Annie discusses the incident with the fervor and conviction of one who has received a private revelation.
“I saw the whole rest-center arranged around that chapel almost as if it were already completed, built around love. I had no idea where the money was coming from, not any kind of an architect’s plan, but it didn’t matter. I knew that Christ would find a way.”
A way began to appear when a nurse who had worked with Sister Annie visited the United States in 1954, telling children in Wisconsin schools about their work. The response was electrifying. One small boy stood up beside his desk to announce with utter seriousness, “I want to give my heart to Jesus.” The appeal spread like a prairie fire; by February, 1955, Wisconsin school children had sent more than $2,500 for the new rest home, which was called Haven of Hope Sanatorium. An anonymous contributor donated another $5,000 through the Church World Service, Hong Kong welfare agency of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America.
“Now our sanatorium had walls and a roof,” Annie says. “So we prayed for furniture and food for our patients—and for bedpans, too.
“It was a hand-to-mouth existence,” she remembers without a trace of self-pity. “Our staff had no resources—we were so short of staff that some of us worked for two years without a day off. We didn’t mind it at all; we worked with one mind and one spirit, as if that sanatorium and what it stood for was our one reason for living.”
In its early stages, the sanatorium was nothing more than a rest home. One day, almost as an afterthought on a busy round of duties, Annie asked a few of her patients to help her with some routine tasks. They pitched in at once and returned the following day to volunteer for more duties. They kept at the work for several days, then called on Annie in a kind of delegation.
“Give us instructions, show us what to do,” they respectfully demanded. “We want to learn how to be real nurses.”
Annie agreed, taking care to see that none of the volunteers exerted themselves beyond the limits of their precarious health. After three months, they insisted on examinations to show what they had learned.
From modest and tentative beginnings, the courses multiplied and expanded into a full-scale nursing school, offering a two-and-a-half-year progression of classes in eleven different subjects, with stiff exams. Most of the pupils are girls between eighteen and twenty who specialize in TB nursing. The eleventh class was graduated in February, 1962, and the demand for new enrollments was so brisk that Annie, as Director of Nursing Services, could accept only five out of sixty eager applicants.