When Jonathan finally made it back to Changte, the church and his house were still standing, though both had been ransacked and nothing of value was left. As he walked around his old house wondering about the fate of his Chinese friends, Jonathan heard footsteps running though the courtyard. “Ku-Mu-shih, Ku-Mu-shih, is that you?” someone called.
Jonathan turned around, and there stood Mr. Ho, one of the leaders in the church before the Boxer Rebellion. The two men embraced each other.
“Mr. Ho! Praise God you are alive!” said Jonathan.
The two of them laughed and cried together.
“Tell me what happened to you after we parted,” Jonathan asked.
Mr. Ho sat on the floor in the kitchen, and the expression on his face grew serious. Jonathan sat beside him. “Once you left,” began Mr. Ho, “I decided to stay inside the church to protect it until you returned.”
“But we begged you not to do that. We didn’t expect you to risk your life to protect the church. Buildings can easily be replaced,” said Jonathan.
“I know,” replied Mr. Ho, “but I could not leave. This place carried the memory of you all, and all I wanted to do was protect it. However, I was not able to do so for long. On the second day, the city officials sent men to get me and take me to the court.” He paused for a moment. “They dragged me through town, where a mob gathered to torment me. They spat and yelled that I should be cut into four pieces for following the foreign devils. Finally I was taken into the courthouse, and the mob stood outside the doors chanting. I was left alone in a room that had a window overlooking the crowd. What an opportunity it was! I told myself I could preach to over a thousand people at once. So I stood at the window and shared the gospel with the mob.”
Jonathan reached out and patted Mr. Ho on the shoulder. “Good for you! How did the crowd respond?”
“They listened for a while and then started yelling at me again. They told me I must have been poisoned with foreign medicine and that I should be ashamed to follow the foreign devils’ God. But I felt no fear,” Mr. Ho said triumphantly. “God was with me. Soon I was taken before the magistrate, and he asked me why I had disgraced my whole family and even my country by following the God of the foreign devils.”
“How did you reply?” asked Jonathan, pulling some bread from his bag and offering half of it to Mr. Ho.
“I said, ‘Your honor, I am not following the foreigners. I am following the true and living God. This God loved us and sent His Son to die in our place so that He might save us from our sins and their consequences. The gods that I used to worship, and that you worship, are not gods at all. Before I became a follower of the true God I used to be an idol maker by trade. With my own hands I made those gods, large ones for people who could afford a lot of money, small ones for those who could not. But they did no good; they were merely pieces of wood. I had many gods in my home, yet they had no power to stop me from dishonoring my parents or make me obey the laws of the land. You yourself know that I have been sentenced in this courtroom many times and beaten for my lawlessness. But from the time God possessed my life, I have not been sentenced to a beating once.’ You should have seen the magistrate when I finished. He didn’t know what to say. Finally he said, ‘Go home. I will protect you,’ and then he dismissed me.”
“Thank God!” replied Jonathan heartily. “And how has it been for you since then?”
“We have survived, though not without difficulties,” responded Mr. Ho. “The bank refused to release the money you left for the church workers, but I was able to sell food and make enough to support myself and my family. One day I did get caught by a gang and I was hung by my thumbs in a tree and beaten with rods. They dared not leave me there to die because everyone had heard the magistrate say he would protect me.”
A moment of silence passed between the two men, and then looking Jonathan in the eye, Mr. Ho said, “Ah, I have said enough of my troubles. What of you and your family? How did you fare once you left us? We heard rumors that you had all been killed in an ambush.”
Jonathan told Mr. Ho all that had gone on since they had parted sixteen months before.
When the two of them had finished talking, they decided to visit all the Christians left in Changte. Jonathan was delighted by what he found. Even though many of them had been beaten and tortured, they were all alive and full of stories as to how God had been with them through their trials. Every Christian, even the newest ones, had been strong enough to stand against the hatred that had threatened to engulf them.
Jonathan was also delighted to find that after escaping with them to Shanghai, Mrs. Cheng had made it safely back to Changte, though she had been tortured. Like Mr. Ho, she had been hung from a tree with a rope tied around her thumbs and left to die. However, when the sun had gone down, some compassionate neighbors came and cut her down.
Tears welled in Jonathan’s eyes as he listened to Mrs. Cheng’s story of faith and survival. He marveled at her faithfulness. Not only had she saved the life of his daughter Ruth while they were fleeing, but in the face of so much death and danger, she had not wavered one bit in her commitment to God.
Soon the church was back in action, and the Christians of Changte began gathering together regularly for worship, prayer, and Bible study. During this time many new converts were added to the church.
As part of the terms of the Peace of Peking agreement, the Chinese government had agreed to pay back anyone for the loss of property destroyed or stolen during the Boxer Rebellion. Soon after Jonathan got back to Changte, an official letter arrived asking him to list everything that belonged to him or the church that was destroyed during the uprising, along with its value. Since most of the items had been bought in Canada and shipped over, Jonathan wrote the values for them in Canadian dollars. Much to his surprise, the money to replace his lost and damaged property eventually arrived in the mail. There was one problem though. In the time it had taken for the money to come, there had been a large fluctuation in the value of the Canadian currency against the Chinese currency. As a result, Jonathan ended up receiving twice as much money as he had originally expected! He did not know what to do. He felt it was wrong to keep the extra money, but he was also realistic enough to know that if he sent it back to Peking, it would simply find its way into the pocket of some corrupt official.
After giving the matter much thought, Jonathan decided to spend the money on something that would benefit a number of the Chinese Christians who had been through so much themselves. He drew up plans for “Peace Village.” This village, which would consist of many small cottages with individual garden plots, would be built on a square of ground close to the mission compound. Until now, most of the men who worked with the mission as schoolteachers, hospital assistants, and evangelists had to spend months at a time away from their families. Peace Village would change all that. Now a worker’s wife and children could come and live in Changte with the worker for the cost of the upkeep of one of the cottages. Jonathan worked tirelessly on this project, and the village was soon finished and the first families moved in.
By the middle of 1902, everything was going well, and Jonathan decided that things had settled down enough for Rosalind and the children to rejoin him. He sent a telegram asking Rosalind to return, and she in turn telegraphed him back saying she and the children would be setting sail on July 1.
Jonathan was overjoyed. He set about making arrangements for their return, pre-enrolling Paul and Helen in the China Inland Mission school in Chefoo, and spring cleaning the entire house. As he worked, however, he began to notice he was feeling weaker and weaker. Then he became delirious. He was soon diagnosed as having typhoid fever, an often fatal disease. His life hung in the balance for many days before he began to make a slow recovery.
Many people might have become bored lying in bed day after day as they recovered, but not Jonathan Goforth. His body might be still, but his mind was whirling with activity. A plan was beginning to take shape in his head. After returning to Changte, the Presbyterian Council had divided the region around the city in three. It had put Jonathan in charge of the largest of these areas, which stretched from northeast of the city to the northwest. Since the work in Changte itself was in the capable hands of such workers as Mr. Ho and Wang-Mei, Jonathan’s thoughts turned to this vast area. Lying in bed he decided the only way to evangelize the area properly was to take some workers and his family and spend about a month in each of the larger towns in the region. The men in the group would go throughout the town and surrounding countryside and preach the gospel while Rosalind would welcome the women into the courtyard of the house and preach to them there. Each evening they would hold a meeting to which all the men and women who were interested in hearing more could come. Jonathan could see it all in his mind. Rosalind would play the new portable organ she was bringing back with her from Canada, and there would be lots of hymn singing and testimonies given throughout the service.
After a month, the Goforths would move on to rent another house in another town, leaving one of the evangelists who had worked with them behind to nurture the new Christians. In this way Jonathan estimated he could start about ten new churches a year, taking two months out to visit the ones that were already established.
The more he thought about the plan, the more Jonathan liked it. He could see no reason for them to stay in Changte, not with all of the needs in the outlying areas.
During his bout with typhoid, Jonathan mailed several letters to Rosalind in Tientsin, where she was awaiting further instructions from him. The postmaster in Peking kept sending them back to Changte, thinking the Goforths were all back there together. No matter how the letters were addressed, he didn’t seem to be able to grasp that Jonathan and Rosalind were in two separate places in China and writing to each other. As a result, Rosalind had been in China for almost a month with only a brief telegram to tell her Jonathan had typhoid. She had no way of knowing whether he was dead or alive, or if he would want her to come to him or keep the children away during the infectious stage of his disease.
By now Jonathan was missing his family a great deal. As soon as he was well enough to travel, he set out on the two-week journey to Tientsin to meet up with Rosalind and the children and escort them back to Changte. It had been ten months since Jonathan had seen his family, and when he finally arrived, they were all relieved to see him up and about.
Jonathan was bursting to tell Rosalind of his new plan to reach the whole area north of Changte. He waited until the children were in bed. “Rosalind,” he began, “I believe I have found the best way to use the time we have left in China.”
“Oh,” smiled his wife, putting down her hand sewing. “I would love to hear about it. Tell me more.”
As Jonathan launched into a description of the nomadic life he had planned out for them all, he watched Rosalind’s face go pale. After a couple of minutes Rosalind held up her hand. “Stop, Jonathan. You can’t be serious! This would be a great idea if it were just you and I, but we have young children to think about. What are we to do with them while we are gallivanting around the countryside? They’re too young to go to the mission school like Paul and Helen.”
“We’ll bring them with us,” Jonathan replied, taken aback by his wife’s lack of enthusiasm. He clasped her hands in his and reassured her. “I know it will work.”
Jonathan watched as tears streamed down Rosalind’s cheeks. “But we have already left four children in graves in China. Jonathan, I could not bear to take my children into the countryside. You know how those people live. Smallpox, dysentery, and typhoid are all there. You should know that! The illness you just had would have killed a child. No! I can’t do it. Little Constance isn’t even a year old yet.” Rosalind sobbed deeply. “Ask me to do anything else, but don’t ask me to risk our children’s lives!”
