328
July 1929
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
Other Cities Also B y R ev . R. A. J a f f r a y ( Wuchow, South China)
f YEAR ago the writer made his first trip to the Dutch.Indies. The present article is written on his return from his second trip. The second trip was made with the purpose of placing two new >Chinese missionaries on the field. They are located on the east coast of Borneo where Gospel halls are being opened in the cities of Samarinda and Balik-papan. That day Jesus had healed Peter’s wife’s mother by rebuking her fever. And at even when the sun was set they brought to him all that were sick and He laid His hands on everyone of them and healed them. The next day before daylight, Jesus arose and went out into a desert place and there prayed. The multitude sought Him and would have stayed Him, but He said unto them, “I must preach the Gospel to OTHER C IT IES ALSO , for therefore was I sent” (Luke 4 :40-43). Twelve months ago, pressed in spirit for the lost in the South Sea Islands, the writer set forth to visit some of the unreached parts of the vast mission field of the Dutch East Indies. Returning after two months’ travel ing, he felt four cities especially laid on his heart. Night and day the words “Samarinda,” “Balik-papan,” “Makas sar,” and “Surabaya” sounded in his ears. The darkness of those four places is probably in the order in which they are named here, and we determined by the grace of God to do our utmost to bring the Gospel Light to those1 who sit in “darkness and in the shadow of death.” T h e C a l l to F o u r N e e d y C it ie s A n sw e r e d The two first-named cities, Samarinda and Balik- papan, are located on the east coast of Borneo. Here it seemed as though total darkness reigned. There was no witness for Christ in either of these cities or any of the surrounding and neighboring cities on the east coast of Borneo. The doctrine of “The false prophet,” Moham med, and heathenism abounded. We sent forth the chal lenging call a year ago :—“Who will open a Gospel hall for the Lord Jesus in Samarinda and Balik-papan?” The call has been answered first by Chinese evangelists, who, thank God, are now located there as the first mission aries of the Cross of Christ. In Makassar, the capital of the Celebes, there is a Dutch Protestant Church, where also Malay Christians may worship, and there had been a Chinese church, but it had sickened and died three years previous. There seemed to be no aggressive witness of the Gospel in this great cosmopolitan center. Thank God we have been able to send a Chinese pastor to Makassar. Pastor S. W. Chue has been laboring in this city since July, 1928. In Surabaya, the great commercial center of Eastern Java, called by the Chinese Sz-shui (Four Waters), there is considerable Christian work and we were pleased to meet a company of earnest Cantonese Christians, but they were a little flock of sheep without a shepherd. They had no Chinese leader or preacher and pleaded with me to send them a worker from China. Thank God, another of., our Wuchow Bible School graduates, Mr. T. H. Loh, has been called to this church and is now doing splendid work for the Lord in Surabaya.
Thus to sum up what the Lord has done in the past twelve months for these four cities. First, a suitable Chinese preacher has been found for Surabaya. Second, Pastor S. W. Chue has reopened the work in Makassar and has gathered a little company of Chinese Christians around him. Third, Mr. C. Y. Lam, with his family, is located at Samarinda, and fourth, we hope that Mr. K. L. Lin will take up the work at Balik-papan. So we thank God that these four “other cities also” are hearing the glad sound of the Gospel. The present trip to the Dutch East Indies had for its first purpose the locating of Mr. C. Y. Lam and Mr. K. L. Lin in their new work. Before leaving Wuchow, a solemn dedicatory service was held, when a number of Chinese leaders and missionary brethren laid their hands upon the heads of these two young men in the name of the Lord. We sailed from Wuchow on January 26, and a farewell service was held in Hongkong, attended by five hundred Chinese Christians. These two young men gave very telling earnest testimonies of God’s leadings and call to this new work. The meeting was in a sense something unique in the history of our Chinese work. It was a real foreign missionary farewell meeting. Many such meet ings have been held as Chinese workers left for a needy field in their own country, but probably this was the first time that Chinese missionaries had been sent forth to a foreign land as missionaries of the cross to bring the Gospel not only to their own people, but with the purpose of learning a foreign language and preaching Christ to another race. The missionary meeting lasted two hours and a half and the people even then did not want to leave. Our party sailed from Hongkong for Makassar on January 30, and from Makassar trans-shipped after a few days’ fellowship and service with pastor Chue and family, for Samarinda. In a most wonderful way the Lord led us to find a suitable place to serve as a chapel, the day after we arrived in Samarinda. We knew of only one Chinese Christian in this city, a Fukienese merchant, whom we met last year. He and his family, especially his mother, who had at one time been a Bible woman in Fukien Province, were greatly delighted when they heard that our Chinese brethren had really come to stay and to establish His work in Samar inda. Mr. Chong did all that he could, with other friends, to assist us in our search for a suitable place to rent. The rents seemed excessively high. The place to which the Lord directed us was given us at a reasonable figure and is suitable both as a home for the Chinese missionaries and also a Gospel hall. It took a week to clean the place up, and make certain slight repairs. The party in the mean time lived in a Chinese inn. G r e a t D a r k n e s s i n C e n t r a l B o r n e o Negotiations for the new chapel being closed, the writer at once left for a trip to the interior. The name of the river motor-boat was the Dyak and this name em bodied the object of our trip to the interior. Samarinda is. situated on the Mahakam River about eighty miles from the coast. The Dyak carried us another 220 miles into the interior of Borneo to a city called Long Iram. We will
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