Page 291 - Three Score Years & Ten
P. 291
“THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN” MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA
Amy Moore
do it. Letters from home were all about the wedding and my mother wrote that she had never seen
Beth so happy.
By August 1945 we were beginning to hope that Japan might surrender to the Allies, but then we
heard that Japan had refused to let the Allies have any control over the Emperor and so the War went
on. Mails were so slow to reach us and we longed for up to date news. Mother wrote in May to say
my brother Jack had been released and flown to England, and then her next letter, which took a month
to reach us, was written in July and told us nothing of his experience as if we had already heard. How
many letters were lost?
Frank was getting so discontented at home and needed school, so I sent to the Western Australian
Education Department for correspondence lessons for him to do
at home. One of the American officers who came to see us
regularly and who had two boys of his own, took a liking to Frank,
and if he was not busy would take him out sometimes, so that
was a help.
In the meantime the work continued, and I was concerned that
we had few people in Hanzhong now who could do anything for
the children. So I decided to have a Daily Vacation Bible School
that summer myself and rope in any help I could get. I invited
GI’s at a home service Joy Chun from Xixiang to come and help. She had developed
into a lovely girl, and was now at University, but she had other
engagements that week. In the end it was Bertha who helped me. Percy had gone down to Shiquan
for meetings and found her looking very washed out after suffering from boils on one of her eyes. He
brought her home with him for treatment and a rest, and she was glad to help me with the children.
Summer 1945 was hot and humid, but the rainy season seemed to start early too. The summer was
never easy to get through as it seemed to bring out all our physical weaknesses. I had the two
children in bed for over a week with some kind of tummy trouble which I did not find easy to clear up. I
finally asked the American Air Force doctor to have a look at Dorothy. He had given me some of the
new sulfa drugs which were being used very effectively by the Air Force, but which I had had no
experience of at all, and I was afraid to use without medical advice. He asked her weight and told me
to give her two sulfa-diazine tablets at once and then one every four hours with plenty of liquid to
drink. She cleared up very quickly after that and I began to feel they really are ‘miracle drugs’. With
Frank it was different and I began to feel it was amoebic dysentery with him which the sulfa drugs do
not seem to help, but when Jess was here she told me how much yatren Dr. Howie used at Chefoo to
treat children with amoebic. I used it on Frank and he slowly cleared up too, but had little energy.
Dorothy’s little friend John Carl Ebeling, was in bed with a high fever which was not responding to the
treatment the doctor was giving him, and Doris Onions was finding her arthritis very painful. As soon
as transport to England was more available, she would leave for furlough, but in the meantime she
was happy to take over the secretarial work for Percy. She had no home or family to return to in
England as she was one of the orphans brought up in Dr. Barnado’s homes. Before the troubles
became worse in the north of our province, she was working in the north and found the climate there
less humid and better for her arthritis, so she would probably go north again when she returned.
291
Amy Moore
do it. Letters from home were all about the wedding and my mother wrote that she had never seen
Beth so happy.
By August 1945 we were beginning to hope that Japan might surrender to the Allies, but then we
heard that Japan had refused to let the Allies have any control over the Emperor and so the War went
on. Mails were so slow to reach us and we longed for up to date news. Mother wrote in May to say
my brother Jack had been released and flown to England, and then her next letter, which took a month
to reach us, was written in July and told us nothing of his experience as if we had already heard. How
many letters were lost?
Frank was getting so discontented at home and needed school, so I sent to the Western Australian
Education Department for correspondence lessons for him to do
at home. One of the American officers who came to see us
regularly and who had two boys of his own, took a liking to Frank,
and if he was not busy would take him out sometimes, so that
was a help.
In the meantime the work continued, and I was concerned that
we had few people in Hanzhong now who could do anything for
the children. So I decided to have a Daily Vacation Bible School
that summer myself and rope in any help I could get. I invited
GI’s at a home service Joy Chun from Xixiang to come and help. She had developed
into a lovely girl, and was now at University, but she had other
engagements that week. In the end it was Bertha who helped me. Percy had gone down to Shiquan
for meetings and found her looking very washed out after suffering from boils on one of her eyes. He
brought her home with him for treatment and a rest, and she was glad to help me with the children.
Summer 1945 was hot and humid, but the rainy season seemed to start early too. The summer was
never easy to get through as it seemed to bring out all our physical weaknesses. I had the two
children in bed for over a week with some kind of tummy trouble which I did not find easy to clear up. I
finally asked the American Air Force doctor to have a look at Dorothy. He had given me some of the
new sulfa drugs which were being used very effectively by the Air Force, but which I had had no
experience of at all, and I was afraid to use without medical advice. He asked her weight and told me
to give her two sulfa-diazine tablets at once and then one every four hours with plenty of liquid to
drink. She cleared up very quickly after that and I began to feel they really are ‘miracle drugs’. With
Frank it was different and I began to feel it was amoebic dysentery with him which the sulfa drugs do
not seem to help, but when Jess was here she told me how much yatren Dr. Howie used at Chefoo to
treat children with amoebic. I used it on Frank and he slowly cleared up too, but had little energy.
Dorothy’s little friend John Carl Ebeling, was in bed with a high fever which was not responding to the
treatment the doctor was giving him, and Doris Onions was finding her arthritis very painful. As soon
as transport to England was more available, she would leave for furlough, but in the meantime she
was happy to take over the secretarial work for Percy. She had no home or family to return to in
England as she was one of the orphans brought up in Dr. Barnado’s homes. Before the troubles
became worse in the north of our province, she was working in the north and found the climate there
less humid and better for her arthritis, so she would probably go north again when she returned.
291
