PROLOGUE

I see my parents now, standing together singing a song. We are at the bottom of the back steps of my Grandparents’ farmhouse-on-posts at Redland Bay. I see and hear my parents now, their voices blending in pleasing harmony. Dad is tall, athletic and fair, though at this time his once round face is rather gaunt, his ‘Roman’ nose is more prominent and his grey-blue eyes are bloodshot. Mum is short, sturdy and trim, with the dark hair, brown eyes and olive skin of her Scottish-Spanish heritage. The lines of her face are classic. She is a beautiful woman. Altogether they are a striking couple.

My parents, Frank and Ella White, are very much in love. This is a time when couples do not make outward display of romance, holding hands or hugging in public. So my parents express the joy of their love in song. They are singing “The Love of God”, and if I am cute enough I may persuade them to sing “Nor Silver Nor Gold” as well. To hear their voices interweave, one taking the melody, and then the other, both capable of rich harmony, is brilliant. And those wonderful rhyming words – “human comprehension”, “infinite dimension”, “broad in its intention” – I love the sound of them, the rhythm of the verse enriching the vowels and consonants, though their dictionary meaning is not important to me. They really are good, these parents of mine! I’m so happy!

But even at the exalted age of three, I know there is a limit. You must not push my father too far. My mother is ever vigilant and intervenes whenever she senses his strength and patience are running out. There is time for only one song today. He must get back to work. He must not waste time. The chipping of the tomatoes needs to be done…

My parents found each other in North-west China. It was love at first sight, and they became engaged immediately. Dad was 35 and Mum was 31 when they met and it was the first and only love for both of them. That may be hard to believe in the modern Australian setting, but it is true. They were both far too busy preparing for and pursuing their missionary vision to have romantic entanglements in their early twenties. And then came the war. In 1945, my mother caught the first boat to India after the war at the same time as my father was flown home to a military hospital in Brisbane to be treated for Amoebic Dysentery and Tuberculosis. It wasn’t till January 1947 that they met at Lanzhou on the western reach of the Great Wall of China.

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Then, in the mail one day at the end of 2008, a package arrived from my cousins Ruth and Roslyn in Melbourne. Here were Prayer Support Letters my father wrote from China from 1939 to 1949, full of people, places, dates and stories. Ruth and Roslyn’s mother was the kind sister who printed and circulated these Prayer Letters to Dad’s supporters. To think they had been preserved in full until now! I could not read them with dry eyes. Here was far more than I ever expected to know.

Now, with these letters, the dry bones of my valley of vision have come together, covered with flesh, full of spirit. May this story live for you!