My dear readers,

“Footprints in the sands of time” serialized

From this week, as often as appropriate, the recently preached messages, touching on my life story, will be serialized. Please pray for me as I work on the script. Thank you.

Chapter One
Farewell, China!
land of my birth

Go south, and live!

Wisdom cried out: A living dog is better than a dead lion. Perish vain thoughts of greatness and power. For real power, go to the One who alone conquered death to live for evermore. He says: “All power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth .... I have the keys of hell and of death” (Matt 28:20 , Rev 1:18 ).

Father thought hard and long. Twice spared from certain death in his pursuit of name and fame, dabbling in Chinese politics, he took a close look at his life direction.

Mother was a woman of prayer. Daily she prayed to God and reasoned with Father: “Better to be God’s servant, like the lowly Jesus, than to hobnob with kings. You have cheated death twice. There may not be a third time. Nanyang is safer.”

The message was clear. To everything there was a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to come, a time to go. Father crossed his Rubicon; instantly a great weight fell away. The final decision was not easy, but safe. God was calling, no mistake about it. Taking Big Brother Timothy (Siang Hui) with him, Father called on General Chiang Kai Shek at his official residence in Eastern Hills, and tendered his resignation from the Superintendentship of the Military Hospital of the Whampoa Military Academy.

Father had learned his lesson. From henceforth, it was “Christ only, the hope of glory,” no more hobnobbing with the top brass.

It was deep winter when we set sail for Nanyang (South Seas) in search of our land of promise. Father gave the word and Mother uprooted the family from Swatow the Teochew Capital City, never to return. I was in my fourteenth month of life, just discovering my feet. Travelling together were my three elder siblings: - Big Sister, Big Brother, and Second Brother; Grandfather and Father’s three younger sisters. Ten souls made up the migrant family.

The “P and O” boat took us to Singapore, port of transit. Our destination, prepared by Father, and awaiting our arrival, was Senai, a rubber-growing village in South Johor, some thirty-two miles to the north of Singapore.

Here in Senai, was Father’s “land of dreams,” conceived during his sojourn some years earlier, when he worked as assistant to a certain Dr Chan in Penang. As proud owner of seventy-three acres of rubber, and rubber was enjoying an unprecedented boomtime on the world market, Father had visions of becoming a prosperous landlord, living off the “milk and money” flowing from the trees in the estate. But this was not to be as we shall see: God had other plans.

In a clearing in the estate stood a sturdy wood-and-plank attap dwelling house with many rooms. Into this, our abode for the next six years, the family quickly settled. While our leaving China had some semblance of the Exodus of the Israelites leaving Egypt for years of wilderness wandering, Senai was heaven by comparison and no wilderness. The family house provided comfort and ample shelter for everyone: no need of a pillar of cloud for shade, like the Israelites.

For water supply God had prepared a crystal clear water brook, flowing through the estate just a stone’s throw from the Family House. This kept our water tank supplied at all times. Abundant bird life in the trees filled the air with bird-song through all hours of the day. Here was paradise, we thought.

Reflecting on this garden-like environment, Father named the estate, “Peach River Garden.” For the years the Lord put us there, it was a garden of experience, at times like Eden, but the latter days more like Gethsemane. Our faith in God was to be put to the test, as we shall see.

Peach River Garden was God’s “School of Learning” for the family. There He would teach us to be “... content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb 13:5 ). Days of severe testing lay yet ahead: how shall our faith withstand the test?

When we first arrived in Senai, the rubber price was soaring to the clouds, buoyed by a global commodity boom. With every cut of the bark, out oozed the white sap or latex; the trees were literally “flowing with milk and money.”

When World War I ended in 1918, Europe and the rest of the world were broken and bankrupt, devastated by four years of war. America, largely untouched, emerged as economic kingpin and saviour of the world. With America in the lead, the nations began to rebuild their shattered economies. The decade of the nineteen twenties ushered in a boom of unprecedented proportions in every area: reconstruction, building, manufacturing, transportation, finance and investment.

The price of commodities rose with the growing market demand. Rubber prices followed the trend, reaching a high of $100 a picul (about 60 kg). Fueled by greed, trading on the New York Stock Exchange boomed, pushing the Dow index to record heights in 1929 Speculators by their thousands, joined in the gold rush, creating a highly volatile and overheated “bull market.”

Then someone decided it was time to sell, take profit, and get out. Suddenly, everyone else thought the same. The result: panic selling. In one day Tuesday October 29, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. Suddenly, stocks and shares lost their shine. Prices plunged “across the board,” and millionaires plunged from New York’s skyscrapers to escape their sorrows. Many a millionaire saw their millions fly away, leaving only the air.

Shock waves from New York swept around the globe. In Malaya and Singapore, the price of rubber fell from $100 to $10 a picul. Suddenly, rubber became rubbish. Overnight, it was not worth tapping. A billion trees stood untouched in a thousand estates throughout Malaya.

Suddenly the specter of hunger and starvation stared us in the face. Until this day, Father’s voice from the past rings loud and clear in my ears: “Rubber was not worth tapping. The proceeds could not even pay the tappers’ wages.” (to be continued)

God bless all readers.

Lovingly in the Lord
Dr SH Tow, Senior Pastor