“Ha! That doctor is a fraud and a liar. He tried to impress the magistrate by telling him he could heal a blind person, but he cannot. He says he will be back in six months, but I do not believe it. He is only pretending. Foreign devil!” the old man snarled.
The two missionaries and the magistrate sat in silence for a moment. Finally the magistrate broke the silence. “I must apologize for the old man. He was the chief of police, you know, and they are not noted for their manners.”
Jonathan nodded. He had experienced enough of China to know that the chief of police was often the most corrupt person in a town or village. The chief of police received no salary from the government. Instead, he was expected to extract his salary by way of bribes and other payments from the people he served. This system often led to guilty men going free while innocent men went to prison in their place.
“We will be back,” Dr. McClure said firmly, “and we will stay for two weeks so that I can nurse Mr. Chou back to health.”
True to their word, six months later, Jonathan and Dr. McClure returned to Hsunhsien. While the old chief of police was shocked to hear they had returned, he was nonetheless eager for the operation to restore his sight.
Dr. McClure set up a makeshift surgery unit, and Jonathan acted as his assistant. The operation was a simple but delicate procedure and was over quickly. The doctor then held up his hand. “How many fingers do you see, Mr. Chou?” he asked.
A huge smile spread across the old man’s face. “Five,” he said. “I can see five fingers!”
“Wonderful,” replied Dr. McClure. “Now I will bandage your eyes so that they can rest and heal properly. In two weeks we will take the bandages off, and you should be able to see again.”
For the next two weeks, Mr. Chou stayed with Jonathan and Dr. McClure, who included him in everything they did, from prayer meetings to preaching in the open air. At first Mr. Chou could not understand the message they preached. He could not believe that God loved everyone, even someone who had done as many wicked and corrupt things as he had. Over the two weeks he was with the missionaries, though, he began to believe what they told him. By the time his bandages were removed, Mr. Chou had become a Christian. His wife soon followed his example, and together the couple began preaching in the streets of Hsunhsien.
One day soon after his sight had been restored, Mr. Chou was preaching with Jonathan near the temple of a goddess who was supposed to be able to grant male children to men who made sacrifices to her. Since having a son was a point of great pride to Chinese people, many men came from hundreds of miles away to ask the goddess for help. On this particular day, the mayor of a neighboring town was leading a huge procession up the hill to the temple. In his arms he was carrying a paper model of a baby boy that he was going to burn as a sacrifice in the temple in hopes that the goddess would send him a real son.
When the throng was about halfway up the hill, Mr. Chou began yelling at them. “The goddess you worship has no power to give you sons! I once thought she had great powers, too. When my eyesight began to fail, I spent a lot of money bringing her sacrifices, hoping she would have pity on me, but nothing happened. Then I met the Christians, sent by the one true God. They restored my sight and also opened the eyes of my darkened soul. You know what a bad man I was, how I did not care about justice as long as I got rich, but now I am different! God’s love has come into my heart, and I want to do good things for people all the time. The Christian God is the one with power, not the goddess you are going to worship. She is just a lump of clay.”
As Mr. Chou spoke, the crowd grew very quiet listening to him and watching the mayor to see what he would do. When he made no move to continue on up the hill, Jonathan took over the preaching. “I have nine brothers and one sister. My wife has nine brothers and three sisters. Our parents have nineteen sons between them, and no one where I come from has ever heard of this goddess who is supposed to grant sons. How can that be? It is the one true God who gives sons and daughters to us. It says so in His Word,” shouted Jonathan, holding up his Bible. “If it is God’s will that you have a son, then you will have a son. It has nothing to do with this idol or anything you might offer her.”
Jonathan stopped to catch his breath, and the worshipers used the moment to urge the mayor to continue on up the hill to the temple.
“Come on,” they said. “We are wasting time, and we are angering the goddess. She does not want us to stay and listen to this nonsense.”
“No, no,” replied the mayor. “You go on if you want to, but I am staying to hear more about this God.”
Three hours later, the mayor announced he wanted to become a Christian. He threw away the paper model of the baby son and told the crowd he would wait for God to give him a son.
Jonathan could scarcely believe what had happened. In just a month he had seen his first two Christian converts, both important men in their villages, and both prepared to go and fearlessly proclaim the gospel to others. He hurried home to Linching to tell Rosalind the wonderful news.
Soon after arriving home, Jonathan received word that the mayor had become a serious student of the Bible. The mayor had memorized all four of the Gospels, and he preached whenever he had the opportunity. As a result, forty families had now denounced their idols and embraced the gospel.
December 1889 marked the birth of another child in the Goforth home. This time it was a boy, whom they named Donald, after Donald McGillivray. The boy was almost always referred to by the nickname “Wee Donald.”
About this time there was another important arrival in Linching. Three couples and two single women from Canada joined the Goforths and Donald McGillivray at the mission. The night they arrived, everyone met to discuss the best way to work together. Although Jonathan was leader of the mission, he wanted everyone involved in the decision about what to do next. After talking and praying, the group took a vote on what they should do and decided they should stay on in Linching for about a year and a half while they learned the language. Once everyone was fluent in Chinese, they would be ready to fan out in pairs across Honan province.
While they were all undertaking language study, it was also decided that Jonathan, Donald McGillivray, and the other three missionary men would take turns making journeys into Honan province to scout out suitable locations to set up mission stations. Even though most foreigners and the well-to-do Chinese either were carried in sedan chairs or rode donkeys, Jonathan insisted that everyone who went “touring” with him walk. He had a simple reason for this. In Linching, Jonathan noticed that several men had wanted to join the missionaries, not because they believed in the gospel but because they wanted to live like the missionaries did back in Chefoo. Jonathan, though, wanted only Chinese helpers with him who were serious about Christianity, and so he didn’t allow any extra “luxuries,” like riding donkeys when they could all walk.
Instead of buying sedan chairs and donkeys, Jonathan bought a used wheelbarrow for four dollars and hired a man to push it for thirty-five cents a day. The barrow was filled with books, clothing, and preaching aids. By using a wheelbarrow to transport their things and staying in the cheapest inns, Jonathan was able to tour through new areas of the province for less than fifty cents a day. At that rate, he was sure that no Chinese person looking for a life of leisure was going to join him!
Those who traveled with Jonathan would awake at daybreak and walk at least five miles before stopping for breakfast. After breakfast, the group would set off again, inquiring along the way to see whether any Christians were in the villages they passed through. If there were Christians, they would stop and encourage and pray with them before walking on to the next village. Often they would walk for eight or ten hours a day before stopping at an inn for the night. While the other members of the party rested, Jonathan liked to take advantage of the curiosity of the other guests at the inn. As soon as he had paid for a spot to sleep on the k’ang—the raised, heated sleeping platform—he would invite a crowd to gather around and listen to Bible stories. He would talk for about half an hour, and then, after they had rested, one of the other men would take over for him. It was only then that Jonathan would take off his boots and have a hot drink.
The journeys were often dangerous because throughout China there was an increasing hatred for foreigners. Jonathan suggested that he and the other missionary men wear Chinese clothing so that they could slip in and out of villages and towns unnoticed if things became violent. This strategy worked sometimes, though not always. Once, in the summer of 1890, Jonathan and one of the missionary men entered a town where an enormous crowd had gathered to watch some kind of performance. A huge tent had been set up, and people were pushing at its sides to get in. Jonathan was always careful to stay towards the back of the crowd and keep his head down. On this occasion, however, it wasn’t enough.
“Foreign devils!” yelled a woman near Jonathan. In an instant the entire crowd swung around to see who had infiltrated their midst. Jonathan grabbed his companion by the wrist and took off running. He could feel rocks hitting his back, and he heard the roar of the crowd behind him. Then he heard a strange whooshing noise, followed by the creaking and then snapping of wood. Jonathan stopped fleeing and turned just in time to see the enormous tent collapse. The foreign devils were forgotten, and the crowd surged back to pull people from the collapsed tent. Jonathan and his companion used the opportunity to get away, but the incident reminded them that there were many Chinese people who wanted all foreigners dead.
After making visits into the Honan region for eighteen months, the missionaries decided the time for their move into the area was drawing near. However, Jonathan would first have to make one more trip. By now Rosalind had given birth to another son, Paul, and she juggled her days by watching the boys, studying the language, and running the mission house.
One day, when Wee Donald was eighteen months old, he was running around the veranda of their house. Jonathan tried to catch him, but Donald thought it was a game and ran faster. He grabbed one of the posts and began swinging around it and laughing wildly. Then, suddenly, he lost his grip and went sailing through the air. Jonathan watched in horror as Donald fell to the ground, hitting his head on a flowerpot as he did so. Jonathan rushed to his son, and he was greatly relieved when Wee Donald opened his eyes and smiled at him.
“Thank God, no harm was done,” he said, lifting Donald up and setting him on his knee.
Jonathan was wrong, however. While Wee Donald seemed to have no immediate problems from his fall, over the next few weeks he became very sick. Bit by bit his arms and legs stopped working, and Jonathan and Rosalind decided the best thing to do was to take him to Shanghai to see a specialist. Towards the end of July 1891, Wee Donald found it hard to hold up his head, and then to breathe. He died peacefully on July 25. Jonathan took his little body back to Pangchwang to be buried alongside his sister, Gertrude.
It was a sad journey. The Goforths had been in China for three and a half years, and in that time two of their three children had died. The only thing that gave Jonathan comfort was the missionary work awaiting him in Honan province.
Chapter 6
Changte
Just as Jonathan Goforth had expected, the first years at Chuwang, deep inside Honan province, were not easy. The Chinese people were becoming more resentful of foreigners and angry at the way they were interfering in the running of their country. Posters went up all round the country telling of the evil things the foreigners did. As was to be expected in this type of atmosphere, it wasn’t long before the Goforths became the target of nasty rumors. One man told how he had seen boatloads of small, drugged Chinese children being carried into the Goforths’ home. He told of how, as he peered through the window, he had supposedly seen Jonathan kill the children and cut out their eyes and hearts. He claimed that the extracted body parts were used to make the powerful medicine for curing the local people. The bodies of the children were then said to be preserved in giant jars.
