At the same place, some years later, we were conducting special tent meetings for Christians in the day time, and for the heathen at night. Just after our meetings began the weather turned bitterly cold, with wind and sleety rain. The tent was like a drafty ice-house. My husband caught a severe cold, which became worse each day. He had fever and severe pains in head and chest, but would not give up his meetings. One noon he came from the meeting looking very ill, and lay down to rest till the afternoon meeting.
I determined to take the Christians into my confidence, and tell them of my anxiety for Mr. Goforth. So, some time before the afternoon meeting I slipped out and called them into the tent, telling them of my husband's condition and asking them to pray for him. Oh, what a wave of earnest, heart-overflow of prayer went up without a moment's pause! The tears came to my eyes as I thought, "Surely God will answer such prayers!"
Then, fearing my husband might arrive, I gave out a hymn. A few moments later he walked into the tent in his old brisk way, looking quite well. At the close of the meeting he told me that shortly after he heard me go out the pain in his head and chest ceased, the fever seemed to leave him, and when he started for the tent he felt quite well. The symptoms did not return.
When on a visit to a certain out-station, after being there two whole days, scarcely any women had come to see us. We were so circumstanced that I could not leave the children. The third day I became so burdened in prayer that I could only shut myself up in an empty room and cry to the Lord to send women to us, as he knew I could not leave the children. From that day we always had plenty of visitors to keep us busy, either Christian women studying or heathen women listening to the Gospel.
At Tzuchow, the first place we opened together, the people seemed much set against us. After the first period of curiosity was over, no one came to hear the Gospel. As we had a nice place for the children to play in with their faithful nurse,—the one who saved Ruth's life in 1900,—Mrs. Wang and I determined to go out each afternoon and try to reach the heathen women with the Gospel. Before going out we always prayed the Lord to open a door to us for preaching. And as I now recall that time, never once did we return home without being invited into some home to preach, or at least being asked to sit on a doorstep and tell of a Saviour from sin.
One of the most outstanding evidences of God's favor and blessing was seen, at this time, in the way he provided my husband with native helpers. To carry on the plan of work we had adopted required a good force of trusty evangelists. Time and again we looked to the Lord for men and women to help us, and the answer always came.
As my husband always seemed to have plenty of men to help him, he was frequently asked for evangelists by his fellow-missionaries of both our own and other missions. I was at first opposed to his giving away his best men, but he would answer, "The Lord has been good to me; should I be less generous with my brethren?" And it certainly was remarkable how, whenever he gave a really valuable evangelist, another man, even better, was raised up shortly after. The secret of his getting men may be seen best through words of his own, taken from a letter to a friend in Canada about the time of which I am now writing: