Section Ten

“I have fought the good fight” (2 Tim. 4:7)

Sister Barber was full of faith. She would not see a doctor, take medicine, or take an injection when she was sick. At the end of February 1930 she contracted enteritis. Her cousin, Sister Lee, was also sick and bedridden. Sister Barber asked her roommate, Sister MuShe Lee, to do the massage for her high fever. After her temperature came down, she prayed for many of her co-workers by name.

Sister Tsou asked her, “Sister Barber, when you should be praying for yourself, why do you only pray for us?” She answered, “All of you co-workers are always on my mind. I am burdened, so I pray for you.” After several days of sickness, she left this world. It is said that before she departed she was shouting, “Life, life!”

She had a few hundred dollars at the time of her death. After her funeral expenses, only about twelve dollars were left. She had truly stored up her treasure in the heavens. Upon hearing the news of her death, many co-workers cried as desperately as if they had lost their own parents. Brother TsungShin Chen wept, saying, “I can’t reach my spiritual mother, who loved me and corrected me.” Some co-workers, like Sister MuShan Lee, suffered a grief that could not be soothed until they received a letter from overseas that said, “This thing is from the Lord.”

Sister Barber was buried in a cemetery for foreigners on top of the mountain at Pagoda Anchorage. Several brothers, including Brother LanJu Wang, bore her coffin from her house to the cemetery. Her tombstone was engraved, “The Resting Place of Sister Barber.”