LETTER FROM CHINA, 1935

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

Side Trip: Letter from China, 1935

Since the middle of August, when our boys and girls' school opened, my work has been in connection with it. As dean, I have been responsible for the school, policies, shortcomings, etc. The school is fortunate in having a faculty lyal to the mission and to its ideals. Becuase our scholastic and moral standards are the best in our frontier province, the non-Christian community leaders send their children to us, and these youngsters sing our Christian songs with as much energy as the rest. Teaching English has been quite a combination of pain and diversion -- about as easy as teaching Chinese to Americans, but most interesting nevertheless, and my one opportunity off the playground to know the students day by day.

Last summer the school asked me to teach English to a Confucian scholar and editor of the Kalgan newspaper. Feeling my time was well occupied, I was not anxious to add to its uses, but I have since been glad to have been teaching Mr. Chang. His son has studied English at our school last year and this, but he alone of all our students has never been allowed to attend our religious services, even at Christmas. Just a few days ago, however, Mr. Chang came to Mrs. Soderbom and to me, said he had decided to send his boy to a Christian Boarding High School, and asked us to help him choose one.

Last winter, when my Chinese reached the appropriate (?) stage I was invited to take my turn leading the daily school chapel service, a morning half-hour devoted to pray, song and a talk. In preparing for these my teacher worked over time seeing that in the Bible reading every Chinese tone was right and that the talk, which he was the first to hear, was not too utterly far from good Chinese.

A couple of days later Mr. Soderbom asked if I was interested in cycling up to a post-Christmas service at Shan-nan-shan, 15 miles away, where Grandfather Lee, in his own village, had started a church. There ought to be a missionary there for the glad occasion, and no one else could go. So I spent the rest of my Chinese study that week preparing the chapel talk into the first Chinese sermon.

After a long pull up the road I reached the village fifteen minutes before the service. The evangelist in charge, puzzled as to what to do with a Chineseless missionary, finally beamed brightly and asked me to say the benediction.

The country people were so hospitable, asking the missionary to make some visits, to stay for the afternooon meal (two meals a day is the country custom), aye, to stay for the evening meeting, and for the night, that after some urging the foreigner accepted. Tired out by the mission Christmas rush, and not particularly rested by a fifteen mile push, I was ripe for such a taste of the leisurely welcome of the country. So in the evening I brought the mission greetings, and your greetings -- of the home church in America -- to this young church, built and supported by the patient efforts of Grandfather Lee; and preached to this peole, many of them part of his own family of twenty-five people. The simple sermon reached these people, for after I finished speaking twenty minutes, Mr. Lee spent thirty or forty translating it into the dialect and mind of his children and neighbors, who listened to him carefully.

This winter, before school doors had closed for vacation, I was pushing my bicycle over the hills toward our southern country churches. Bible School boys were in the field and I wanted to see how they were doing. In the first town, "Western City", the church members asked all kinds of ordinary questions about this thing and that thing and I answered them, and their looks showed they had learned little. But when they called a meeting, and I spoke to them earnestly the message of God's love (which weeks before my teacher and I had labored on so long and carefully), I saw their faces bright with understanding.

And it was so in all the churches. I could not understand, let alone answer, all the many questions in local dialect asked about this and that, but when I spoke the simple children's message of a God who loves them, the people listened eagerly, and it was a blessing to speak to them.

During the balance of the school vacation I visited another section of China to see what Christians and others are doing to help the often desperately poor farmer, who is 85% of China. Taking advantage of the winter freedom from disease, I traveled inexpensively with the Chinese, often forgetting that my skin was not yellow like everybody else's.

I visited a communist-ravaged section of Kiangsi, now recovered by the national government, and where the National Christian Council has provided the government with some able Christian leaders to help recreate some of the destroyed communities. These Christian leaders need all the great faith that their religion gives them, in tackling the problem of the poverty stricken, illiterate, superstitious, over-populous and war despoiled, albeit very human and warmhearted Chinese farmer.

The winter term at school, begun February 25, is now on in full swing.

Almost at the opening of school special services were held at the mission led by Rev. Cecil W. Troxel, of Tientsin. Mr. Troxel has been a China missionary since 1901. He tells us here that he was started in the ministry through the encouragement of Rev. R. F. Day, now of the Inwood church, then ministering fo his first charge in Holder, Illinois. The meetings have been a success, Christians being strengthened, and others being added to the church. Those interested in our school are much gratified because four of our five young men techers in school joined the church last Sunday at the conclusion of these services.

Now is a favorable time for our mission work in China. The government, by and large, is friendly; while the people in our section are quite friendly and highly regard the church. Opportunities come to us frequently now, to lead people, high and low, into the Kingdom of God. How long this season of general goodwill toward the church and missionary here will last only God knows. Please pray that we may make the most of it.

May you know a rich measure of God's grace, at Easter and in the months to come.

Your missionary in China, J. Wesley Day.

Printed in The Missionary Record, Board of Missions of the Methodist Protestant Church, May, 1935. pp 21-23