Acts of the Green Apples

The blonde teenager sat back against the wall, her eyes closed and her big yellow guitar leaning against her legs. Words same from her mouth as smoothly, as freely and as quickly as water runs over a pebble" (Bob Bennett, Hong Kong Standard).

Our living quarters had become slightly more respectable. We had persuaded the landlady to have the flat painted white (which horrified her -- I think she envisioned a hospital). We had a man come and stain all of the mismatched furniture a uniform shade, and build shelves for the walls. Gail industriously made white draperies for the windows and a second little man re-covered the upholstered furniture with blue and green print material we had purchased in the "stalls" where yardage is sold cheaply. Mary Nelles visited and contributed six kelly green rattan chairs; Hugh Jagger made us a coffee table from an old door, and the Foersters donated the pictures they didn't want to transport. We had no carpeting, but on Saturday nights we didn't need it as we sported wall-to-wall people.

Perhaps the living quarters were more respectable, but we were not. A number of parents were disturbed because their children were contracting religion (they appeared to regard it as a disease). Some of them told their offspring that they didn't mind if they were confirmed, or even attended the established church if they felt strongly about it, but this stress on religion simply "isn't done." One priest agreed. He told us when we first met him that he thought the church must change or die, but his idea of change was not ours. He saw it as forgetting the religious emphasis and becoming realistic by providing food and clothing and teaching the Chinese skills such as painting. This last bit really cracked us up because the Chinese had been painting when the priest's ancestors were residing in caves. One of the Sunday School teachers told him that there must be something wrong if they couldn't get the kids to turn out to be entertained and fed at the church youth group -- the "the Willanses don't have any trouble getting fifty to turn out to a prayer meeting."

The minister wasn't pleased. His retaliation was to have a friend, who did radio talk interviews, investigate glossolalia by interviewing people and asking their opinions. It didn't seem to matter much that many of the people interviewed had never heard of the subject. The interviewer admitted this. He said, "I'm not in favor, but the program is coming out pro because anyone who knows anything about it is for it and the people who are against it really don't know a damned thing about it."

For a number of years people all over the world had been speaking in languages given by the Holy Spirit, so it was no longer front page news as it had once been. But Hong Kong was considerably behind on such things. Thus glossolalia was a new thing there, and for that reason controversial. After the prerecorded program was aired, a very lively panel discussion followed. It was ludicrous, as one of the primary people speaking was an agnostic who referred to himself as Christian. To cloud the issues further, the moderator (an atheist) would periodically pipe up with something like, "As a Jew I object!" However, it seemed reasonable to the radio station. Rick was supposed to answer questions, but was usually cut off if he started to say anything pertinent. Before the program he discovered the mother of an involved student was on the panel. We knew the daughter had not previously been confirmed nor attended church. The mother said (off the air) she herself hadn't been to church in years -- it bored her too much to even think about it. But on the radio she went into a dissertation that speaking in tongues was not to be tolerated because it caused in youngsters a "condescending attitude" toward the established church!

Early the next morning, after the radio program that had been organized to stamp out glossalia, there was a knock at the door. An English schoolteacher, of Roman Catholic persuasion, was standing there.

"Is this where the prayer meetings are held?"

He wanted to map out the territory to be sure he could find it the following evening to attend the meeting. And so it went --

A reporter from one of the newspapaers telephoned and inquired, "Is this the place where you hear voices?"

When he arrived at the prayer group, complete with photographer, still asking about "voices," a Supreme Court Justice, who was a regular attender, firmly admonished him to call it "speaking in tongues." The next morning one of the American nuns discovered, pinned to the school bulletin board, a picture of herself which had appeared in a half-page article in the morning newspaper entitled, "HOLY SPIRIT MAKES THEM SPEAK IN UNKNOWN TONGUES." But that wasn't as bad as the next headline.

Meanwhile, we decided to print a booklet called Charisma in Hong Kong, containing the personal stories of a number of people in the group. We visited the printer for an estimate, and he roughly mentioned HK $1,000. We accepted, went home and told God we needed $1,000 and please send it right away. Keith Philcox telephoned and wanted to look in on us. I made tea and we talked but didn't mention the booklet. Before he departed he handed Rick a check for $1,000 and said God had told him to give it to us three days before. The following day the formal estimate arrived from the printer, and it was closer to $2,000. We apprised God of this development.

The next day, while lunching with Jackie Pullinger and an elderly missionary, a man stopped to greet the missionary. With him was a visiting American named Ernie Lambert, a Baptist whose business is mutual funds. Rick and Ernie talked and Saturday night Ernie came to SNAG. During the evening he suggested, "I had dinner with you tonight; how about having lunch with me tomorrow at the Peninsula Hotel?" Naturally I agreed to such a rare treat; so the next day he took everyone but the parrot to lunch. Gail and Suzy left, but the three of us talked for hours. At the end of that time Ernie looked at me and said, "Do you need any money for anything?" I said, "No. All of our bills are paid; we have food in the house and God takes care of us." He said, "I want to do this anyway," and he signed several traveler's checks and gave them to us. They almost exactly totaled the amount needed for the publishing venture -- but we had not mentioned it to him at all!

Like the prayer group, the booklet grew. Everyone we asked to write an article did, and we had twice the material for which we had received an estimate. When it was time to pay the printer, a businessman and member of the Cathedral Council inquired, "How much are you short?" and wrote a check for the amount needed. Charisma in Hong Kong vanished so rapidly we were almost out of them before we had begun and yet we still receive letters from many parts of the world with requests for more.

Melissa Singer decided the reporter who had written the newspaper article needed something, so she sent him a copy of Charisma. The reporter reprinted part of Martha Baker's story with pictures and ran it in the newspaper the following day, captioned, "BISHOP'S DAUGHTER IN TONGUES CULT." Poor Melissa hadn't meant to do that. And what the reporter didn't know was that the bishop's wife also spoke in tongues and some people suspected the bishop!

A countess saw the headlines and decided she needed to investigate. She became such a keen member of the group that she had me speak twice at Toastmistress (she was President) to tell them of the acts of God in the Twentieth Century.

A singer from America was interview in Hong Kong by a reporter from one of the two major newspapers. The reporter commented, "I hear you are religious. I'm disenchanted with the organized church."

The singer replied, "So am I."

"But I thought you were religious."

The singer then told the reporter of the charismatic life. The reporter observed, "There's a group here who speak in tongues. Our paper had a big write-up on them."

"You should go there."

So the reporter brought his wife to the gathering. Over a period of several weeks he returned to God and his Chinese wife became a Christian. They were both baptized with the Holy Spirit. The wife taught in a Catholic school, and one day she visited all of the classes and told the students about Jesus Christ and the need for a personal belief. That day one hundred and forty took that step and were filled with the Spirit. The radio program had backfired!

The mother general of a Franciscan order made her periodic visit to Hong Kong. During her routine call on the Catholic bishop he asked, "Do you know one of your nuns speaks in tongues and that she even attends a meeting where this sort of thing occurs?" Mother affirmed she was aware of it. The frail little French sister superior accompanying Mother spoke up bravely, "But I also speak in tongues and I also attend that meeting." The bishop gasped, "How many more of you are there?" He continued, "One of your sisters telephoned me from Macao this morning and asked permission to begin such a meeting there for the students. She should not have telephoned me; she should have spoken to her superior." The tiny sister remonstrated, "But Bishop, she is the superior!" When the two nuns departed, the mother general admonished the sister superior, "If the bishop is so interested in this speaking in tongues, why have you not invited him to a meeting?"

Mother attended a meeting. Being deeply committed to our Lord, it took her no great amount of time to become convinced that the gift of the Spirit was from God and enhanced one's devotional life. She asked for and received the gift for herself, and her parting question to me was, "My nuns all over the world must have this gift, but how can this be without you and your husband to accompany me for the imposition of hands?" When we returned to the United States on leave, I received a letter from a sister in Tahiti who had received the gift of the Spirit through Mother by the imposition of hands. Obviously she had discovered there was no problem -- God was in Tahiti also and He is the one who bestows the Spirit. The Tahitian sister was busy translating charismatic literature into French for the edification of the other nuns who had been similarly empowered.

Mother was somewhat concerned how those at the Mother House would view what God was doing. She feared they might not understand. But soon thereafter the newspaper from the Mother House arrived and it told of a "new" thing in our day. It seems that two charismatic priests had spoken there and three sisters had already received the "new" blessing.

About this time, in a confirmation service, the Catholic bishop laid hands on a nine-year-old child who immediately began to speak in tongues. Of course she had never heard of such a thing. A nun assisting the bishop pointed out, "She's speaking in tongues, Bishop." He replied, "Yes, yes, yes," and seemed terribly nervous about the whole proceeding.

Jill Haylock, a lovely young Plymouth Brethren girl, was baptized with the Spirit while in Hong Kong on holiday from an English boarding school. The next week her sister came with her, was converted, and received the Spirit. The girls returned to school. Their father, Ted, who sang in the cathedral choir, had come to a meeting like a proper parent to investigate what the girls were involved in. We invited him to dinner one evening so we could tell him a bit more of the girls' attitudes. I wore a brown brocade hostess gown. Gail had changed the buttons on it for me, as several of the original ones were lost. What I didn't know was that Gail had decided to save money by using smaller buttons because they were cheaper. After dinner I arose to pour the coffee and as I gracefully swung around and handed Mr Haylock his coffee, the buttons gave way and the gown opened all of the way down the front and there I stood in my pants and brassiere. Speak of life's most embarrassing moments. I quickly clutched the pieces about me but Mr Haylock, being a proper Englishman, turned not a hair and showed neither by look nor deed that anything untoward had occurred!

The following Sunday Ted Haylock took us to dinner at the officer's club and then we returned to our flat to talk. I asked if he would like a heavenly language, and he said he would; he immediately acquired one. The next day we discovered the girls had gotten into trouble at boarding school by playing a tape of their friends' experiences with God. A letter arrived from the Headmistress, but somehow it didn't seem as serious to Ted as it might have the previous week.

We had been away from home nearly four years. It had been rewarding in that many hundreds had come to an awareness of Jesus Christ as the Redeemer and had gone on to appropriate the promise of the Spirit. A number had been healed and many more had actually changed in their personalities. But we were homesick and in need of a rest. We determined we should go home on leave. We had no money to do so, but we had not had any money to come, either. We wrote that we would be home in July, and a few days later a letter arrived from Herbert and Mary Charlotte Mitchell notifying us that they were sending their income tax refund to us. It was enough for three tickets to the United States.

When we left the United States many people had stated we could never go to China because politically it would never be possible. But when we arrived in Taiwan, where friends still told us, "This is China and where you are to be," a notice in the newspaper stated that no longer would one's passport be confiscated if one traveled to mainland China -- that the Supreme Court had declared this would be unconstitutional. In Hong Kong people were sure we could not enter China; to top it all, they thought we were CIA because we had such strange answers to their questions. But nothing deterred us -- everything else in the dream had come to pass, and we knew China was also in God's plan for us. In the dream it had specifically been shown that the ultimate target of our mission is in China, and a voice had said, "Not Hong Kong." We understood what that meant. Despite the work that had been accomplished, we were not to consider ourselves finished -- we still must go to China. We packed our clothes, bought our tickets home and went on leave, knowing God would work out the next lap of our journey even though everyone was still saying it couldn't be done. Our plane landed in San Francisco on July 15th, 1971, and the headlines on the San Francisco newspapers blazoned, "NIXON GOING TO CHINA." The Great Wall had cracked. The future was before us and the Spirit would lead --

The blonde teenager sat back against the wall, her eyes closed and her big yellow guitar leaning against her legs. Words same from her mouth as smoothly, as freely and as quickly as water runs over a pebble" (Bob Bennett, Hong Kong Standard).

Our living quarters had become slightly more respectable. We had persuaded the landlady to have the flat painted white (which horrified her -- I think she envisioned a hospital). We had a man come and stain all of the mismatched furniture a uniform shade, and build shelves for the walls. Gail industriously made white draperies for the windows and a second little man re-covered the upholstered furniture with blue and green print material we had purchased in the "stalls" where yardage is sold cheaply. Mary Nelles visited and contributed six kelly green rattan chairs; Hugh Jagger made us a coffee table from an old door, and the Foersters donated the pictures they didn't want to transport. We had no carpeting, but on Saturday nights we didn't need it as we sported wall-to-wall people.

Perhaps the living quarters were more respectable, but we were not. A number of parents were disturbed because their children were contracting religion (they appeared to regard it as a disease). Some of them told their offspring that they didn't mind if they were confirmed, or even attended the established church if they felt strongly about it, but this stress on religion simply "isn't done." One priest agreed. He told us when we first met him that he thought the church must change or die, but his idea of change was not ours. He saw it as forgetting the religious emphasis and becoming realistic by providing food and clothing and teaching the Chinese skills such as painting. This last bit really cracked us up because the Chinese had been painting when the priest's ancestors were residing in caves. One of the Sunday School teachers told him that there must be something wrong if they couldn't get the kids to turn out to be entertained and fed at the church youth group -- the "the Willanses don't have any trouble getting fifty to turn out to a prayer meeting."

The minister wasn't pleased. His retaliation was to have a friend, who did radio talk interviews, investigate glossolalia by interviewing people and asking their opinions. It didn't seem to matter much that many of the people interviewed had never heard of the subject. The interviewer admitted this. He said, "I'm not in favor, but the program is coming out pro because anyone who knows anything about it is for it and the people who are against it really don't know a damned thing about it."

For a number of years people all over the world had been speaking in languages given by the Holy Spirit, so it was no longer front page news as it had once been. But Hong Kong was considerably behind on such things. Thus glossolalia was a new thing there, and for that reason controversial. After the prerecorded program was aired, a very lively panel discussion followed. It was ludicrous, as one of the primary people speaking was an agnostic who referred to himself as Christian. To cloud the issues further, the moderator (an atheist) would periodically pipe up with something like, "As a Jew I object!" However, it seemed reasonable to the radio station. Rick was supposed to answer questions, but was usually cut off if he started to say anything pertinent. Before the program he discovered the mother of an involved student was on the panel. We knew the daughter had not previously been confirmed nor attended church. The mother said (off the air) she herself hadn't been to church in years -- it bored her too much to even think about it. But on the radio she went into a dissertation that speaking in tongues was not to be tolerated because it caused in youngsters a "condescending attitude" toward the established church!

Early the next morning, after the radio program that had been organized to stamp out glossalia, there was a knock at the door. An English schoolteacher, of Roman Catholic persuasion, was standing there.

"Is this where the prayer meetings are held?"

He wanted to map out the territory to be sure he could find it the following evening to attend the meeting. And so it went --

A reporter from one of the newspapaers telephoned and inquired, "Is this the place where you hear voices?"

When he arrived at the prayer group, complete with photographer, still asking about "voices," a Supreme Court Justice, who was a regular attender, firmly admonished him to call it "speaking in tongues." The next morning one of the American nuns discovered, pinned to the school bulletin board, a picture of herself which had appeared in a half-page article in the morning newspaper entitled, "HOLY SPIRIT MAKES THEM SPEAK IN UNKNOWN TONGUES." But that wasn't as bad as the next headline.

Meanwhile, we decided to print a booklet called Charisma in Hong Kong, containing the personal stories of a number of people in the group. We visited the printer for an estimate, and he roughly mentioned HK $1,000. We accepted, went home and told God we needed $1,000 and please send it right away. Keith Philcox telephoned and wanted to look in on us. I made tea and we talked but didn't mention the booklet. Before he departed he handed Rick a check for $1,000 and said God had told him to give it to us three days before. The following day the formal estimate arrived from the printer, and it was closer to $2,000. We apprised God of this development.

The next day, while lunching with Jackie Pullinger and an elderly missionary, a man stopped to greet the missionary. With him was a visiting American named Ernie Lambert, a Baptist whose business is mutual funds. Rick and Ernie talked and Saturday night Ernie came to SNAG. During the evening he suggested, "I had dinner with you tonight; how about having lunch with me tomorrow at the Peninsula Hotel?" Naturally I agreed to such a rare treat; so the next day he took everyone but the parrot to lunch. Gail and Suzy left, but the three of us talked for hours. At the end of that time Ernie looked at me and said, "Do you need any money for anything?" I said, "No. All of our bills are paid; we have food in the house and God takes care of us." He said, "I want to do this anyway," and he signed several traveler's checks and gave them to us. They almost exactly totaled the amount needed for the publishing venture -- but we had not mentioned it to him at all!

Like the prayer group, the booklet grew. Everyone we asked to write an article did, and we had twice the material for which we had received an estimate. When it was time to pay the printer, a businessman and member of the Cathedral Council inquired, "How much are you short?" and wrote a check for the amount needed. Charisma in Hong Kong vanished so rapidly we were almost out of them before we had begun and yet we still receive letters from many parts of the world with requests for more.

Melissa Singer decided the reporter who had written the newspaper article needed something, so she sent him a copy of Charisma. The reporter reprinted part of Martha Baker's story with pictures and ran it in the newspaper the following day, captioned, "BISHOP'S DAUGHTER IN TONGUES CULT." Poor Melissa hadn't meant to do that. And what the reporter didn't know was that the bishop's wife also spoke in tongues and some people suspected the bishop!

A countess saw the headlines and decided she needed to investigate. She became such a keen member of the group that she had me speak twice at Toastmistress (she was President) to tell them of the acts of God in the Twentieth Century.

A singer from America was interview in Hong Kong by a reporter from one of the two major newspapers. The reporter commented, "I hear you are religious. I'm disenchanted with the organized church."

The singer replied, "So am I."

"But I thought you were religious."

The singer then told the reporter of the charismatic life. The reporter observed, "There's a group here who speak in tongues. Our paper had a big write-up on them."

"You should go there."

So the reporter brought his wife to the gathering. Over a period of several weeks he returned to God and his Chinese wife became a Christian. They were both baptized with the Holy Spirit. The wife taught in a Catholic school, and one day she visited all of the classes and told the students about Jesus Christ and the need for a personal belief. That day one hundred and forty took that step and were filled with the Spirit. The radio program had backfired!

The mother general of a Franciscan order made her periodic visit to Hong Kong. During her routine call on the Catholic bishop he asked, "Do you know one of your nuns speaks in tongues and that she even attends a meeting where this sort of thing occurs?" Mother affirmed she was aware of it. The frail little French sister superior accompanying Mother spoke up bravely, "But I also speak in tongues and I also attend that meeting." The bishop gasped, "How many more of you are there?" He continued, "One of your sisters telephoned me from Macao this morning and asked permission to begin such a meeting there for the students. She should not have telephoned me; she should have spoken to her superior." The tiny sister remonstrated, "But Bishop, she is the superior!" When the two nuns departed, the mother general admonished the sister superior, "If the bishop is so interested in this speaking in tongues, why have you not invited him to a meeting?"

Mother attended a meeting. Being deeply committed to our Lord, it took her no great amount of time to become convinced that the gift of the Spirit was from God and enhanced one's devotional life. She asked for and received the gift for herself, and her parting question to me was, "My nuns all over the world must have this gift, but how can this be without you and your husband to accompany me for the imposition of hands?" When we returned to the United States on leave, I received a letter from a sister in Tahiti who had received the gift of the Spirit through Mother by the imposition of hands. Obviously she had discovered there was no problem -- God was in Tahiti also and He is the one who bestows the Spirit. The Tahitian sister was busy translating charismatic literature into French for the edification of the other nuns who had been similarly empowered.

Mother was somewhat concerned how those at the Mother House would view what God was doing. She feared they might not understand. But soon thereafter the newspaper from the Mother House arrived and it told of a "new" thing in our day. It seems that two charismatic priests had spoken there and three sisters had already received the "new" blessing.

About this time, in a confirmation service, the Catholic bishop laid hands on a nine-year-old child who immediately began to speak in tongues. Of course she had never heard of such a thing. A nun assisting the bishop pointed out, "She's speaking in tongues, Bishop." He replied, "Yes, yes, yes," and seemed terribly nervous about the whole proceeding.

Jill Haylock, a lovely young Plymouth Brethren girl, was baptized with the Spirit while in Hong Kong on holiday from an English boarding school. The next week her sister came with her, was converted, and received the Spirit. The girls returned to school. Their father, Ted, who sang in the cathedral choir, had come to a meeting like a proper parent to investigate what the girls were involved in. We invited him to dinner one evening so we could tell him a bit more of the girls' attitudes. I wore a brown brocade hostess gown. Gail had changed the buttons on it for me, as several of the original ones were lost. What I didn't know was that Gail had decided to save money by using smaller buttons because they were cheaper. After dinner I arose to pour the coffee and as I gracefully swung around and handed Mr Haylock his coffee, the buttons gave way and the gown opened all of the way down the front and there I stood in my pants and brassiere. Speak of life's most embarrassing moments. I quickly clutched the pieces about me but Mr Haylock, being a proper Englishman, turned not a hair and showed neither by look nor deed that anything untoward had occurred!

The following Sunday Ted Haylock took us to dinner at the officer's club and then we returned to our flat to talk. I asked if he would like a heavenly language, and he said he would; he immediately acquired one. The next day we discovered the girls had gotten into trouble at boarding school by playing a tape of their friends' experiences with God. A letter arrived from the Headmistress, but somehow it didn't seem as serious to Ted as it might have the previous week.

We had been away from home nearly four years. It had been rewarding in that many hundreds had come to an awareness of Jesus Christ as the Redeemer and had gone on to appropriate the promise of the Spirit. A number had been healed and many more had actually changed in their personalities. But we were homesick and in need of a rest. We determined we should go home on leave. We had no money to do so, but we had not had any money to come, either. We wrote that we would be home in July, and a few days later a letter arrived from Herbert and Mary Charlotte Mitchell notifying us that they were sending their income tax refund to us. It was enough for three tickets to the United States.

When we left the United States many people had stated we could never go to China because politically it would never be possible. But when we arrived in Taiwan, where friends still told us, "This is China and where you are to be," a notice in the newspaper stated that no longer would one's passport be confiscated if one traveled to mainland China -- that the Supreme Court had declared this would be unconstitutional. In Hong Kong people were sure we could not enter China; to top it all, they thought we were CIA because we had such strange answers to their questions. But nothing deterred us -- everything else in the dream had come to pass, and we knew China was also in God's plan for us. In the dream it had specifically been shown that the ultimate target of our mission is in China, and a voice had said, "Not Hong Kong." We understood what that meant. Despite the work that had been accomplished, we were not to consider ourselves finished -- we still must go to China. We packed our clothes, bought our tickets home and went on leave, knowing God would work out the next lap of our journey even though everyone was still saying it couldn't be done. Our plane landed in San Francisco on July 15th, 1971, and the headlines on the San Francisco newspapers blazoned, "NIXON GOING TO CHINA." The Great Wall had cracked. The future was before us and the Spirit would lead --

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