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A Foot Wide on the Edge of Nowhere

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23.01.2022 Great to see the book being offered for sale on the Bookstall at NTE 2019 (AFES) in Canberra. Thanks Karl!

09.01.2022 How much can happen when one person is willing to do what God tells him to do! Thousands of young people have been trained in Bible Study and sent out to minister in far-flung places - just like the first student, Theo Lowther, and my parents Theo and Olive Simpkin - because CH Nash responded to God's call to commence the Melbourne Bible Institute. My father attended MBI only nine years after this first class, and went to China as a missionary where he met up with Theo Lowther!

05.01.2022 In September 1930, Theo wrote from Wuding: Sapushan is only about 5 miles from here, but one has to climb a mountain - the mission station being 1000 feet higher than Wuting. The scenery is beautiful, and we are solemnised by the thought that we are the only missionaries among the Chinese in this vast district. Amongst these mountains there is a large population of aboriginal tribes people called Miao. There are other tribes, too, called Lisu, Nosu, Laka, Lolo, Tai... et...c. ... The Chinese authorities provide no schools for the tribes people, whom they seem to consider too poor and insignificant to care for. Thus it has been devolved upon the Mission to provide schools and teachers. Evangelists have to be provided too, to reach the many lonely villages amongst the mountains, which the missionary can only visit at very long intervals. The great drawback in the past has been that these teachers and evangelists have had to go out with very inadequate training. It is now felt desirable, indeed it is felt to be essential, that a Bible Institute and Normal School be established at Sapushan to give the adequate training." It was in Bible teaching such as this that Theo and Olive spent most of their years in China. Nowadays secular school education at a basic level is provided by the government for minorities, but access to further education is hampered by the distances and the terrain. Theological education for leaders for minorities churches is even harder to obtain. The photos show some of Theo and some of his Bible School students. See more

05.01.2022 This has been an unusual, and for some an eventful Easter. Very different from our ‘normal’ Easters, with special worship services and conventions, as well as family meals together. Easter 1936 was another very eventful and unusual Easter for the missionaries in Yunnan, China. At this time, the Red Army was trying to evade the Nationalists. They embarked on the Long March northward. Just six months or so earlier, Theo and Olive had had a narrow escape from an encounter w...ith one segment of the Red Army as it passed through Yunnan. (See Chapter 10, Danger at the Gates in A Foot Wide on the Edge of Nowhere.) Now in 1936 alarming rumours abounded that more elements of the Red Army were about to invade Yunnan. Deciding that these rumours were not to be taken lightly, the Wuding contingent of CIM missionaries packed up and left for the capital, Yunnanfu (now Kunming), late in March 1936. Theo and Olive with their six-month-old son David joined this exodus. Two years earlier, Rev Arnolis Hayman and Mr Rudolph Bosshardt of the CIM had been kidnapped and held for ransom by one of the Red Armies. Mr Hayman had been released in November 1935, but Mr Bosshardt was still in captivity, being forced to accompany the army. That Good Friday, 1936, the CIM family continued to pray earnestly for Mr Bosshardt’s release. How great was the rejoicing when, on Easter Saturday, after trudging 2500 long weary miles across five provinces, Mr Bosshardt was escorted in to Yunnanfu to be welcomed back into the missionary family. How appropriate that, as the CIM family rejoiced in his release from captivity to the Red Army that Easter 1936, they were also celebrating the deliverance of human beings from the bondage of sin, made available through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s Son. Hallelujah! What a Saviour!

01.01.2022 This weekend the AFES National Training Event commences in Canberra, Australia. "A Foot Wide on the Edge of Nowhere" will be available on the bookstall. Let's pray for God's blessing on all who attend this conference.