This time Belle was packing not for a visit but for a two-year stint living among the Lisu. She wrote lists of everything that she would need to take with her: kerosene for the heaters, clothes for a growing three-year-old, canned milk and meats, medicines, her guitar, a typewriter, reams of paper, pen, ink… Belle watched in dismay as the lists grew longer and longer. Yet she realized that every single item she listed was vital if they were to work effectively.
Eventually, eleven mules, loaded and ready to set out on the journey, stood outside their house. Belle took one last look around the place. She would miss the Yungping River running outside her door and the long, flat plain that spread out in front of her. She wondered how long it would be before she saw another flat stretch of land.
John gave the order, and the mule train began to move. Belle lifted Kathryn up into a small sedan chair, and off they went. At first the journey was relatively easy going. Since it was December, as they started to climb up the Mekong River Valley, the air soon grew thin and cold.
The mule train climbed over high mountain ridges, the mules laboring under their loads, and then dropped down steeply into the bottom of a narrow canyon. The trail then ran along the bubbling river at the bottom of the canyon. As the travelers made their way along the river, sheer rock faces rose up on either side of the canyon. High above, huge boulders jutted out from the cliff face. Then the travelers began to encounter places where these boulders had come crashing down in landslides that almost blocked the canyon and covered the trail. They were forced to clamber over the landslides, which became more frequent the farther up the canyon they went.
At one stage the muleteer pleaded with John to turn back and take the other trail to the Salween River Valley. The mules, he said, were having great difficulty making it over the numerous landslides with their loads. John thought about it, but they were already five days into the journey, and their food supplies were beginning to run low. The muleteer became stubborn and insisted they go back, but John reasoned with the man and told him to lighten the mules’ loads even if he had to make two trips across the landslide with the animals to get everything across. Grudgingly the muleteer agreed, and on they went.
At one particularly treacherous landslide, the mule train came upon a group of travelers headed down the canyon. The two groups of travelers stopped and talked awhile, and Belle was relieved to learn that this was the last major landslide they would have to cross. The travelers also told John and Belle that a week earlier in this very landslide a British consul had lost all of his supplies.
After six days the group reached the Salween River, the entrance to Lisuland. Belle’s heart soared when she finally saw the river. They stopped for lunch at a village called Deer Pool, where John had stayed on his way back to the Yungping Valley. “There is a Christian girl here called Homay,” he told Belle. “We’ll share our food with her. She is a remarkable girl; wait and see. She even speaks some Chinese.”
Soon a plump young woman dressed from turban to toe in navy blue emerged from a hut beside a pigsty. It did not take Belle long to see why John had described Homay as remarkable. Homay was quiet, but she exuded an air of confidence as she helped prepare rice for lunch while at the same time entertaining Kathryn.
After lunch, as the group said good-bye, Belle hoped that she would have the chance to spend more time with Homay. She did not have to wait long. The next day Belle glanced back and spotted Homay climbing the trail behind them, a bedroll on her back. Belle dropped back to allow her to catch up. “Are you coming to join us?” she asked. Homay nodded. “Yes. I would like to live with you and help look after your little girl if you want me to.”
Belle flung her arms around Homay, not sure whether that was an acceptable gesture or not. She was too excited to care. She now had a wonderful Christian woman to disciple and a helper all in one. Belle’s heart overflowed with gratitude to God.
One more surprise was yet to come. At dusk, Job, a Lisu evangelist, met them on the trail. “God told me to come and help you,” he said.
And help he did. John, Belle, and Kathryn were able to walk the last few miles to Pine Mountain Village while Job stayed and directed the mules and muleteer, who had to climb the final mountain at a much slower pace.
Darkness had enveloped the mountain by the time the Kuhns arrived at their new home. Belle remembered the first time she had been in it, chatting with Leila and enjoying her freshly baked muffins. But Leila had already left to join her husband farther north in Luda, and now the house was empty except for a couple of dusty bookshelves. An icy wind whipped through the loosely woven bamboo walls.
As Belle lit a lamp, she felt a tug on her arm. “Mommy, let’s just stay for a couple of days and then go, can we?” Kathryn asked, her big hazel eyes raised to Belle’s.
With her daughter’s words, Belle felt her resolve drain away. Tears filled her eyes. Was this really what she had prayed for through the years? Did she want living in a one-room hut high on a mountainside to be among Kathryn’s first memories? What had she done? Then in the glow of the lamp, Belle spotted a piece of paper pinned to the wall opposite her. “My God shall supply all your needs” was written on the paper in crayon by a childish hand. A child who was praying for the Cookes must have sent this to them, Belle thought. Then she remembered all of the people who were praying for them as well. “Forgive me, Lord,” she whispered. “You brought us here, and You will carry us through.” Then she looked down at Kathryn.
Kathryn smiled hopefully back at her mother, and then hand in hand the two of them walked with new strength out of the dimly lit hut to find John and begin setting up their home.
It took Belle only a day to organize her house. Each corner of the room had a designation: clothing, office supplies, food, bedding. She folded the clothes and put them into their designated corner, stacked the food in its corner, and placed the bedding and paper and pens and ink in their respective corners. Then she was done. Now it was time to turn her attention to the Lisu.
Christmas was approaching, and preparations for celebrating it were already under way at Pine Mountain Village. Christmas was the one time of the year when all the Lisu Christians gathered to celebrate with their fellow Christians from across the area and with the missionaries. Before John and Belle arrived, Pine Mountain Village had been designated the host church for the Christians in the southern area of the Salween River Valley.
Belle watched as small pine shelters were built to house the guests and cooking stoves were set up. An arch of freshly cut greenery was also set up as a welcome gate for the visitors. The day before Christmas, a watchman scanned the trails leading to Pine Mountain Village for approaching visitors. When he saw someone, he would fire two shots from his rifle into the air as a signal, and the Christians of Pine Mountain Village would emerge to welcome the visitors, lining up on both sides of the arch. When the guests arrived, the Christians serenaded them with song, and of course there was lots of handshaking.
The day after Christmas a baptismal service was held at the same nearby pool where Belle had witnessed the baptism on her earlier visit to Pine Mountain Village. Belle helped Kathryn climb up onto a large rock near the pool, and together they watched as twenty-nine Lisu Christians were baptized.
The Lisu people near Oak Flat and Pine Mountain had seen several white missionaries over the years, among them James Fraser and Leila and Allyn Cooke. But when Belle and John left Kathryn with Homay and ventured farther afield, they often met locals who ran from them. With her dark brown hair and hazel eyes, Belle seemed less frightening to them than John, who had bright blue eyes and a long nose.
“He is a bird demon! See, his nose is like a beak, and his eyes are plucked from the sky! He eats children!” people would shriek as they ran away from Belle and John.
Such moments made it hard for the Kuhns to press into new areas, but the two of them persisted. They mastered the Lisu language, and Belle translated many new songs and hymns into the language. The Lisu loved to sing in four-part harmony and were mesmerized when Belle would play her guitar and sing.
Within the local area, Belle spent much of her time teaching the Bible. To date, the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts had been translated into Lisu, and James was still busy trying to complete the first translation of the entire New Testament into Lisu. As a result, church elders were eager for Belle to teach them from other parts of the Bible, especially about the history of the Jews in the Old Testament.
July 1935 proved to be a difficult month for the Kuhn family. Belle and John liked to take Homay and Kathryn with them on their travels around Lisuland as often as they could. On a trip to a northern village during July, four-year-old Kathryn caught malaria. She became deathly ill, and Belle nursed her daughter day after day as Kathryn’s tiny body struggled to fight off the disease.
No sooner had Kathryn begun to recover from the malaria than Belle began to feel ill. Her body was soon covered with a rash, and she could not stand the smell of food. She decided that it was not malaria, though she had no idea what the illness was. With Kathryn feeling somewhat better, John had just left on a trip to meet with the new Christians across the mountains in Goo-moo, Burma. In John’s absence, Belle knew that Homay was doing all she could to care for her. She just didn’t know whether it would be enough. The nearest doctor was a two-week journey away, and Belle knew that she did not have the strength to make it that far.
Every night the Lisu church members came and sang outside Belle’s hut, and one or two of the elders came inside to pray for her. Belle was heartened by their concern for her, but she did not seem to be getting any better.
Then one morning Homay told Belle that Job, the church evangelist, had gone for help, promising to run all the way to Paoshan to fetch someone. The reality of his journey brought Belle to tears. It was the middle of the rainy season, and traveling was particularly dangerous throughout the area. The rain loosened rocks, which tumbled down the mountainsides, wiping out huts or animals or anything else in their way, including lone travelers. Huge landslides blocked the common trails, forcing anyone traveling that way to scramble across unknown routes.
Belle began to lapse in and out of consciousness, praying for Job’s safe passage to Paoshan when she was lucid enough to think. Job made it to Paoshan in record time, covering the distance in four days rather than the normal six days. He arrived back in the village from Paoshan with two missionary nurses and infected feet from running so far in bare feet.
Belle was barely aware of the nurses’ presence as they lifted her off the plank on which she was lying and placed her on a portable cot they had brought with them. It felt like she was resting on a cloud.
From the blur around her, Belle heard one of the nurses whisper, “It’s just a skin disease. It shouldn’t have done this to her. I think she’s starving to death as a side effect. Homay says she won’t eat.”
Hour after hour the nurses spooned nourishing food into Belle’s mouth. The chicken broth and lentil soup slowly strengthened her until she was well enough to be carried down from the mountains to Paoshan, where a doctor could examine her.
Homay and Kathryn came along on the journey, as well as the two nurses. Once Belle had a steady supply of good food, her health improved quickly, and the doctor was able to treat her rash successfully.
Three months later Belle was back in Lisuland, more determined than ever to make a difference there in the six months before she and John were scheduled to leave for furlough. The six months went by swiftly, and in March 1936 it was time for the Kuhn family to return to North America. Leila offered Homay a place in her home until John and Belle returned. This eased Belle’s mind, as did the fact that Homay had just accepted a marriage proposal from an outstanding young Christian man named Joseph. All seemed stable in Lisuland as John, Belle, and Kathryn once again made their way down from the steep mountainside.
