Rolland Baker

[Jim Watt]

*"TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE" MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt – Beth Chesed, **Tacoma***

*PO Box **25116 – Federal Way** **WA** **98093-2116***

*Web: www.2rbetter.org – Fax: 253.474.0189*

*Tel: 253.874.4265 – Email: jmbetter at gmail.com*

*April 29, 2007** *

* *

*"VISIONS BEYOND THE VEIL" – H. A. Baker*

*(Recently republished by Rolland & Heidi Baker of **Mozambique**)*

* *

*Rolland is grandson to H.A. Baker, author of over 20 books, and pioneer
missionary to Tibet, S.W. China, and **Formosa** among other areas.
Rolland's father was unable to revisit **Kunming** and Ka Do land made
famous by his father – because of Communist domination of that area. But in
2001 his son Rolland, grandson to H.A. Baker, was able to make as it were a
pilgrimage to this area of God's visitation over a generation ago.*

*            In 1944 "Visions Beyond the Veil" by H.A. Baker was given to me
in **Victoria**, **BC** **Canada**. God had that year revealed Himself to me
as a sailor in the Navy, according to His promised to me in 1942 while I was
a student at the **University** of **British Columbia**.*

*            It was one of 4 books that made a profound impression on me as
a new Christian. The others were "Answers to Prayer" by George Muller of **
Bristol** **England**, "Ever Increasing Faith" by Smith Wigglesworth, and
"40 Years of Signs and Wonders in the Life of Mrs. Maria Woodworth-Etter."
In the last 63 years I have not departed from God's challenge through these
4, but have added to them "Rees Howells, Intercessor" by Norman P. Grubb,
"Lewis Agonistes" by Louis Markos (biographer of C.S. Lewis), and "Oswald
Chambers, Abandoned to God" (author of "My Utmost for His Highest") by David
McCasland.*

*            However, the Life and books of H.A. Baker came early in my
Christian life. Following is the account by his grandson Rolland of those
early days of the last century in S.W. **China**.*

* *

*Subject: A MISSIONARY LEGACY/Rolland & Heidi Baker/**Iris** **Ministries***

*(**Kunming**, **China**, **21 November 2001**)*

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The rocks are slippery in the dark. I slide, catch myself, and notice with
my dimming flashlight that I'm at the edge of a cliff. The footpath gets
steeper and even rockier. I come to streams and choose stepping stones
carefully. I and half-a-dozen others press on down the mountainside, and I
just follow the leader. It's late and getting very cold. We crash through
bushes and inch along, carefully keeping our balance as the trail gets
narrow. The ground rises comfortingly on our right, but disappears into
blackness on our left.

            "It's just ahead!" I'm told. "Only another half-mile! We'll be
right there!" On we go. I can't picture our surroundings at all. My feet are
cracking and hurting, even with good hiking shoes. We cross more streams and
balance on more sharp rocks. I'm carrying a camera bag and just trying not
to get hurt. There would be no medical help if I did.

            Finally, hours into the night, the path levels into a small
clearing. Tall Bamboo trees are overhead. There's a hut of some kind before
us, with a dim light. We hear shouts of excitement. They've heard us coming
and run out to meet us. We get led through a low doorway into a courtyard,
and then there are hugs, greetings and bows all around. Everyone is grinning
hugely. These people have been waiting years for this day. H.A. Baker's
grandson has arrived!

            I feel like I have reached the ends of the earth. I'm deep
inside China, high up in an incredibly remote mountain valley among a nearly
forgotten minority tribe. And I have come to my grandfather's home of
fourteen years, his beloved Ka Do land. Not since the communists forced him
to leave more than fifty years ago has anyone seen a foreigner here. My
father was never able to make the trip. Now that government restrictions
have lifted, I have come to taste and see for myself the world of my
grandfather's books, accounts of God at work among the poor, meek and lowly
of the earth.

            I started this trip from Africa, where I was meeting with our
famine-stricken Malawi pastors. I flew my plane back to central Mozambique,
then our home in Maputo to the south, and on to Nelspruit in South Africa.
After a commuter flight to Johannesburg, I endured an eighteen-hour leg to
Atlanta, and then continued to Pennsylvania where Heidi and I met and
participated in a conference. She went her way, and after stops in Chicago, Los
Angeles, Tokyo and Hong Kong, I arrived in Kunming, capital of Yunnan
Province in southwest China, and the place of my birth.

            It took most of a day in a rented van to reach Mojiang, the
first main town into the mountains from Kunming. There I connected with an
old man, Li Shu Yi, eighty-three years old. He's the only one left of all
the orphans written about in "Visions Beyond the Veil," my grandfather's
account of an intensely wonderful outpouring of the Holy Spirit in his
orphanage back in Kunming. Li Shu Yi's parents died when he was little, and
he was adopted by his rich uncle and aunt who had no children of their own.
But they were cruel to him. One day when he was only six his aunt lost her
temper and fiercely beat him until her stick broke, his clothes were torn
and he lost his body functions. He escaped to the streets, lost, afraid and
crying his heart out. In the night he was robbed of his clothes and left
with the filthy, smelly rags of a beggar. My grandfather took him in. My
grandmother gave him a bath and changed his clothes, bursting into tears
when she saw his bruises and wounds.

            Li Shu Yi became a devoted son to my grandparents, never leaving
them all their days in China. In 1926 when he was nine the Holy Spirit fell
on the orphans, and as they described what they were seeing while in
visions, Li Shu Yi translated their local dialect for my grandfather, who
wrote down all that he heard for his book. This went on for months, a time
of rare and privileged revelation that has enriched the faith of believers
all over the world who have read the story.

            In 1929 my grandfather began making long, arduous journeys into
the mountains to preach to the Ka Do minority tribe. There were no roads or
buses in those days, and my grandfather would be gone for months, climbing
the ridges and descending into the valleys every day on foot. The mountain
people were wild and rough. Many were thieves and bandits. He wore their
coarse peasant clothes, ate their simple, meager food, and walked in their
thin cotton shoes, whatever the terrain. And always, wherever he went, there
was Li Shu Yi with him, his constant walking companion, translator and
helper.

            In 1935 my grandparents moved to a beautiful valley deep in Ka
Do land, where I am today. The journey from Kunming took seventeen days.
>From here my grandfather itinerated in all directions, preaching the Gospel
to poor villages clinging to terraced mountainsides. He might walk twenty
miles a day, each day in a different village, and he bore great fruit.
Thousand all over his own valley came to Jesus, and in time he was regularly
traveling a circuit of forty churches. The Holy Spirit fell on these simple
people, written about in another of my grandfather's many books, "God in Ka
Do Land." Later I would listen to my grandfather tell endless stories of
those days. He opened up to me a supernatural reality filled with angels,
demons, the power of the Spirit and the presence of Jesus.

            Tonight I am in Li Shu Yi's house, which my grandfather helped
to build right next to his own. It's a typical mountain peasant hut, nearly
bare, built around a small courtyard. The stars overhead are clear. The
night gets colder, and we pull rough wooden benches up to a pot of hot coals
to keep warm. And we talk of years gone by, when the suffering and endurance
of one foreigner was used by God to bring mercy and hope to faraway lost
sheep in an entire region. The village administrator joins us, along with
the village's several teachers. Are they Christians? No, they would lose
their government jobs if they were. Later, later. But they want to hear more
about this Jesus. My friend Ken Zhao from Shanghai is with me on this trip,
and together we give out the Good News. We read John 3:16. Jesus is worth
everything. We live and move by His Spirit, and in Him we inherit all
things. One teacher has never read the Bible at all, and we give him a copy.
He is excited. We tell stories of what God has done for us. Everyone is
concentrating intently on our words. Li Shu Yi fervently affirms us.

            It is late and our guests have to leave. They are moved, and if
they choose Jesus, they may pay a very high price in the persecuted society.
China's cultural revolution and communist repression put out free expression
of Christian worship. Even now most believers remain careful and low-key,
treasuring what they know quietly in their hearts. The intense revival my
grandfather saw is subdued after two generations. But Li Shu Yi prays his
heart out for his people and land, grief-stricken at the blindness of China's
new and materialistic society. He has suffered in prison for his faith and
his service to my grandfather, and threatened with execution. Unafraid of
death, he kept insisting on leading my grandfather's churches after 1949.
The government tried hard to bring accusations against him, but could find
no evidence of wrongdoing. He has been allowed to register his churches
legally. Today these forty churches have become eighty, and LI Shu Yi is
still their spiritual father. Other revival movements in China prefer to
remain unregistered and suffer the consequences, but we must be grateful for
what Li Shu Yi has been able to accomplish.

            I sleep on Li Shu Yi's own bed, a short, hard straw mattress.
Even under a thick quilt and fully dressed, I am so cold. The household is
up before dawn and soon I emerge to find a fire blazing in the courtyard. We
have noodles, peanuts and fruit for breakfast. Li Shu Yi's son and family
keep the house now, and they spare no effort to honor my visit. Ken and I
are taken around the hillside and shown what my grandfather planted and
built. We walk his paths and stand in his gardens. We see his prayer
mountain, a high peak overlooking his valley where he took hundreds of
believers at a time to fast and pray. In the far-off haze among the rice
paddies and vegetable gardens we spot the villages in which every family
came to know Jesus. All around the valley stand more peaks that complete the
physical grandeur of this rich, fruitful field of mission.

            Li Shu Yi talks as we walk. His eyes fill with tears over and
over as he remembers my grandfather's sufferings. He is so moved by God's
grace working through the love of this foreigner for the Ka Do mountain
people. He tells me how my grandfather would lean on his stick against the
hillside when he was sick and in pain, always pressing on, always praying
for healing, always trusting God for everything. And Jesus would be with him
and carry him forward. During World War II no support could come from
America, so Li Shu Yi and my grandfather planted peppers in their garden and
traded them for food. Li Shu Yi made hats with my grandmother's sewing
machine and sold those. My grandmother wrote many letters, and everywhere my
grandfather traveled, he was somehow writing more books, true treasures of
spirituality.

            It's late in the morning and time to go. I have a conference
back in Africa. Ken and I start the climb out of the valley, accompanied by
Li Shu Yi and his grandson and granddaughter. This old man still walks
everywhere, just like my grandfather did until he was ninety. We finally
make it to a little town high on the ridge, rocky, windswept and so far awayis
Spirit, and in Him we inherit all things. One techer has never read the
Bible at all, and we give him a copy. He is excited. We tell stories of what
God has done for us. Everyone is concedntrating intently on our words.
KLLfrom all that we know. It's market day, and the little streets and
alleys
are jammed with goods in stalls and on the ground, all carried in by great
effort over long distances across the mountains. We climb into our tiny
hired van, made in China, and then for hours struggle, bounce and lurch over
a fiercely rough dirt road. Rocks, ditches and mud hinder us all the way.
Often we get out and push. We get to a tar road, but it is torn up and winds
so tightly that it still takes us three hours to travel forty miles.
Eventually that night we arrive in Mojiang and we say good-bye to Li Shu Yi.
His churches and people need help. We must return. Jesus will not forget
them.

            A Seven-hour bus journey the next morning brings us back to
Kunming. I cannot comprehend how my grandfather made that trip on foot over
and over, year after year. How could a foreigner endure that much isolation
and deprivation? No other missionary wanted to join him. And only Li Shu Yi
stayed with him every step of the way. Today I have my grandfather's
hardwood walking stick, carved by Li Shu Yi and worn down many inches. It is
a testament in my hands of what our King and Lord will do with one willing
servant lover.



            Now I am back in Africa among people even more poverty-stricken
than Chinese country peasants. Only a few years ago Mozambique was also
repressed terribly by a communist regime. Today it cries out in desperation
for Jesus and the Gospel, and only a small band of missionaries are trying
to pull in a harvest of millions of souls. Conditions in most of the country
are primitive beyond Western imagination, but we have freedom to preach.
"Who will endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus" (2
Timothy 2:3)? Who will say with Paul, "I consider my life worth nothing to
me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has
given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace" (Acts
20:24)?



God used my grandfather's life to inspire and encourage my father and mother
in their lives of missionary service, and now He continues to do the same
with Heidi and me. I doubt that I would ever have considered working with
orphans and the poor in forgotten, nonstrategic corners of the world without
my grandfather's example. But in his life I see the Good Shepherd, who lays
down his life for the sheep (John 10:11). May such glory invade all our
lives until we see his face and are safely home with Him in His heavenly
Kingdom.

            With much love in Jesus, Rolland



Rolland and Heidi Baker, Directors, Iris Ministries, Inc

P.O. Box 563, No. 654/29 Zimpeto, Av. Mozambique Km. 11

Maputo, Mozambique – Tel: +258-82-303-068 – Email: Rolland at irismin.org

Website: www.irismin.org



U.S. address for support checks and personal mail

(money will be wired to Africa and letters forwarded by DHL):

1900 Via Sage – San Clemente, CA 92673 – USA





*NOTE: **Rolland Baker will be ministering in the Port Townsend area of **
Washington** **State** -- June 9-11. Interested people from **British
Columbia**, **Washington** & **Oregon** are already inquiring and planning
to attend. If interested, contact Darrell & Carlene Dahlman, Email:
darrelldahlman at gmail.com – Tel: 503/997-0713*

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