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Show - 4- - mother died when he was a small boy. When he was twelve years old, he wras married to a girl of twenty or more. She took care of him for a while, until bandits took the village and occupied it for several weeks. She became enamoured of some of the bandits; and when they left the village she went with them. The little fellow thus deserted wandered around for a time, and then went to the village where the bandits were encamped to try to persuade his wife to come back. The bandits set him to carrying water and doing errands around the camp. He was unable to persuade his wife to go back home with him; and he finally got away and went to live with some of his relatives. (He has not married again; and so far as I know has never had any further word of his wife.) The village in which he lived-Lang Wo-er, meaning wolves' den-had a feud of long standing with a neighboring village. Some people in this other village were searching for some means of injuring Lang Wo-er last winter, and somebody remembered this incident. So they went to their county-seat, and bad Mr. Chang (by this time about thirty years old) arrested as a bandit. He had already been a student in our school for a year and a half, and was a very earnest Christian. The people in his own village had to go his bond and pay a goodly sum for his release. Still the magistrate was unwilling to release him. Mr. Chang, however, insisted that it was time for school to reopen and that he must get back to Lintsing. The magistrate was rather skeptical about Mr. Chang's being really a student in the Bible training school; and he wrote a letter, asking if Mr. Chang was one of our students, and inquiring as to what sort of a fellow he was. It so happened that this magistrate was one of the officers of the Propaganda Corps that came with the Nationalist Army on its march northward in 1928, and had been in our home a number of times the summer before,-he is a graduate of the University of Illinois. We replied to his letter, stating that Mr. Chang surely was one of our students, and that to the best of our knowledge he was an honest, law-abiding citizen. Mr. Lai, the magistrate, then released him, on the understanding that Mr. Chang was to return at once to school. Last summer I had an opportunity to visit Lang Wo-er, and find out more about Mr. Chang. He is now living with an uncle. Through his own efforts he has gathered together a group of nearly thirty people,-not all of them church members as yet, but a very live and enthusiastic group. They have fixed up a small building for a church, bought benches, etc., and have regular services on Sunday and services every week night for prayer and Bible study. Mr. Chang started this work before he entered the training school; and he expects to go back and help in the leadership of this group after he graduates in the spring of 1931. He has never received any pay for this work, and expects to continue as a volunteer worker after he graduates. I won't tell you about the others now. Come and see us. Sincerely, Alice E. Murphy |