Dr. Miller was walking with Stella Houser, one of his older students, when she inquired about his plans for the future. As a former secretary to the Foreign Mission Board of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, she was constantly on the lookout for possible missionaries.
BLENDING IN: Soon after their arrival in China, Harry and Maude Miller pose in the dress of those they came to serve.
“I think I’ll continue with surgery and teaching,” he answered. “Why?”
“I think it would be a wonderful thing if you and your wife would go to China,” she said earnestly.
Miller had thought vaguely of an excursion to Mexico or Australia sometime, but China had never entered his mind. Her suggestion followed him wherever he went. He talked it over casually with his wife, Maude. Suddenly questions tumbled over one another. Was there a divine plan behind all of this? What was China really like? They knew only that China had two cities, Peking and Shanghai, and that it produced Chinese laundrymen.
Getting Serious About Service
Miller talked to his former roommate Arthur Selmon, whose fiancée, Bertha, was also a physician. He and Bertha volunteered to go, [as well as] two nurses. The idea was snowballing. [It] was one thing to decide to go to China, and quite another to get there. None of the group had more than a few cents apiece.
Stella quickly passed the word on to the secretary of the mission board. The sad news came back: “the board has no funds to send you.” If they were to go, they would have to find their own way, their own money, their own transportation. Read More
