A
Weldon Culver Overseas Crusade missionary and his two gospel team mates.
The MISSIONARY My KINSMAN
As told to Dick Hillis by a Tribesman
into the mountains. In the high jungles and on the rocky eastern coast where the mountains climb out of the sea, we have lived for four hundred years. While America has grown from wilderness colony to world power, we have made less progress than one of our little fishing boats in “the great calm” on the river. For the Chinese in the plains, there are schools. For our children there has been no education. Here in ten thousand-foot mountains, nights are cold . . . a damp, clammy, disease-carrying cold. Many of our people die young of tuberculosis or pneumonia. We have no way of coping with sickness. Our people just suffer and die. But no longer are they unloved. A man and woman of your nation care for us. They are not like us. They are taller, with white skin, big noses, and pale eyes. Their hair is old but their faces are young. They can read and write, not only in their own language, but also in the Chinese language of the plains. They have education and medical skill. These people carry with them strange •boxes. One box has a glass eye which can show us our selves. Another box makes music and voices, which tell us about Jesus. This Mr. and Mrs. James Dickson are your Countrymen, but they are my kinsmen. To my heart they brought the message of salvation. They made their people my people, and their God my God. During the Japanese occupation of Formosa, they took one of our tribal women, “Granny,” into their home. They taught her the Word of God, and she went back to her village so bubbling over with the joy of new life in Christ that they called her “Gospel Granny.” Soon the government outlawed Christianity. Evan gelism became an underground movement. Every night Gospel Granny proclaimed the glad news of redemption. She slept in the daytime and at nightfall tramped to village after village, preaching Christ. My people caught up the message. Young men and women followed “Gospel Granny” until they absorbed the little she knew. Then they too trekked off to new and unreached villages.
M y f a t h e r w as a h e a d -h u n te r . . . I am a h e a rt-h u n te r. My father was out to take life . . . I am out to give life. Christ has made the difference. Since the Gospel was first preached to my people and to the other tribes living in the high mountairfs of For mosa, many miracles have taken place. Head-hunting is gone. Tribal wars have ceased. Hundreds of churches now mark our island hills. At long last Christ has come, and with His coming we have new light and peace. I and my people are short, brown-skinned Polyne sians. When my forefathers came north across the seas to populate this island, they called it “Great Terraces.” Centuries later Portuguese explorers, looking at these same green mountains, called the island. “Formosa” — “the beautiful.” My people settled on the western side of the island, growing rice in the fertile plain and sweet potatoes on the foothills. Then the Chinese came. With their superior weapons and vast numbers of warriors, they drove us
In many areas the tribes people are neglected ones.
THE KING'S BUSINESS
40
Made with FlippingBook Online document