This is a complete and accurate transcript of the tape of the sixth oral history interview of Miss Elizabeth Morrell Evans (CN 279, #T6) in the Archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words which were recorded have been omitted, except for any non-English phrases which could not be understood by the transcribers. In a very few cases, words were too unclear to be distinguished, so the word "[unclear]" was inserted. This is a transcription of spoken English, which, of course, follows a different rhythm and rule than written English. Also, if the speaker used an older version of a Chinese name, such as Peking" instead of "Beijing," then it is the older version which is in the transcript.
... Three dots indicate what the interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence on the part of the speaker.
.... Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
() Words in parenthesis are asides made by the speaker.
[] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber.
This transcription was made by Robert Shuster and Kerry Cox and was completed in June 1990.
SHUSTER: This is a continuation of the interview with Miss Elizabeth Evans which took place on August 27th at the Billy Graham Center. Miss Evans, we were talking about some of the speakers at the Rumney conferences and I wanted to ask you about Mr. J. E. Jaderquist. Is that how his name was pronounced?
EVANS: [Chuckles] He did not come very much to our...to our...our conferences. He was at Rumney. Many of these other speakers also had a series of...of conferences or daily Bible conference throughout all of New England. Dr. Jaderquist was only at Rumney. And he was an interesting man. He had been teaching at the Missionary Institute in Nyack for a time and his daughters had been attending Wilson Academy, which was on that hillside and belonged to the [Christian and Missionary] Alliance...was at the foot of the hillside. Our home was very close to that. We had a fifteen room home in the next street, and one reason that we were in Nyack was so that our children of our family could attend Wilson Academy. And my older sister and brother were students with Helen Jaderquist and her sister Beth, and Merrill Tenney, who was there at that time. The...Dr. Jaderquist taught at...at Nyack for a while and we...we knew him, but not too well. He was a good speaker. He was an interesting speaker, but I would say more of a Bible teacher on the whole than a evan...the evangelistic type. But refreshing, interesting. I would say probably not an outstanding speaker, but a good conference speaker.
SHUSTER: How about Horatio J. Chase?
EVANS: Well, he was a...he was a man that was quite jolly. He had a...he had a church in the city of Everett, Massachusetts when we first knew him. And he was very much interested in financing churches. He would...he liked evangelistic work....
SHUSTER: What do you mean, financing?
EVANS: Well, the church wanted to build an addition or it needed to be completely renovated or they might want to build a new church. And he liked to go to those churches and help them raise the money for it. So, every so often he took a little vacation from his church to do that sort of thing. For a little while, he was...he was executive secretary for our New England Fellowship, when Dr. Wright was very busy with the National Association of Evangelicals. We found that on the whole he did not...he did not fully understand the difficulties of raising money in an organization, an interdenominational organization. No churches are re...were responsible for raising the money for us. You know something of those difficulties [laughs]. And so do many, many others. And interdenominational schools have that problem. He had been accustomed to raising money by going to the church and putting it up to the church members, or perhaps even some of the merchants in town to do something to help this church that had burned down or needed to be rebuilt. When he got into the New England Fellowship he was beyond his depth when it came to doing any real raising of money. Dr. Wright had gone everywhere and visited everyone and had raised most all of the money that was needed for running the work, even though it was a difficult thing to do. And he never asked for money, but he would...he would so present the work that the people wanted to help. He was not what you might call a man that would pressure anybody for any money. And in fact, he...he went, for instance, to the president of the Sun Oil Company years later when he had read an article that this man had written. I think Hill is the name. He...he realized that he was really an Evangelical man, but very much disturbed and confused by the modernism that he heard in the churches. He was the president of the Sun Oil Company and he was a man that had just given five million dollars to Harvard. Dr. Wright thought, "That man really needs help." That was very like Dr. Wright. He went immediately down and had a long talk with this man. He talked with him for many hours and he told him about the Evangelicals. You see, he had never known Evangelicals and his...the churches had grown more and more liberal. And this confused him and disturbed him.. Well, Dr. Wright helped him to see the value and the importance of the work and...and he later arranged for Dr. Ockenga to meet him. He took him down and introduced him and other people. Dr. Wright never got a cent from him for any of that, for his work. But Dr. Ockenga would get some and the others. And he became very much interested in the Christian activities. And that was the sort of a man that Dr. Wright was.
SHUSTER: What...who were some of the major financial supporters of the Fellowship?
EVANS: I...we had none. I don't remember anybody who was a major supporter. John Bolton was a member of the board for years, but I don't remember him...of him ever giving very much money to the New England Fellowship. He later was the treasurer for World Evangelical Fellowship and in that capacity he would give some...some money. I don't know how much.
SHUSTER: But...so where did the support come from?
EVANS: Just from...from small gifts that were given, largely by individuals. Our radio ministry was very much blessed of the Lord to many people and I think that some received much spiritual help and some helped to...to pay for the money that we expended on the radio. But very largely the people attending the different services and offerings that were given. One reason Dr. Wright took the Radio Ensemble out of New England to some of these large churches around the country, like the Church of the Open Door [Los Angeles] and Moody [Chicago] and so on was that he would get good offerings in these places and helped to pay the salaries (or the allowances) of his workers that New England [Fellowship] couldn't pay. New England was rather poor as far as the financial circles were concerned.
SHUSTER: What was the average budget for the Fellowship?
EVANS: Oh, it...it varied year to year. It began with a very small budget and...and went up to a hundred thousand or something like that over the course of time.
SHUSTER: How was Dr. Walter Wilson?
EVANS: He's lovely. He was a beautiful character. He came there for conferences and everybody loved him. And he was so good at stirring up their minds to witness for the Lord. He....
SHUSTER: How do you mean?
EVANS: Oh my, he would tell about how he had won so many souls to the Lord. His books are just full of illustrations of what he said to a person under a given situation. And you just loved to hear of him...hear him. And he would...he...he would tell of these experiences and how this one and that one was won to the Lord. But he also would give outlines of Bible truths. And he would say, "Well now, this is just off the cuff for you pastors, you just take it down. You can use it in your sermon next Sunday. This will help you so that you'll have a sermon, although you've spent your time here at the Bible conference." Things of that sort. And I asked him to please give a special talk (since he was a doctor) give a little talk to the girls and a talk separately to the boys. Because we had a lot of young people on the grounds and I felt that they needed good advice from such a man as he.
SHUSTER: About what?
EVANS: And he did so well, being a doctor and a father and a...a deep spiritual teacher. We loved to have him come. He came several years. He didn't go on our circuits. He was a very busy man. He had carried on a practice all his life. And he...he...he was the one who helped to org...found the Baptist...the Calvary Baptist Seminary that's in Kansas City. He lived there. I have...I could tell one story about him that's so good. I was at Winona Lake on one of my furloughs and I saw by the program that after Wisconsin, which was a musical festival that Bob Pierce put on, Walter Wilson was to be a speaker and a...and a speaker I had known from Philadelphia who was a good Bible teacher. And I thought, "I don't have to go home yet. I came late. I'll stay a day. And I will have the joy of hearing both these men who are old friends of mine." Well, Walter Wilson dressed fit to kill. His second wife was doing very well by him. And at first he was the little bit slow but soon he was right in the midst of it and he was his old self. (He was eighty-two.) And he was just doing a fine job. And I heard him finally say...he gave an outline and he said, "Off the cuff for you pastors." And other things that were just...were just Walter Wilson. So when it was all over, I went up to shake hands with him. Well, I waited until everybody had gone, except one couple and I waited behind them. And they said, "Dr. Wilson, do you remember us?" And he said, "I'm sorry Madam but I don't." And she turned to her husband and said, "Think of it. He doesn't remember us and we had him home for dinner." Not remembering the thousands and thousands and thousands of people that that man met and had dinner with. So I walked up and I wasn't going to embarrass, though I knew him pretty well. And I shook..."And I'm Elizabeth Evans from...formerly from Rumney." And he said, "You've...I haven't been getting your letters recently." And I said, "Well, you moved." And he said, "Yes," he said, "I married the landlady so I won't have to pay the rent." Isn't that a rare story?
SHUSTER: Yes it is.
EVANS: But it was not too long after that that he died. A great warrior.
SHUSTER: What about Jack Wyrtzen?
EVANS: Jack Wyrtzen, I think, came before he really started Schoon Lake. And of course he was pretty well known because of the meetings that he held on Saturday nights at the Gospel Tabernacle in New York. It...they grew, of course, to be tremendous, so that they overfilled the Boston Garden. Hundreds, hundreds couldn't even get in. But at that time he wasn't as well known but known enough so that we knew we would have quite a number on our hands. And we weren't prepared for the number that actually came. It...it stretched our facilities to the uttermost. I remember my mother putting cots on a long porch and putting girls on those...on those cots on that porch and having them dress inside and going to the neighbors for...for help, that sort of thing.
SHUSTER: What were the facil...how many people could the conference grounds hold?
EVANS: Well, that week, the second time he came, I fed altogether, in all the different places, four hundred and fifty people. If you count the camps and you count those that...that had dining privileges at Emmanuel Home, I had to set second table for a hundred and fifty of the young people all that week, which was a dif...difficult.... He was just himself, fine evangelistic type. Led many to the Lord, would always give an evangelistic appeal, an appeal also for a spiritual life and for persistence as Christians. He's a very short man but very energetic. He and Carlton Booth made a tremendous couple, Carlton on the music and he...and he on the speaking.
SHUSTER: Did he ever come with Walter Smyth?
EVANS: He may have the second time, but I noticed he didn't the first time. I think...I think Walter Smyth...Walter Smyth was with him one of the times. But Walter was with another man another week.
SHUSTER: Who was that? Do you recall?
EVANS: I don't recall it. I have it. I have...I have it with...on the folder that tells about him.
SHUSTER: Do you recall anything about Mr. Abraham Vereide?
EVANS: Yes. He came...he came as a Methodist minister in charge of their...their program that they have for the poor and needy. Now, what is that called?
SHUSTER: The Morgan....
EVANS: I kno...the Morgan Memorial. And Dr. Wright.... He was a young man and Dr. Wright was very much interested in him. And he would ask him to...to attend some meetings that he had and did all he could to encourage him in his Christian life and in his ministry. I feel that Dr. Wright was a good influence with him at that time because I don't think that at that time he had a...a vision for the work that he later did. And the fact that he himself was a Methodist and perhaps not a strong Evangelical, I think was...it was a big help Dr. Wright could encourage him in his Christian faith. One thing that Dr. Wright was especially careful about was never to call men modernists. He felt that these...a lot of these young pastors had been raised in...in churches and in...and at seminaries that did not give them strong teaching on being born again, the Christian life, the necessity of a real change of heart for every individual. And I think that his effort to welcome these men...their...very often they didn't understand the inspiration of the Scriptures and were kind...inclined not to believe in it. And Dr. Wright would make it a point to have speakers that would explain this to men that were there and try to encourage these young men to...to stay in...within the ranks of the Evangelicals. There is an inclination to say right away a person that had been going, for instance, to Boston University, "He's probably a modernist. He's not...he can't say that he believes every word of the Bible, so he's a modernist." Dr. Wright was greatly against that. He felt these people should be encouraged. And I think that Abraham Vereide was a little of that type. He had not had too much spiritual teaching. I don't know how...how strong he was along those lines but of course became quite a leader of le...of important people and starting of the prayer breakfast and so forth lat...in later years.
SHUSTER: Was he a good speaker?
EVANS: I would say he was...would be above average, but a great deal of it was the type of people that he encouraged. They would know nothing of deep Bible study, probably. So he could...he could minister to them better than some of these other Bible teachers who would just go right into the Bible truths of which they knew so little.
SHUSTER: Why do you think Dr. Wright was so impressed with him?
EVANS: Well, he saw his char...possibilities and he knew just being there at Morgan Memorial did not particularly inculcate a lot spiritual enthusiasm. And he wanted to encourage him. He was inclined to...to like to do that whenever he could.
SHUSTER: How about J. Oliver Buswell?
EVANS: He came many times. He would come in the spring and he would have a Wheaton dinner in Boston. And we would give him services in the area around there. Perhaps he would have as many as four services over a long weekend all together, besides having a Saturday night Wheaton dinner. Katherine some years was the one that arranged that (my sister), sometimes other people. I was too busy and often away at the time. But he always had a good ministry, he always had a good message and...and he was a good mixer. He...he wasn't at all inclined to certain doctrines that later he especially emphasized.
SHUSTER: Such as?
EVANS: Well, for instance, the separation from all modernism, the...the inclination to label people. He was...he was very, very, very good as a Bible teacher, as a...a inspirational speaker, as a man that could lead all...all that came to him. He was very different from the man he became in later life. And very acceptable as a summer speaker. He came sometimes and...and was the speaker for a week, a Bible teacher. And he would have the Quintet come every summer and we would have a Wheaton [College alumni] dinner. We had a Gordon [College alumni] dinner during the summer and we would have a Wheaton [College alumni] dinner and sometimes a Providence Bible Institute [alumni dinner] for quite a few years and sometimes I remember seeing his name on the roster at Rumney and...and also in the spring for the dinner and having services. I would say of, six, seven years, something of that sort, when he returned each year, and usually with a musical...some musical talent.
SHUSTER: What did you mean when you said he was different from the man he later became?
EVANS: He...I think you must know what he was later in life and he didn't seem to have those tendencies to draw the line so radically as he did later in the separation from anyone who might differ with him in...on small points of doctrine or...or of the operation of the church. He...he didn't show those tendencies in those years. Neither did Bob Jones Jr. show those tendencies that later caused him to separate himself from a great many of the Christians.
SHUSTER: What do you think caused the development of those tendencies that later [unclear]?
EVANS: I...I wouldn't want to make an evaluation. I don't feel that I'm capable of it.
SHUSTER: Did Carl McIntire ever speak at Rumney?
EVANS: No. No, he was never asked to speak. [laughs] Dr. Wright reasoned with him sometimes on the.... He said one time that there were twenty-seven lies in the [Christian] Beacon and he went down and talked abo...talked to McIntire about it. And he told him he's...and he showed him the lies. "You should surely make a correction in the Beacon for all these lies." Well, he made a very small one.
SHUSTER: A retraction?
EVANS: Sort of an apologize for having said it. But he didn't say, "These were lies."
SHUSTER: And put it on the front page?
EVANS: On the back page.
SHUSTER: What about Billy Graham? Did he ever speak at Rumney?
EVANS: Oh yes. But it was about in '54, '55 when he spoke.
SHUSTER: What impression did he make at the time at Rumney?
EVANS: Well, just about the impression he made on other.... He was a fine young man, he was well liked by the people, he appealed to the young people. It was more or less a youth conference but it enough of a general conference so that there were older people. It wasn't one of our weeks of just young people. He...he did very well. I don't think he drew as many people at stage as Jack Wyrtzen did because Jack Wyrtzen was much better known in...in New England that Billy Graham was at that time.
SHUSTER: And he was...what kind of speaker was he?
EVANS: Well, he was just about like himself. Simple, Gospel message, very sincere, very earnest. And he made a very good impression all the time by his life, by the interests that he had. But he was a young man still.
SHUSTER: Well, why don't we move on and talk some about your...your years in Taiwan. We talked yesterday about how you came to arrive in Taiwan, originally going to India and then God called you to Taiwan. What was the work that you began doing there?
EVANS: I think I would make a li...a statement about my going.
SHUSTER: Okay.
EVANS: I had been teaching for twelve years in the evening school of the Bible at Park Street Church the principles of Christian education. That was my specialty. I did that in many parts of New England through the years. Earlier I had done a good bit of visitation work and had taught how to...to do house-to-house visitation in foreign districts too, with your pockets full of Gospels in different languages. But now at this time I was especially holding these Christian education conferences in churches or for towns and men that came from other countries came to Boston University or to other schools for graduate works. Dr. [George A.] Hadjiantoniou I spoke of yesterday, from Greece, and there was a...a pastor from Egypt and some other places that were very much interested in the work of Christian education that I was doing. And they would say, "We...we want so much that you will come to our country and that you will help us with our Christian education. We need it so much." Dr. James Dixon of Taiwan cabled also that he wished that I would there and help them with their Christian education that they needed. I also had worked, you see, for six years with World Evangelical Fellowship. And so I was promoting World Evangelical Fellowship as well and the benefits that were derived from it. Christian education would be, you might say, one facet of a program that they would need. Dr. [Everest] Cattell had been very anxious for me to go to India to promote that, but also in [unclear] and help in other phases. I felt as though I...it was well to promote the work...the work locally of Evan...the Evangelical Fellowship and to have the Christian education too. And so when I was asked to go to India to help and I had said that I would if the Lord led and if...and if they...the visa came, I had also said...told these other people that I might come to them, especially when the visa was first refused for India. I went almost a month all over Greece and had many opportunities to give Christian education course and I had a lot of material with me, the latest in Christian education that would be profitable for them. And as I had told you, we had translated the ETTA courses for the Greek people and also eventual in Arabic...
SHUSTER: That's the....
EVANS: ...that they had it. That was in...in Egypt
SHUSTER: The ETTA stands for...?
EVANS: Evangelical Teacher Training Association. They had books in these various subjects. And my filmstrips that I used would show that. I had many of the latest books on methods of teaching and so forth. And books on how to lead people to Christ, children to Christ that I could show them and that they could order if they wanted in the English or even ask to have translated into their language. And I was to do the same sort of thing in Taiwan. Now after I had spent almost a month especially in youth work and...and mountain peoples' work in Vietnam with my sister (having already gone to these other areas) I went on to Taiwan and they asked me to speak at...of the Bible College of the [Christian and Missionary] Alliance out on the island and also in some of the churches. Then I went on. Dr. Dixon, who was the senior missionary...he was, interesting, another Presbyterian.
SHUSTER: Senior missionary in Taiwan?
EVANS: Yes. Outstanding senior missionary. It had been Presbyterians in Greece, the United...the Reformed Presbyterians in Cyprus, the United Presbyterians in Egypt. The Canadian Presbyterians and English Presbyterians had been almost a hundred years in Taiwan and had been put out at the time of the Japanese occupation finally. And had come back and now people that were of the various denominations were into Taiwan. There were no others hitherto. But now they were all put out of China and many of them were coming. And James Dixon had a...a beautiful attitude toward them, more so than some of the people of his denomination. And he would tell the Free Methodists, for instance, that, "There are many of the soldiers down in the southern part in different barracks and their families. If you would go down in that area and work, you could use your Mandarin [language] with those people and it would be very effective." So they developed quite a work down there and they developed a large Bible school for their...for their church people for their education. That was James Taylor who...and the father of James Taylor (who also was James Taylor) who is now the leader of the OMF [Overseas Missionary Fellowship]. Then farther up there were the [Society of] Friends people and there were those of different denominations. I said in going to Taiwan that I hoped that he would arrange for me to have these Christian education conferences all around Taiwan and invite the denominations of all the churches. The predominate of course were Presbyterian. And so the services were held in Presbyterian churches. But I...I spoke in...in English, it was translated into Mandarin, it was translated into Taiwanese. The Taiwanese was the Amoy dialect of the southern part of China and the girl that went around with me had...had quite a little education in Canada and understood English well. She was very good in the Taiwanese and I would find somebody who was good in Mandarin. I found the missionaries had difficulty, even a missionary who had...who had been all his life in China and was supposed to be so fine in Mandarin would have difficulty with any technical Christian education terms because he might not know them. Some of the women would have made a better interpreters for that. Well, I had a wonderful introduction to all of Taiwan and they to me. Because I able...I...I had...I think it was one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...at least seven points all around the island I had these Christian education conferences one right after the other. In every one of them I would also speak about the [World] Evangelical Fellowship. In the course of my being there, perhaps about three days or four days, I'd have sessions afternoon and evening usually. So that gave me a tremendous introduction to the island... And I asked them after that was over whether...or they brought up the subject of whether I would stay or not.
SHUSTER: Who did?
EVANS: The...the...the leaders of...of the area. There was Dr. Dixon himself and then there was a Dr. Montgomery who was the head of China Sunday School Association that had moved in from sou...from China and had established a pretty good interdenominational bookstore, the only one for a while on the island. He...I had asked him to be the chairman of the committee. And I asked the members of the committee. I had a Methodist and a Southern Baptist and so on on the committee. They urged...they urged me after I finished that series to stay there and I wasn't quite sure yet whether it was the Lord's will and I heard that Dick Hillis was there in town at the time (he often was not) and so I asked him if he would...if he would visit with me. I took a pedicab and went out to his new place that he was just building. I remember it was just stones, stones the whole way. It was very rough in that pedicab. And they said, "There he is coming in a...in a white truck." So I got out in the street and I waved my hand like this. He had never met me. I got in the.... He said, "I'm just on my way to dedicate the new Door of Hope Children's Refugee that used to be in Shanghai." And had been moved. The children had come. He said, "I was just there to dedicate the ground for the building. Why don't you come along with me?" So I did. And it happened that an old school friend from Wheaton in my class was the one that was in charge of all the building: Cora[?] Nelson. She was a sister of the Dr. Nelson who's been with Billy Graham for so many years.
SHUSTER: Victor Nelson.
EVANS: Yes. And a classmate of mine. So it was very nice for me to go. And I asked his view and he said, "By all means, I...I think the Lord would have you stay." So I hunted for a...a place and I settled and immediately I began having calls from different churches to come for evangelistic meetings and for...for developing their Sunday school, teaching their teachers and...and so forth. And so I would go for three weeks at a time. I was...I had a little home and I had a young man who stayed in an outbuilding on the property and sort of looked after the property for me at that time and I would be gone three...for three weeks down the country, right in the homes of the people, staying in their homes. It didn't matter what they gave me or what they gave me to eat. I was very careful not to...not to buy things for me to eat like oranges while I was in that town because they might...the neighbors...they followed me everywhere. In a lot of those villages they'd never seen a white woman, certainly not a gray-haired woman. And I knew that the report would go, "Well, they don't give her enough food there at that place so she had to buy some." I bought oranges and things of that sort because the diet would not include that and I would eat whatever they gave me and I would stay right in their home. It might be a tiny[?] floor, just a Japanese floor with a screen between me and the rest of the family. Where ever they put me. I was in a belfry where I had to climb a high ladder to get up there. I was in a place where...I was in...oh, had open...open all around me and I...just a bed in the middle, but I was so glad for a net because bats were flying around my head all night. I found a dead one on the floor. That gave me a tremendous introduction to the people and I was able to understand their...their needs for Christian education so well. And they knew that I was one of them. It was a tremendous help. And so I did that for quite a while and then I began to organize for more extensive Christian education courses. And also I was helping with the work of the Taiwan Evangelical Fellowship. And that was a good portion of my work.
SHUSTER: Were you there...were you affiliated with any particular mission or were...
EVANS: No, but...
SHUSTER: ...you there independently?
EVANS: ...I was...I was caring for my own needs and trusting the Lord for the supply of everything that I needed and I paid myself for my...the home and...and for the...those who helped me. I had always had those who went with me. Usually they were young men, one was a young married man, that would help with the translation, the interpreting or the teaching, however it would be. I developed tapes in three languages that were of help because they...it might be that Taiwanese, it might be Mandarin, it might be Hakka, it might be a tribal language. Sometimes there were five languages on one trip that I made.
SHUSTER: What is Hakka?
EVANS: Hakka is a...a...a group of people that are very strongly family oriented. And they used to wear long black clothes and black hats. And they were...their tribe name meant "wanderer." "Traveler." And they went around in different parts of China and then finally came over in large numbers to Taiwan so that it was the third largest group (or perhaps even larger than the Mandarin group) of those years.
SHUSTER: Were they...?
EVANS: And it was very difficult for them to accept the Gospel. The hardest of all the groups. I did far more in the last years with them. But in the early years their churches were very small and...and often pastorless. And I would find a Hakka young man who had gone to the seminary and graduated and was in a Taiwanese church. And I'd say, "Why don't you go to a Hakka church and help them?" And they would say, "They're too small to support a family. We just can't." I stayed and had evangelistic meetings with one man that had just been married and I slept on the other side of this tatami and they were so good to me all that week. Because he had only been married a very few weeks and he was so anxious for the spiritual development of that Taiwanese church. Years later, when I was having a meeting in P'ing-tung, his wife came and introduced herself to me and said, "We want you to come to our church. We have the largest Hakka church in Taiwan." And they had five children. [Chuckles] I so enjoyed that time of ministry with them.
SHUSTER: Were the Hakkas kind of like gypsies?
EVANS: No they weren't. They were farmers. They liked to settle down in...in the community and stay there and work their farms. They were very industrious but they were...they were quite sufficient until themselves.
SHUSTER: You say it was very hard to reach them with the Gospel. Why was that?
EVANS: Well, because they...they were steeped in their idolatry and their family orientation was very strong and it was Buddhism and Taoism and you just couldn't get through to that...to break into them for the Gospel. It took a matter of ten or fifteen years of preaching among them just as it did in some other countries before they really began to open up in large numbers and...and you began to feel the effect in the community of a good sized church of any size. Well, I'll tell about the...the work I did in connection with the Taiwan Evangelical Fellowship, because I think that that was quite important. Very early I realized there were different Christian groups that were all doing the same thing, in a way.
SHUSTER: How do you mean?
EVANS: Well, there might be the OMF that was printing a book, a translation into the Chinese language. And then there might be another group in another part that had translated the same book. And we felt that they needed to get together. And all these books that were being translated were by missionaries, not by nationals (or practically so). And we felt as though we needed to develop national writers very badly. So we invited a...a woman of OMF that was very capable of teaching courses on writing to come from the Philippines and then we asked the people of that community...of the whole of Taiwan, to send writers, young...young prospective writers. We had about twelve or fourteen. And we paid their...their entertainment for that period of time for them to...to take this course of about seven days. And it was a very, very fine course that that lady put on...that missionary lady. And it encouraged them, you see, to start writing original things in their own language. Then we also found that radio was divided, that TEAM [The Evangelical Alliance Mission] had radio in the middle of the...a radio studio. They didn't do the radio themselves, the producing, because they were not...not permitted to. The government has full control.
SHUSTER: You say TEAM [train whistle drowns out rest of question]?
EVANS: TEAM. Then on the other side, why there were others that were doing...they were making radio programs. And we felt that it was best for them all to get together. And I heard that Clarence Jones was going from one group to group in different countries. He was the first, you know, first Christian radio station for short wave and so on. And he encouraged others to get started--first the Far East Broadcasting, eventually TransWorld and other broadcasters in different countries. So he was coming and so I arranged for a three day radio conference and got the people together, see, under the...the umbrella of the Taiwan Evangelical Fellowship. And we had a board of directors, we had a monthly meeting and James Dixon was our president for about twelve years. And at that monthly meeting we would have different speakers that would come. It...the mission...what we were trying to do in all these countries, getting the missionaries and the nationals working together and developing national leadership so that they took...they took an active part. They have now taken such an active part the missionaries have hardly any part in it. [Chuckles] And that's true in India too as well now. But it's worked out better in India than it did in Taiwan. They really needed the help of the missionaries. There were not...not enough of them that were...that had been trained by missionaries to show the capability. So, at any rate, we did things of that sort every so often. Well then I would have, perhaps, an audio-visual aid conference. When I returned one time I met a man in Japan who had done quite a job of audio-visuals there. Now I had been using audio-visuals ever since I had come to the island and I immediately established an audio-visual center in Taipei and then at...eventually across the island on the other side and...and gave them slides and film strips and slide projectors they could use. And then I began giving...loaning also large tapes and moving picture projectors. And so in that way we were beginning to get them using visual aids, which they had never been doing on their own in their own country. So I had this man come and we had this own audio...audio-visual and they set up quite a program. The man's son has now gone there to sort of run that...
SHUSTER: What was his name?
EVANS: ...department. I forget for the moment. I'm sorry. [Laughs] Knew him very well.
SHUSTER: Did you...?
EVANS: He was with TEAM mis...TEAM mission.
SHUSTER: Did you notice a different response to the Gospel from the Taiwanese and the Chinese?
EVANS: The Taiwanese had been there for hundreds of years. I think about two hundred on the whole. I don't think that there was too much difference in their response to the Gospel. Perhaps the Mandarin people that were not Christians might be a little bit more so because they had largely just come from China and you know how the refugees often felt and those just getting settled? And perhaps they had broken up these strong family ties. The Taiwanese family ties are very strong. Ancestral worship is very strong. Taoism is stronger in Taiwan than it was on the mainland. Missionaries who were missionaries in China would tell us, "There's more idolatry and we can feel the Enemy [Satan] stronger here than we could feel in...in...in China." And that's saying a good deal. I would say that ancestral worship really is...is Taoism. It's a fear of their spirits coming back to haunt them and to...to cause difficulty. And so they're very careful to treat the older people very and to...and to provide them maybe with a house. [Laughs] They have a paper house which perhaps they burn, so they'll have them in...in the next life. And they have little oak coins which they put in there so that they will have something for the journey. They'll put food sometimes. They are very superstitious in that...in that way with their fear of the evil spirits. I remember one instance that was quite telling. I don't know if you know Colonel [Roy] LeCraw but he was the mayor of Atlanta when it became a city of a thousand...of a million people and he became a very staunch Presbyterian and helped to try to keep the faith strong in the Southern Presbyterian denomination and was rather opposed to the...the union of north and south of Presbyterians. He came over. He was supposed to be especially good in raising money. And he had...he had gone around and raised maybe another two or something for the Southern Presbyterian people. And he was supposed to be especially good with young people also and businessmen. And he had a great big motto: Christ is the Answer. Well, he came over there and he was looking at Presbyterian work. And when these speakers came, I would make arrangements for them all up and down the island in different key cities. And we had him down in the Hsin-shu area and he wanted to see the new Bible school that was being built by the Southern Presbyterians, largely by their money, for Presbyterians. There was a great big chimney in the middle of the property. They bought five pieces of property. And there's this huge chimney where they burned...they incinerated the people. And....
SHUSTER: They incinerated the people?!
EVANS: Yes, yes. The bodies.
SHUSTER: The dead bodies. Oh.
EVANS: They...the owner from whom they bought it had said he would have it taken down, because of course it must go for them to build their buildings. But when it came the time, he wouldn't do it. He said, "Oh no." He said, "If I should do it and anything should happen in town, there would be a fire or anything, why they would...they would blame me. They'd come and kill me." They tried the contractor and the builder and they couldn't get him to do it. And it made it very difficult. Finally they...they hadn't gotten anybody that would take down that building. And so a cry went out, "Pray, do pray, do pray." God sent a typhoon...
SHUSTER: Knocked it....
EVANS: ...and down...the whole thing came down. [Laughs] Isn't that a good story?
SHUSTER: Cheaper that way, too, of course.
EVANS: And nobody could be blamed.
SHUSTER: What...what was your...were you self-supporting when you were in Taiwan or....
EVANS: God supporting. I went out with no promise except a few friends. The girl who had worked with me for many years said, "I want to...." As soon as she heard I was thinking of going, "I want to give twenty-five dollars a month." She gave it faithfully as long as she lived. Trudy Clark said to Dr. Wright, "You tell her I will send her ten a month because I know she'll work." [Laughs] And there were just a few like that. I had fifty-five dollars that was more or less promised. Five wasn't really promised but she did keep it up for a yea...for my first term. I was a little short of money to run a car. I...I had seven pieces of luggage to take everywhere where I went. I was determined not to have a car. I wanted to live in a home equal, about, like the people and I wanted to do as the people and they didn't have cars and I didn't want to be different. But I had all these pieces of luggage, my equipment, my projector, you know, my books that I was carrying around. I had to take some bedding to put on their beds, [laughs] if they...if you could call them beds. And so it was...it was very difficult. And I must have said something in some letter so Dr. Wright began immediately to say that I must have a car. And I refused to ask anybody for the money, so he wrote to a bunch of the people of the New England Fellowship and...and he said (that were friends of mine) and he said, "She needs a car." And they raised just enough for me to buy a second hand Ford and...and have it licensed. And it...it com...it was just nip and tuck my whole first term. And I would...I would trust the Lord for the next dollar or two or for the rent when it was going to be due or for the young man that I had that was caring for the property. And I didn't think that that was entirely glorifying to the Lord. So when I was on furlough, I said, "Lord, it would mean so much if I could have about thirty dollars a month because it's expensive to run a car." (You paid about two forty for a gallon...equivalent of a gallon of gas, not to mention the oil and upkeep.) "And about twenty five dollars for...more that I could depend on for a salary to help me with the expenses." 'Cause I cared for everybody that had any connection with me. And by then we were beginning to build a studio to make tapes and things of that sort, too, for the mountain people. So when I was on furlough, there was...nothing happened anywhere I went. I just...I just...I just told my story. Katherine and I had furloughs together.
SHUSTER: Your [unclear]
EVANS: Katherine would...if I were coming home, she arranged to have her furlough at the same time. And then we'd have a car and we'd go together to the different places and we found that the only arrangement that we could make would...would be for us to make it ourselves, to write our own friends and our own relatives and say, "We'll be in this area if you would like to arrange a meeting." And we arranged the...the...our first furlough. I thing we had...we traveled thirty thousand miles and had two hundred services or something like that in nine months or something of that sort. [Laughs] And lived in our car, you know. I mean by that all that we possessed was in that car. We didn't have a home anywhere except the first month we rented an apartment out there to get started. Well, we...we did that our whole...our whole furlough. And I hadn't gotten much more than just expenses and nothing more promised 'til I got to the west coast and they asked me to speak out there and...and the pastor asked if we had...I had any special needs. I had been asking the Lord for anything. And I said, "Well, I have been asking if I might have twenty five dollars more." They were already giving and had given for several years twenty-five dollars for training, Christian education. They had done that while I was still in New England, before I went. So they...and then I said, "Or thirty dollars for the upkeep of my car, the expense of running my car." And...and he said, "Oh, well, we'll care for that." [Laughs]
SHUSTER: Just your [unclear]?
EVANS: Both. Both! Which I didn't expect, you know. So for the years that made it quite a little easier, because I had that to depend on. But it was wonderful the way the Lord supplied. Wonderful. We were able to have this studio. There was a.... I went over on a...I went over on a...a ship because a lady that I didn't know at all heard that I was talking of on...going tourist rate or going on a plane and she didn't know I didn't have the money to go. And she handed me a check and said, "I...you're very tired and I want you to go first class on a ship." And I went on the Queen Mary second class. I wouldn't go first class because they...they...I wouldn't be a bit interested in their type of entertainment. Second class was just about my level. They were teachers, some retired teachers. There was businessman that went every year to...to see his mother up in Scotland. People of that sort that we could have something in common with. And the Lord arranged me to be at the same table with that man. And I never talked about...about anything but if they asked me questions about my work, why I'd just tell them a little about my work. And so when he left, he put his card in my hand and he said, "If you have any need at any time, you let me know." And he was a Scotch. Older man. And so I did write him that we needed Ampex[a type of recording tape], two Ampexes or something like that. He sent me seventeen hundred at one time. [Laughs] It was wonderful the way the Lord supplied. We had this studio that we fixed. Dr. Wright raised ten thousand dollars.
SHUSTER: For the studio?
EVANS: Yes. No, for us...our whole building, for our Taiwan Evangelical Fellowship. It originally was supposed to be a partial payment for a large building where many different organizations would...would be in the same building, much as they have now done in Japan. But it didn't work out so we bought a building ourselves, a three story building. And just after that there was the Taiwan straits crisis there. And they siphoned off almost all the married people or the women that were afraid and sent in a whole lot of men without their families or single men.
SHUSTER: Who did? Who...?
EVANS: The American government. See, we were helping. They were being fired upon every other day and there was great danger that...that China was going to at least take those islands that were off Taiwan. And they were firing on them every other day. And I guess they do to this day. They still fire upon them every other day. So we...we did what we could to help in that time. And since we had just bought this building, we turned it into a recreation place for the soldiers. We had ping pong tables on the first floor and we kept it open for them. They would be out in the mud way up in the country and then be given a three day pass and nothing to do, except to go to the brothels. And there were saloons around near by. It wasn't the best part of town. And so we were able to fix it. Upstairs a place for their reading and writing and on the third floor, shuffleboard court. On the roof, we fixed up fine chicken wire so they could have basketball...practice for baskets. But it didn't work because there was enough rain there...I mean enough wire that came so that the balls would go over the top and it would gone by the time we could down to get them. The kiddies, you know, would just love to find those nice basketballs. But we had for quite a time there while they were...there was this crisis, why we cared for those boys that we could get to come in and play. They had no other place, you see, where they could play games or anything like that. Just go to the brothels, go to the saloons. They weren't taken to....
SHUSTER: This was the American army or...
EVANS: Yes, American.
SHUSTER: ...was it the Chinese army?
EVANS: No, it was the American army, American army. No, the Chinese army wasn't given time to do that sort of thing.
SHUSTER: The...were you with the Taiwanese Evangelical Fellowship the whole time you were in Taiwan?
EVANS: No, I was there until I was seventy and I retired and Katherine came out. I wanted very much for her to see Europe and see Palestine and so on. So I said I wanted her so much to come see my work and...and pack me. She's a very good packer. And it was a good excuse for her. She said she...she canceled her policy so if she was an old woman and in the poorhouse, she would have happy memories at least. So she went to...to New Zealand and Australia and so on and saw some of our workers who used to be with us in New England that were working as missionaries in the Philippines, two different girls.
SHUSTER: Who were they?
EVANS: One was Goldie Bergsten[?], who is still there and the other was Blanche Palmer, who carried on the same kind of work in the schools that I had had. I'll just take a drink, I guess.
SHUSTER: Sure.
EVANS: I'm a little bit choked up. [Sips a glass of water]. She did the same sort of work in the schools of the Philippines that she had done....
SHUSTER: [Unclear]
EVANS: Yes, but it had greatly enlarged. They were...the government was perfectly for them...her to go into the schools, and so she had a good many girls and eventually was teaching almost twenty thousand children in the schools. So she looked at her work and then she came. And I had closing programs. I had had for three years special teaching program with very definite teaching on...on how the methods of teaching and child psychology and adult counseling and the development of the Sunday School and evangelism. Three years of Bible teaching and that combined and I'd give certificates if they took the courses and completed them and a nice diploma if they had taken the whole thing, studied the book that I'd had translated and adapted for the Chinese. And she was to come to the closing programs and then we were to go together across Europe and stop in Palestine. She wanted very much to go to Afghanistan. And...and we went to see Lydia's work. She wasn't there but we were very well cared for in Vietnam...to see Lydia's tribal work that she had done so many years. And then we went to [a] missionary conference at Park Street Church [in Boston, MA]. Katherine's been supported by that church through the years and my niece Helen. And then....
SHUSTER: Why did Katherine want to go to Afghanistan?
EVANS: Because we had one of our former workers teaching kindergarten there at that same school that Wilson was teaching.
SHUSTER: Who was that?
EVANS: Uthemea[?] Forsyth[?] who is now Uthemea Harvey. She is living near us now since her retirement. But she was teaching kindergarten at that Christian school that later was destroyed. Well, then I had all my things sent home, but my heart was in Taiwan. And I knew that there were little villages all along the coast, fishing villages and farming villages that had never had the Gospel. I couldn't get away from it. A very fine surgeon, that had saved my brother-in-law Herbert's life when he had operated on him, had operated on me, was an excellent Bible teacher. He had also made a survey of our whole area and found so many of these villages and I knew that they would be in other areas along the coast. So I settled in Hsin-shu and I did that sort of work. I built a...a mobile...I got a chassis from Japan and then built a big bookmobile and...and now the Sunday School Association was printing such nice looking books, nice attractive covers and many biographies and things of that sort that weren't getting into the churches at all. And I felt that I must go to the churches with that. But I also had evangelistic books for...for Saturday night market and for some of the big factories...to have in front of the factories. Then I had all the equipment for moving pictures and I had several films. And I would go to some of these areas that had no churches and no Christians. I'd have vacation bible schools when I could...could have then, you know in the summer, in the vacation times for the children. Then I'd go nights. I'd tried to go at least three months, one night a month, to a village to give them a Gos...the Gospel by means of the preaching of whatever language and the film that would attract them.
SHUSTER: So you were...were you affiliated with any mission at this time or were you again independent?
EVANS: No, I was...I was in the same capacity. I always had a committee out there. I always worked with a bunch of men that...that were godly men. I had...had about three missionaries and four...four national pastors of different denominations, always had such a committee and always worked with such a committee. And so I had.... And Carlton Booth was one of the first ones that was on my original committee in the States. He and Sherman Williams. I don't know if you know him.
SHUSTER: No.
EVANS: But he was the president of our incorporation here, our Taiw...Taiwan Evangelical Fellowship. Then later it was called the China Evangelical Fellowship. It caused...it's called China Evangelism Age Center Fellowship now and I...I asked a man to come, Mr. Barrow[?], to come and take the work that I had built up there in the Hsin-shu area. Then I went to Tao-yuan which didn't have any missionaries at all. I intended my last year to take it a little easier. I was teaching several hours in a Christian college that had practically all heathen people. There were hardly any Christians in that so-called Christian college, hardly any teaching of Christianity. Dr. James Graham had originally built it and started it and then they had put in to that thousands...they had, five thousands, six thousand people that were Buddhists, Taoists, not interested in the Gospel. But we always tried to have some teacher, you see, that would give them some Gospel in connection with their classes. And so I did that my last year.
SHUSTER: Before when you had your bookmobile and you were going to villages which had never heard the Gospel, how did you begin? I mean how did you to start to evangelize [unclear]?
EVANS: With mov...with moving pictures and slides. I found that the older people and the children did far better with slides and I had translated the twenty...the twenty slide...the filmstrips of Wen...that Wendell Loveless had given the sound effects for and had given in English. And in our studio we made them into three different language...the major languages. And with sound effects the best we could. I used the nationals in those languages. So I had these tapes in three languages and I would show these filmstrips because they can get far more from watching a filmstrip, watching these slides, then they can from a film. You see, the film goes fast and sometimes its difficult for them. They might not understand that language too well. We used to stop it about in the middle and then preach a little. And I would give out tracts. I would slip around while they were watching. I had a huge, great big screen I put with bamboo poles so it could be seen on both sides up and down streets, places where we could put it....
SHUSTER: Did you usually hold these film, slides, filmstrips out in the open or was it...?
EVANS: Yes. Even...even when I went to churches (which I did quite a good deal Sunday nights, they liked me to come) I would, if possible, have it outdoors so we'd get the people on the street. And we...and we'd al...we had music in the language of the people and we would go all around and announce. We had great signs we put up on the sides to tell, "A mov...a moving picture will be shown," for instance, on the...in the square. We very often used the yard of a Buddhist temple in those small places. That's the only place you could and they would be perfectly willing for us to do it. I had vacation bible schools almost in the yard of Buddhist temples.
SHUSTER: Why were they willing to have you...to have you there?
EVANS: Because they liked my approach. People would say, "Oh, you can't get into that. That's a very stronghold of Tai...of Taiwanese people and they wouldn't let any preacher ever come in." And so I'd just say, "Well, I'll just see what I can do." So I would go and I would ask if I...if it would be all right for me to bring a moving picture I wanted to show there. "Oh yes, it would be perfectly all right." And they would wel...welcome me over and over and then it came time for summer and I wanted a vacation bible school in that village (it was a pretty good size village, suburb of Hsin-shu) and I went there and I asked them. I said, "Is it all right to use your park here?" And there was a nice wall, we could...you know, and trees, stumps and rocks. "Is it all right for us to come and teach the children some of the Bible stories?" "Oh yes, perfectly all right." See, they had confidence in me, some way. It's the...it was the Lord that did it, because they said it couldn't be done and I...I just...I just was sure the Lord was giving me a little shove. [Laughs]
SHUSTER: Had you...were you able to speak Taiwanese or...?
EVANS: No. There was no use. I tried. I went to language school to study conversational Chinese. My eyes couldn't stand it and I didn't have the time on the characters, though I did start to learn to read. But I found it very, very hard on my eyes and time consuming. And of course I was working full time.
SHUSTER: Sure.
EVANS: I went 7:30 in the morning and I took conversational Chinese if I could stay in an area long enough. But you see I was all...traveling all around Taiwan practically all the time.
SHUSTER: What did...?
EVANS: I had the ketaohua [Chinese phrase] you know, the courtesy language, to speak a little and I understand enough to speak in the market for what I wanted, things like that.
SHUSTER: That's the cutsewa [makes a phonetic approximation]?
EVANS: Ketaohua is the polite language.
SHUSTER: Oh.
EVANS: "Nihaoma," [Chinese phrase] you know, "How are you?" "I'm fine." That sort of thing. I taught at Madame Chiang's sewing place.
SHUSTER: [Unclear]
EVANS: That was very interesting. She had very early...she began....
SHUSTER: This was Madame Chiang Kai-Shek?
EVANS: Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, yes. She was a fine Christian. So was her husband. They gave a wonderful testimony at Easter time every year and put their message of Easter resurrection of Jesus into all their Chinese newspapers and into the English speaking newspaper. And she invited some of us into her home and she talked with us. If I had time I could tell you a wonderful story...
SHUSTER: Why don't you?
EVANS: ...that she told. I don't know that there is time. But she told us that when she first married the president and she went to his home.... Of course, she was the daughter and you know the system that the Chinese had. The older sister or the mother was the boss. And so she started to talk with her about the Gospel. And she said, "Now listen. I know that our brother has married a Christian. We are Buddhists. We leave it there." And so she never spoke about it. She just tried to live the life in front of them. And eventually that older sister got cancer. And she was an ardent devotee of the temple. She'd always pay the priests well and had always done all the ceremonies that she was supposed to do all year. And they couldn't do anything for her. They'd come over and over. They'd offer sacrifices, they'd do all sorts of things. She'd pay large sums of money and still wouldn't get any, any help. Finally she said to Madame Chiang, "Would you...would you pray for me?" And...and Madame Chiang said yes, that she would. And so she said, "Would you...I...I cannot...I...I cannot be sure that's it's God's will to heal you but I will pray that you won't suffer so." And she did and she never suffered after that. And she was so impressed by it that she asked her if she would read the Bible to her and teach her the Bible and teach her about her God. And she said, "Well, there's a general's wife who that's a better teacher than I am...knows better." And probably had more time." She was very busy. And so she came in every day and taught her and she gave her heart to the Lord and she called in her daughters-in-law and she said, "I've been a hard master. I haven't treated you right and I want you to forgive me. I am now a Christian and I am pra...I am praying that you will become one too." And those daughters-in-law and the sons and so forth became Christians and they were...were happy in the Christian life. And that woman died a happy Christian. And Madame Chiang said to us...there were several of us that had had high...high...very high tea with her, which was a tremendous meal. She said "I wish that I had spoken long before." And I had been so impressed by that. She should have talked to that...even though she said, "Don't say anything." Because she had waited years to have that woman come to the Lord and I think she felt she might have come sooner. I thought that was a very good story.
SHUSTER: Yes, excellent. One.... We're almost out of tape now. There's one more question I wanted to ask you about. When did Dr. Wright receive his title "Doctor"?
EVANS: I don't remember the exact year but it was while...while his...daug...his granddaughter was attending the academy there and....
SHUSTER: The academy where?
EVANS: Bob Jones. And it was while they were very friendly and were working together that Bob Jones said that they wanted to give him a doctorate. And they did but the daught...the granddaughter went to Wheaton afterwards to college which they didn't like at all. [Laughs] And she became a very famous doctor.
SHUSTER: Who was that?
EVANS: Her name was...her name was Pickerin[?] and she is Muriel [Wright Evans]'s daughter. She is quite a famous doctor.
SHUSTER: Well, I think that concludes it for this interview.
EVANS: [Chuckles]
SHUSTER: Thank you once again for all the details....
EVANS: I might say I finally came back when I was seventy-seven.
SHUSTER: Glad you did.
EVANS: I went my last year to that place where I could point out there was no missionary there. [End of side one of the reel of tape. Interview resumed on the other side.]
SHUSTER: You were saying about your very last year as a missionary you went to a city which had never been evangelized?
EVANS: Well, it had some churches but it had no missionary. It had, I think, two churches and it was a good size city.
SHUSTER: What city...what was its name?
EVANS: Taoyuan.
SHUSTER: How do you spell that?
EVANS: T-A-O-Y-U-A-N. I had a very fine year. I had to go and find a house, buy furniture all over again. And it seemed foolish and my heart was tired, but the Lord gave me wonderful strength. No missionary had gone and I had prayed eight years that some missionaries would go, a missionary couple. And they would go nearby, but not to that city. It might be eleven kilometers in some other direction or down in the factory area. So the Lord told me I was to go. And so I...the Lord gave me the strength. I opened it up. I had classes for high school students, classes for adults. I went out to many of the Hakka churches and showed moving pictures and encouraged them. They'd have three days of special meeting and I go for those three nights, to gather the crowds you might say, you know, and...and then they'd have preaching. I did all sorts of things. I had a very busy year and a blessed year and it was that year that Billy Graham came there and had that big campaign. And...and so I charted a bus and took groups two nights up there to...to the evangelistic meetings. Rained the whole time. We picked people up on the way that came in from churches, so that.... We...about all of them that came forward in the meeting...I don't know whether...they were rude. It was unexpectedly large and I don't think they had enough personal workers to really minister to them to much. But they gave them the new translation of the Liv...Living Bible [a twentieth century paraphrase many Christians use as if it were a Bible] in Chinese what had just been given. I gave it to all my students at...when I taught at this...this class of architects' training...over sixty. I gave them all that new...new New Testament which is very good, because the old Bible was very hard for them to understand. I hope they have the whole Bible in the Living Bible by now or perhaps even a better translation. But it was a wonderful year. I...I did not see necessarily tremendous fruit as far as real definite conversions but they had the Gospel, a good many, and I had a Sunday school in my home and even an unconverted Chris...teacher in the schools helped me with the small children [laughs] and I had Bible reading with her most every day for quite a long time. But it was good it...it..it showed the missionaries of other denominations that nothing was done of that sort, you know, in that city and soon after I left they sent the first missionaries there to live right near where I had been.
SHUSTER: [Unclear]
EVANS: So I went home happy.
SHUSTER: And that was...
EVANS: I hadn't even....
SHUSTER: ...in '79?
EVANS: No, I was seventy-seven and it was in '76. [There was a Billy Graham crusade in Taipei October 29-November 2, 1975.]
SHUSTER: '76.
EVANS: I am one year older than the century. [Chuckles]
SHUSTER: Well, that...that was a good story. I am glad we included it on the tape.
EVANS: I appreciated it.
END OF TAPE