Page 168 - Three Score Years & Ten
P. 168
“THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN” MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA
Amy Moore
vegetation and all kinds of wildflowers; buttercups, wild violets, wild roses, red, yellow, pink and white,
something that looked like white may, as well as many others I didn’t know at all.
A band of soldiers was just ahead of us on the road and, as there were rumours of brigands in the
mountains round us, we hoped the presence of so many soldiers might be a protection for us. We
leaned later that two Christians from Hanzhong had been attacked just two days previously, but we
came through safely.
I could not help noticing the number of people in these mountains who suffered from goitres. Nine out
of ten of the women we met had huge goitres hanging from their necks, while some had two or even
three.
We reached Hanzhong just three weeks after leaving Shanghai. Miss Haslam had thought we might
be there with her for several weeks before we three girls moved on to Chenggu to be with Miss Cooke,
but it was actually only a week.
In all that long trip with its many seen and unseen dangers, I don’t remember feeling any fear.
Perhaps I felt then as I do now that, ‘I am immortal till my work is done.’ I knew that God had called
me to China and that He would fulfil His purpose for my life. I was learning to know that I could trust
Him in any and every situation, and that brought a great sense of peace and security.
CHENGGU, SHAANXI
We were only a week in Hanzhong when Miss Kitty Cooke and Miss Elsie Parr arrived to take us on to
Chenggu. It was a day’s journey by sedan chair from Hanzhong. This was our first experience of this
way of travel and we found it very comfortable. The trip gave us another opportunity to see something
of the rich pastoral land of the Hanzhong plain. We passed fields and fields of wheat, but for every
wheat field there was an even larger one of the opium poppy, beautiful to look at, but the cause of so
much misery.
The Mission home and Church, in their enclosed compound in Chenggu, struck me as being too
‘foreign’ compared with the Chinese houses around them. In fact, everything about Chenggu came as
a shock to us three girls who had come prepared to ‘rough it’ in pioneer work where the Gospel had
never been preached.
There had been work in Chenggu for over thirty years, and we found the missionary whose place we
were taking was still there owing to a broken ankle which had delayed his departure for the coast. Mr.
Carwardine’s wife, who had died some years before, was buried in the garden of the Mission home,
and his only son ws in business in England. He had some very strange ideas about Church work
which included a fixation about the people to whom we should preach. He said that we were all in
Shaanxi for the Shaanxi people and it was they to whom preference must be given. Therefore only
the local Shaanxi people were allowed to enter the Church through the main door, while other people,
and especially the Sichuanese of whom there were many in Shaanxi because we were not far from
the border, had to enter through a small gate that led out into the back lane. It was the one which we
used to bring the goats in and out. The result of all of this was that the majority of Church people had
split off and founded an independent Christian Church while only a handful remained to worship in the
big foreign Church building.
Miss Cooke was in charge of us girls, to ensure that we got time for language study, and also to mix
with the people, use the language we had, and learn something of the local culture. Mr. Carwardine,
for all his strange ideas, was a gentle, kindly old English gentleman, who tried to assist us in any way
168
Amy Moore
vegetation and all kinds of wildflowers; buttercups, wild violets, wild roses, red, yellow, pink and white,
something that looked like white may, as well as many others I didn’t know at all.
A band of soldiers was just ahead of us on the road and, as there were rumours of brigands in the
mountains round us, we hoped the presence of so many soldiers might be a protection for us. We
leaned later that two Christians from Hanzhong had been attacked just two days previously, but we
came through safely.
I could not help noticing the number of people in these mountains who suffered from goitres. Nine out
of ten of the women we met had huge goitres hanging from their necks, while some had two or even
three.
We reached Hanzhong just three weeks after leaving Shanghai. Miss Haslam had thought we might
be there with her for several weeks before we three girls moved on to Chenggu to be with Miss Cooke,
but it was actually only a week.
In all that long trip with its many seen and unseen dangers, I don’t remember feeling any fear.
Perhaps I felt then as I do now that, ‘I am immortal till my work is done.’ I knew that God had called
me to China and that He would fulfil His purpose for my life. I was learning to know that I could trust
Him in any and every situation, and that brought a great sense of peace and security.
CHENGGU, SHAANXI
We were only a week in Hanzhong when Miss Kitty Cooke and Miss Elsie Parr arrived to take us on to
Chenggu. It was a day’s journey by sedan chair from Hanzhong. This was our first experience of this
way of travel and we found it very comfortable. The trip gave us another opportunity to see something
of the rich pastoral land of the Hanzhong plain. We passed fields and fields of wheat, but for every
wheat field there was an even larger one of the opium poppy, beautiful to look at, but the cause of so
much misery.
The Mission home and Church, in their enclosed compound in Chenggu, struck me as being too
‘foreign’ compared with the Chinese houses around them. In fact, everything about Chenggu came as
a shock to us three girls who had come prepared to ‘rough it’ in pioneer work where the Gospel had
never been preached.
There had been work in Chenggu for over thirty years, and we found the missionary whose place we
were taking was still there owing to a broken ankle which had delayed his departure for the coast. Mr.
Carwardine’s wife, who had died some years before, was buried in the garden of the Mission home,
and his only son ws in business in England. He had some very strange ideas about Church work
which included a fixation about the people to whom we should preach. He said that we were all in
Shaanxi for the Shaanxi people and it was they to whom preference must be given. Therefore only
the local Shaanxi people were allowed to enter the Church through the main door, while other people,
and especially the Sichuanese of whom there were many in Shaanxi because we were not far from
the border, had to enter through a small gate that led out into the back lane. It was the one which we
used to bring the goats in and out. The result of all of this was that the majority of Church people had
split off and founded an independent Christian Church while only a handful remained to worship in the
big foreign Church building.
Miss Cooke was in charge of us girls, to ensure that we got time for language study, and also to mix
with the people, use the language we had, and learn something of the local culture. Mr. Carwardine,
for all his strange ideas, was a gentle, kindly old English gentleman, who tried to assist us in any way
168
