CHINA - Giving all for the joy of serving Jesus
31/08/06 - Aunty Esther and Aunty Mabel talk about living through China's Cultural Revolution and their continuing Christian service in their 90s...
Aunty Esther and Aunty Mabel carried on their fruitful ministries for Jesus well into their 90s. They studied medicine together in Beijing, China, in the 1930s but were forced to clean toilets and shovel sand in a work gang, respectively, during the 1960s and 70s as a result of China’s Cultural Revolution. Their stories are told below.
Auntie Esther Li
A tiny elderly lady answers my knock on the door. Her dark glasses frame a warm face with a large, welcoming smile. I tell her I have some Bibles for her. She raises her hands and says, “Praise God, my prayers have been answered!” She did not know I was coming and was asking God to send someone with a fresh supply of Bibles! Her English is very good and we have no difficulty conversing freely. She is very excited about her current role of discipling new believers in China. Her talk is peppered with praises to God.
I sense God’s presence in this room, tiny by western standards – about 4 by 6 metres. It contains her bed with a steel framework around it and a platform on top which holds the treasures of a lifetime: a desk with a well loved Bible lying open on it, two worn chairs; a little, round table; a small, potbellied stove; and an old piano. The walls are covered with photographs, posters and banners with favourite scriptures on them. (photo: Dr Esther Li: 25 Dec 1910 – 24 Jan 2005)
We sip Chinese tea from blue-lidded cups and I request Auntie Esther to share about her life. She smiles and looks briefly into the distance. Leaning forward in her chair she begins her story. She was born on 25 December 1910, in a cold, northern province of China. At the age of 40 days she was found, cold and blue in her bed, hardly breathing. A doctor was sent for and the one who came was Hudson Taylor’s son. Hudson Taylor is perhaps the best known missionary to China, and his son followed in his footsteps.
The doctor prayed over the baby and told the mother to keep her in a basin of warm water, to pray continuously and trust God that she would be revived. For many hours it looked as if their labours were in vain, but on the third day the mother detected the baby’s breath and within a short time, her daughter’s colour returned and she was breathing normally. The often repeated story of her recovery left a deep impression on Esther and at the tender age of six, two memorable events occurred: she sensed God’s call on her life to preach His Word in interior China; and she made a decision to be a paediatrician, like Dr Hudson.
The latter was achieved in her early twenties, while the call to preach was put on hold. When a church friend told her God had revealed to her that Esther was to marry a man who had just recently come from South America to spread the Gospel in China, Esther’s response was, “If the Lord wills it, so be it.” Six months later they were married. Years went by with Esther doctoring and her husband preaching. Then she took ill with a fever that no medicine could break. Near death, she was placed in quarantine in a back room of the hospital. Every day she grew weaker and it appeared she would not recover. But God had other plans. One night a nurse came in to check on her and she asked Esther if there was anything she wanted. “A Bible,” she whispered.
For the next seven days, Esther read the Word of God as He clearly showed her His plan of salvation. His Word said that her good works were not enough. “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6). The Holy Spirit guided her to passages that revealed her true state in His eyes. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). Then He gave her hope. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). Esther felt her heart stir and she sat up in bed and read on. “The word is near you, it is in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved” (Romans 10:8–10). In that dark, little hospital room where she had been placed to die, Esther began to live again as she asked Jesus to be the Lord of her life. And the fever broke.
Medical missionary
The Lord had one more message for His daughter that night. He gently reminded her, “What are you doing in Beijing when I called you to preach the Gospel in interior China? In obedience to God, Auntie Esther spent many years in missionary service with her preacher husband in Kunming, Yunnan, in the south-west of China. She was known as a’ Bible woman’.
But then came the dreaded Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976. In the mid-60s, she was back in Beijing in charge of eight paediatric wards at a large hospital. The communists were beginning to crack down on people who did not toe the party line.
Early one morning Esther was rudely awakened by four nurses who pulled her from her bed and marched her on foot to the hospital. She was to be ‘invited’ to join the party which would require her to renounce her faith in Jesus. On the way there, the nurses stopped at a barber’s shop and half of Esther’s hair was shaved off. Confronted by the communist leaders, she said she would consider their invitation if she could continue to practise her faith in Jesus Christ. At the mention of His Name, she was thrown down and cursed.
In early 1966, whilst doing her hospital rounds one morning, a communist official came to her, tore the stethoscope from her neck and said, “You are no longer Esther; you are now The Fool.”
For the next eleven years this tiny, gracious little lady lived in the basement of the hospital and obediently submitted to her new job – cleaning the loos and reception area of the wards of which she was once the head.
Her meagre salary of 50 yuan a month was reduced to 15 yuan (then equal to 50p). It went first to buy the cleaning materials, then for food.
But Esther did her chores with joy in her heart for she had found life’s meaning in a personal relationship with Christ. His presence was with her, and she sang as she toiled. Those who enforced her labour marvelled at her attitude and secretly envied her joy. Like the apostle Paul, she was a fool for Christ. She says with a twinkle in her eye, “My hospital had the cleanest toilets and floors in all of China. People would ask me, ‘How can you be so joyful, so happy doing such a menial job when you should be in charge of this hospital?’ I would respond, ‘It doesn’t matter what job you have or what your position, it only matters that you love Jesus and are faithful and loyal to Him.’“
In 1977, she felt a hand on her shoulder one day as she was scrubbing the floor. “Esther,” he said. (Oh, how long it had been since she had been called by her real name!) “You can go home now. You will receive your pension as a concession of Chairman Mao.” Esther didn’t question him even though she knew Mao had died the year before. So, home she went to the unit which has been home to her family off and on since 1936. And in a gesture that can only be called a miracle, she was awarded full back-pay for the years she had lost from her profession. This money was sufficient to sustain her family and helped to educate two of her children in North America.
No time to retire
Auntie Esther pauses to refill the tea kettle and then continues to share. She tells us of the miracles that surrounded the time of her husband’s death. He was very ill at home and Esther felt he was dying. His faith was extremely strong. When he came upon Exodus 15:26, “I am the God who heals you,” he felt the Lord do a mighty work in his body. Together they thanked God for this miracle of healing.
Their daughter, Mary, who was not yet a believer, came home with an ambulance to take her father to the hospital. Strangely, neither Esther nor her husband protested, as they both felt God was directing them to go to hospital even though he had received healing. He was placed in a ward with five critically ill patients who each had several family members with them. The Lord spoke to Esther, “Preach my Word,” and Esther began to tell everyone in that hospital room about God’s plan of salvation. Many placed their trust in Jesus Christ that day and in the days that followed, as she continued to tell them about His mercy and grace which He freely gives to all those who will believe in Him.
Auntie Esther’s husband was in hospital for 31 days, and every few days he was moved to a different ward, so she would start at the beginning, winning more souls to the Lord. One day he whispered to her, “I’m going home today.” She knew in her heart he meant home to his beloved Father in Heaven and she called the family to come and say farewell. All that long night Esther held his hand and felt his pulse slow down, and finally stop. In the morning the doctor confirmed he was dead and said, “When the fruit is ripe it will fall.”
An extensive autopsy was done but the cause of death was never determined.
Mary grieved for her father and when she returned home from the funeral, she sat at the piano he had so loved to play. As she placed her fingers on the old keys, talent not unlike her father’s began to express itself in the melody. She asked her mother if the spirit of a dead loved one could be transferred to another. Her mother put her arms around her and told her no, that only the Holy Spirit of God could have gifted her with this. In that moment, Mary gave her life to Christ and asked Him to come and live in her heart.
Those eleven years as ‘Christ’s Fool‘ and her month of joyously sharing the good news of salvation in the critical care wards, were not wasted. Some hospitals continued to invite Auntie Esther to return three times a year to share the Word of God with doctors, nurses and patients. But Esther’s favourite witnessing method is bus evangelism. She boards a local city bus at its terminus where she is sure to get a seat. During its run with people crammed in like sardines, Auntie Esther reads stories about Jesus aloud from her Bible. If anyone shows interest, she hands them a slip of paper with her address and an invitation to come to her home and talk.
She does not fear the authorities who treated this kind of activity with severity. She is often quoted as saying, “At my age and after all I’ve suffered, what can they do to me now?” Her strategies for personal evangelism helped her lead dozens of people to Jesus, including some very highly placed people in the Chinese government and media circles. She is also prepared for the discipling that follows.
A total Bible woman
Because of her active evangelism and discipling, it was not long before Auntie Esther was seeking out assistance for the many Bibles she needed. She had a wooden box built under her bed and requested Open Doors workers to “please don’t let my box go empty!”
Esther told the Lord she would witness to anyone He sent to her door. One day a policeman came by to check why so many foreigners were visiting. At first Esther’s heart began pounding with fear. But she remembered her promise to the Lord, invited the policeman in for tea and shared the Gospel with him.
An Open Doors courier from Scandinavia named Nora arrived at her door another day, to leave her a load of Chinese Bibles. Diminutive Auntie Esther welcomed Nora warmly with her large smile and “praise the Lord!” She was especially excited to see the big bag of Bibles as her supply had recently been exhausted. “Please excuse me for a few moments,” she said to Nora, “because I’m discipling a young lady who just received the Lord a few days ago. She works for the Beijing Daily News and has no Bible. Now I can give her one of these you brought.”
Nora was happy to wait for what turned out to be about half an hour. Then she spent time in prayer and fellowship with this elderly Chinese saint who has a perpetual overflow of joy. Auntie Esther shared how her supply of Bibles was depleted quickly because of the great demand for God’s Word. There were always new Christians on her ‘waiting list’.
As the next day was Sunday, Nora asked for directions to the Three Self Protestant Church in the city where she could observe a Chinese worship service. Nora’s train companion attended with her, to interpret what turned out to be a very evangelistic and Biblically sound message. After the sermon, three people went to the front of the church, to pray. As Nora and her companion were about to leave, a group of young Australian tourists approached her with a problem. “We heard that Bibles were badly needed here in China,” they started, “so we went to the Bible Society in Australia and bought a bagful. But when we came to this church today, one of the pastors told us they don’t need any more Bibles here. They now print their own. And they wouldn’t accept our gift! Do you know what we can do with them?”
“I gladly relieved them from their quandary,” Nora beamed as she reported later, “and put the bag on my shoulder to leave. But just then the three people who had been praying at the front were coming back up the aisle. And to my surprise one was Auntie Esther and another was the new believer she had been discipling the day before.”
Auntie Esther ran to Nora and excitedly shared that the third person was the young lady’s fiancé who had just prayed the sinners’ prayer and committed his life to Jesus. Then her smiling face turned solemn. “But I’ve already distributed all the Bibles you brought yesterday. I’ve none left for this young man.”
Nora placed Esther’s hand on the bulging shoulder bag. “God has provided – again!”
Auntie Esther smiles wistfully as she remembers repeated occasions of God’s faithfulness. Our visit is drawing to a close and she insists we sing together. Mary plays the piano and the neighbourhood is filled with the strains of international voices praising the Lord in song. The bottom line of Auntie Esther’s years of service is this: minister faithfully to anyone as God gives opportunity. The Lord told her something long ago that has helped her to boldly continue proclaiming the love of Christ to all who will listen. He said, “Your reward will not be on this earth, but great will be your reward in heaven.”
Aunty Esther passed into the presence of the Lord on 24 January 2005, after years of being bedridden.
Auntie Mabel (Chen Mei Bo)
Auntie Esther’s closest friend was Auntie Mabel – a slim lady with sparkling eyes and a large, warm, charming smile. Mabel was born on 23 May 1907 into a Christian family. Her grandfather was a Methodist pastor who was martyred in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Her uncle was also a Methodist preacher, and her father was active in the church.
Mabel received her early education at a Methodist girl’s school where she learned her excellent English. Later she went to Nanjing University and then took medical studies at Peking Union Medical College an extension school of New York University. It was here she developed a lifelong friendship with Esther Li. Mabel graduated with a degree in medicine – a qualified neurophysiologist (1934).
Two years later she was saved and baptised. The wife of the famous Chinese Christian writer and martyr Watchman Nee was also a close friend of theirs. Both Esther and Mabel had a chance to go to America for further studies on a scholarship to do research, but both turned it down because God had called them to ministry in the interior of China. (photo: Chen Mei Bo: 23 May 1907 – 25 Oct 2004 )
During the brutal Japanese occupation of China (1937–1941), Esther and her husband went to Kunming in southern Yunnan Province and Mabel went with another worker to Tientsin. There at Cheefoo, the Little Flock of Watchman Nee asked her to stay and work with them (Cheefoo is also where missionary children were educated). When war broke out, she moved to the interior of China to minister. By now she had given up her medical career. After the war, she returned to Peking. Her friends were amazed to learn she had given up medical practice. She visited all her old classmates to share the Gospel with them.
When the communist ’liberation‘ occurred in October 1949, her large house marked her out as one of the landed class. Thus her inherited property and houses were confiscated (on the land where the Beijing International Hotel now stands) and she was assigned a small flat in which to live– actually just a garden shed with a cooker, two deck chairs and an old bed. She was forced to go to a ’mental hospital’ for treatment because she refused to become a communist and spent all her time in Christian ministry. She was later released.
Her brother, a music professor contracted tuberculosis. She gave up the prospect of marriage in order to nurse him for eight years.
Her Christian convictions meant she was an object of suspicion, so when the Cultural Revolution broke out, she was sent to work shovelling sand in a labour gang. But the final indignity was when the Red Guards – teenagers who were given power to direct the Revolution – began to visit her, beating her up, parading her in the streets, and forcing her to wear a placard with her ‘crimes’ written on it. She suffered repeated ’criticism meetings’ and was forced to study the political thought of Mao Zedong.
The Red Guards even erected a large sign outside her house declaring her a pariah because she had distributed “imperalistic literature in praise of the Four Olds” which means she had given out Bibles in the ’mistaken‘ belief that religion is helpful. For those Red Guards, there was only one ‘god‘ allowed and that was Mao, and only one ‘Bible‘ allowed: his little Red Book.
Mabel descended into hell. Shunned by neighbours, victimised daily by members of her labour gang, and beaten up regularly by the Red Guards, she came back one night into her little shed and said to God, “I’ve had enough.” She reasoned, “I’m in my 60s now, I’ve lived a good life, and God will not mind me coming to heaven early.” So she took a large chopper, held it over her wrists, and issued one last prayer before bringing it down, “Lord, if this is wrong, help me.”
She never brought the chopper down. She put it away. She sat down, burst into tears, and endured another eight years of beatings, isolation, and victimisation. She said, “Somehow, God gave me the strength to endure, but I never knew how.” She later added, “The Cultural Revolution was to touch the ‘soul’ of every person, but the Christian has a secret place with the Lord that no one can touch.”
Many years later however she knew why. In the late 70s, after Mao died and Deng returned to power, China began to put the excesses of the Cultural Revolution behind it. The hated Red Guards were disbanded and the little Red Book fell into disuse, but Mabel was not restored to her house. However she began to receive a stream of visitors. To her astonishment, these visitors were all rather high-ranking members of the Communist Party. Even more astonishingly, they asked her for Bibles!
“Why come to me – out of all the people in Beijing, why do you come to the house of a 70-year old?” she would ask, and each would answer the same: “Well, during the Cultural Revolution, there was a large sign outside your house full of your crimes. One of them was that you had distributed Bibles. So I’m just here on the chance you might have some left.”
Amazingly, that sign which made her life such a misery became the means of a new ministry. It kept people away from her during the Cultural Revolution, but afterwards, after she had endured, it drew them. Mabel was able to contact Open Doors who smuggled Bibles to her and she became a vital conduit of the Scriptures into China’s capital.
But on 30, December 1991, the police came to her home and confiscated the many Bibles and other spiritual books in her home. They told her that China would provide all the books needed for any group. But the police overlooked copies of the Jesus film that couriers had brought her. So she took them to the police station and demanded to see the chief.
She said, “Today your men raided my house and confiscated all the Bibles and books. But they overlooked these. Now I want you to watch this video and have your staff check it too, to see if it is also a problem.”
Mabel chuckles as she says, “Even the Chief of Police has heard about Jesus!” Actually a number of high-ranking members of the Communist Party in China today owe their faith to her endurance.
She reflected, “It’s been nice to know why. It helps my faith. But it was hard. Every day was hard. I can’t say I saw Jesus, or even felt him close most of the time. I just got the strength to keep going, and that was enough.”
Aunty Mabel has a special burden for the most unreached group in China: the Tibetans. She has been on mission trips there twice and went again in August 1995. This is her favourite subject and burning passion. She often says, “Jesus is saying to us today, ‘You need to hurry and get the job done, so I can come back again’!”
In the early 1990s she received a visit from Greg O’Connor – at that time the Director of Open Doors Australia. He had just returned from visiting North Korea and was telling her about the needs of believers in that country. Auntie Mabel was deeply moved and opened her purse. She took out 300 Yuan (about £25) and said, “Greg, this is all the money I have, but I want you to take this to buy Bibles for the North Korean Christians. They are even needier than the believers in this country!”
In early 2003, Auntie Mabel’s weakening condition forced her to leave her flat, at the age of 96, and be cared for in a Christian seniors’ home in Beijing. She went to be with the Lord peacefully on 25 October 2004.
By Paul Estabrooks, Open Doors International
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