SOME OF GOD'S CHILDREN

Title - “Some of God’s Children”
Author - Phyllis Mills
Content - Auto Biography
290 pages
$16.00 - including handling and shipping U.S.A.
Phyllis Mills, 600 Independence Parkway, Apartment 3205, Plano, TX 75075

This is a true story - as true as the imagination and memory of an eight year old child will allow. However, no attempt has been made to reveal was really fact and what was fancy. To the child, these things happened.

This is the story of some of God’s children who crossed over mountains both temporal and physical to serve their Lord on the border of Tibet. The mountains are real, the family exists, and their faith is a living fact.

This the story of a child’s dislike of a new country and fear of a strange people, that changed to love and trust.

It is the author’s hope that those who would read this story should also find the faith that will enable them to climb over their own mountains to become victorious children of God.

GOD ♥ YOU

SOME OF GOD’S CHILDREN

CHAPTER 1 - STARTING OUT

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that bringeth good tidings. - Isaiah 62:7

The little group sitting that October evening in the deserted custom-house was strangely different from the others that had passed through the building. A family of six, they huddled together against the cold, with their battered suitcases and rope-tied cardboard cartons stacked in a heap. Music was drifting from the ship. Music for dancing, punctuated now and then by laughter, but the family did not hear. They were not listening, only vaguely aware of the merry-making on board the ship that lay in berth beside the custom house, the family sat silent, cold, tired, and miserable within the huge building.


Earlier there had been crowds of people going through the building. People who would board the ship, friends to see them off. The air had been heavy with noise and excitement, filling Phyllis, an excitable child of eight, with emotions that she could not understand. Far a time she had been a part of that happy, milling crowd. Weaving back and forth between the laughing, crying mob, she was one of them, until one by one they went up the gang-way and disappeared down the mysterious passageway into the ship. Phyllis’s heart had sung, “I’m going too, I am going too.” while it was almost bursting with the joy of anticipation as again and again she followed the throngs right to the edge of the dockside and watched them enter the crowded gangway.


She could not go aboard the ship yet. She had to wait. The six of them still waited. The crowds were gone, also was the excitement that they had brought, leaving the family sitting cold and lonely.


“Can’t we go on the ship now? Phyllis questioned her parents for the “umpteenth” time.


The answer was always the same. “We can wait a little longer.”


She remembered with chagrin how earlier in the afternoon she had rushed the family to get started. “Hurry, hurry, or we’ll miss the ship,: she had urged, working herself into tears of frustration.


A sad, little laugh, which somehow ended in a sob, escaped her lips. She was exhausted and disappointed for she had hoped to explore the ship from stem to stern before settling down in the cabin.


“Oh-ho, Phyllis is crying,” taunted her twelve year old brother John.　
“No, I’m not!” she shouted back at him, but the tears streaming down her face belied her denial. Giving away er disappointment, she buried her head in her arms and cried herself to sleep among the suitcases. Awaking from time to time as small groups came through the building on their way to the ship, she looked at the people who would become fellow passengers. Their fine clothing, furs, and fancy luggage made her feel still more dejected as she looked at her own battered suitcases, some even being held together with cord.


At one time a ship’s officer came to speak to her father. Phyllis expected him to ask them to leave for they surely did not look like ship-boarding people if those she had seen were any comparison, but he smiled and addressed Mr. Nichols in a friendly manner. “Is there anything I can do for you? Is everything in order?”
Mr, Nichols rose timidly from his seat on the suitcases. He always seemed tall to Phyllis but the tall officer towered above him. She realized that her father’s thinness gave him the illusion of being taller than he really was.


“Thank you for your kind offer,” he said. “I know we must look quite lost and forlorn but we promised to meet some friends here. They seem to be a bit late,” he added with a tired laugh.

　
“Maybe you have missed each other in the crowd. It could easily happen with so many people here,” the officer suggested. “They may be looking for you on deck somewhere. I can have them paged if you like.”


Mr Nichols demurred, knowing that the arrangements were to meet on dock-side and not on the ship.It was to symbolize their entering the work together by entering the ship at the same time. But the officer insisted on being helpful so Mr Nichols have him the names of the ones they awaited.


It wasn’t long before the music stopped abruptly, in mid-beat and a voice called for attention over the loudspeakers, “Is there a Miss Schwake or a Miss Palmer on board? Miss Schwake and Miss Palmer, you are wanted in the purser’s office.”


As Mt Nichols had expected, no one responded to the call, so the family, once again huddled in their coats and continued to wait. The night air was growing colder.


Mrs. Nichols drew the blanket tighter around the child she held in her arms, four year old Lois Gail. The woman’s face was lined with worry and fatigue. Normally she would have a happy smile or a joke to lighten the way for her family, but this night her mouth was puckered like a nervous prune. She was a practical woman, her mind filled with the physical problems of her family - food, clothing, shelter. Her husband was an idealist. She accepted that, loving him for it. The turning of her chicken house into a place of worship, was proof that his idealism coupled with her realism could accomplish things for the Lord. But maybe, just maybe, it was too much to uproot four children and take them to as foreign country. However, she was committed now. There was no turning back. She must trust the Lord that there would always be food, shelter, and warmth for her children.　
Soon after, the music ended and the merry-makers left the ship’s open deck for the warmth of the lounge or their own cabins.


The large building where the Nichols family sat was empty, silent, yet there were sounds for those who listened, sounds which the empty building magnified; the tread of the father’s feet as he walked back and forth, the splash of the waves on the piling, a sigh, a cough, all sounding abnormally loud.


“I wonder where they could be? “I hope nothing has happened to them,” Mr. Nichols said, more to himself than to any of the family. His concern went deep for if the friends failed to arrive before the ship departed, his work would suffer. Do you think they could have missed the train?” asked ten year old Dorothy, helpfully, looking up from the book she was reading.


“Or perhaps the train is just late,” suggested John.


“Or maybe,: Phyllis added, now wide awake and not wanting to be left out of the discussion, “they got married and aren’t coming at all.” She finished with a flourish which nearly knocked her mother’s glasses from her face. To Phyllis’ mind, to be married was better than going to the mission field.

　
Just then three people entered the big empty building, a man and two women. Phyllis, seeing them, whispered excitedly, “I told you so. One of them did get married.!” But the trio walked past, giving the family only a casual curious glance., before they disappeared into the dimly lit gangway leading to the ship.　
All was quiet again. Phyllis sat dejectedly upon a suitcase, her chin resting on her hands, her elbows on her knees, staring at the ship until it began to take on the shape of a huge ant-eater, with its red tongue out, encouraging all to enter, only to devour them when they did so. A shudder ran through her thin frame.
Her thoughts returned to her grandmother’s house in Nebraska where she had just spent eighteen months and farther back to her home in Texas.


She thought of her warm bed, and began to bitterly resent the reason for being there in that cold drafty custom-house. She did not want to be a missionary. She did not want to go to some far-off, God-forsaken land. She wanted again her home, her own bed, her toys. She did not care that her father was God-called, that for him it was a dream come true. She only knew that the first excitement was gone, that misery had set in , and she wanted to go home, back to where they had started, but there was no going back, and resentment ran deep.


Edgar Nichols was on his way to Tibet. His dream of doing mission work was finally to be realized. Throughout his childhood and youth, he had hoped to serve the Lord on the mission field, but somehow it had never worked out. Even when he and Mabel were first married, they talked of going to the mission field, but the babies came, and then the Depression. The years slipped by.


Now in the late 1930’s nearing his fortieth birthday, he had a call to serve. It was after agonizing prayer in which he asked, “Why haven’t you used me?” that the answer came, “I have a place for you. Go to Tibet.”


There was never a moment’s doubt in his mind that God had called him. The particular field to which the Lord directed him seemed fitting and natural fir his sister and her doctor husband lived and worked there and wrote of the needs.
Now as they sat waiting in the custom house, Phyllis’ thoughts returned to that day when her mother had first told of the plans to go to Tibet as missionaries. How excited she had been. Even when her mother warned that there would be dangers and hardships, she had not listened or cared.


Not until that bitter day in April, when Mabel had told the children they had to sort out their toys and belongings and choose what they wanted to take, did her enthusiasm waver. They took the box to the back yard and started the task of discarding the worn, broken toys, while putting those they couldn’t take because of their size on one side. These were to go to some neighborhood children. The doll carriage, new at Christmas time, would have to be given away, as well as the tea set, with its broken teapot spout and three cups missing, but, much loved nevertheless. Teddy, his button eyes gone, plus much of his cotton stuffing, so that he was now soft and cuddlesome, was thrown onto the fast growing heap of toys to be given away. Phyllis eyed then teddy longingly then went over and made him comfortable in the doll carriage,

Labels:　Biography of my Childhood on the China / Tibetan border