Page 64 - Malayan Story
P. 64
MALAYAN STORY
Pendamaran on the west coast near Klang, was another village where the Methodists in Klang had
started work but were glad when the CIM workers took over. When Ruth Verhulst and Olive
Finney moved in to Pendamaran in March 1952, they found a huge settlement of 1200 families.
There was a group of Methodist Christians who welcomed their support, and the Methodist Church
in Klang helped them start a Sunday School. A very keen retired Methodist Bible woman was also
helpful in visitation, so their start was made easier by the cooperation of national Christians as well
as from contacts made through the Red Cross clinic where they assisted.
In the villages where the Red Cross were holding regular clinics, their nurses were grateful for the
help that our missionaries were often able to contribute. Sometimes it was simply to act as
interpreters when the people spoke dialects which the Red Cross nurses could not understand, and
sometimes the missionaries had medical training and were able to assist with the actual treatment
of the patients. While the people were not interested in the “western religion”, they were grateful
for the medical help they were given and some who were too ill to be treated at the clinic were also
grateful when the missionaries gotthem quickly off to hospital and in doing so probably saved their
lives. All this expedited the breakdown of opposition, but where there was no clinic it was harder.
Communication was always difficult, but not always because of language. Children were often
responsive because they were learning Mandarin at school, but their mothers were suspicious of us
and, because the majority of the first missionaries in the villages were women, it was hard to get
close to the men. If the men did not believe, their wives did not dare. As most of the people in the
villages were rubber tappers, they were away from early in the morning and we were unable to
contact them until the afternoon. Even then the attempts to get through to the women were hindered
by the language barrier, suspicion that we were spies and fear of the spirits and of repercussions
from the guerrillas. They didn’t mind the children coming to listen to stories or learning to sing
bright choruses, but it must not go any further than that. Some of the teenagers began to accept and
believe the message of salvation, but once this became obvious the trouble began. We wondered if it
would be better to work through the city churches and encourage the Chinese Christians to go out to
the villages and so break down the opposition that seemed to be targeted at the “foreign” religion.
At our first Field Conference in 1952 Arnold Lea from HQ in Singapore brought a Bible reading
each day based on the topic “Consider Him!” Betty Laing probably expressed the feeling of every
new village worker best when she commenced her report on her work in Scudai by saying, “If one
considered the work or oneself before considering the Lord, there would be utter discouragement.”
That first year in Malaya had been far from easy and Percy summed it up in his letter to Prayer
Partners back home: “The excitement and interest of our arrival in this country and in the new
villages has now worn off, and we are finding in many villages that we are up against a brick wall.
Souls are not being saved. The only answer is PRAYER. The alternative to prayer is fainting. We
must either pray to keep from fainting or we will faint in the work. Satan has colossal power in
this country and prayer is vital for victory.”
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64
Pendamaran on the west coast near Klang, was another village where the Methodists in Klang had
started work but were glad when the CIM workers took over. When Ruth Verhulst and Olive
Finney moved in to Pendamaran in March 1952, they found a huge settlement of 1200 families.
There was a group of Methodist Christians who welcomed their support, and the Methodist Church
in Klang helped them start a Sunday School. A very keen retired Methodist Bible woman was also
helpful in visitation, so their start was made easier by the cooperation of national Christians as well
as from contacts made through the Red Cross clinic where they assisted.
In the villages where the Red Cross were holding regular clinics, their nurses were grateful for the
help that our missionaries were often able to contribute. Sometimes it was simply to act as
interpreters when the people spoke dialects which the Red Cross nurses could not understand, and
sometimes the missionaries had medical training and were able to assist with the actual treatment
of the patients. While the people were not interested in the “western religion”, they were grateful
for the medical help they were given and some who were too ill to be treated at the clinic were also
grateful when the missionaries gotthem quickly off to hospital and in doing so probably saved their
lives. All this expedited the breakdown of opposition, but where there was no clinic it was harder.
Communication was always difficult, but not always because of language. Children were often
responsive because they were learning Mandarin at school, but their mothers were suspicious of us
and, because the majority of the first missionaries in the villages were women, it was hard to get
close to the men. If the men did not believe, their wives did not dare. As most of the people in the
villages were rubber tappers, they were away from early in the morning and we were unable to
contact them until the afternoon. Even then the attempts to get through to the women were hindered
by the language barrier, suspicion that we were spies and fear of the spirits and of repercussions
from the guerrillas. They didn’t mind the children coming to listen to stories or learning to sing
bright choruses, but it must not go any further than that. Some of the teenagers began to accept and
believe the message of salvation, but once this became obvious the trouble began. We wondered if it
would be better to work through the city churches and encourage the Chinese Christians to go out to
the villages and so break down the opposition that seemed to be targeted at the “foreign” religion.
At our first Field Conference in 1952 Arnold Lea from HQ in Singapore brought a Bible reading
each day based on the topic “Consider Him!” Betty Laing probably expressed the feeling of every
new village worker best when she commenced her report on her work in Scudai by saying, “If one
considered the work or oneself before considering the Lord, there would be utter discouragement.”
That first year in Malaya had been far from easy and Percy summed it up in his letter to Prayer
Partners back home: “The excitement and interest of our arrival in this country and in the new
villages has now worn off, and we are finding in many villages that we are up against a brick wall.
Souls are not being saved. The only answer is PRAYER. The alternative to prayer is fainting. We
must either pray to keep from fainting or we will faint in the work. Satan has colossal power in
this country and prayer is vital for victory.”
Return to Table of Contents
64
