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willing to be led, why pray for guidance? • their getting passage to America. The English were retreating in Siam ahd the Malay peninsula. The Repulse and PrinCe of Wales had been sunk by Jap anese bombs. Manila wasvdeclared ah open city, all to no avail.
• Unless you are news came. A Dyak messenger from the local official’s office suddenly ap peared and called but: “ Pontianak has been bombed, 12,00 people Were killed and wounded.” I sat still for a moment, wondering what to do. Pontianak was the coast ■ city of Dutch West Borneo. Swiftly, as a bird of prey, war had struck—in Dutch territory this time. I thought of my w ife alone at our station, and I forgot about the rice and chicken. Asking jihe Dyaks who were accom panying me to wait and eat, I grabbed my canteen and hastened down the •trail. In a little over, three hours, I was climbing up the bank of the river leading to our house. The ?station was unusually quiet, gnd I soon learned that my wife, the twp children, and three Dyaks’ were the only ones there. My wife looked so calm when she greeted me I thought she could not have heard the news. But she had. “Are you all right, dear?” I asked anxiously. “Yes, quite all right.” “Well, if she is all right, I am too/' I thought. Thus the days went. Sometimes the news was gravé and disquieting. On 4other days the very lack of news lulled us into a sense of normalcy. Then suddenly it was Christmas. The -Christian Dyaks were making their usual plans for services in their churches on Christmas day. “ Don’t meet in your churches on Christmas,” the Malays said. “Thé Jap anese know all about you, and that is the day they w ill come and bomb every church.” “ Perhaps the Japanese will come,” they said. “ Perhaps they will-bomb our churches, but where is there a better place to go to heaven from than from the church?” This was the testi mony of people who had been out of heathenism only a few years. On Christmas day we listened, too, with aching hearts, to the incredible news that Hongkong had surrendered. Evacuation Becomes Necessary It was in the dead of night a few weeks later, and I was traveling up river from a conference with some fellow missionaries whose station was 156 miles from ours. Now and then the darkness of the mid-January night was broken, by flashes of light along the river bank, and I knew that fifth- columnists Were busy. More and more I felt that I should get my family to the coast and see them off to Java where there would be opportunity of
After a time, she said, “ If you think I should gp, I will.” I knew what it had cost her to say that, for if there was one Verse of Scripture above another the Lord had laid on both bur hearts it was: “Take heed to . . . the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers.” The decision made, we began to pack. During our hurried preparations, my wife said to me, “Why don’t you take us as far as Java? If everything is all right, you can return to the station here, and if everything isn’t all right, you w ill lie there with us.” Her words made me pause. The Lord Speaks “Perhaps that is the best,” I replied. I had scarcely spoken the words when something moved in my heart, and I knew the Lord wa% leading me, .as well as my family, out of Borneo. I could hardly believe it. Then I knew why I had found it so difficult to know God’s Will in the past weeks of un certainty. When one is praying for guidance from the Lord, one must come with an open mind, in fu ll sub mission to Him. I had had only one idea in mind, and that Was to stay! When I told the Dyak workers I was taking my family to Java, they cried with one voice, “ Yes, Toean, (Sir) you must get out. We’ve been wanting to tell you for two or three weeks, but we did not want to in fluence you. The Japanese don’t care anything about us dark:skinned peo ple, but they might kill you white people.” Their feeling tha,t we should go but confirmed my own decision. And so we set out, in one small motor boat,, towing another flat boat with out an engine. Two nights later we pulled in at the Williams’ station to pick them up Midnight of the following night found us on the wide river, our flashlights playing over the water to find the landmark that would guide us into the right river to reach Pontianak. Dozens of rivers run in all directions near the coast of West Borneo. It was necessary to find the right one or we might be lost for days. Pontianak was still with the stillness of death. Heartlessly bombed and ma chine-gunned, the place seemed like a graveyard as we made our way ashore and over to the steamship company to ask for passage to Java. “There w ill be no other boats put ting in here,” the manager informed us. “ The last ship left for Java at 1midnight.” [ Continued on Page 79]
Government boats and large Chi nese merchant boats had stopped run ning along the river, causing a near- panic since no rice was being im ported. A week before; I had gone to con fer with the Dixons, fellow mission aries working in the Melowi river dis trict. There we had talked most of the night, discussing the gravity , of the situation and how it concerned us. I found they, also, had received no mes sage from our Consul or Missionary headquarters, it was necessary there fore for each to act as he felt the Lord led. Finally we had agreed that each family would get to the coast the best way possible, in Case of invasion of Dutch territory. On my return home, I had talked to my wife, but she was not ready to leave. The Dyaks tugged too hard at her heart strings. Every day from thirty to three hundred of them came to the station. They had their prob-^ lems and needed counsel and prayer, or perhaps first aid. I was away from the station nearly half of each month; who would help them if she left? Though I was much concerned for her, I had no heart to urge her to leave, Finally, I had gone to the station where Mr. and Mrs. Williams, of an other Mission, were working, .to de termine their plans. I had the only boat in the district and would need to help the others if the decision to leave was reached. After mUch prayer, We had decided We should get the women and.children out of Borneo im mediately. Now I was on my way home to break the news of evacuation to my wife. My heart was heavy, knowing what a disappointment it would, be to her to have to leave, dreading to see her go. The more I prayed, the most restless I became. Why was it so difficult for me to know the mind of the Lord, I thought. In praying about mission problems and church activities, I could see the Lord’s leading. Why should I be in such a cloud of inde cision now? It was three o’clock in the morning when I put in at the tiny cove of our river home, but my wife had heard the engine and was waiting to greet me. My first words were scarcely ones of greeting. “Dear, I’m taking you and the children to the coast at once, to put you on a boat for Java ” I said.
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