A COUNTRY TRIP, 1934

A Missionary Life:
Rev. J. Wesley Day
China, Malaysia, Indonesia

Side Trip: A Country Trip, 1934

Far South of the Kalgan mission are to be seen the beautiful Southern Mountains, beyond which lie wide valleys teeming with villages and towns of olden China. It is our territory, claimed for Christ by our church, but for two bandit-ridden years no missionaries could enter it.

New Year 1934 Horace Williams was busy packing. Two Chinese preachers and Wesley Day also packed up bedding, some food, and lantern slides. Bicycles were tightened and oiled. January second we four started South.

Horace Williams, Wesley Day, in 1934

That day we rode to Hsuan Hua. Next day we crossed a frozen, wind-blown river, and slowly made our way up a long mountain trail till we came to Shui Chuan (Springs of Water), where we must spend the night.

We entered a gate in the crumbling walls of the village, and asked of the people who gathered to look at us, the way to an inn. There we announced a meeting for the night, and wished for privacy to rest. The keeper gave us one room to ourselves, so bothered only by curious eyes which stared through made-to-order holes in paper windows, we rested.

In the evening we showed slides of the life of Christ to the village people, who jammed the streets to see the big pictures on the roadside wall, and who listened with at least recurrent interest to the preachers. Some of the crowd talked, many crowded in on the light from the projector, and some crowded the rickety table we had borrowed for the projector, but they were good-natured, and we were glad they would look and listen. One of the missionaries, by turn, operated the picture machine, while the other walked about, keeping his feet warm in the cold of the winter night.

We sold a few gospels and returned to our room in the inn. Now a room in any Chinese home or inn is about half taken up by a k'ang, a wide, dirt, mat-covered platform three feet high, heated in winter, on which people eat and sleep. At our return the innkeeper burned straw in the fire places, which warmed the k'ang so we could sit upon it, while at the same time the smoke from the straw filled the room, making our eyes burn.

Cart drivers came in to bear their greetings -- plain greetings of good people, -- and some to learn of Jesus. As bed time came, our guests took their departure, then each of us made a long envelope from his bedding, and changing clothes by stages, he wriggled into bed.

At break of day we rose, to pack our bedding and send it by a cart that went our way. Then the Chinese cooked a stew of all the food on hand. We ate, and started up the road.

The trail was steep and long. But by afternoon we topped the mountain, seeing our next destination, Shen Ching (Deep Wells), in the distance. Before we reached the city, though we were dry as dust and dirty as the country in which we lived, we were gladly meet by Christian leaders. They took us to their little gospel room, and had us sit cross-legged upon the k'ang, tasting tea and cakes, while we told them of our journey. Their best room awaited us, new scrubbed and neat, where they gave us steaming water to wash, and a real chance to rest.

The Shen Ching group is one of our youngest groups of Christians. Two of Mr. Williams' Bible School boys preached there a year ago, a number showing interest. One drinking, wife-beating gambler had a new vision of what life should be while the boys preached, and he became the staunch, yet humble, leader of the Christinas in the town. He donated the gospel hall, and kept up interest when the young preachers were far away.

Two days we spent amid these people's kindness, while Horace and the Chinese taught the people, hungry to learn of Christ. (Only one trifle marred our stay -- the buzzy cat, who kept us company on our k'ang, ate all the lard we saved for breakfast eggs.)

The morning of the third day, because we had to go, good food was placed before us, much more than we could eat. We held a final meeting then the church boys wheeled the bicycles through the city, the leaders kept us company to the gate, and all wished our party peace and blessings on the way.

The two weeks journey passed. Some of our churches were in need of spiritual resurrection, but some were like Shen Ching. Pictures were shown every night out of doors tuill the weather was so cold the projector would not funciton. With audiences varying from fifteen to five hundred, the preachers always gvae their best. Mr. Williams spent ever more time in fervent, fruitful prayer. By the end of the tour four Witness Bands were organized to preach in the district.

When we finished briefly seeing our Southern Churches, and finally arrived at a foreigner's home, in material things we came to a new world. We sayed in a house two stories high, with floors not made of dirt, with rooms not smoky by night or cold as ice by morning, and where curious eyes never looked through little holes in paper windows. But of treasures not material the country is full, and we want to go back.

J. W. Day, Methodist Protestant Mission, Kalgan, Chahar, China
Printed in The Missionary Record, Board of Missions of the Methodist Protestant Church, July 1934, p. 86