‘My great-grandmother was born in China in 1902 in the province of Guangdong.
She didn’t know God. Her life was strongly marked by sadness. After giving birth to a daughter (who would become my grandmother), Madame Lee had the misfortune to give birth to stillborn babies.
She would have liked to have boys, as is often the wish of parents in Chinese culture.
My great-grandmother turned to Buddhist practices and even incantations to obtain boys, but without success.
One day, a couple of Chinese missionaries arrived in the village. When the missionary’s wife met my great-grandmother, she soon noticed the sadness on her face.
The missionary then invited my great-grandmother to discover the Bible in a house meeting. She accepted. She went to these meetings with her daughter Lin, then aged 12. Each time, she reminded her daughter: “We mustn’t let Dad know we’re going to see Christians. Don’t ever tell him.”
Mrs Lee and her daughter kept going to the meetings where those native missionaries shared the Gospel.
Their hearts gradually opened up to the love and the grace of God.
They both gave their hearts to Jesus.’ Yukki
Extract from the book ‘Leave the shore!’
This is the same Lin Lee who has just celebrated her 100th birthday.
Last Saturday, 33 members of the family came to the Old People’s Home near Paris for that special occasion.
Lin, who as a child discovered the Gospel with her mother in China, has kept all of her life a strong faith in God.
At the end of the celebration, Yukki’s grandmother, her face radiant, prayed for us all.
In spite of her frail body, Madame Lee is a blessed one hundred year old.
Yukki and Timothée Paton
“Leave the shore!” is available at : Leave the shore!