"Hold out your hand, dear!"
Hsiao Yun (Little Cloud) felt her fingers close tightly over a shiny penny. "Hsieh hsieh! We pu p'ei!" she cried politely. She was saying, "Thank you. I am unworthy."
Hsiao Yun was the little four-year-old daughter of Mr. Hu, the gatekeeper at the mission compound. She lived with her parents, her brother Tung (Winter), and her older sister Ping-an (Peace), in a little two-room cottage close to the gates of the compound. She played a lot in the tiny front yard, but mostly she played around the big gates, watching the people entering or leaving.
Sometimes when the missionary or his wife were going out or coming in, they would give her one or two pennies, thinking naturally that she spent them on candy or on the sugared apples children dearly love in Manchuria.
Hsiao Yun played happily through the spring and summer and early fall. Then it was that the missionary had some special meetings to try to get the Christians to have an "All the World Heart." He spoke especially about India, and of the need of the Indian children to hear the Word of God.
Autumn changed into winter, and with winter came that biting, bitter cold of Manchuria. With it, too, came Hsiao Yun's birthday, when she became five years old. Then one day, when she was playing in the yard and about the drafty gateway, she caught a cold. Mrs. Hu, her mother, thought it was just an ordinary cold, but it quickly developed into pneumonia. Everything possible was done for her, but the missionary and his wife and her own parents soon saw that there was no hope. She was sinking fast.
One day as they stood beside her bed Hsiao Yun sat up and said, "Mother, I'll meet you in heaven," and she passed quietly into the arms of her loving Savior.
It was evening. A bright fire burned in the stove, and the curtains were drawn, shutting out the dark and cold. A lighted lamp was standing on a table, and the missionary and his wife were sitting near the fire, talking over the happenings of the day. Suddenly the quietness of the evening was broken by someone knocking at the door. The missionary opened it, and in the light which flooded the doorway he saw poor Mrs. Hu standing there, crying.
"Come in," he invited, and on entering she went straight to his wife and offered a small soap-box to her. With tears streaming down her cheeks, and a voice choked with emotion, she said, "Hsin-niang (Teacher's wife), my little Yun before she died gave me these pennies, which she had saved up, all unknown to me. She said that they were to be used to buy Bibles for the poor Indian children."
The missionary opened the box, and sure enough, there were all the pennies that Hsiao Yun had received.
The missionary and his wife added enough money to make five dollars, and then sent it to India.
So a little Chinese girl had had an "All the World Heart" and had thought of her sisters in India without the gospel of God's grace.
Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.