The word stuck in Belle’s mind. Dysentery—thousands of Chinese and many foreigners died every year from the illness caused by contaminated water or food. She tried to think back to what she had eaten at the last inn, but it required too much effort.
Belle did not die from the disease, although she was seriously ill for two weeks before she began to feel a little better. Never in her life had Belle been so grateful for Ritz crackers and canned tomato soup, which the American missionary willingly shared with her.
In all, three weeks passed before the group could resume their travels. They made their way at a slower pace this time so that Belle could keep up. At times Belle even had the energy to look up at the beautiful mountains of Yunnan Province, though most of the time she just clung to the side of her sedan chair, carried by two coolies, and looked down at the rocky road they were traveling over.
The longer they seemed to travel, the more interesting the landscape became. Tali was in a particularly old part of China, an area where the best marble in the country had been quarried for thousands of years. The houses in the area were made of brick and had wonderful gardens filled with vegetables and fruit trees that thrived in the moderate climate.
By the time they reached Tali, Belle had used up every ounce of her energy. She simply could not muster the strength to walk the final fifty yards to the CIM mission compound—her and John’s new home. So John wrapped his arms around her thin body, lifted her up, and carried her the last leg of the journey. Since the house had no furniture, because the coolies had not yet arrived with their belongings, John lay Belle down on the marble floor of the house. It had been a difficult journey from Chengchiang, and Belle had nearly died along the way, but as she lay on the marble floor, she gave thanks to God for bringing them closer to her dream of reaching the Lisu people.
Shortly after their arrival at Tali, a knock at the door attracted Belle’s attention, though she was too weak to get up and answer it. The visitor turned out to be the local church leader, Pastor Li. Belle realized that she looked a little unconventional lying on the floor by the entranceway, but there was nothing she could do about it.
Soon Pastor Li came back with blankets and warm food, which helped Belle regain her strength. While Belle recovered, John surveyed the mission compound, bringing back the most wonderful news. The compound had rooms to spare! Pastor Li lived in the front part of the compound, and the Kuhns would share the back—six rooms encircling a neatly kept lawn and a huge garden, complete with flowering plum and peach trees. After living in public view in Chengchiang, Belle was finally going to get some privacy—and fresh vegetables as well.
John and Belle had much different missionary roles to play in Tali than before. China Inland Mission had put out a call for two hundred new workers to volunteer in the next two years, and James Fraser was particularly concerned that these new missionaries receive a positive first experience of China. He planned to send many of them to Tali for cultural and language orientation with John and Belle. Not only that, but Tali was on a widely traveled route, and Belle and John were told to expect many extra visitors on their way to and from more remote areas of the province.
Now that she was closer to Lisu territory, Belle eagerly looked forward to hosting visitors who might have news of CIM’s work with the Lisu. Since James had not returned to work among the Lisu, a married couple, Allyn and Leila Cooke, had been sent to live and work among them. The Cookes worked hard nurturing Lisu churches along the Salween River Valley. Two groups of churches were located about a week’s journey apart. Belle prayed faithfully for the Cookes each day and longed for the time when she could meet them in person.
Before she could fully settle into her new home, Belle felt ill again. This time, though, it was for the happiest of reasons—she was expecting a baby. But this presented John and Belle with a problem. The nearest Western doctor worked at the hospital in Kunming, fourteen days’ journey away. If Belle was going to have the baby in Kunming and be attended by a Western doctor, to make the journey safely she would have to leave Tali when she was about six months pregnant. Belle shuddered at the idea of staying in the dark, dirty inns along the way to the hospital and then staying in them with a newborn baby on the return trip. In the end she decided that she couldn’t do that—there had to be a better solution. Then she remembered Nurse Ling at Tsuhsiang who had nursed her through her scrape with dysentery. Belle recalled Nurse Ling telling her that she had trained as a midwife under an English doctor in Shanghai. Perhaps she could be persuaded to come and stay in Tali once Belle’s delivery date got nearer.
John wrote a letter to Nurse Ling and after a long wait received a reply from her. Nurse Ling said she would be happy to come and deliver the baby, and she would bring her textbook on difficult births just in case she needed it. Belle knew that Nurse Ling was trying to make her feel relaxed about the birth, but the thought of birthing difficulties made her nervous. She was even more nervous when Nurse Ling finally arrived and showed her several pages of gruesome diagrams concerning birth. Belle began to pray extra hard when she realized just how few missionary wives had their babies in such remote places.
Any fears Belle may have had about giving birth in such a remote location were unrealized, and on April 10, 1931, Kathryn Ann Kuhn was born. The child was also given the Chinese name Hong-En, meaning “vast grace.” Kathryn was a healthy, happy baby, with Belle’s black hair and hazel eyes.
Most of the local residents of Tali had never seen a white baby before, and soon a constant stream of visitors were coming to the house to look at Kathryn and pinch her cheeks for good luck.
For the next year and a half, John and Belle worked hard at their missionary tasks. Many new missionaries settled in the area, and John was responsible for finding and negotiating their housing and helping them establish a Christian fellowship. The work was difficult, but it suited John well. He was one of the most fluent Chinese speakers in China Inland Mission, and he loved setting out on long treks over the mountains to escort new missionaries to their posts.
At the end of 1932, John and Belle received a letter from James Fraser asking them to move farther west to open up a work in the Yungping Valley. Belle’s heart jumped for joy when she heard the news. This was another step closer to the Lisu, but John was despondent. He had visited Yungping and described the place as a tiny valley filled mostly with Muslims. Of all the cultural groups in China, the Muslims were often considered the most difficult to reach with the gospel message. Still, John and Belle trusted James’s judgment and agreed to exchange their beautiful home and thriving ministry in Tali for a dirty, crumbling house in the tiny Chinese village of Old Market, situated at the north end of Yungping Valley.
John rented a house alongside the river in Old Market for the family to live in. The house consisted of three wings set around a courtyard, with a crumbled brick wall in front by the river. A carpenter was hired to put new wooden floors in the house, repair the roof, and strengthen the walls. Then Belle and a local Chinese helper set to work cleaning up the place, scraping away years of accumulated dirt. Finally everything was ready, and the Kuhns moved into their new home.
Not long after John and Belle and Kathryn Ann had moved into the house, a delegation of Buddhists from the village came to visit. John invited them to come in and sit down.
“We have noticed that you do not drink alcohol or smoke tobacco,” the leader of the group explained. “As a result we have decided that a Christian church would have a good influence on our town. So we want to help you in any way we can.”
Belle glanced at John. She could tell that he was as surprised as she was at this outcome. It had not been what they were expecting.
“Thank you for your kind offer,” John began. He then went on to tell them about Jesus Christ and the gospel.
The members of the delegation smiled and nodded as he spoke.
“Yes, Christianity is a fine moral religion,” the group’s leader interjected. “Buddhism and its idols are old-fashioned.”
Things were going fine until John said, “As Christians you cannot worship any other god except the God of the Bible—not even your ancestors.”
At this the smiles left the faces of the members of the delegation. “Surely you cannot expect us to do that. We have always worshiped our ancestors,” another member of the delegation replied.
“Then you cannot become a Christian until you are willing to do so,” John replied firmly but politely. “Thank you for coming to visit. You may come back at any time to discuss further what we have been talking about.”
“Satan will first try to cooperate with us. Persecution is only his second-best method,” John told Belle after the delegation had left the house.
“I know,” Belle replied. “Our ministry here will be challenging.”
Sure enough, it was. Belle drew up a map and visited every village in the valley. The women were more attentive than the men, but they were illiterate and seemed to have little idea of what she was talking about. How could they? Belle wondered, since most of them had never climbed up and over the mountains that surrounded their valley and had little idea what the rest of the world was like. In spite of John and Belle’s best efforts, there were few converts—either Muslim or Buddhist—and never enough to form the core of a thriving church fellowship.
Despite the challenges, the Kuhns’ time living in the Yungping Valley seemed to fly by. Baby Kathryn adapted to the new conditions and grew from a baby into a curious two-year-old. Yet Belle could not help but feel isolated living in the Yungping Valley. She was grateful when other CIM missionaries came to stay with them. And she was delighted in August 1933, when two female missionaries arrived to live with them. Belle welcomed their company for another reason. For some time John had wanted to scout out an area to the north for potential missionary sites, and Belle had discovered that she was expecting another baby. With the arrival of the two new missionaries, John could head out on his adventure, knowing that Belle and Kathryn had help at home.
The plan would have worked well except for the unusually heavy rains that fell that summer. With almost no warning, the Yungping River flooded, pouring into the bottom floor of the Kuhns’ house beside the river. The three women hauled as much of the furniture and personal belongings upstairs as they could. It was a race against the rising floodwaters, and in the rush of the moment, Belle gave little thought to her pregnancy. That night, as Kathryn lay snuggled beside her, Belle felt the cramping begin. Tears began to roll down her cheeks and wet her pillow. She knew that she was losing her unborn baby.
It was a difficult time for Belle. John was far away, and many of the family’s belongings were ruined in the flooding. But most of all Belle grieved that the hope of a new life was over. She struggled to remain cheerful for the sake of those around her, but she was despondent.
Three weeks after Belle had miscarried the baby, John arrived home to learn the sad news. He tried to comfort Belle. “God must have some purpose in this,” he said. “Let’s pray and ask Him what good can come from this.”
Belle nodded. She promised to try to look for some positive outcome, though she could not think of any.
The day after John’s arrival home, a passing mule train dropped off a letter from James Fraser. “I want you to pray over a difficult problem,” Belle read aloud to John from the letter, which went on to say that the situation among the Lisu people had reached a breaking point. The Lisu churches were being persecuted because they had refused to grow opium for the local warlord. The warlord threatened to annihilate the churches in response, and so Allyn and Leila Cooke had separated so that each grouping of churches could have a missionary to serve as a buffer between them and the warlord. Doing this was a brave act, but as James pointed out, it was not a permanent solution. Someone else needed to join them in protecting the local churches, but who? James concluded his letter by asking John and Belle if they could think of anyone who could go, either temporarily or permanently.
