broken from the fence
and small explosions detonated around.” They bore this all patiently and were soon able to say,
“Five nights a week we have been conducting meetings in our front room and already the children
announce in song that their ‘cups are full and running over’ and ‘every burden of their heart is rolled
away’. Our shop front doors are wide open so the adults who linger in the darkness outside can hear
the simple message from the Gospel Recordings, which we play in their own Hakka language.
When Ursula Kuhler and Irene Neville first moved in to Serdang Village, the undisciplined
behaviour of the children who crowded in on their first night in the village, almost brought the
house down around their ears. In the end, when it seemed quite impossible to control them, the two
ladies managed to get all the children out and lock the doors while they went off to visit friends in
the Red Cross bungalow. Later, when the commotion had died down, they crept back, undressed in
the dark and went to bed without anyone knowing they were back.
Usually the missionaries chose to let the adults accept invitations to meetings when they were ready
to do so, but the children did not need such encouragement. They continued to pour in and it was
not long before the same children that caused the initial problems were singing praises to the living
God. They were even begging to be allowed to stay for the adult service, promising to be good.
Towards the end of 1952, after he had settled in Kuala Lumpur, Percy took three single ladies,
Margaret Hollands and Annette Harris, both teachers, and Ferae Blair, a nurse, to start work in the
village of Sungei Way. This was only eight miles out of Kuala Lumpur on the Klang Road. There
were no Christians in the village and the people were mainly rubber tappers or employed by the tin
mine. The missionaries’ home was one of a row of shops where they had a “shop front” meeting
room and they were to live in the back and upstairs. The shop front meeting room would be used as
39
CHAPTER 10 CHILDREN IN THE NEW VILLAGES
Beginning work in a New Village was never easy, and particularly when Percy had to settle two
single lady missionaries alone in a village which was entirely strange to them and, apart from
some preliminary excursions, to him too. He often came away after moving them in to their new
home, with a feeling of guilt that he could not stay and help them through the next few days.
Sir Gerald wanted men to move into the New Villages, but in those early days, it was women who
were coming in numbers to work there and Percy felt that this was the Lord’s strategy as the people
were more suspicious of foreign men who might be military agents. The “Emergency” was still a
very real part of our lives in those early days.
Usually the children gave the missionary the first welcome, though not always the kind that they
would have liked. The adults kept aloof and it would often be months before any adult would
venture in to any of the meetings.
One missionary wrote: “We have enjoyed the usual welcome given by the village children - tins
thrown in the well, dried mud thrust through the windows, outside window fasteners screwed out
and thrown in the grass, stones thrown on the corrugated iron roof, bamboo broken from the fence
and small explosions detonated around.” They bore this all patiently and were soon able to say,
“Five nights a week we have been conducting meetings in our front room and already the children
announce in song that their ‘cups are full and running over’ and ‘every burden of their heart is rolled
away’. Our shop front doors are wide open so the adults who linger in the darkness outside can hear
the simple message from the Gospel Recordings, which we play in their own Hakka language.
When Ursula Kuhler and Irene Neville first moved in to Serdang Village, the undisciplined
behaviour of the children who crowded in on their first night in the village, almost brought the
house down around their ears. In the end, when it seemed quite impossible to control them, the two
ladies managed to get all the children out and lock the doors while they went off to visit friends in
the Red Cross bungalow. Later, when the commotion had died down, they crept back, undressed in
the dark and went to bed without anyone knowing they were back.
Usually the missionaries chose to let the adults accept invitations to meetings when they were ready
to do so, but the children did not need such encouragement. They continued to pour in and it was
not long before the same children that caused the initial problems were singing praises to the living
God. They were even begging to be allowed to stay for the adult service, promising to be good.
Towards the end of 1952, after he had settled in Kuala Lumpur, Percy took three single ladies,
Margaret Hollands and Annette Harris, both teachers, and Ferae Blair, a nurse, to start work in the
village of Sungei Way. This was only eight miles out of Kuala Lumpur on the Klang Road. There
were no Christians in the village and the people were mainly rubber tappers or employed by the tin
mine. The missionaries’ home was one of a row of shops where they had a “shop front” meeting
room and they were to live in the back and upstairs. The shop front meeting room would be used as
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