Many poor Chinese people had never seen a foreigner before, and they believed what they were told. As a result, very few people were brave enough to come to Jonathan’s home, and fewer still were willing to listen to the gospel message that Jonathan had brought with him to present to them. Mr. Chou, the old police chief who had been cured of blindness, had come to help at the mission. He, along with the others, lived under constant threat of death, and no innkeepers would allow the missionaries to stay the night in their inns.
Jonathan learned an important lesson during this time. A foreigner must never stand in the center of a crowd but must always have his back against a solid wall. This was because Chinese people would seldom throw rocks or bricks at a person who was looking at them; they preferred to do it while their victim was not watching. By standing with a wall behind him, Jonathan was able to keep his eye on everyone and in turn reduce the number of objects thrown at him. Even when the crowd became hostile, shouting abuse and threats, Jonathan found it was best not to make a run for it but rather to stand and stare down the crowd.
After several months of foreigners living under near siege conditions, the British minister in Peking demanded of the Chinese government that all foreigners, including missionaries, be treated fairly and with respect. After this, the rumors began to die down, and a few curious Chinese people began to listen to what Jonathan had to say.
By the time the Goforths were ready to return to Canada for their first furlough in June 1894, Jonathan had his eye on the city of Changte as the site for a new mission station. Over the previous two years he had repeatedly asked the other missionaries who made up the Canadian Presbyterian contingent in China for permission to set up the new mission in Changte. Each time the group voted on the matter, the answer was always the same: no. There were not enough missionaries to spare at the existing stations to help establish a new work.
Finally, just before leaving on furlough, Jonathan was given permission to move to Changte, along with Donald McGillivray, on one condition: He was not to ask the other mission stations in the area to provide staff for the new outpost. He would have to find his own workers. This was fine with Jonathan, who was certain that once he got to Changte things would go well. First, though, it was back to Canada for furlough with Rosalind, three-and-a-half-year-old Paul, and daughter Florence, who had been born the year before.
As they were packing for the trip, a terrible flood hit Chuwang and the surrounding area. The river rose so high that the mission house was under eight feet of water. The Goforth family waited on the roof for the flood to subside, knowing that everything they owned was being destroyed by the swirling, muddy water below them. What the water did not ruin, the black mold that followed the receding river did. The only thing Jonathan was able to dry out and save was the twenty-four-stop organ. The irony of the situation was not lost on Jonathan. Soon after they had arrived in China, everything he and Rosalind owned had been destroyed by fire. Now they were preparing to leave, and everything they had accumulated since the fire had been ruined by the flood.
The trip by boat back to Canada was much smoother and more pleasant than their voyage out, though their time in Canada was rather frustrating. Jonathan spoke at eight or ten meetings a week, and while he enjoyed visiting old friends and family and telling them about the work in China, his heart was back in Honan province, where he longed to be.
Rosalind Goforth was expecting another baby, and Jonathan waited until the child was born on September 22, 1894, before he returned to China to set up the new mission station in Changte. He arranged for Rosalind, Paul, Florence, and the new baby, Helen, to make the return trip two months later, when Helen was old enough to make the journey safely.
From the moment Jonathan arrived back in China, things went well for him. While he had been away, Donald McGillivray had purchased a perfect building site for the new mission station at Changte, just outside the city wall. Jonathan agreed to stay put and supervise the building of a house and chapel on the site while Donald traveled around outlying areas preaching.
Supervising the building was not an easy task. The Chinese made it a game to see how much they could steal from the gullible foreigners. As a result, Jonathan spent much of his time making sure the materials he bought were used for the mission buildings and not whisked away by the builder for some other project. He was constantly weighing bricks and measuring lengths of wood to make sure they had not “shrunk.”
By the time Rosalind arrived from Canada with the children, the buildings were finished. The house was a simple wooden structure with a dirt floor, like most of the other houses in Changte. Word quickly spread around the city that foreign missionaries had arrived in their midst. These foreigners had come with a box that made music (the organ), three pale children with hair the color of wheat, and a woman with a man’s feet (almost all Chinese women at this time had their feet bound from the time they were children and were unable to walk more than a few yards at a time).
From the day the Goforth family moved into their new home, hordes of Chinese people flocked around the place trying to catch a glimpse of the foreigners. It was too good of an opportunity to miss, and Jonathan and Rosalind took full advantage of it to present the gospel, thinking the number of visitors to their new house would soon level off. Instead, the opposite happened. More and more people became curious about the foreigners living in Changte and flocked to see them.
It was only a matter of weeks before the Goforths were exhausted. Jonathan was preaching for eight or more hours a day in the chapel while Rosalind talked to the thousands of women who came to visit. Sometimes Rosalind talked so much that her voice gave out and she would have to send a note to Jonathan asking him to come and help her. By the end of their first month in Changte, Jonathan didn’t know what to do. He had agreed not to ask for workers from the other mission stations, but he and Rosalind desperately needed more workers to help them.
One morning, while it was still dark, Jonathan sat reading his Bible by the light of an oil lamp. As he read, he came across Philippians 4:19: “My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory.” The phrase “all your need” jumped out at Jonathan. “Rosalind!” he exclaimed, running into the bedroom to wake her. “God has promised to supply all our needs, and surely we need another evangelist! Let’s pray right now and ask God to bring us someone.”
Rosalind fixed her sleepy eyes on her husband. “But where would he come from?” she asked. “We promised not to ask for workers from the other mission stations.”
“I don’t know,” replied Jonathan, undimmed in his enthusiasm, “but if we pray, I know God will answer us.”
The two of them slipped onto their knees and prayed.
The following morning, as Jonathan was preaching in the chapel, he noticed a beggar standing at the back of the crowd. The beggar had the gaunt, haunted face of a hungry man, his clothes were dirty and torn, and he had no shoes. Jonathan presented the gospel to the crowd, and when he was done speaking, he dismissed them. As he slipped out the side door of the chapel, the beggar followed him. In the daylight, Jonathan got a better look at the man. He let out a gasp at what he saw. “Wang Fulin? Is that you?” he asked.
“Yes, Pastor, it is I,” replied the beggar.
“Then you must come home for lunch with me! Rosalind will want to talk with you, too,” said Jonathan.
Over the course of lunch, Wang Fulin’s story came out. The Goforths had met him two years before in Linching. Although he had read through the New Testament twice and believed it was true, Wang Fulin saw no hope for himself. He was an opium addict, and no matter how he tried, he could not free himself from the grip of the drug that was slowly sapping away his life. Jonathan had finally persuaded Wang Fulin to seek help at the mission hospital, and after a long struggle, Wang Fulin’s opium addiction was broken. He became a Christian, which in turn meant he had to give up running the gambling tents that had been his livelihood. With no income, he had wandered around the countryside for the past two years, often eating the bark and leaves of trees to ward off starvation.
“But yesterday,” said Wang Fulin, taking a long sip of steaming tea, “I had the strange idea I should come to Changte. Do you have anything for me to do here?”
Jonathan looked at his wife. What could he say? Yesterday they had prayed for a helper, but could Wang Fulin possibly be the answer to their prayer?
“First we will get you cleaned up and fed, my friend,” said Jonathan, “and then we will talk.”
By midafternoon, Wang Fulin looked quite respectable in one of Jonathan’s shirts and a pair of his pants. He still had sunken cheeks, and the clothes tended to hang from his bony frame.
“Would you like to come with me to preach this afternoon?” asked Jonathan.
Wang Fulin’s eyes lit up. “I could think of nothing I would like better!” he exclaimed.
When Wang Fulin got up to speak, Jonathan was amazed. Wang Fulin held the crowd spellbound as he talked about how Jesus had saved him from his opium addiction. The preaching went on for three hours, and Wang Fulin seemed more energized at the end of it than he had been at the beginning.
“That was amazing!” exclaimed Jonathan as he took Wang Fulin home for dinner. “Where did you learn to speak like that?”
“Have you forgotten?” asked Wang Fulin. “A long time ago, before I ran the gambling tents, I was one of the chief storytellers of the province. I made a very good living, and people came from miles around to hear me. But,” he lowered his voice, “when I started to smoke the opium pipe, my throat became sore and I could not speak loudly anymore. That is when I took up gambling.”
“I see,” said Jonathan, thinking that maybe God had answered his prayer after all. “Would you like to preach again tomorrow?”
Wang Fulin’s face lit up in a huge smile. “Yes, please let me,” he exclaimed.
Over the next few months Wang Fulin became the best evangelist Jonathan could have hoped for. Although he was never physically strong, he preached for hours at a time.
On December 16, 1895, Jonathan wrote home:
During the last five weeks we have had such a number of men coming day by day that we have kept up constant preaching on an average of eight hours a day. …We [Wang Fulin and Jonathan] take turns in preaching, never leaving the guest-room without someone to preach from morning to night…. Men will sit a whole half-day at a time listening. Some seem to get so much interested that they seem to forget that they have miles to go home….
Four months later Jonathan wrote a follow-up letter. In it he said, “Since coming to Changte five months ago…25,000 men and women have come to see us and all have heard the Gospel preached to them.”
Two of the first Chinese visitors to become Christians as a result of Jonathan and Wang Fulin’s preaching were a well-respected doctor and a wealthy landowner. The conversion of these men had opened the way for many others who quickly followed their lead. Within months of the setting up of the mission station at Changte, small groups of Christians were meeting all over the countryside.
By mid-1896, it became obvious to Jonathan that Rosalind needed a Bible helper, too. She was expecting another baby in August, and although she kept up a grueling schedule, there was no way she could personally talk to all the women who came to visit. The problem of finding a Chinese woman who could preach seemed even more impossible than finding Wang Fulin. Still, Jonathan and Rosalind remembered how God had answered their prayer and provided Wang Fulin. Together they asked God this time to supply a suitable woman to help with the evangelistic work.
