W h il e the following personal sketch of some of her labors for the Lord was being considered for publication by The King’s Business, the author, Mrs. Edna Alger Gall, on October 31, 1966, went home to be with the Lord. On September 29th, a huge ban quet, attended by 150, had been held in her honor. Eighty-one years old and in a wheel chair, Mrs. Gall made her way the length of the immense dining room, greeting personally all of the 75 students from 35 foreign countries. Mrs. Gall, as she explains, was the first BIOLAN to go to the mission field. She spent seven years in China after which she and her husband carried on a work for men from the Free China armed services as well as the U.S.A. Here is a condensed autobiographical version of her story: Right after Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 hundreds of servicemen came into Santa Ana. The Air Base, where Orange Coast College now is, was the training ground for all the west ern half of the United States. Our home was opened to these men, and on Saturday evenings we ar ranged for recreation at Calvary Church. Frequently we’d take sev eral home for overnight and as a rule they’d attend the Sunday morning service. We might have others for dinner, to become ac quainted with as many as possi ble. The names of nearly 800 servicemen in our guest books bring to mind many happy memo ries. By the end of 1943 Free China began to send in Chinese cadets who had flown over the hump to Calcutta, shipped to Melbourne, then across the Pacific to San Diego. Soon we saw them on the streets in Santa Ana, and won dered how we could make contact. It wasn’t long before we met sev eral Chinese officers, and the nat ural thing for me to do was to greet them in their own lan
guage. Were they ever surprised to find someone who could con verse with them in the Mandarin language which I had learned as amissionary in China! We invited them to visit us, and the very next afternoon several came to our home. As they told us o f the ac tivities at the Santa Ana Air Base, it was easy to envision a mission field almost at our door. Mandarin is the language most ly used in China. Although these men came from all parts of China, the majority had learned Mandarin for military purposes. Pekingese is one of the best types of Mandarin, and that is what I had learned in North China. Now twenty years after my return to the States and not permitted to return, Mandarin was the key to befriending these strangers with in our gates. Some spoke a little English, but how happy they were to know someone familiar with their native land with whom they could freely converse! During those years at least 200 Chinese were entertained in our home — at times officers, at other times cadets. The cadets were served Chinese food at the Base, but the officers ate with the American officers — Am erican food! We would have ten to twelve for dinner, and I couldn’t begin to tell you how many bowls of rice and meat with soya sauce they’d eat. After a few months our home, that had already acquired the name “Bittersweet Lodge,” be came known as the Chinese Head quarters. The men spoke to their Chaplain of my knowledge of Mandarin and he invited me to speak at four chapel services at the Air Base and twice at Castle Field near Merced. Many engineers from other countries studying here under the Bureau of Reclamation also vis ited us, but the Chinese military men were in the majority. We al ways had prayer with our guests before they left. Although it Continued on page SS
by Edna Alger Gall
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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