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Show American Board Mission, Tehchow, Shantung, China. February 24, 1936. Dear All of You, A whole free day dropped ín my lap like a snowball. Surely nowhere else would two inches of snow give the bus-drivers a holi-day. This morning I got up at five-flfteen to take the bus to Yao Chan and after waiting at the station an hour, was told the bus would not run today. My flrst thought always when I have a bit of time, is letters. So, I pulled off steen-eleven layers of clothing and got out my un- My"BigSister" and I. a n s w e r e d l e t t e r g a n d l i g t o f u n. thank-you-ed Christmas gifts,-and decided to write to all of you all at once. It is two years since my last general letter, but rest your hearts, I shall not try to tell you all about China or even about myself for two years. I couldn't, for whatever else you may say of the life I lead, it is not monotonous. So far, in Shantung, the overpowering "friendship" of our island neighbors has not effected us directly, tho we doubt not that befoye long we will have more than newspaper reports to warm our blood. I am sure that you have all had enough letters from me to know that a i year ago last summer I moved my "flrst class' furriiture and "second class" clothes to Tehchow. I have two classes of furniture, one for here and one for Lihtsing, and four classes of clothes, flrst-class for Peiping and Peitaiho, second for Tehchow, third for Lihtsing and fourth for the country. Fourth class is a funny collection of cast-offs with a neat Chinese garment on the outside to cover a multitude of lauglis. My flrst interest and a good share of my timestill go to Lintsing and much of my time is spent on the road. With the Wickes family no longer here, the Harold Robinsons loaned to Tungchow, and the Gilberts on furlough: we just do the best we can until more help comes. In general, my work has been much the same the last two years as the two before, a large part of the time spent in the country with our traveling laymen's training school, and the rest in church, Religious Education, Sunday School, Vacation Bible Schools, Homes and school work. This means many hours of committee work and consultation. Last fall, instead of our customary three months in a village, our laymen's training school staff divided the time between Tehchow and Lintsing holding special training classes, of ten days or a month, for picked leaders, teachers of literacy classes and flrst year "Station Classes". The plans for this were made early in the year, but it worked out particularly happily for me, for it gave me more time at home with my mother, who carne out last summer to spend a year or two with me in China. Tomorrow I will try again to go to Yao Chan where our training school team will be working for the next six months. It is a large market town about thirty-five miles south of here on the oíd imperial highway, the oíd cart road north and south before the days of railroads and autos. Two weeks from today I will have to be back here for we expect Miss Kuan, one of our Tehchow girls, who is now the Christian Homes secretary of the National Christian Council. She and Miss Mary Jones, who started the flrst Mother-craft school in China, have written that they want to stop off for two days on their ,way north, to visit our work., In our Homes work here in Tehchow this year, Mrs. Hausske and Lucia Lyons and I have been working out some special projects. There are two Mothers' Clubs, one in the city and one here at the compound. We could find no suitable material for their meetings so Mrs. Hausske worked out a course on "How to Train Your Child to be Well and Happy" and Miss Lyons translated it. We have planned out and had made small models of a play-pen, screened bed, etc., that can be carried around for demonstra-tions and lectures. Mrs. Hausske has written and I have translated and arranged, five posters on child care, and they are just off the press. One is on sleep and one on play, and three on feeding. The Chinese translation of Mrs. Hausske's other book on the care and training of a baby during its flrst year is soon to be published by the National Christian Council. But the theme that runs like an undercurrent to all our thoughts and plans and even our dreams at night, is the famine. It is the worst this year that I have ever seen, worse than the "Big Famine" of 1920. For more íhan ten months last year, we had no rain, until there was nothing green left. In June the so-called "month of roses", our landscape was a waste of blowing dust, in a farming área that averages over a thousand persons per square mile. Cistems and wells were dry and there was little water in the CP.T.O. |