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You're supposed to be in here, you know. Well, I, I know, I thought that it would just be nice to talk to you on the telephone for a change. You're probably sitting at home, nice and cool and uh relaxing after a hard day somewhere. I don't

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have a shirt on, Tom. We've got a couple of things, we're going to talk to you about tonight. A couple of follow ups, um of stories that Gordon and, and I have been involved with over the past 12 months and I suppose the most interesting one

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was one I just played a teaser of uh right at the beginning of the program, which was about the Amity Foundation in Nanjing in China and the Bible printing press. Now, what's the latest on that particular story? Well, the latest is that the printing press is

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continuing to be established if I can put it in those terms. A site has been selected about eight kilometers outside of Nanjing, which is, of course, is in the center of China. And uh they've selected a paddy field which has been uh cleared of water and

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now has uh bulldozers and earth moving equipment. Uh traveling all over it to clear the site for the construction of the actual printing plant. Ok. Look, Tom, before we uh you tell us more about the story, why I'll just play an excerpt from the interview that

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Gordon did with uh Hung Wenzhao, who was the General Secretary of the Amity Foundation in Nanjing. I'm going to cross right now to Nanjing in China and talk to Mr Han Wenzhao, General Secretary of Amity Foundation. Good evening to you, Mr Wenzhao. Good evening. Thank you

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very much for taking our call. This is a very historic moment for us to be able to talk with you from Nanjing to talk with you. Now, what is the nature of this agreement that has been made between Amity Foundation and the Nanjing Normal University concerning

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the establishment of a printing plant in Nanjing? Yes. Uh well, the uh tens are proceeding quite well. You have just said that we are cooperating with the 1919 Normal University uh in the setting up of prayers supported by the United Bible Societies. The agreement will be

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signed between the two parties in a few days time. What kind of literature are you planning to print on the printing presses set up in Nanjing? Well, depending will give priority to the printing of Bibles and other Christian materials and literature entrusted by the organizations Christian

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organizations, both inside China and outside China. We have already printed 1.7 million Bibles including the complete Bible and the New Testament with good talking to Han Wenzhou. Now, Tom, you said that the press is not yet running, but they've got the bulldozers working on the land

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works at the moment. Yes, of course. It's a tremendous enterprise and it's going to cost in the order of $10 million. The printing press machinery has been ordered and some of it is on its way from various countries. Um I understand that actually uh 200 workers

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have been allocated from uh the workforce in China and they will uh be trained to work on the printing press once it is established within the new plant. Now, Tom, when we remember back to 1949 when the communists took over China and kicked all the missionaries

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out. This seems to be a remarkable change about what's brought about this change. Well, I believe that uh that God has actually brought about that change, the people around the world have been concerned and have prayed for the people of China for many years. And of

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course, we've known in a sense only a spattering of uh of the the stories of what has been happening in China until recently. And now we've learned of great uh hardship and persecution that many believers have gone through. But then again, not just believers either because

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during the Cultural Revolution, not only did Christians suffer but also many other educated people, you so they they not only burnt Bibles and destroyed Bibles during those days. But all the libraries were destroyed as well. Now, they're spending, uh, nearly $11 million or $10.8 million to

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purchase and install the equipment. Wouldn't that perhaps be better spent in, uh, getting Bibles into China by normal shipping means or those sorts of things. One of the things that's difficult for us to understand because that's the way that we would think in the West. Yes,

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we'd think. Well, ok, let's ship in a couple of ship loads full of Bibles from the United States, the United Kingdom. But the Chinese people, and I'm sure the Chinese people here in Australia are the same are very individual people and they, uh, they really want

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to do things uh for themselves and be seen by people outside of their own country to be uh supporting their own aims and pursuits and therefore a shipment of Bibles from outside looks as though they really can't look after themselves. And that's something that they don't

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like at all when the press gets up and running, first of all, do you know when that will be, it's planned for later this year, in actual fact? And that's a great expectancy that we have. Now, what difference do you think having a press in China

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churning out Bibles? I suppose a couple of 1000 a day are possible on the, the process that's going in? What difference will that make to uh Christianity and churches within China. Is it possible to uh predict? Well, Christians uh believe what God's word says about itself.

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And that is uh God says that my word will not return to me empty. It'll always do what uh I purpose for it. And uh therefore, as G as 750,000 copies of the scriptures come off that printing press every year, then we'd believe that God will

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actually use that word in the lives of Chinese people throughout that great land. So yes, it's going to, it's going to make great changes and and indeed, already Martin, the Chinese authorities have seen that the uh the worth of Christians in that country and uh many

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Christians from the West are being encouraged to go to that country and uh uh be involved in educational programs for instance. And uh that, that is a great recommendation for Christians that the Chinese are recognizing. Yes. Now is the press going to be printing just Bibles

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or we also do religious books and uh support material. As Han Wins said in that interview, it will be primarily for the production of uh Bibles and uh New Testaments and Scriptures, but it'll also produce hymn books and other religious material and then it will also

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produce uh material which fits into the aims of the Amity Foundation and they're wholesome aims. Uh I know that one of the concerns that we have in the West is that this printing press will be uh perhaps taken over and, and end up printing the little

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red book or something. And, and I can only say to uh to your listeners that we have taken every precaution to make sure that money which has been given by people in Australia and in other parts of the world is being used wisely and that the

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uh guidelines are firmly established and we really need to trust our brothers and sisters in that country to look after the investment that we in the West have made in their country and with them. Mm Yes, it's certainly a remarkable story. I have some uh some

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close friends in Melbourne who uh and these friends were Children, but uh their parents were taken out of China in 1949. And uh one of them has told me the story when he was about eight. I was vividly remembering crossing the bridge from China, mainland China

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into Hong Kong and looking back and wondering with his parents, whether the gospel was finished in China. But this is, you know, an incredible turnaround. And uh I'm sure there are many missionaries, many people who uh mi uh ministered in China who are now rejoicing greatly

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over this news of the Amity printing press in China, Martin. When when you last spoke to to to Han Wen Zia and others in China. One of the things that hadn't happened at that time was what I consider to be just another miracle. And that is

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that the printing machinery is coming from uh from the West and uh of course will be paid for. But um in back in May of uh 86 the people of New South Wales prayed that the duty on the printing press which is a 40% duty would

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be waived. This is going into China. Yeah. Yeah, that, that really in, in many people's eyes would be uh just a, you know, a silly thing to pray that the Chinese authorities would actually waive the duty on a printing press. However, when David Thorne, who's an

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Australian and is the coordinator of the project. Uh when David was uh was uh in my office, we got a call from China saying that the news had just come through that the duty on the printing press had been waived by saving about $2 million. That's

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an awful lot of money to save. The remarkable thing is that uh he had been working with the Chinese uh uh people and they had of their own initiative back in May. When people in New South Wales were praying back in May, they had decided to

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approach the Nanjing government with that request, the Nanjing government found it was too much to handle, there was too many dollars involved. And so they decided to send it off to the Central Communist government which they did. And it was uh it was that that request

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which then brought the response from China that they would waive the duty on the printing press. Now that, you know, that is just another one of a series of miracles in that country. That's a great story. We must follow that up over the next few months

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as the press is built. Yes, we have some other things Tom, which have been happening and we've all been involved together with the bike for Bibles. In fact, I see my friend who goes to my church regularly, who did some of the biking from Adelaide right

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up to Queensland, I think. Did it go that far? Yes. Yes, it did. Martin remembering that it's only two years ago that Bob Forrest and two other riders rode from Melbourne from Sydney to Melbourne. And then the next year, half a dozen fellows did the same

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ride and raised about $10,000. Now, the ride which took place at the end of last year, how much money did that raise? Well, I must say I'm not quite sure at the moment is still rolling in and, but, but certainly it's going to be in excess

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of 50,000. Great. Now that money was designated for Scriptures in Guatemala, wasn't it? So, has any money gone over there yet to help the distribution of Bibles in that country? No, in actual fact, all that has happened right at this point because we're, we're just holding

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so that we can send it off in a sense as a package. But what has gone across is that these fellows carried a Spanish Bible from uh Adelaide to Brisbane. And that has gone across by uh with our general secretary, he has taken it across to

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make a presentation. Actually, I think last week or this coming week, he will be making that presentation and uh and bringing back to us photographs of that significant event that's certainly uh again a worthwhile uh task. And I know people in our church at G Baptist

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got involved with Bob and uh and some of the other team members who came from our church and really supported them. So that's uh encouraging that uh in the paper asking the people if they knew anything about us that we'd done or to people or hurt

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people, they were to come and report it. So we waited with bated breath for several weeks to see what was going to happen. Finally, they decided we had no uh one to report bad things about us and they let us leave. And when I left, I

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was told I wasn't to communicate with any of the Christians or anybody in China in any shape or form. And they were told they weren't to communicate with us. If they did, they would be severely punished. So when I stepped over into Hong Kong, I felt

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that maybe I was leaving China behind forever. It was not an easy thing to do, but during the next 30 odd years, my heart was often in China and often I prayed and asked other people to pray for those Christians that I'd left behind in China

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because I knew life wasn't going to be easy for them. In 1984 a group of Chinese Christians came to Australia, a delegation from the Christian Council and I was invited to go to a consultation which was held in the YWC A and we were given rather

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large name tags. I arrived there before anybody else. And the next person to come in was the associate Secretary of the China Christian Council, Mrs Tai Sanjay. She saw my name tag and she said, oh, you've been a missionary in China, haven't you? And I said,

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yes, that's right. She said, do you remember Tang and Bo? And I said, yes, he was one of my students and one of my colleagues and his mother used to teach me Chinese. She said, well, Bishop Ding and I met him in Hangzhou before we came

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on this tour. And he said to me, will you please when you go to Australia, try and find my good friend, deaconess Mary Andrews. And she was so excited to think the first person she met at that consultation was me. She and Bishop Ding said, oh,

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I wish you could come back to China again because you would be greatly encouraged to see what is happening in your former diocese where the ch. So it was indeed a great thrill though in 1985 when Rhonda Felch from Ballina and I set forward for a

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visit to China, we arrived, not knowing quite what to expect, but knowing that God was going before us and opening up the way, spent the first few days in Beijing, we were not able to contact the pastor there because of the program we were involved in.

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But I did contact one of our former C MS missionaries who were studying at a college and then we went to Shanghai and there we were, we were able to meet. This is Chang who had first encouraged me to go to China. What a thrill it

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was to meet her and to be warmly greeted by her and Phoebe Shu who had also come the year before with the delegation to Sydney. She is the head of the YWC A and the vice chairman of the China Christian Council. We met in the seagulls

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hotel after the guide had been able to get the telephone number of Sanjay. And she in a very short time, was able to contact Phoebe and also Esther Tan, who with her husband had come all the way up from Fuzhou and were very happy to meet

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us. We spent an hour or so chatting over our various plans and ideas since we last met in Sydney. Then the next day we were taken to Hangzhou and on arrival there we were told we could only stay, um, until the Sunday, not until the Monday

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as originally planned. And I said to the guide, I was very disappointed because I did want to find my good friend, um, um, Un whom? So I said, Jay had told me about the guide, asked me if I had his telephone number and address. I had

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the one from the church. So the guide rang up only to find that um a had gone home. But when I told the guy about this, he said, well, will get his number of where he's living and we'll after dinner, we'll go and find him. We'll

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ask the government car to come back again and take us. And so much to my joy that night, I was able to spend an hour with Zhang Pop. It was wonderful to be able to talk in the dialect that his mother had taught me and to

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find that we could understand each other fairly well. After 40 years absence, it was a thrill to hear of the way the church is growing in China after all the troubles that had been going on and to know that God was in control and that according

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to his blessed plan, God was working out his purposes for the church in China. Zang encouraged me to go if I possibly could to Zai, where one of the former students of Zang Tian middle school, he was in charge of the church pastor Shen. So I

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mentioned this to the guide and he said, yes, he'd take it, but it would cost extra money. He said that didn't matter. So the next morning we set off for the 70 kilometer drive to Zin. It was wonderful to see the familiar sights, sugar cane, growing,

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the paddy fields, the pumpkins, the cook maize millet and then to arrive at Sing itself, many of the older buildings had gone. But for the most part, it was like, I left it in 1951 we were taken to what was once a temple and now has

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been converted into a hotel there. We had lunch. And during the luncheon, the guide f found out where the church was, we were taken to the Dalian church used to be the largest Baptist church on the eastern coast of China. And there we met a woman

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who had remembered me in 34 years ago, how excited she was. She ran along to the secretary who said the pastor had gone to Hangzhou. That was a little bit disappointing. But as we were being taken and shown around the two story or at least the

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church with a big balcony. We um heard that the pastor was coming back. So in due course, he arrived and was able to share in fellowship with us. Then he took us to the, to the school where I used to teach primary school. And it was

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wonderful to be warmly greeted by the principal and staff there. But the church, the Anglican church that used to be beside the school had collapsed and was no longer, there was just a vacant piece of ground. After taking photos of the staff and the Children, we

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went then to le or jail where Miss Dylan and I made our home and just as we were looking around, we and we noticing the differences that had come about two story houses had been built where we used to have our play garden and play built

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and the bible school. But the old home itself was still there and how it thrilled I was to find the lady in the house opposite our home. Remember but me and she said I used to teach her when she was a little girl. She took me

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in to see her 95 year old mother who looked at me as though I was a woman from Mars or something. We went back to Hangzhou that evening rejoicing in all the great and wonderful things that we had seen and all the wonderful experiences of seeing

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the city where I had spent 3.5 years before the communist takeover. And during the communist takeover. And then from Hangzhou, we later flew back to Hong Kong rejoicing in all the wonderful way that God had led and guided us. But there was in my heart, a

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longing to go back and to spend a longer time with those dear Chinese Christians whom I had loved long since and lost a wife. So in August 1986 my dream came true. And Minna I born and I set forth vagina again. This time, we just booked

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um have hotels and our planes with the access travel people and we were without guides. So I wrote and told China Christian Council friends about our plans when we arrived in Pho where I had not been before. There was Esther Pan, her husband, Pastor Pan and

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other Christians ready to greet us and what a warm welcome we received and thank God for the wonderful way. Um He planned things for us. We were given a wonderful program which enabled us to see a great deal of what the church is doing in Fu

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Kian Province and especially um in the country and city areas where the church is flourishing. Bishop Moses Shea, when we arrived, was away at the National Committee meetings of the National Council churches of China in Beijing. And so Esther Tan and her friends arranged for us

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to go to the go San Mountain to the monastery there where we had a vegetarian lunch and was able to look around at the monastery which is being very rapidly repaired. Another day, we went to visit some Christians in the country village and there it was

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a great joy to find such a radiant group of people who were singing God's praises for the choir there, sang for us. And then Bishop Moses Shea returned to um Suzhou and entertained us at a lovely Chinese meal with some of the other leaders of the

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China Christian Council for the Fujian area. Bishop Moses. She is now 83 years of age. He is the president of the Fujian Christian Council and the oldest member of the China Christian Council. He remembered the visit of Archbishop and Mrs Mole, Archbishop Loam and others in

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1956 he actually lives. He said in the home where Mrs Mole was born because her parents were missionaries. It was a great joy on the 24th of August, the 40th anniversary of my ordination as a deaconess to worship with over 1000 Christians in the Fujian Cathedral

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which was only opened last year but is now filled with overflowing with joyful worshippers. The service was led by a lady pastor and the sermon preached by pastor PM. It was not easy to leave Fuzhou because I've felt part of the life in the of the

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community there especially. Might you miss out from the what I mean? Professional women's college, the only college of its kind open in China and still functioning there. And when we got to Shanghai after being delayed in Fuzhou, because of a typhoon, we found that much damage

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had been done to Shanghai. But the people who had gone out to meet us the day before didn't know quite what was happened. So we weren't met there, but we got taxi to the hotel, the Shanghai hotel. And I no sooner got in when one of

00:26:05.339 - 00:26:23.030

the young women from the YWC A was ringing up to know if I'd arrived and then she said that she and Mrs so and Jay would come round in the afternoon to see us when they came, they brought a program for us during our stay in

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Shanghai. And it included many visits to both the city, urban and also the country areas showing how the people lived the kind of homes they lived in and also something of the work and ministry of the churches in these areas. It was a great joy to,

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to go with Miss Hong to the acrobatic show in Shanghai and to see how cleverly the Chinese people can act and how they're trained their animals, the little Pomeranian dogs, the tigers and the monkeys to ride bicycles and the panda to play with a ball on

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his tummy. It was a very exciting and interesting evening on the Sunday, we at at we attended services in three of the city's 12 churches. Although during our time in Shanghai, we were able to visit six of the 12 and meet some of their leaders and

00:27:39.880 - 00:28:05.599

pastors, Lord, the pastor of the community church, Mr Shen Yan, who is the deputy chairman of the National China Christian Council. And whose father, I remember as a bishop, his wife Mrs Hall was very kind to us and enabled us to see much of Shanghai during

00:28:05.609 - 00:28:27.599

the time we were there. Now, one night, we were taken to the community church for a sacred concert. And that is where Phoebe she belongs. And it was wonderful to hear the joyous singing of those Chinese Christians and to realize the wonderful way in which they

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were using their talents and gifts for the glory of God and for the building up of his kingdom. The last day we were in Shanghai. This is home, took us do what was a former convent built in 1911 but which today is used to look after

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some 500 disabled Children out of 300.