Rats invading her bedroom, fireworks exploding at funerals, and delectable baby mice soup served to the author were not her expectations when she signed the necessary forms to go to China as an English teacher through the Amity Foundation. Nor did she foresee riding a motorcycle behind a most polite Chinese man or eating mystery meat later identified as canine solely for food.
Even from a devout teenager, Martha Sue Todd was convinced that the Lord was calling her to become a missionary to China, and she never gave up on that pursuit. In her early years of teaching, however, a handsome young man proposed to her, they married, and they became the parents of one son. After the death of her husband of forty-one years, she again felt a strong pull to service in China. Accordingly, she learned about Amity Foundation, which allows foreign organizations to send English teachers into China.
The author met the requirements and left the United States in 1988 at the age of 67 to serve for 13 years a people she came to love with an undying devotion.
Few western amenities awaited her, but she never failed to adjust. Walking four flights of stairs, living in one room, and having access to a usually non-functional toilet failed to diminish her enthusiasm, and soon many of her students visited her in her various lodgings.
She learned to appreciate Chinese customs, such as red wedding dresses, fireworks at funerals, and strange food that would make most Americans wince.
When the author returned to the United States in 2002, she dreamed of revisiting her second home country and was able to return to China in the summer of 2004, when she visited many of her former students andother Chinese friends.