Hudson Taylor-The Hurting Women in Western China

By Mary Vee

Year: April 1881 

Hudson Taylor: age 49

From J. Hudson Taylor's Notes

Photo Courtesy

Sweet Fanny Clarke went with her husband, George to  Dali, the most western province of China to tell the people about God's love. They had become the missionaries who lived the farthest away from any other European person. Mail took seven months to reach them.

When they went to the house they'd bought to live in and set up their missionary work, they found squatters. Squatters are people who live in a home or apartment that they have not payed for. Squatters usually refuse to leave, mostly because they have no other home and cannot pay to go live anywhere else.

Fanny and her husband George needed someplace to live so they moved into their home and hoped the squatters would decide to leave on their own. The squatters had pigs, chickens, and their own children running through the yard and the house. There wasn't enough room for Fanny and George to invite people from the village to tell them about Jesus. Six months later the squatters finally left.

Next, Fanny needed to hire someone to help her cook and clean. There didn't seem to be any women available to work. In this city of Dali the men smoked drugs. This made them very wicked. The men sold their children for money to buy more drugs. Sometimes they even sold their wife to buy drugs. At last Fanny found a woman who wanted to hide from her husband. She brought her child to protect the little one and asked for a job.

Unfortunately, her husband found them. He came to the missionary house and took the woman's daughter. He sold her for drugs. There was nothing Fanny or George could do to stop him. This was the way in Dali. 

While their neighbor smoked drugs one day, he tried to kill his wife and child. Fortunately, George and Fanny and three other women stopped the man and saved the lives of the wife and child. George and Fanny spent most of their time trying to protect women and children.

Fanny said the city was like Sodom and Gomorrah, the wicked cities talked about in the Bible.

I have been praying that these men will be freed from the drugs so the city can heal. Only God knows if this can happen. Until then, George and Fanny will keep trying to help and tell the people of God's love.

Please pray for them.

J. Hudson Taylor

Missionary to China--Inland China!

So Very Blessed by God

Research resources: J. Hudson Taylor, An Autobiography by J. Hudson Taylor; It is Not Death to Die, a new biography of Hudson Taylor by Jim Cromarty; Hudson Taylor Founder, China Inland Mission by Vance Christie; J. Hudson Taylor, A Man in Christ, by Roger Steer, and Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret by Dr.and Mrs. Howard Taylor