From China’s war zones to a gospel movement in Taiwan and beyond, Dick Hillis learned that God’s strength begins where ours ends. This episode tells the remarkable story of how one man’s simple prayer—“Oh God, make me willing to go one mile farther”—became a life’s calling that reached across continents and generations.
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00:00 --> 00:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Your listening to martyrs and missionaries, I'm Elise, and in every episode I'll bring you a new martyr and or missionary, the cold and the brave.
00:07 --> 00:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode we're talking about a missionary to China, Taiwan, and beyond, Dick Hillis.
00:36 --> 00:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh God, make me willing to live and die if need be to carry your message of salvation one mile farther.
00:43 --> 00:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Long before Dick would ever think to utter these words, he was a thief, attempting to run away and join a merchant ship headed to the mysterious city of Shanghai.
00:53 --> 01:02 [SPEAKER_00]: This is a listener requested episode and the book I used for research if you're interested in reading it afterwards is called steel in his soul by Jan Weinbrinner.
01:02 --> 01:08 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a really good easy read so if you'd like to check out more after this episode, I will link it.
01:08 --> 01:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It's available as a free PDF so super easy.
01:17 --> 01:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick and his twin brother Don were born in Canada in 1913 and their parents moved to a small milk farm in Washington when they were still young.
01:26 --> 01:32 [SPEAKER_00]: His family grew up going to church and then his mom was actually the leader of the missions committee at their local Methodist Church.
01:32 --> 01:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So going to church very normal, but it was just kind of something they did.
01:37 --> 01:42 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no heart behind it at least for Dick and then also for his brother Don as well.
01:42 --> 01:50 [SPEAKER_00]: When he was 13 years old, their church hosted a week of evangelistic meetings headlined by the author of the famous him, The Old Rugged Cross.
01:50 --> 01:58 [SPEAKER_00]: He sat there night after night as they sang, the sermon was preached and the altar call invitation to accept Jesus was given.
01:58 --> 02:06 [SPEAKER_00]: and then suddenly on Thursday something shifted, we don't know what the topic of the sermon was, but we know that he felt called to go to China as a missionary.
02:06 --> 02:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't even really sure entirely what a missionary was, even though his mother was on the mission sport, he's very disconnected from all of that, but he wanted to go.
02:16 --> 02:19 [SPEAKER_00]: But over time, this desire shifted.
02:19 --> 02:28 [SPEAKER_00]: He still wanted to go to China, but not so much as a missionary, but more as an explorer and working on a merchant ship as a merchant sailor.
02:29 --> 02:35 [SPEAKER_00]: The entire Orient fascinated him much as it did a lot of North America and Europe at this time.
02:35 --> 02:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He showed little interest in Christian things as he grew up.
02:39 --> 02:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He was known more for his malicious pranks than for his Christian faith.
02:43 --> 02:48 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, he and his brother decided to throw rotten eggs into the school's AC system.
02:48 --> 02:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And huge fans blew the stench through every hall and classroom in the building.
02:54 --> 03:02 [SPEAKER_00]: After graduation, his brother goes off to study at Biola in California and Dick gets a job working as a shopkeeper's assistant.
03:02 --> 03:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And in the Depression era, this is a really good, reliable job to have.
03:07 --> 03:15 [SPEAKER_00]: But Dick isn't interested in keeping this job because even before he gets it, he's already planning to rob the place and then leave for Shanghai.
03:15 --> 03:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So he clears out the cash register, he heads to California, goes down to the docks looking to find a ship, to join.
03:22 --> 03:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And he goes from ship to ship, and they ask him how old are you, and he's about 17 or 18 years old.
03:29 --> 03:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And they say, oh, no, you're too young to join us.
03:31 --> 03:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So he tries to inflate his age a little bit, but nobody's buying it.
03:35 --> 03:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And he gets to the end of the line, and no one will hire him on.
03:39 --> 03:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So his plan is completely null and void and now he's stuck being a thief not able to go to Shanghai and he's trying to think what am I going to do?
03:50 --> 03:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So the only thing you really can do is go back.
03:53 --> 03:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he goes back, tells his parents what happened.
03:56 --> 03:59 [SPEAKER_00]: He shall tell us the shopkeeper that he had robbed him.
03:59 --> 04:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had to pay back the money that he obviously spent on train tickets, all those things to get out to California.
04:06 --> 04:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And so the shopkeeper, graciously, lets him work there at the shop until he can pay off his debt.
04:12 --> 04:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, when he's paid that off, he decides to join his brother, Dawn at Biola.
04:18 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a bit of a conundrum for Biola, because he's not a believer.
04:22 --> 04:34 [SPEAKER_00]: He says as much on his application, and so they're not really sure what to do with him, but they decide to accept him as a temporary basis, because they think, well, I mean, this is kind of the place he probably needs to go.
04:34 --> 04:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was, because it's here at Biola that he accepts Christ and actually does become a
04:40 --> 04:45 [SPEAKER_00]: The same thing happens with his mother Dawn and then a few other guys in their friend group.
04:46 --> 04:53 [SPEAKER_00]: After this, Dick fills the call to China again, but he's like cautious.
04:53 --> 05:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Is this something I want to do because this has always been my dream to go off an explore or is this something God actually has for me and so he decides to pray and pray a lot about it.
05:05 --> 05:11 [SPEAKER_00]: But then he kind of starts to lose his motivation because there's a pretty girl who enters the picture.
05:11 --> 05:14 [SPEAKER_00]: and her name is Margaret, and he's really in love with her.
05:14 --> 05:15 [SPEAKER_00]: She goes on a date with him.
05:15 --> 05:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't really go anywhere on her end.
05:18 --> 05:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And then she starts dating his best friend, but he still keeps her at the top of his prayer list, asking God that it be his will that he and Margaret get together.
05:27 --> 05:36 [SPEAKER_00]: But in the midst of all this, he hears a sermon on Romans 1 through 3 and he gets convicted, thinking about the countless millions dying without Christ.
05:36 --> 05:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he rearranges his priorities and goes back to praying, where do you want me, God, do you actually want me in China?
05:44 --> 05:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And after a few months of praying, he's determined, he said, this is where God has me.
05:48 --> 05:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he applies to join the China Invin mission.
05:52 --> 05:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And at 20 years old, he is their youngest ever missionary.
05:55 --> 06:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And because of this, he develops a bit of a hero complex because everybody thinks he's amazing.
06:02 --> 06:06 [SPEAKER_00]: All these old ladies, they're, you know, basically pinching his cheeks like you're so adorable.
06:06 --> 06:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Look at you from so on fire for the Lord.
06:09 --> 06:35 [SPEAKER_00]: You're just, I can't imagine leaving it all behind, like you're promising future, and so the author of the book compares it to growing a halo, whose brightness increased with every odd compliment on his brilliance, youth and exuberance, but soon a dick would learn that as the fiery heat of the sun burns away the halo around the moon, so the fiery trials of foreign service melt the halo around a missionary's head.
06:36 --> 06:40 [SPEAKER_00]: With his halo firmly attached, he is on a ship heading for Shanghai.
06:40 --> 06:48 [SPEAKER_00]: When it kind of dawns on him that he's not going to be home for eight years, which is a really long time.
06:48 --> 06:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's thinking, how will this change me?
06:51 --> 06:52 [SPEAKER_00]: How will China change me?
06:53 --> 06:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And how will it change my family back home when he started thinking about his parents?
06:56 --> 06:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And how much they had been excellent parents to him?
06:59 --> 07:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And he thought, well, what will they be like when I get back?
07:02 --> 07:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Is there going to be eight years older?
07:04 --> 07:06 [SPEAKER_00]: and he began to feel very, very, very lonely.
07:07 --> 07:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Because in addition to thinking about his family, whom he won't see for almost a decade, he also can't communicate with his fellow passengers because the majority of them are Chinese and he doesn't know the language yet.
07:18 --> 07:26 [SPEAKER_00]: and then he arrives in Shanghai and he's reinvigorated because this is everything he's hoped and dreamed for years.
07:27 --> 07:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The streets are filled with people.
07:28 --> 07:32 [SPEAKER_00]: There's all these markets overflowing with spices and other exotic goods.
07:32 --> 07:34 [SPEAKER_00]: There's Rick Shaw's narrow winding streets.
07:35 --> 07:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything that he had hoped for.
07:37 --> 07:41 [SPEAKER_00]: His first couple weeks in the city, he's busy in meetings.
07:41 --> 07:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He's busy in appointments.
07:42 --> 07:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Full of things to keep him distracted from the reality of where he is and he's just
07:48 --> 08:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But in between the smells of spices, there's other not so pleasant smells, there's the language barrier, there's these things to start to kind of crowd in on him and he realizes this is a life changing decision.
08:01 --> 08:05 [SPEAKER_00]: But overall he's just too busy for home sickness.
08:05 --> 08:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And after his two weeks there are finished, he packs up his bags and he heads off to a language school, slowly meandering along the young's river.
08:13 --> 08:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And after three days of traveling, he reaches the city of Anching, which is in eastern China considerably inland.
08:21 --> 08:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And at this language school, he found there was no time for loneliness because his days were busy from five o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night.
08:28 --> 08:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He had classes on mission orientation, Chinese culture, and of course, the language and each one of these classes required hours and hours of homework.
08:37 --> 08:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So every night, Dick was sat at his desk reading, memorizing copy and characters until he was absolutely exhausted and collapsed.
08:45 --> 08:56 [SPEAKER_00]: After about six months, he's sent off to spread his wings a little bit in the city of Shang-Chi, which is still in Central China, and he moves in with this lovely missionary family who keeps him busy.
08:56 --> 09:01 [SPEAKER_00]: He started language for six days a week and then spent three days sharing the gospel and local villages.
09:01 --> 09:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Little bit by little bit, he's improving in language and he finally feels some confidence.
09:08 --> 09:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, his missionary family is called away to another location, leaving him all alone.
09:14 --> 09:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick does not do very well, all alone.
09:18 --> 09:25 [SPEAKER_00]: because even though he kept busy and was not physically lonely, he definitely felt emotionally lonely.
09:25 --> 09:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And he longed to hear English words, and he tried speaking and singing to himself, but he just felt a little bit foolish, and he also really wasn't that great of a singer because he was basically tone deaf, which also made Chinese a little bit more difficult for him.
09:38 --> 09:43 [SPEAKER_00]: He, of course, read his Bible in English and that helped a little bit, but not as much as he would have liked.
09:43 --> 09:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He started to spiral and was all but ready to concede defeat and pack it in when he received a telegram inviting him to a ten-day conference for defeated missionaries.
09:54 --> 10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: It would take him five days to get there and then, of course, he'd be somewhere the lame defeated missionary who's going to a conference with other lame defeated missionaries.
10:06 --> 10:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But he went anyway because he figured, what do I have to lose?
10:10 --> 10:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And he drew comfort from the fact that everybody else is there for the exact same reason.
10:14 --> 10:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So it must be somewhat of a common problem.
10:17 --> 10:37 [SPEAKER_00]: and the entire conference they spent the time in Bible study and prayer and then small groups able to talk and pray with each other and one woman got up from her knees and she slipped an engagement ring off of her finger because she said her engagement was not God's will but it was something that she had said only because she was lonely.
10:37 --> 10:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there was another man who cried out that he didn't love China or her people.
10:42 --> 10:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there was an older man as well, who said he was coming close to the end of his missionary service.
10:47 --> 10:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And he asked everybody to get up from their knees and he was, they were all sitting in this circle.
10:52 --> 11:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And they listened to a story of these years and years that were barren, were wasted, he said, because he had tried to do God's work through his own strength.
11:02 --> 11:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick clenched his hands together, and he was like, this is me.
11:05 --> 11:08 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I've been trying to do, and he was miserable.
11:09 --> 11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And when the group session ended, Dick can hurry it off to his room and locked his door, and he was kneeling by his bed, and there was just the thinking of the picture of
11:20 --> 11:42 [SPEAKER_00]: a few months and it was just, you know, this massive creation that he had, and suddenly he went from being something he was proud of, to something that he was ashamed of, and he saw himself as this young hero coming from California, you know, this person, everybody thought was just amazing, and he was going to win China for Christ, single handedly.
11:42 --> 11:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had worked really hard, but he realized that this had all been his own work.
11:47 --> 11:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was failing.
11:48 --> 11:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It was miserable.
11:50 --> 11:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't doing it for God in God's way.
11:53 --> 11:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And because the work was his own, he was defeated.
11:56 --> 12:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And so in shame, he just confessed to God.
12:00 --> 12:05 [SPEAKER_00]: These are the things that he was doing and he thought of the verse in John.
12:05 --> 12:09 [SPEAKER_00]: 15.5 which says, for without me, you can do nothing.
12:09 --> 12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And before this dick had known this first, but he didn't really truly believe it.
12:15 --> 12:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And so for the first time, he admitted that he couldn't do this on his own.
12:19 --> 12:20 [SPEAKER_00]: He needed help.
12:21 --> 12:22 [SPEAKER_00]: He needed to submit to the Lord.
12:23 --> 12:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he prayed, like Christ, be my Lord, and I, his servant,
12:27 --> 12:50 [SPEAKER_00]: and this heavy weight of depression that he'd had over himself lifted in his loneliness cited a little bit and he acknowledged that missionaries are only human and that God's grace and glory are the only adequate sources for a missionary like himself and so with that his halo of banished and in its place was a soldier's helmet.
12:51 --> 12:55 [SPEAKER_00]: The next language tutor in Shang Qi was a man named Kong.
12:55 --> 12:58 [SPEAKER_00]: A man roughly the same age as himself, 22 years old.
12:58 --> 13:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had come to faith after reading the Old Testament and in the New Testament in school.
13:03 --> 13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And his yield for the Lord was inspiring to dig.
13:05 --> 13:09 [SPEAKER_00]: The two would travel around together, preaching in the nearby villages.
13:10 --> 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the people was what would happen to them if they stopped worshiping their idols because who would keep the evil spirits away?
13:19 --> 13:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick is preaching one day when his crowd grows pretty restless and he began to think that I say something wrong because his language was progressing but it's by no means perfect and not long before he had preached a sermon all about a pig coming down from heaven because the words are very similar in Chinese, there's really only a total difference of first versus a third tone.
13:39 --> 14:07 [SPEAKER_00]: He's thinking about all this when he hears a scream suddenly come from down the street and everybody runs to this house and word passes quickly through the crowd that the spirits had come and a man was possessed and Dick warns Kong he said this is just he then superstition but was it because Kong is not so easily convinced he says if it happened in Jesus as a day why not our own day and a woman pushes the crowd and she
14:07 --> 14:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The people say that you rest in the Supreme Emperor heaven.
14:10 --> 14:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I beg you to ask him to help me she pleaded her face, distorted with fear, and evil spirit has again possessed the father of my children is trying to kill him, and Dick could hardly believe what he was hearing.
14:22 --> 14:44 [SPEAKER_00]: But with Kong and the Lee, they moved through the crowd and worked together to get to the stashed hut where the afflicted man was, and they stepped over a mangy brown white dog that was partially blocking the doorway, and they followed this woman into her very sparsely furnished hut, and his eyes adjusted to the dim light, and he saw this middle-aged man thrashing about on the bed.
14:45 --> 14:47 [SPEAKER_00]: His arms and legs were held down by four men.
14:47 --> 14:52 [SPEAKER_00]: He was wrestling against the restraints, and he tossed violently two and froze side to side,
14:52 --> 14:59 [SPEAKER_00]: and blood was slowly oozing from a deep gash in his forehead where he had a self-inflicted wound.
15:00 --> 15:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And the atmosphere of the room just seemed really heavy, really charged with evil.
15:05 --> 15:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was so close and so real that Dick felt that he could just reach out and touch it.
15:11 --> 15:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And his skin was prickled with fear, and Kong was sizing up to situation.
15:15 --> 15:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, an evil spirit has possessed farmer hoe.
15:19 --> 15:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Our God is bigger and more powerful than any spirit, and he can deliver this man, but first you must promise me that you will burn your idols and trust in Jesus the Son of this Supreme Emperor, an old woman who is praying before the ancestral tablet she lifts up her head.
15:34 --> 15:44 [SPEAKER_00]: in surprise, but nobody speaks, and so finally one of the men nodded, and then Kong turned to Dick and he said, hey, sing these three verses of the hymn, there is power in the blood.
15:44 --> 15:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Dick will say, I can do that, I can be okay with this.
15:49 --> 16:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Dick here's Kong's voice he joins in, he's tone deaf, his voice isn't that pleasant, but doesn't really matter, because as the words to the song filled the room, Dick could feel the atmosphere beginning to grow calmer, and farmer who's writhing and struggling was easing, and as they sang the last line of the him.
16:06 --> 16:30 [SPEAKER_00]: a Bible verse flashed into Dick's mind, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, and Dick knew he was experiencing for the first time the forceful meaning of this verse, and there in that little hut, Dick and Kong were fighting a spiritual battle such as they had never fought before, and swiftly quietly Dick named each part of the armor of God and slipped it on by faith.
16:30 --> 16:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And Kong reached out, he took hold of Dix' hand and he said, now, and the name of Jesus became man, the evil spirit, to leave the man.
16:37 --> 16:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dix clashed onto his hand very tightly, and tried to swallow down the uncertainty that was rising within him, and Kong straightens his shoulders and begins to pray boldly and furpently, that every member of the whole family would turn to God and turn away from idols and be saved.
16:52 --> 16:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had just begun to pray.
16:54 --> 17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: when the dog screeched and yelped, and Dick turned, and he saw this poor animal whirling around in circles, snapping wildly at its tail, and Kong never paused, never missed a word.
17:04 --> 17:11 [SPEAKER_00]: They kept right on praying, and Dick and the whole family gazed in the basement as the dog suddenly fell over dead.
17:11 --> 17:13 [SPEAKER_00]: and silence fills the room.
17:13 --> 17:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick is just standing there and he's like, what just happened?
17:17 --> 17:34 [SPEAKER_00]: When he thinks about the story in the Bible, where Jesus commands the spirits to come out, they go into the pigs and go over the cliff, and he's amazed and conquering and farmer who was laying there, he's relaxed, he's quiet, and the family goes to get him some chicken broth.
17:34 --> 17:46 [SPEAKER_00]: and as they're preparing this meal and the man is resting, Kong begins to share the gospel with them, and his entire family comes to Christ, and at two weeks later, they're burning all these idols.
17:47 --> 18:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And Mr. Hoset, I was possessed by an evil spirit who boasted that he had already killed five people and was going to kill me, and he would have accomplished his boast, but God sent Mr. Kong along just at the right moment, and in Jesus' name, I was set free.
18:01 --> 18:17 [SPEAKER_00]: The whole family became one of a few dozen Christians in the region in Kong, and especially Dick often felt overwhelmed at the enormity of their task to evangelize in the region, because there were one and a half million Chinese to witness to, and there were only two men who were capable of doing the work.
18:17 --> 18:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Their fellow Christians were farmers, and their work took up the majority of their time, and they didn't really have much incentive to, you know, become evangelist, because that was
18:29 --> 18:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And one night as mosquitoes were coming at him from every angle, even though he had a mosquito net, they always find a way through.
18:35 --> 18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was toxic and turning.
18:36 --> 18:41 [SPEAKER_00]: When suddenly he thought of Jesus were as to the disciples, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
18:41 --> 18:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus taught the disciples how to become fishers of men.
18:45 --> 18:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly he realized that he could duplicate this method of Christ.
18:49 --> 18:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he throws off the covers.
18:51 --> 18:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He begins to read Acts, where Jesus tells
18:55 --> 19:03 [SPEAKER_00]: and reading on he noticed this was the model of the early church for evangelism and could he help these farmers become fissures.
19:04 --> 19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And so with this new idea in his mind he approaches the church and he says, hey, how about you take a month off between crops to grow on witness and the villages and they began to come up with reasons why they couldn't.
19:14 --> 19:16 [SPEAKER_00]: They said, well, I only have a third grade education.
19:16 --> 19:17 [SPEAKER_00]: How am I going to do anything?
19:18 --> 19:19 [SPEAKER_00]: How much are you going to pay us?
19:19 --> 19:20 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know how to do this.
19:21 --> 19:22 [SPEAKER_00]: How will we learn?
19:22 --> 19:24 [SPEAKER_00]: and Dick was like, you can read, so you can do this.
19:25 --> 19:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Why don't you go see how much Jesus paid Peter and John in that sure answer?
19:29 --> 19:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And then you can learn by following me.
19:32 --> 19:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And so as they learned, they travel and they witnessed their motto became every Christian of witness.
19:38 --> 19:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And people were so hungry for the gospel that within five years time, so many churches had cropped up that the elders of the shangchee Church were on a rotation visiting all the churches,
19:52 --> 19:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And so these farmers became fissures and it was a beautiful thing to see.
19:57 --> 20:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Now in the words of Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in one's of a wife.
20:06 --> 20:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick did not have a good fortune, physically, but he had one, spiritually, and he was lonely, and though his ministry duties kept him very busy, he keenly felt an emptiness that he felt could only be filled with one person.
20:18 --> 20:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Margaret Humphrey, this was the same Margaret he went on
20:25 --> 20:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And times were different, I suppose, but this is a very, to me, a very unique love story.
20:31 --> 20:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know though you would see this happen today, maybe we do.
20:34 --> 20:42 [SPEAKER_00]: But before he leaves for China, he asked a friend to write him every six months and tell him how market was and if she was still dating his friend.
20:42 --> 20:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And for four years, every six months he's due to fully received a letter which read, situation status quo.
20:49 --> 20:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And then he receives a letter which said, they are no longer together, and Margaret feels that God wants her to serve in China, and she's already applied the China-Inland mission, and has been accepted.
20:59 --> 21:02 [SPEAKER_00]: She will sell sale in six months.
21:03 --> 21:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick is like what is oh, this is amazing.
21:06 --> 21:07 [SPEAKER_00]: This is wonderful.
21:07 --> 21:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He drops to his knees.
21:08 --> 21:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He prays.
21:08 --> 21:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, God.
21:09 --> 21:13 [SPEAKER_00]: If you can only get her safely to Shanghai, I will do the rest.
21:14 --> 21:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, it was as if the reality of the situation suddenly hit him.
21:18 --> 21:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And he thought, she probably doesn't really remember who I am.
21:22 --> 21:25 [SPEAKER_00]: But ever the bold soul,
21:25 --> 21:27 [SPEAKER_00]: He decided, I'll write her a letter.
21:27 --> 21:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And so a letter essentially says, for years I have loved you, I have prayed for you and I want you to be my wife.
21:34 --> 21:40 [SPEAKER_00]: You've not seen me for nearly five years, but we didn't know each other pretty well for the years we were in Bible school.
21:40 --> 21:43 [SPEAKER_00]: You will say you can't accept my proposal without courtship.
21:43 --> 21:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I have to answer that in our circumstances, there can be no courtship until you have accepted my proposal.
21:49 --> 21:55 [SPEAKER_00]: This is hard, I know, but it looks as if your decision
21:55 --> 22:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It is easy for me to believe that your God's will for my life, as I have already admitted my deep love for you.
22:01 --> 22:08 [SPEAKER_00]: For you it is a much bigger problem, so I will gladly give you six months to answer, and this allows you time to really pray.
22:08 --> 22:13 [SPEAKER_00]: God will show you his will, I know, before I close, let me ask you a question.
22:13 --> 22:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Did you come to China because you love the Chinese?
22:16 --> 22:18 [SPEAKER_00]: or because you were sure this was God's will for you.
22:18 --> 22:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I know your answer.
22:20 --> 22:22 [SPEAKER_00]: You came because you knew it was his will.
22:22 --> 22:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Knowing this, you were confident that he will give you his love for the Chinese.
22:27 --> 22:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Will you dear?
22:28 --> 22:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Let me relate the same clear logic to your decision.
22:31 --> 22:36 [SPEAKER_00]: If it is his will for you to be my wife, then will he not give you a love for me Margaret?
22:36 --> 22:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I will be praying every day many times every day because I love you.
22:42 --> 22:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He sent this letter off to Shanghai to wait
22:46 --> 22:54 [SPEAKER_00]: and she accepted many strange and interesting things when she gets to Shanghai, but this by far topped her list.
22:54 --> 23:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And she remembers him a little bit, not normal amount of remembering, and she remembered that he really liked her and that he was funny and good looking, but she thought of him as a friend and then not really at all once he had left for China.
23:10 --> 23:17 [SPEAKER_00]: and she thought, I really wanted a great love, like a romance story, but she decided she would pray for it.
23:18 --> 23:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And she's been in Shanghai for a few days.
23:20 --> 23:21 [SPEAKER_00]: This is older woman.
23:21 --> 23:25 [SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't tell anybody about this letter because, you know, why would you?
23:25 --> 23:28 [SPEAKER_00]: But this older woman ever owned volition is like, you know what?
23:29 --> 23:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Me and my husband we actually didn't meet before we were married and it was a beautiful thing and God grew our love and it was wonderful.
23:37 --> 23:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And then a few days after this, she runs into another lady, who then of her own oblision as well says, I've been praying for quite some time that God would bring you and Dick Hillis together.
23:46 --> 23:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And her mind is just like, what is happening?
23:50 --> 23:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And she's a little worried because she's thinking the prayers of these Stanley women are generally answered.
23:58 --> 24:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But she's given it a try, so they get to know each other through letters and Margaret found that she was saving up little tidbits of life to write to Dick.
24:08 --> 24:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And a few more months go by and feel assignments are coming up and so she needed an answer because if she doesn't say that she's engaged to Dick, then they could be, you know, she could be flung way far out there, way away from Dick and there's no way that this would ever work out.
24:23 --> 24:30 [SPEAKER_00]: and so she decided she would say yes but she was really nervous because what was her new life going to be?
24:30 --> 24:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The entire marriage is planned through letters.
24:33 --> 24:35 [SPEAKER_00]: They're married in April of 1938.
24:36 --> 24:44 [SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't have a wedding gown, there's no beautiful chapel and the only music was that of the Japanese bombers as they attacked a far-off city.
24:44 --> 24:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Then the two of them traveled together
24:50 --> 24:59 [SPEAKER_00]: and their Margaret settles into her new home, which hosted multiple families of rats, and apparently the ghost of the ladies deceased husband who sold the place to them.
24:59 --> 25:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It had no electricity and no running water, so for veteran listeners of M&M it should be no shock that within six months Margaret had contracted a horrible fever.
25:10 --> 25:14 [SPEAKER_00]: and Dick prayed for her endlessly, but it didn't seem that God was listening.
25:14 --> 25:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The nearest hospital was 100 miles away, and there was no way to get her there because the roads were terribly unreliable.
25:21 --> 25:23 [SPEAKER_00]: She was running 105 degree fever.
25:24 --> 25:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And as Dick prayed for her, he was hit with the conviction that perhaps he had loved the gift of Margaret more than the giver who had given her to him and so he continues to pray and he surrenders Margaret to God and he felt like he should go to this Chinese medicine shop.
25:44 --> 25:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And when he arrives, there's this man there and he says, I don't really have anything for you.
25:49 --> 25:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's nothing for Fever's.
25:50 --> 25:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
25:51 --> 25:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So Dick leaves heading back to Margaret Barry defeated and the shopkeeper's assistant comes over and he says, hey, you know, come back.
25:59 --> 26:02 [SPEAKER_00]: He has something for you.
26:02 --> 26:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out this several years ago, a German guy had been passing through and gives this man this medicine and he says this can cure any fever.
26:10 --> 26:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Not sure what it is written in German, but he pays a hefty sum for it and takes it back to Margaret.
26:16 --> 26:18 [SPEAKER_00]: He gives it to Margaret within a couple days.
26:19 --> 26:21 [SPEAKER_00]: She is much better and then a couple weeks.
26:21 --> 26:24 [SPEAKER_00]: She is entirely healed.
26:24 --> 26:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And through this event, Dick felt that he had learned a very valuable lesson.
26:29 --> 26:40 [SPEAKER_00]: The Japanese bombings which had begun in 1937 continued to intensify, and by 1941 they inched ever closer to the hillous home, and they were now a family of four.
26:40 --> 26:43 [SPEAKER_00]: One morning, Dick woke up with this stabbing abdominal pain.
26:44 --> 26:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He just knew that it was appendicitis.
26:46 --> 26:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He needed to travel by Rickshaw 35 miles to see a doctor, which would be an excruciating journey.
26:53 --> 26:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And what it'd be safe to leave Margaret and the kids.
26:56 --> 26:59 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't have a choice.
26:59 --> 27:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So Margaret is left alone with her two children, the youngest of whom is two months old.
27:05 --> 27:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And the calendar reads January 15th, she wouldn't hear from Dick to probably some time in February, and in their city, the nationalist soldiers are retreating and the Japanese are advancing.
27:17 --> 27:20 [SPEAKER_00]: and people are coming to her and saying, hey, you need to leave.
27:20 --> 27:21 [SPEAKER_00]: You cannot stay here.
27:21 --> 27:22 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be good.
27:23 --> 27:31 [SPEAKER_00]: But she realizes if she takes her baby and her kids or other kid, and she leaves, she's going to be in far worse conditions.
27:32 --> 27:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not safe for a baby.
27:33 --> 27:36 [SPEAKER_00]: These are cold mud floors.
27:36 --> 27:39 [SPEAKER_00]: This is absolutely a death sentence for her child.
27:39 --> 27:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So she says, I'm actually way better off staying here.
27:43 --> 27:55 [SPEAKER_00]: because I can boil milk and water and soon she is all alone the man who milks the goats as gone and she doesn't know how to milk the goats, but she's going to figure that out and she's dreading it because these goats are very can't hankerous.
27:56 --> 28:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But the next morning, as she's getting ready to go out and prepare herself to do this, there's a lady her neighbor missed Mrs. Lee who comes over and says, hey, I have gone ahead and milk the goats.
28:07 --> 28:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to
28:11 --> 28:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So the two women take care of the kids together, these Japanese soldiers continue to advance, but they get chicken eggs delivered to themselves, somehow some miraculous intervention.
28:22 --> 28:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they can eat their oldest child can eat.
28:27 --> 28:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Japanese are advancing until they're just not.
28:31 --> 28:32 [SPEAKER_00]: and they turn around.
28:32 --> 28:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody knows why, but they just leave.
28:35 --> 28:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And the city was safe and got it provided for them.
28:39 --> 28:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's actually a deeper layer to this story because in every event that happens, her little calendars, you know, calendars that have like the little Bible verses on them.
28:48 --> 28:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And so as she was tearing these calendars away, every single verse was directly applicable to what was going on.
28:55 --> 28:58 [SPEAKER_00]: One was about like not fearing, one was about providing for the little ones.
28:58 --> 29:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was so in cany that she knew that it was absolutely God.
29:01 --> 29:05 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no way that that anybody, it was a coincidence.
29:05 --> 29:07 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just too strangely specific.
29:07 --> 29:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a really cool story.
29:09 --> 29:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So after the Japanese have left, the city is safe.
29:11 --> 29:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And now all she has to do was wait for her husband to return.
29:15 --> 29:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out the dick had traveled those 35 miles for nothing because the doctor confirmed that it was appendicitis, but he could do nothing for him.
29:23 --> 29:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He needed to go to Shanghai.
29:25 --> 29:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But dick is like I have to get back to Margaret and the kids before I go to Shanghai because that's way too long to leave them alone.
29:32 --> 29:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So we get back to them, they pack up their stuff, friends had offered to pull their rickshaws as far as possible.
29:38 --> 29:48 [SPEAKER_00]: It's incredibly dangerous because they needed to go and convince the Chinese to get past their lines to go through nomans land, which is nothing but bandits and awful things.
29:49 --> 29:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And then when they get to that, it's the Japanese line, which is not good either before they can arrive in Shanghai.
29:56 --> 30:03 [SPEAKER_00]: They also needed food for themselves and for the kids, but they prayed because God would knew what they needed and would provide for them.
30:04 --> 30:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Chinese commander, when they get to his side, he tells them, you're absolutely crazy.
30:08 --> 30:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why you're even trying because there's bandits and Japanese is very dangerous, but he gives them papers and sends them on their way.
30:16 --> 30:20 [SPEAKER_00]: when there in no means land, they run into a gang of opium smugglers.
30:21 --> 30:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But turns out, these opium smugglers, the leader of them, was the son of a Chinese pastor who had broken his father's heart.
30:28 --> 30:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But he was very glad to see Dick because, you know, it's like, hey, this is a guy I know.
30:33 --> 30:47 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in kind, Dick is also very happy to see him because otherwise they were in for a bad day if they run into just, you know, stranger opium bat my bandits, um, but they gave him a place to sleep and food and then I chartered a boat to get them across the river.
30:47 --> 30:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And there are still in no man's lands when some bandits come up to them and they're, you know, attempting to rob them, um, and Dick asks, you know, what what's your name?
30:57 --> 31:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, yeah, so you can tell the authorities, but he had this little
31:03 --> 31:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And this guy is reading it and he says, Hey, you have the same, the same surname that I did.
31:08 --> 31:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I do, which is really incredibly unusual.
31:10 --> 31:14 [SPEAKER_00]: He had Dick had actually never met anybody else who had his surname.
31:14 --> 31:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And so it wasn't it was something never had come in handy before because people were like, it's kind of weird name.
31:19 --> 31:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, this guy was overjoyed.
31:22 --> 31:23 [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, we're brothers.
31:23 --> 31:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, we're family.
31:24 --> 31:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm going to treat you really well.
31:25 --> 31:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So they returned everything they as stolen, I gave him a place to sleep, and then he sends his best guide with them to get within sight of the giant walled city they would need to go through to carry on with their way.
31:36 --> 31:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The only problem is the Japanese army is blocking the way.
31:41 --> 31:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So, they pray again, how are we going to get past?
31:44 --> 31:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And while they're praying, these two Japanese centuries come up to them and harass them and they're looking through their stuff, they march them up to the gates of the city and they're like, ah, you can't get through, we're not going to let you through.
31:53 --> 31:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And then a two-star general appears in the ass that imperfect English how they got there.
31:58 --> 32:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out, this man had attended the University of Washington at the same time as Margaret and they had actually graduated the exact same year.
32:07 --> 32:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I would love to help you get whatever you needed and then he lets them into the city.
32:12 --> 32:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And so finally, after all these things, they arrive in Shanghai and Dick is taking back immediately for surgery.
32:20 --> 32:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And as you recover, he's thinking back on all these things and just thinking about the goodness of God in this protection, he thinks the verse, the angel, the Lord, and camps around about those who fear him.
32:30 --> 32:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And he thought about all the ways that God had seen them through that harrowing trip, even keeping his appendix from bursting during the weeks of travel.
32:38 --> 32:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And he found himself incredibly grateful that God's promises can always be trusted.
33:03 --> 33:09 [SPEAKER_00]: After Dick had recovered the hillesses, head back to America for furlough and they stay there until the war ended in 1945.
33:10 --> 33:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And while they're there, Dick goes to Dallas, the logical seminary for a year, and then he taught missions and practical work at Biola, and after the war, Dick was one of the first volunteer to go back in survey China, and it would be a five-month trip, and his friends gave him this beautiful new bicycle to make his surveying easier.
33:29 --> 33:36 [SPEAKER_00]: but it's late to arrive and he never got the chance to use it, and he surveyed mainly on foot in the company of two other missionaries.
33:38 --> 33:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And reading from the book, in spite of the blisters, the months of survey with Phil with Joy.
33:42 --> 33:48 [SPEAKER_00]: He found that many of the mud huts that served as churches had been destroyed, but they also discovered the Christians had remained true.
33:48 --> 33:55 [SPEAKER_00]: War and famine had not tarnished their faith, but it polished it, and one village, a middle-aged elder greeted them in.
33:55 --> 33:59 [SPEAKER_00]: My entire family was killed during the war,
33:59 --> 34:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And I will be with them again some day, until that day I will be faithful to my God even unto death.
34:06 --> 34:11 [SPEAKER_00]: At every Christian home they were warmly welcomed and asked eagerly when the missionaries were coming back.
34:11 --> 34:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They promised to return and live among them as soon as they could bring their families.
34:15 --> 34:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And after about five months of traveling, the three men arrived back in Shanghai with her report for the mission's headquarters.
34:21 --> 34:32 [SPEAKER_00]: When they got back, Dick saw that his lovely new bicycle was waiting for him, but now it did him no good, and he felt sorry that his friends had wasted the money on this kind gift and been for nothing.
34:33 --> 34:36 [SPEAKER_00]: But as we know, rarely are these things for nothing.
34:36 --> 34:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick soon realizes that he might not be able to get home after all, because all transportation was military.
34:42 --> 34:50 [SPEAKER_00]: and during this meeting where they're telling what they have seen their survey trip and American Colonel approached him and said, hey, I think I can help you out.
34:50 --> 34:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's make an exception.
34:51 --> 34:54 [SPEAKER_00]: All you need to do is buy your ticket.
34:55 --> 34:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But the bike cost about $35, it could be worth more.
34:58 --> 35:06 [SPEAKER_00]: His friends decided to advance him the money and told him they'd try to sell his bike to make up the difference anything that was left over he could just pay them back later.
35:06 --> 35:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The ticket was $150, and he is riding back in luxury and officer's state room, wonderful time.
35:14 --> 35:17 [SPEAKER_00]: His bike sold to a wealthy Chinese man for $350.
35:19 --> 35:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely incredible.
35:22 --> 35:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick and Margaret are now returning to China as a family of six.
35:26 --> 35:35 [SPEAKER_00]: They had added two more kids during their furlough, and it had now been 13 years since his very first time going to China, and now is going back married with four kids.
35:36 --> 35:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The situation in China, he knew was going to be tense because you have the communists now who were fighting the nationalist, and they had agreed to a temporary priest peace treaty kind of truce during the war.
35:47 --> 35:49 [SPEAKER_00]: They had begun fighting before the war.
35:50 --> 35:53 [SPEAKER_00]: but the Japanese became the higher priority when all the Japanese have been defeated.
35:54 --> 35:56 [SPEAKER_00]: They were back to battling.
35:56 --> 36:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And the nationalists are led by Chinkai Shek and the Communist are led by Mao Zedong.
36:02 --> 36:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So arriving back in a very different war zone than they had left, they settled into the city of Loho, about 200 kilometers west of Shangchi, and Loho was held by nationalist troops, headed up by a man named Captain Wong, who was fully confident that his giant gun, don't know what kind of gun this is, but he's very proud of it.
36:21 --> 36:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He thinks it can stop any communist attack.
36:24 --> 36:28 [SPEAKER_00]: well, they get a test that out very shortly because the Communists attack.
36:28 --> 36:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The Nationalists decide to blow up the bridge and they leave the city quietly through the side gate, leaving it completely wide open.
36:36 --> 36:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They decide hey we're going to defend it from the giant walled city a couple miles away.
36:41 --> 36:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The Communists take over their overall decent folks, no real problems have started yet.
36:47 --> 36:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Then Captain Huang begins shelling loho and he's actually killing more civilians than communists.
36:54 --> 36:58 [SPEAKER_00]: One evening while the kids are all playing in a living room and they're acting out the story of Ruth.
36:59 --> 37:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And a shell hits the their living room and the kids are covered and does everything is covered in dust and they they look you know are we okay because you know everything's settling you don't know what's going on.
37:10 --> 37:15 [SPEAKER_00]: You know they're checking each other out nothing's the all the children are fine.
37:15 --> 37:16 [SPEAKER_00]: They're a little bit scraped up.
37:16 --> 37:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They're okay.
37:17 --> 37:19 [SPEAKER_00]: They go and they hide in the closet.
37:19 --> 37:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The very next shell that hits their neighbor's house is direct hit and the children are in this closet.
37:26 --> 37:29 [SPEAKER_00]: They're sobbing, they're shaking, the children are clinging to their parents.
37:30 --> 37:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Their daughter Nancy, her face is streaked with muddy tears.
37:33 --> 37:35 [SPEAKER_00]: She's choked and she's stammering.
37:35 --> 37:38 [SPEAKER_00]: She says, Daddy, I don't care if the next shell hit does hit us.
37:38 --> 37:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Then we'll get to go to heaven and there aren't any shells in heaven.
37:41 --> 37:45 [SPEAKER_00]: and Dick hugged her tightly and made himself focus on his thoughts on the heaven.
37:45 --> 37:47 [SPEAKER_00]: He began drawing in some strength.
37:47 --> 37:49 [SPEAKER_00]: He began to tell the children Bible stories.
37:50 --> 37:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Daniels tripped the alliance in, seemed especially appropriate.
37:53 --> 37:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And the children listened quietly as he spoke, and their small bodies were pressed close to him.
37:57 --> 37:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick said, you know, we may meet Daniel tonight.
38:00 --> 38:01 [SPEAKER_00]: John, what would you say to Daniel?
38:02 --> 38:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And John had been the first one to stop crying.
38:04 --> 38:11 [SPEAKER_00]: With remarkable control, he said, I would tell him the same God who took care of him and the
38:11 --> 38:14 [SPEAKER_00]: in the war, so cute, so faithful.
38:15 --> 38:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The shelling stopped in the next morning they found out that their neighbors had been killed.
38:19 --> 38:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Dig is inspecting the hole in the living room and he realized that if Captain Hwang's gun had been raised even just a fraction of an inch higher, they would all be dead.
38:30 --> 38:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Later when evening, they're all sitting down to dinner when communist officers tell Dick that he needs to come with them.
38:35 --> 38:46 [SPEAKER_00]: This would have been a terrifying moment anyway, but it was becoming increasingly more common and more dangerous because missionaries were being accused of being spies and then they were killed.
38:47 --> 38:54 [SPEAKER_00]: So he arrives at the Communist headquarters in the city, and they said, hey, how long have you been in the service of your state government?
38:54 --> 38:56 [SPEAKER_00]: When is America planning to attack China?
38:57 --> 39:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I'm a preacher of the gospel on that employed by my state government.
39:01 --> 39:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And there are so many ways this could go wrong because
39:06 --> 39:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Previously, the generator they had had been mistaken for a radio, and then there were these national army uniforms from these two soldiers that had been put down this well.
39:16 --> 39:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't find them, but then they also realized there was a phone that was down there too.
39:20 --> 39:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So if these communists had found that, that's not good.
39:24 --> 39:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And then they're also very paranoid about this pile of like sand and gravel that's up against the wall the mission compound and they're like what is under there and they're like oh it's it's no big deal is just we're building in addition to our mission compound and need this and so.
39:43 --> 39:46 [SPEAKER_00]: the Communists are like, hey, I want you to dig and show us.
39:47 --> 39:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, as they're digging, they find these two guns that had been previously stashed by these same two national soldiers who threw their uniforms down the well.
39:57 --> 40:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they had, like, brought these up, though, we had no idea these were here.
40:01 --> 40:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a few days after all of that that he's brought into this office on an interrogated, and then hours and hours and hours go by.
40:10 --> 40:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, he could tell they were starting to get a little bit bored, he's exhausted.
40:15 --> 40:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And they say, hey, you can go home.
40:18 --> 40:19 [SPEAKER_00]: We've decided to let you live.
40:21 --> 40:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And as he's walking back home, the streets are absolutely deserted.
40:24 --> 40:29 [SPEAKER_00]: He's thinking about the wife, his kids, I mean, he was probably convinced he would never see them again.
40:30 --> 40:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He flings open the front door, Margaret meets him and she pulls him into a hug and she says, I pray it until about two and then suddenly the piece of God came over me and she said, I just need to be back.
40:40 --> 40:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So when God gave me peace, I went right to sleep.
40:45 --> 40:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Fast forwarding a bit to Christmas 1947, Dick is laying away.
40:48 --> 40:50 [SPEAKER_00]: He's having trouble sleeping.
40:50 --> 40:51 [SPEAKER_00]: He's incredibly tense.
40:51 --> 40:55 [SPEAKER_00]: It's in the wee hours of the morning when he startled by a loud banging on the front door.
40:55 --> 41:03 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a group of soldiers led by a young, steely-eyed, bony and filthy lieutenant who kicks them out of their house.
41:03 --> 41:06 [SPEAKER_00]: They slumped the mission church where several other families were already sleeping.
41:07 --> 41:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And then 28 days later, this lieutenant Beckins him back, telling him that, within a week, he would have his house back, and that nothing will be missing, because his men were honest and devoted communists.
41:18 --> 41:21 [SPEAKER_00]: and this opens a door of conversation for Dick and so he took it.
41:22 --> 41:25 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, you say you're leaving next week, where are you going to go?
41:25 --> 41:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's a military secret.
41:28 --> 41:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, how long have you been a communist dick asked two years?
41:31 --> 41:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And knowing the strength of family ties in China, he says, how long have you been away from home 14 months?
41:37 --> 41:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And how old are you, sir?
41:38 --> 41:40 [SPEAKER_00]: 19 years old?
41:40 --> 41:45 [SPEAKER_00]: In China, when you're born, you're considered to be one-year-old, so it's actually just 18.
41:45 --> 41:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Dick asked, again, what do your parents do?
41:48 --> 41:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're farmers in the Shantong province.
41:51 --> 41:54 [SPEAKER_00]: That word of the province was liberated by the Communist two years ago.
41:54 --> 42:03 [SPEAKER_00]: I suppose your poor parents have received extra land and are better off now, not yet, but with a weight into the revolution is over, the soldier answered proudly.
42:05 --> 42:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick's questions had not lessened his confidence nor dampened his enthusiasm for the
42:10 --> 42:20 [SPEAKER_00]: four days later, the young Lieutenant calls him again, and has his men line up for inspection, and he had them turn out their pockets, and one man had tried to steal a four-rock and he was slapped in the face for his efforts.
42:20 --> 42:23 [SPEAKER_00]: The house was dirty, but everything was accounted for.
42:23 --> 42:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Lieutenant proudly said, see, I told you nothing would be stolen, and then he told Dick that they would be leaving that night, so they could move back in.
42:32 --> 42:35 [SPEAKER_00]: and Dick tries again, he said, sir, may I ask where you're going?
42:35 --> 42:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't believe it when the young officer pointed to the high ancient walls of the city one mile away.
42:40 --> 42:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you realize there are 10 well-armed nationalist soldiers there, and he feels this dread crawling up his spine?
42:48 --> 42:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And the lieutenant said, yes, our intelligence knows all the figures.
42:53 --> 42:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, how many men are in your group?
42:55 --> 42:58 [SPEAKER_00]: We have nearly 5 men who will take part in the attack.
42:59 --> 43:00 [SPEAKER_00]: how many of them are armed.
43:01 --> 43:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Two out of every three.
43:02 --> 43:07 [SPEAKER_00]: You have a formidable enemy behind walls, 30 feet high and 14 feet thick.
43:08 --> 43:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Your enemy is not only well armed, but also protected by a deep mode.
43:12 --> 43:15 [SPEAKER_00]: You only have half the number of men to attack this city as certain death.
43:16 --> 43:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not gonna go well.
43:18 --> 43:24 [SPEAKER_00]: and the young Otena he straightens his shoulders as eyes flash, he said we will take that city tonight or die trying.
43:25 --> 43:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But sir has communism done anything for you.
43:27 --> 43:32 [SPEAKER_00]: What if you gain that would make you willing to lay down your life to carry it just one mile farther?
43:32 --> 43:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I fight not for personal gain in the officer said, it is what the role of a game that counts.
43:39 --> 43:44 [SPEAKER_00]: My men and I are willing to die if need be, but communism must win.
43:44 --> 43:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The rule of my life is Communism for all, and my all for Communism, and that all includes death.
43:53 --> 44:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The battle raged all night, but by morning the nationalists had taken back the city, and the commanding general came to see the hellesses, and Dick asked at any of the men from the Communist Lieutenant's company had survived.
44:05 --> 44:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Not a one.
44:06 --> 44:09 [SPEAKER_00]: The general said they'd been mowed down like clay pigeons.
44:10 --> 44:17 [SPEAKER_00]: and later that night, Dick lay awake thinking about the young man who had given his life for something as empty as communism.
44:17 --> 44:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The young officer had displayed a dedication that convicted Dick and made him think about his own sense of urgency, was he willing to sacrifice for the sake of the message of Christ and Dick got down on his knees and he bowed his head and he prayed, oh God, make me willing to live and die if need be to carry your message of salvation one mile farther.
44:40 --> 44:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The nationalists were not able to keep low hope for long, and the order came to evacuate to Kaifong because the communists were coming in with reinforcements.
44:48 --> 44:58 [SPEAKER_00]: They prepared to head out when the order came that actually they needed to go to Shanghai and Dick felt immense grief at these new orders because the hand-in-provence was all he'd ever known.
44:58 --> 45:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Any labored there for 14 years, and leaving low hope was bad enough, but leaving everything he'd worked for felt miserable.
45:07 --> 45:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure that the dick 20 years ago would never recognize his older version of himself.
45:13 --> 45:23 [SPEAKER_00]: This man who looked for the only out, the plain windows as the farm is grew smaller and smaller, because Shanghai had been younger to kill us as dream and now it felt like a failure.
45:23 --> 45:40 [SPEAKER_00]: but with time, Dick adjusted to his new city life and he decided that it wasn't all bad, it was it was just different, and he did to get used to it, and he felt the Communists could never cross the Youngster River, and so he felt safe to settle in to this new ministry, and he began teaching at a local seminary.
45:41 --> 45:47 [SPEAKER_00]: when about four months later he traveled to a nearby village and he sees communist in the marketplace right outside of Shanghai.
45:47 --> 45:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And within a matter of weeks the seminary was closed down and they had become prisoners of the mission compound and they had no access to the Chinese believers.
45:57 --> 46:04 [SPEAKER_00]: They were entirely isolated, and then after several months came the order to get out, to leave China forever, and not the easy way.
46:04 --> 46:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They had to travel over a thousand kilometers north to Tianjin, taking various modes of inconvenient transportation, with five kids in tow, and Margaret was seven months pregnant, and every juncture was designed to inconvenience them.
46:17 --> 46:25 [SPEAKER_00]: On the miserable boat trip back where they packed in like a prison ship,
46:25 --> 46:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And one verse came to his mind over and over again, he who began a good work and you will carry it on to completion until a day of Christ Jesus.
46:33 --> 46:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The faith of his Chinese brothers and sisters would not die out.
46:36 --> 46:42 [SPEAKER_00]: They were gods, not the Communist soldiers, and God had the final say, and he always kept his promises.
46:44 --> 46:50 [SPEAKER_00]: When the Hellesses arrived back in America in 1950, Dick was 37 years old, and he felt ready to settle down.
46:50 --> 46:54 [SPEAKER_00]: He would become missions and church history pastor at a Christian school somewhere.
46:54 --> 46:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Margaret pushed back a little bit and was like, are you sure this is the plan that God has for us?
46:59 --> 47:01 [SPEAKER_00]: In Dick was sure.
47:01 --> 47:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Within a few weeks, he'd moved the family to Washington where their sixth child was born, and the summer he gives an invitation to a conference in Indiana that was organized by a young
47:12 --> 47:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was like balm for his soul, he felt refreshed, he was worshipping with old friends and new friends and hearing about what God had been doing all over the world while he was in China.
47:23 --> 47:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was having a great time.
47:24 --> 47:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Tori Johnson, the founder of Youth for Christ and Billy Graham, who had really just taken off, were there.
47:30 --> 47:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a wonderful time.
47:32 --> 47:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Until the middle of the week, the speaker gets up and he just rams a wrecking ball right through
47:40 --> 47:43 [SPEAKER_00]: A cry for help has come to the Christians of America, the speaker said.
47:43 --> 47:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Madame Chang Kai's check wife of the president of Free China has asked for someone to come out to Taiwan and preach to the soldiers who have escaped from the communists.
47:53 --> 47:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Thousands have fled the mainland and have taken refuge on the island since the communist invasion.
47:58 --> 48:01 [SPEAKER_00]: They have left their homes and many of their families and members behind.
48:01 --> 48:03 [SPEAKER_00]: They are defeated and discouraged.
48:04 --> 48:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Madame Chang has already begun a woman's prayer group in Taiwan.
48:10 --> 48:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And now she desperately wants the soldiers who have followed her husband to freedom and Taiwan to learn up of the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
48:17 --> 48:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Madame Chang is pleading for someone to come and preach the gospel to the thousands who need the message of hope.
48:22 --> 48:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And there is a man here tonight who could go and do this very thing.
48:26 --> 48:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick started to feel even more nervous, he closed his eyes and he sat very still on his seat.
48:31 --> 48:37 [SPEAKER_00]: This man has just returned from China and has experienced the pain of being ousted from the land he loves.
48:37 --> 48:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick Hillis, I'm going to ask you to come forward and just pray for you that God would direct you into this new ministry if that's his will.
48:45 --> 48:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And with a sense of disbelief, he knelt, I guess, but his spirit was rising up.
48:48 --> 48:50 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, Lord, I'm not going to Taiwan.
48:50 --> 48:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I just escaped from the communist.
48:52 --> 48:55 [SPEAKER_00]: I have been caught once and I'm not going to caught a second time.
48:55 --> 48:58 [SPEAKER_00]: That island is only a couple hundred miles from mainland China.
48:58 --> 49:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's doomed to fall, Lord, how can I explain to these men they can't understand but you do, Lord.
49:04 --> 49:06 [SPEAKER_00]: You have something for me here to do in America, Lord.
49:07 --> 49:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to teach.
49:08 --> 49:09 [SPEAKER_00]: It's already been decided.
49:09 --> 49:11 [SPEAKER_00]: My plans are made, please understand, Lord.
49:11 --> 49:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And back in his room, he's reeling.
49:14 --> 49:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The need was great half of a million Chinese soldiers had just lost their homes.
49:19 --> 49:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They were hopeless and aimless.
49:20 --> 49:22 [SPEAKER_00]: They needed the good news of Christ.
49:22 --> 49:23 [SPEAKER_00]: But he's a father of six.
49:23 --> 49:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Is this responsible?
49:24 --> 49:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Is this stable?
49:26 --> 49:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyone can be a Christian schoolteacher.
49:28 --> 49:32 [SPEAKER_00]: He began to think, but how many
49:33 --> 49:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And that night, he remembers some of the missionaries.
49:35 --> 49:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd come back to China with after his furlough.
49:39 --> 49:41 [SPEAKER_00]: This was Jim and Billion Dixon.
49:41 --> 49:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And they'd spent many hours talking about their various ministries together and before splitting ways as Shanghai, Jim Dixon had invited them to come to Taiwan if they ever had to leave China.
49:51 --> 49:54 [SPEAKER_00]: The need is great, he'd said.
49:55 --> 50:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So Dick agreed to go if God met a series of his conditions chief among them was support for his family.
50:01 --> 50:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Every condition that Dick asked for a God met and soon he was moving his family to Glendale, California, into a home provided by a church.
50:09 --> 50:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was heading out to Taiwan for a three-month trip.
50:12 --> 50:19 [SPEAKER_00]: With two other men, Ells Culver, he was a newlywed son of MK's, and Yuri Chandler, who was another young missionary.
50:19 --> 50:23 [SPEAKER_00]: At 37, Dick is the senior guy among the team.
50:25 --> 50:32 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're like me, you don't know much about the history of Taiwan, especially before the 1940s, so I'll tell you a little bit about what I found out.
50:33 --> 50:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently Taiwan's indigenous population first interacted with explorers in the mid-1500s.
50:39 --> 50:43 [SPEAKER_00]: These were the Portuguese who gave the island the name for Mosa, which means beautiful.
50:44 --> 50:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And they had a little bit of interaction with Chinese merchants and pirates, and less than 100 years later, the Dutch arrived and they bought in Chinese workers to
50:53 --> 50:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And when the Ming Dynasty fell on the 1660s, Ming Loyalists fled to Taiwan and kicked out the Dutch.
51:00 --> 51:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But then the Qing quickly took Taiwan back and it stayed a part of their kingdom until they lost it to Japan in 1895.
51:08 --> 51:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It was part of a war treaty conditions thing.
51:10 --> 51:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And it stayed at territory of Japan until 1945 when it reverted back to China.
51:17 --> 51:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And after the communists took over 1.2 million Chinese fled to Taiwan where they held fast against a takeover from the mainland.
51:26 --> 51:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And Taiwan was under Marshall Law until 1987.
51:31 --> 51:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Zooming in a little bit more when Dick Eury and Ells arrive had hunting a still practice among many of the indigenous people.
51:38 --> 51:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Little girls are routinely sold under prostitution.
51:41 --> 51:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Leprecy is a common epidemic before Jim and Lillian Dixon arrived.
51:46 --> 51:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Taiwan's Leprecy clinics were so miserable and filthy that they had recorded an average of three suicides a week.
51:53 --> 51:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Lily and went to work cleaning up the clinic.
51:55 --> 52:03 [SPEAKER_00]: She burned all the old blinns, bought new ones, established visiting hours, and then added background music that was peaceful and soothing to these clinics.
52:04 --> 52:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And then together, she and her husband helped start 100 churches and 100 kindergarten serving 5 kids.
52:11 --> 52:16 [SPEAKER_00]: They set up schools for indigenous children to learn farming or homemaking.
52:16 --> 52:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Liam was an accomplished accordion player, so she and Jim would go into the mountains where he would preach and then she would play music for the children.
52:23 --> 52:28 [SPEAKER_00]: They also set up maternity wars to help combat the staggering infant mortality rates.
52:29 --> 52:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Liam would say they worked on a shoe string but it's God's shoe string.
52:33 --> 52:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The Dixons were widely respected veteran missionaries whose support knowledge was essential for this newly arrived trio.
52:40 --> 52:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The day after they arrived, they were summoned by Madame Chen Kai's Czech secretary who told them that their work among the soldiers is of the highest priority, and they would do everything possible to assist them.
52:51 --> 53:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And the next morning, they were greeted with a mixture of surprise and certainty because a weapons carrier arrived at the front door of the Dixon's home to take a dick and the party over to the barracks to preach.
53:02 --> 53:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The taxi services are arranged by Madame Chang's pair group and they presented a ferrocious appearance until the men understood the kindness behind its arrival.
53:10 --> 53:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And at the barracks, Dick's team found that the common dot was ready in waiting with T for them, and every day followed the same format that began the game that first day.
53:19 --> 53:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The unusual taxi cab ride T with the common dot, and then a walk to the parade grounds where the soldiers were lined up and waiting for the preaching to begin.
53:28 --> 53:30 [SPEAKER_00]: That first day, Dick was the first to speak.
53:30 --> 53:34 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, how many of you have ever heard of Christ Jesus before?
53:34 --> 53:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Some raised their hands and told of learning from missionaries on the mainland, then he asked how many of you have never heard of Jesus.
53:42 --> 53:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was astounded as more than one third of the soldiers raised their hand.
53:46 --> 53:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And he breathes a silent prayer for God's Spirit to move and work among the men, and then he read a letter from their leader, General Chain Kai's Shek.
53:53 --> 54:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The letter said, I am very pleased to agree with the Bible because it is the voice of a Holy Spirit, enlarging the righteousness and passion of God towards the men of the world.
54:01 --> 54:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Savior Jesus Christ, His love, can cover our sins, and all those who believe in Jesus will get eternal life.
54:09 --> 54:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Then gospels of the John were passed out to all the men, so they could follow along in the Bible as they listened, and each day in every military post the pattern was the same.
54:17 --> 54:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Each meaning began with questions and their response was always the same.
54:21 --> 54:28 [SPEAKER_00]: A third of the soldier had never even heard of Jesus, and these men seemingly never got tired or restless of listening to the word, a dick-row home.
54:29 --> 54:37 [SPEAKER_00]: After the meeting is over, I get them a little exhortation from John 14, on the return of Christ to the world,
54:38 --> 54:43 [SPEAKER_00]: If the Lord Terry's and we don't see you any more on the island of Promosa, we'll see you over on the mainland.
54:44 --> 54:48 [SPEAKER_00]: The men break out into a great ovation for their looking forward to sing their loved ones on the mainland.
54:49 --> 54:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick Eury and Ells were overwhelmed by the responsiveness of the soldiers, and the bottom of one of the decision slips.
54:55 --> 54:59 [SPEAKER_00]: One soldier wrote, won't you hurry back and tell us more about Jesus Christ?
55:00 --> 55:06 [SPEAKER_00]: their eyes still but tears many times as they finish preaching and they watch them in marked back from gathering smiling and waving.
55:07 --> 55:08 [SPEAKER_00]: There is something that tears at our hearts.
55:09 --> 55:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick wrote Margaret seeing these men without shame and bigotry but quite insincere.
55:13 --> 55:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And one after the other soldiers responded to the new life offered in Christ Jesus.
55:18 --> 55:44 [SPEAKER_00]: entire families came to know the salvation God provided through Jesus and large numbers of them grew hungry to know more to know God better and the most logical way for them to do this was to integrate them into the churches but they couldn't integrate into the churches because the language barrier, the churches spoke Taiwanese, these guys spoke Mandarin and so they had to figure out what could they do for these guys, they met together and they prayed about what they should do,
55:45 --> 55:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And the most logical course they settled on was a discipleship course, and Dick had remembered seeing one made by the navigators, and that had been translated into Chinese.
55:54 --> 56:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So they said about making it happen, they wrote the navigators president asking for the course, and for two men to come and help them run it, and Jim and Boolean were helping the trio day a day, and they were also running their own ministries every day.
56:07 --> 56:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick just didn't know how they did it.
56:09 --> 56:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And one night he's talking to Jim, who was facing a very serious
56:13 --> 56:16 [SPEAKER_00]: the same one that Dick had faced all those years ago in China.
56:17 --> 56:20 [SPEAKER_00]: How to spread the gospel to 12 million people?
56:20 --> 56:26 [SPEAKER_00]: There were 30 believers on the island, and they were content to lead the responsibility to the clergy.
56:26 --> 56:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick went with Jam on one of his preaching expeditions, and as it continued to help him more and more, his vision expanded beyond just the Chinese.
56:34 --> 56:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to see to all these 12 million souls come to Jesus as well.
56:39 --> 56:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He felt that every heart without Christ is a mission field, and every heart with Christ is a missionary.
56:45 --> 56:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And these Christians needed to be trained to share the good news with their fellow countrymen.
56:50 --> 56:53 [SPEAKER_00]: These three months passed quickly and Dick's mind was spinning with possibilities.
56:54 --> 56:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Jim told him he needed to come back.
56:56 --> 56:57 [SPEAKER_00]: There was just so much work to be done.
56:57 --> 57:07 [SPEAKER_00]: The Dickson's worth of Presbyterian org, the Jim knew what it'd take then there was just too much of a denominational mix, but maybe they should think about starting their own mission.
57:07 --> 57:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And these last few weeks teaching in the U.S. that helped less and less appeal for Dick.
57:12 --> 57:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And when he arrived back in the U.S., he immediately went to DC to talk with the head of an organization there about what he would look like to set up a mission.
57:21 --> 57:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And he found out that it's really a very easy process just some paperwork and a $10 bill and Dick didn't have $10 but between a couple men they were able to get it going and the Orient Crusade was born.
57:33 --> 57:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick went back to the West Coast to move his family as high-worn.
57:36 --> 57:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He also booked speaking engagements, church conferences, and radio broadcasts to help give the fledgling mission exposure.
57:42 --> 57:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And meanwhile, the workers in Taiwan were busy, concert reports, flowed, telling Dick, the miracles occurring on the island.
57:50 --> 57:58 [SPEAKER_00]: A summer visitor wrote to say, I have seen a greater harvest in Formosa in these last few weeks than in 17 years of ministry at home.
57:59 --> 58:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Another said, that one soldier's meeting accomplished more than all my summer's conference work.
58:04 --> 58:06 [SPEAKER_00]: One worker who joined the staff of the young mission route.
58:07 --> 58:16 [SPEAKER_00]: This last month, we distributed 60 gospels of John, ministered to 100 people, and saw 7 indicate they're desired to no Christ.
58:16 --> 58:20 [SPEAKER_00]: That summer was the beginning of intensive work among the tribal people.
58:20 --> 58:24 [SPEAKER_00]: The first church leaders conference was held on over 70 pastors attended.
58:24 --> 58:33 [SPEAKER_00]: More than 10 decisions for Christ were made on the island of Taiwan, that summer as reports of the excitement continue to come in, dig more and more anxious to get back.
58:34 --> 58:38 [SPEAKER_00]: But first it was necessary to establish administrative staff for the mission.
58:39 --> 58:45 [SPEAKER_00]: The mission bought property in LA, the former area director of youth for Christ joined them as home director.
58:45 --> 58:52 [SPEAKER_00]: They established a board of directors and their little mission was this perfect little harmonious blend of organizations.
58:53 --> 59:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And in December 1951, when Dick Margaret and their children a landed in Taiwan, the work began in earnest.
59:00 --> 59:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Jim and Lillian joke that they had asked God for years to send them 200 missionaries, but they forgot to stipulate Presbyterian.
59:07 --> 59:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The goal of the Orient Crusade was to motivate, train, and mobilize the believers on Taiwan to evangelize their own nation.
59:14 --> 59:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It was an ambitious goal to reach an entire nation, but nothing left seemed acceptable.
59:19 --> 59:24 [SPEAKER_00]: The navigators supplied the correspondence course, as well as the men to administer it.
59:24 --> 59:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The Oriental Mission Society, OMS and Youth for Christ, blended, a manpowering efforts, although all this work was almost entirely derailed when Jehovah Witnesses came in and they started telling all the soldiers they had to be pacifists or to be Christians.
59:39 --> 59:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And Madam Chang kicked them out and told Dick that she trusted their team to decide which missions groups should be allowed and who shouldn't, and this kept the cults away and helped unify their present missions.
59:50 --> 59:56 [SPEAKER_00]: As the work in Taiwan was met with more and more success, Dick began to think beyond the island of Taiwan.
59:56 --> 59:58 [SPEAKER_00]: There were over 100 islands in the region.
59:58 --> 01:00:05 [SPEAKER_00]: He took a trip to Okinawa, which had been devastated by the war, and the mission helped rebuild
01:00:07 --> 01:00:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And one day Taipei held a basketball game that attracted 8 people.
01:00:11 --> 01:00:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It got his wheels turning, and he went and talked to Madam Chang who said, you find the players and we'll sponsor them and get them into the country.
01:00:17 --> 01:00:20 [SPEAKER_00]: He had this vision for a Christian basketball team.
01:00:21 --> 01:00:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick contacted a skilled coach he knew, and then buds Shafer who was an all-American from Wheaton, who could play and preach and teach, and it went so well.
01:00:30 --> 01:00:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They toured for three months, and they shared the gospel to 300 people.
01:00:34 --> 01:00:39 [SPEAKER_00]: They also won 86 out of 87 games, so you could be proud and rude for them, and it wouldn't be weird.
01:00:39 --> 01:00:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And there was a girl named Ginny, who would never have come to church, but she came to a basketball game, and she signed up for the Bible Course they offered during half-time.
01:00:49 --> 01:00:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And through this, she became a Christian.
01:00:52 --> 01:00:56 [SPEAKER_00]: She left Taiwan, she moved to LA, where she joined the mission's home office.
01:00:58 --> 01:01:20 [SPEAKER_00]: a few years later Billy Graham asked the mission to expand into the Philippines and then into Vietnam and then into Hong Kong and then a few years after that they were asked to move into South America, specifically Argentina, but Dick was kind of stuck because he thought well, we're orient crusade, but then he felt, you know, that Bible verse come to his mind that said, for God so loved the world and so he said, okay, let's do it.
01:01:21 --> 01:01:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they expanded again, they changed their name to overseas crusade.
01:01:25 --> 01:01:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And while some of their missionaries
01:01:28 --> 01:01:45 [SPEAKER_00]: They met a very young, very enthusiastic and zealous Louis Palau, an emissionaries encouraged him to go to Bible College in America, and he would actually later serve as the mission's president for two years in the 70s before he went off to start his own very now famous international association.
01:01:47 --> 01:01:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The overseas crusade then branched out into Brazil, and this branch of ministry was overseeing by a German named Hans, whom Dick had helped lead to Christ and then disciples way back in Shanghai.
01:01:57 --> 01:02:05 [SPEAKER_00]: His parents have been missionaries to China, but Hans had aligned himself much more with the Nazis and was devastated when they had lost.
01:02:06 --> 01:02:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick came in contact with Hans and found out that he had been studying at UCLA, and he asked Hans when he was finally going to join them at O.C., and Hans sidestep the question and joined the Navigators instead, and he was one of the two men who came to Taiwan to help lead the discipleship course, and he had been asked for specifically by Dick, and in time, Hans joined up with the O.C.
01:02:27 --> 01:02:35 [SPEAKER_00]: state side, and when the opportunity came to expand into Brazil,
01:02:35 --> 01:02:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And we're like, hey, I was something important to ask you a port to tell you.
01:02:38 --> 01:02:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, turns out that Dick wanted to ask him to head up the Brazil branch.
01:02:43 --> 01:02:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And Hans was like, hey, I feel like God's telling me to head up the Brazil branch.
01:02:47 --> 01:02:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he did.
01:02:49 --> 01:02:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And these two had such a sweet friendship, but I'll read a little bit from the book here.
01:02:53 --> 01:02:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick once wrote to Hans, even fluenced every life you touched either towards Christ or away from him.
01:02:58 --> 01:03:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Hans could not escape the impact of that statement.
01:03:02 --> 01:03:04 [SPEAKER_00]: He carried it with him as a continual challenge.
01:03:04 --> 01:03:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Many years later, Hans answered another challenge for the overseas crusades and went to Germany to lead a team in the work of the Church of his homeland, and for most of the years since they're meeting in 1947, continents and oceans have separated Hans and Dick.
01:03:19 --> 01:03:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet friendship thrived, letters traveled their circumference of the globe carrying encouragement, and the news of God's work and whatever country they happened to be.
01:03:26 --> 01:03:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Time and travel have caused the welcome letters to be lost or discarded, but one remains, a reminder of the value of time invested in a young
01:03:34 --> 01:03:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Dear Dick, I just wanted to thank you for the times of laughter and tears, your impact on my life cannot be measured on this side of heaven.
01:03:44 --> 01:04:03 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1962, the Hillis family moved from Taiwan back to California to better oversee the growing mission, and the 60s saw them spread into Greece, Mexico, and Indonesia, they even added a music ministry to their sports ambassadors ministry, which had begun in Taiwan, but it also expanded quite rapidly, moving into South America and other places as well.
01:04:03 --> 01:04:10 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1976, the mission celebrated its 25 years, and Dick wasn't content to just rest on his laurels he wrote.
01:04:10 --> 01:04:15 [SPEAKER_00]: We asked God if it pleases him to place OC missionaries in every free nation of the world in the next 25.
01:04:16 --> 01:04:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They then expanded into Europe and in the Africa.
01:04:20 --> 01:04:24 [SPEAKER_00]: In two years after they celebrated this milestone, Margaret was diagnosed with cancer.
01:04:24 --> 01:04:28 [SPEAKER_00]: She went through remission and was falsely declared cancer free.
01:04:28 --> 01:04:31 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1981, she was ready to meet her savior.
01:04:31 --> 01:04:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Her only concern was that Dick not be left alone.
01:04:34 --> 01:04:36 [SPEAKER_00]: She knew he needed another helpmate.
01:04:36 --> 01:04:37 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't do well on his own.
01:04:37 --> 01:04:41 [SPEAKER_00]: She even compiled a list of eligible women and then gave it to her daughter.
01:04:41 --> 01:04:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Her daughter threw it away because she knew that he would just marry the first
01:04:48 --> 01:04:55 [SPEAKER_00]: In her final month, Dick was her primary caregiver, and much like he had back in China as her fever raised he had to give her up to God again.
01:04:55 --> 01:05:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And reading from the book here, during those days Margaret talked much about going home.
01:05:00 --> 01:05:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Once when her appetite abbed, Dick encouraged her to eat, but she responded.
01:05:05 --> 01:05:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Dear, how long do I have to continue eating this earth food?
01:05:08 --> 01:05:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Honey, this could be your last meal down here, I don't know.
01:05:12 --> 01:05:17 [SPEAKER_00]: But the good shepherd has his timing, his clock, his calendar, and he will tell you when you have to eat the last one.
01:05:17 --> 01:05:21 [SPEAKER_00]: She often talked about earth clothes and earth days.
01:05:21 --> 01:05:27 [SPEAKER_00]: On April 10th, she said, Oh, I thought I would have left my earth clothes behind, and been in heaven now at home.
01:05:27 --> 01:05:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Five days later on April 15, 1981, she did change clothes.
01:05:32 --> 01:05:41 [SPEAKER_00]: She stepped into a new robe, the one described by the prophet Isaiah, as the garments of salvation, the robes of righteousness, and put it on with a shot of joy.
01:05:42 --> 01:05:50 [SPEAKER_00]: At a memorial service, the Hillis' longtime friend said, As I think about Margaret and I think about missions, I think of cultures and the changing of cultures.
01:05:51 --> 01:05:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And when you go to another country, you always go through culture shock because there are so many changes.
01:05:56 --> 01:06:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Of all the people I know, Margaret Hillis would have had the least culture shock in heaven because she lived it so much here on Earth.
01:06:06 --> 01:06:12 [SPEAKER_00]: After Margaret's death, Dick was determined to finish his own race well, but maybe he was pushing himself just a little too hard.
01:06:13 --> 01:06:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He was only 68 and he was rushing to get to heaven early.
01:06:16 --> 01:06:23 [SPEAKER_00]: When his son confronted him, he admitted that he was hard to run alone and he prayed for someone to help him run his last lap.
01:06:23 --> 01:06:32 [SPEAKER_00]: He married Ruth Copperrad in 1981 about a year after Margaret's death, and she had been working at OC for almost 20 years and had come to be a family friend.
01:06:33 --> 01:06:38 [SPEAKER_00]: She ended up being the perfect help me for Dick to help run his last lap.
01:06:38 --> 01:06:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Later that year he started thinking about China again, how can we believe that we are reaching into the uttermost part of the earth while China containing one fourth of the world's population is not being taught or disabled?
01:06:50 --> 01:06:55 [SPEAKER_00]: It had now been 50 years since they'd first arrived in China and now it was blocked behind the bamboo curtain.
01:06:55 --> 01:07:00 [SPEAKER_00]: restrictions have loosened and in October he found himself back in the streets of Shanghai.
01:07:00 --> 01:07:06 [SPEAKER_00]: No longer the wide-eyed young man he had been back then, but maybe even more eager than he had been back then.
01:07:06 --> 01:07:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Shanghai itself had changed just a little bit, but the state of the church had changed a lot.
01:07:11 --> 01:07:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And all the churches were now state churches, there were no seminaries or Bible schools.
01:07:16 --> 01:07:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The generations that had been taught by missionaries were dying off.
01:07:19 --> 01:07:23 [SPEAKER_00]: The new believers in China were spiritual babies with no one to help them grow.
01:07:24 --> 01:07:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick had the idea starting a radio ministry that could be headquartered in Manila with powerful transmitters and surrounding Asian countries.
01:07:32 --> 01:07:35 [SPEAKER_00]: This would allow them to broadcast into China without getting it shut down.
01:07:35 --> 01:07:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They could disciple believers and train people to minister to their own people.
01:07:40 --> 01:07:43 [SPEAKER_00]: The stream became a reality and they were broadcasting six days a week.
01:07:44 --> 01:07:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Soon they began receiving correspondence there in the Hong Kong office.
01:07:48 --> 01:07:51 [SPEAKER_00]: A listener wrote, we are indeed the weakest ones in the body of Christ.
01:07:51 --> 01:07:52 [SPEAKER_00]: We desperately need your prayers.
01:07:53 --> 01:07:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Other Christians wrote to say, there are almost 90% of the contents in your programs, which we have never heard before.
01:07:58 --> 01:08:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It is so precious to us.
01:08:00 --> 01:08:06 [SPEAKER_00]: A desperate plea came from a teenager in Guanchi, said, I am desperate as I look into the future.
01:08:06 --> 01:08:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I would rather die than drag on with a hopeless life, but committing suicide cannot be a way out.
01:08:12 --> 01:08:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Just of this moment of confusion of frustration, I have thought of writing to you for your kind of advice and encouragement.
01:08:18 --> 01:08:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I need your help desperately, and I am most thankful for your guidance rendered to me.
01:08:23 --> 01:08:30 [SPEAKER_00]: All of these letters are forwarded to Dick, who often read them through tears, requests for songbooks, Bible and Christian literature began pouring in.
01:08:30 --> 01:08:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Another believer wrote, I was overjoyed with tears as I received the precious Bible from you, the word of God is what I need to grow and be matured in the faith.
01:08:39 --> 01:08:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I am a faithful listener.
01:08:40 --> 01:08:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I beloved little girl died before I received the Bible's, I was indeed sorrow and very weak in the faith.
01:08:46 --> 01:08:48 [SPEAKER_00]: My wife was even more depressed than I was.
01:08:48 --> 01:08:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to God that the Bible has come into our hands just in time to save us from our weakness.
01:08:53 --> 01:08:55 [SPEAKER_00]: The Word of God has revived our faith.
01:08:56 --> 01:08:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Brothers and sisters are encouraged.
01:08:58 --> 01:09:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Many of us have little education, and we don't usually have a pastor around to guide us.
01:09:03 --> 01:09:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Now all these programs have provided the guidance we need.
01:09:06 --> 01:09:11 [SPEAKER_00]: In every letter, Dick read the affirmation of God's leading in the radio ministry in China.
01:09:13 --> 01:09:20 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1995, Dick was finally starting to slow down, but he still kept up a letter ministry helping to connect the Chinese Church to the world.
01:09:20 --> 01:09:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And in July, he was invited by the board to come to their quarterly meeting, where they wanted to honor him for 60 years of ministry service.
01:09:28 --> 01:09:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And it coincided with the intern training and the furlough program, so a lot of members of the mission would be able to make it.
01:09:35 --> 01:09:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And Dick went and he was happy to go, but he didn't want the celebration to be focused on him.
01:09:40 --> 01:09:47 [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to be focused on the organization, which is not an organization at all he once said, but rather, it isn't organism.
01:09:47 --> 01:09:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It is people doing the will of God.
01:09:49 --> 01:09:54 [SPEAKER_00]: He also wanted to focus on God and what he had done in these past 60 years.
01:09:54 --> 01:10:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And during the first day of the two-day conference, Dick got up to speak, and he began with the words, I didn't love enough.
01:10:03 --> 01:10:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And everybody in the audience said, what is this?
01:10:05 --> 01:10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: What are you talking about?
01:10:07 --> 01:10:07 [SPEAKER_00]: We know you're ministry.
01:10:07 --> 01:10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: What does this mean?
01:10:09 --> 01:10:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He went on, I never had tea with a Buddhist monk.
01:10:12 --> 01:10:16 [SPEAKER_00]: It is to my shame that I never sat down to tea with a Buddhist monk.
01:10:16 --> 01:10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: I never offered or asked for friendship.
01:10:19 --> 01:10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't love them.
01:10:24 --> 01:10:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I did work but I didn't develop relationships.
01:10:27 --> 01:10:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Relationships which would have established a base for sharing, perhaps for winning, love pushes you into a demonic temple and you sit down with someone you take tea and you tell them the story of Jesus.
01:10:38 --> 01:10:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Failure to love is sin and it requires confession, it should come with tears.
01:10:43 --> 01:10:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I wish I understood that 60 years ago in China, do not turn your back on the lost sheep.
01:10:50 --> 01:10:53 [SPEAKER_00]: that first message kept the tone for the entire conference.
01:10:53 --> 01:11:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The mission would rejoice in what God had done, what he was doing, but there would be no back-thumping no self-congratulations, no, here's how amazing we are.
01:11:01 --> 01:11:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And many again from the book, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and I have no love, I become as a sounding brass or a tinkling symbol, though I understand all mysteries, though I have all knowledge, though I have all faith.
01:11:15 --> 01:11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Though I give my goods, though I give my body, and have no love, I am nothing.
01:11:20 --> 01:11:23 [SPEAKER_00]: The work is nothing if love is not present.
01:11:23 --> 01:11:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The goals are futile if love does not fuel them.
01:11:26 --> 01:11:30 [SPEAKER_00]: The research, the data, and the strategies are empty without love.
01:11:31 --> 01:11:35 [SPEAKER_00]: At every opportunity, Dick pressed home his message, love more.
01:11:37 --> 01:11:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Dick passed away in 2005 at the age of 92.
01:11:40 --> 01:11:51 [SPEAKER_00]: More than 28 years after it had been trying to run himself into an early grave, 28 years after he had helped start the radio program in China that helped encourage the faith of millions of Chinese believers.
01:11:51 --> 01:11:56 [SPEAKER_00]: 28 more years to continue carrying the gospel one mile farther.
01:11:57 --> 01:12:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, the overseas Crusades goes by a different name, one-challenge international, OCI is present in over 40 countries helping to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ, one mile farther as well.
01:12:08 --> 01:12:16 [SPEAKER_00]: It's you enjoy this episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you listen and let us know.
01:12:16 --> 01:12:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And as always, thank you for sending them our missionaries, I'm Elise.