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When the Japanese came in, they came from the North, and from the eastern part of China. We were driven into the West, and when the decision was made to go, we felt we could say like Abram--that we had obeyed. "So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken." God spoke to us and told us to go west with our Chinese workers and preachers and their families. There were twenty-one of them, as well as my husband and myself. Going, going where? We were departing; we were leaving all behind; going to a new part. He said, "I will show thee a land, a field of labor." He would show us where we could go and have one of the greatest ministries of our lives. There were many times when we had five thousand as a common congregation. At other times, there were twenty thousand in our congregation, listening to the Word of God, because God had said to us, "Get thee out of this country. Get up and go on. Go on into the western part of the country. It's not time to quit working just because the enemy has come in and taken this portion of the country."
I remember that, as we crossed the Yellow River, we went into the district where the Free Methodists were working, Cheng Chow. We had wonderful fellowship with them, but there came a day when we passed on beyond their station, farther west into new territory. En route, we stayed all night in a Lutheran compound. Early next morning, my husband put a cot out in the back yard where I could get some sunshine, rest, and quiet, and have my private devotions. While I was there, an air raid alarm was sounded, and I did not know at the moment where my husband had gone. I was looking to God, for had we not a whole group of Chinese, a small army with us? Twenty-one Chinese to feed, twenty-one to look after? My eyes fell upon these words as I lay upon the cot just at the sounding of the air raid and alarm. "Behold, I will send my angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him and obey his voice." It was this word that I received as I arose from the cot and rushed down into the air raid shelter, which was way under ground--a dugout place prepared for hiding from these dangers. It was down in there that I met my husband.
We did not know where we would go when we landed in the city of Hsi An, to which we were traveling. We were asked, as in other cases, "Where are you going, and where will you stay, and do you not know that there are 500,000 people in that city? It is overcrowded. Many people have gone in there as refugees and are sleeping out in the street, and under trees, and it is impossible to get any room whatsoever." But God had said to me, "I will send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way."
We needed to be kept in the way for there were rumors that the railway was being bombed in different parts, that the bombs were falling everywhere, and that they were going to be falling on this compound in a few moments, for the airplanes were overhead now. But God had said, "And bring thee into the place which I have prepared," which is past tense. As I met my husband down there in the air raid shelter, I said to him, "Harry, we have a place in Sian (Hsi An)." He said, "How do you know?" I said, "God said He had prepared a place, and that He was going to send an angel along to take us to that place." My husband stepped out on the promise without questioning, and said, "Praise the Lord." He believed as well as I did that there would be a place.
No longer on this journey did we have to wonder about what we were going to do with our Chinese and ourselves when we arrived in the city, because God had said that He had prepared a place.
What about the bombings? We had already come many days' journey--almost a two-weeks journey-where there was no railroads. We were being drawn in carts and pulled by men. These carts were not rickshas. We just sat in them, "chia tzu ch'e." My husband rode a bicycle, however, except up the highest mountains, and then he hired a donkey or boy to pull his bicycle up over the mountain. And so it was in our travels.
We were now to a place where we could take the first train and travel by rail. But how dangerous! The Japanese were determined that no supplies should be shipped along the railway, and it was now that the railways were being bombed. But God said, "Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way." Not only to keep us after we got there, but He was going to keep us in the way and then bring us into the place which He had prepared. This blesses my heart as I recall it. That day when the promise stood out and I first said to God, "Lord, that's Old Testament," He said, "It's yours if you step on it." And so it was that I stepped out on this promise by the help of the Holy Ghost, and a long, long, tiresome journey was made.
In places where the railway had been bombed, where we had to get off the train and walk, we hired coolies to take our baggage all the way across these bombed-out ravines, across places where bridges had been bombed out, and then we found a train on the other side to take us from there. Trains would just go up to the broken-out places, and then there would be others from the other direction of the broken places to receive us. Besides, we had to travel on trains, not as you think of trains, but in cattle cars and freight cars. One car in which we traveled was just a big freight, like a cattle car.
So many people wanted transportation that forty rode on top. Many rode underneath the cars, out on the engines, and wherever they could hang on. They just tied on and hung on. We went through one tunnel and forty people were raked off like flies and killed. But the train had no time to tarry, for the enemy was on our trail, and the dead were left to die unmourned. Relatives knew not where they were lost off, nor when. We were inside, crowded so that there was no place to recline. We were held up by one another, so crowded and jammed were we. I recall sitting on my baggage, but I had to stand up at times or be trampled underfoot, we were jammed in so tightly. As some got off, there was room enough to sit for awhile, or until at some large station we were "repacked"! The gas fumes from the smoke of the engine came back into the cars making it necessary for us to get right down and put our faces on the floor for air. At times, it seemed I would faint and pass out, but God was keeping us by His holy angel along the way.
After this tiresome journey had been completed and we had arrived at our destination in the city of Sian, Shensi, in West China, a man met us whom we had seen only once before for a few hours. He came down to the railroad station to meet us and to help us go through customs. He had very little trouble for he had only to show his card, He was a man of high position and a good friend to Chiang Kai-shek, We passed on through without any trouble. This man placed us in his automobile, hired rickshas for the Chinese, and told them where to go to spend the night.Then he turned to us and said, "Mr, and Mrs. Shreve, I have a compound with three courtyards all rented. All the red tape is finished and signed up. I heard that you were coming, so I got busy and had this place prepared for you."
I said, "Well, praise the Lord! We knew that you had that place."
He was so baffled he could hardly believe the words he was hearing. He said, "I don't believe you understand that there are 500,000 people in the city, that we are overcrowded, that every hotel--we can't find a place for even our own men, much less a permanent dwelling for as many people as you have with you."
(Besides the people with us, we had three goats. Imagine trying to get a place in New York City for a missionary and his wife, for some twenty Chinese, and three goats.)
"I have been living in a hotel for ever so long," he went on "waiting for a place I have wanted for my office and my men.” (They had also evacuated from another part of China.) "The people haven't moved out yet. So now we are staying in a certain hotel. It's a miracle this compound is available to you. Tomorrow, I'll take the whole crowd of you out, for there are three different courtyards in the compound."
Later on, this man said unto me, "Mrs. Shreve, what did you mean when you said you knew I had this place?" (We had not been in correspondence at all.) I told him to come over some time and I would tell him. It was one afternoon when he came. He said "Now I've come and I want you to tell me how you could know that I had found this place for you. You do not know how difficult it is for people to find places to rent." And he explained to me how only thr
ough his position and prestige had he been able to persuade this man to rent this property to us. I said, "Well, it was because God said to me one morning in Lo- Yang, in the back yard of the Lutheran compound, 'Behold, I send my angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.' I explained that that was past tense, so I knew that morning that the place was ready for us. As he looked back, it was that very morning that he had paid the price, had the receipt and papers in his hand, and the house was emptied that we might move into this great compound. Tears came streaming down his face as he listened to us telling how God had kept us in the way, how we had had to jump off those trains, run into the wheat fields, hide under trees, and crawl on our stomachs down through the wheat to keep from being strafed by the planes. God sent His angel and I always looked up and said, "Now, Lord, You said You would keep us in the way."
God kept us every step of the way, and we did not lose a single piece of our luggage. This providence can be understood only by those who have traveled in foreign countries, for when a piece of baggage is left out of sight just a few moments, it is apt to disappear for good. But God kept every piece of baggage while we ran into the fields to hide. Upon returning to the train, we found our baggage there, intact, for the angel of the Lord had gone before, fulfilling the promise, "Mine angel shall go before thee, to bring thee in."
By Ina [Shreve] McVey, taken from her book, 'Tis the Master Calling Me'. Used by permission.)
In Straight Paths Page 17