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Show office is heated by a small tin stove holding about a quart of coal. While giving an examination day before yesterday, the ink in the brushes which the students were using froze. Some of the students decided to use pencils instead; but a few of them solved the difficulty by stopping every minute or two to thaw out their brushes with their breath. A year ago we had twenty-five women and sixteen men; but in the summer it was decided that our limited budget would oblige us to cut the enrolment to a total of thirty students. As finally decided on, our group includes sixteen men and fourteen women. (Last year was the first year when we had more women than men.) Last September Pastor Wang left us to go to Shantung Christian University for further study. He had been in the school ever since it was started,-first as head Chinese teacher, and since the spring of 1927 as principal. We miss him very much, but have been most fortunate in being able to secure a very capable man to take his place. Mr. Lee, our new principal, is a graduate of the theological department of Yenching University, and is doing very satisfactory work in the school. The most interesting thing about our school is the students. For instance, Mrs. Ch'in is the mother of the congregation at Shao Ku, one of our outstations about twelve miles from Lintsing. She lives in the church yard, and is hostess, parish vistor, deaconess, mother confessor, and general pastor's assistant. For this she receives no salary, but has the use of one small room,-a room with a dirt floor and furnished with two rickety chairs and a small table. She can read the Gospels fairly well, and can write a few characters. She is as poor as Job's turkey, but she has a goodly store of treasures in heaven. A year ago she had to put her little boy in an orphanage because she had no means of feeding and clothing him. This is her second term in the training school, and she is studying hard so that she may go back to be of even greater service to the Shao Ku church. She became a Christian through the influence of her two daughters, who came to Miss Ruth Van Kirk's children's refuge in Lintsing nine years ago, at the time of the other big famine in North China. Lee Tsun Jieh is a man in the middle thirties who was on our force of evangelistic workers ten years ago. After preaching for two or three years he began to smoke opium. Of course he was dropped from our force of helpers; and during the next few years he managed to send up in smoke practically everything he had. (Opium smoking is the most expensive habit it is possible to acquire in China.) About a year ago, one of our evangelistic helpers, Mr. Sung, went to Mr. Lee's village, and preached there. He managed to get a real hold on Mr. Lee, and persuaded him to give up smoking. It was a real transformation, and he has not smoked since. Last spring, Mr. Sung asked if Mr. Lee might come to our training school, so that he might have a chance to break completely with his old habits. We responded that he might come on trial. He has made good; and last fall his home church gave him a letter of recommendation to be received as a regular student. During the New Year vacation last year, we heard suddenly one day that one of our students, Mr. Chang, had been arrested as a bandit, and was in prison in a city about thirty-five miles to the southwest of Lintsing. Then I learned his story. His father and |
