Anna Bog Madsen's letter to her relatives in Odense continues with a description of the turn of the year to 1920 and the Annam's passage through Asian waters:
"And here in the 'Red Sea', when the ship's bells rang the new year, I knelt down and entered the year 1920 on my knees. God bestowed on me the words in Jn. 15:5: 'I am the vine and you are the branches. He who remains in me and I in him shall bear much fruit. Without me you can do nothing.' Stay in me, bear much fruit. As a matter of fact, it is so simple, and that made me happy.
"Looking back at last year, I can only say how good God has been and how he has been faithful to me during this long journey. Thanks to you also for having prayed for me. No place else other than here on the 'Annam,' where God has placed me, would I prefer to be. And he gave me the certainty that the journey will be crowned with blessing. The others celebrated New Year's like they did Christmas: they boozed and danced until late morning. How can they be bothered and how can it satisfy them?
"I have had several good conversations with the captain concerning the Kingdom of God. At first, he did not like to talk about it, but now he says that 'it is a pleasure for him to talk to me about spiritual matters' and all Sunday forenoon he sat reading my Bible. I pray God for a revivalist meeting on board and I said to the captain, 'Imagine you could win all these men for Christ.' However it is necessary first to see that one needs salvation and then wishes to be redeemed. God can do it. 'If you can believe, you shall see God's love.' And then the young lady with whom I share a cabin, she is not at all happy and those amusements do not satisfy her, so I told her about the perfect peace and happiness that is only found with Jesus. She answered, 'It must be wonderful to feel like that.'
"Otherwise, days are all the same. At 6:30, I bathe, which takes 15 minutes in the morning. After that, while the young lady is taking her bath, I have my silent prayer time during which God bestows the Holy Spirit on me and gives me strength from day to day to live a holy life. Then we walk for 30 minutes before breakfast, which is taken at 8:30, because it will be too hot later when the sun is high in the sky. At that time, we take a place at the upper deck, protected by awnings. We have thus a hyggelig outdoor living room, with a table in the middle and many deck chairs and other chairs, and little Jorgen's bed and carriage. How wonderful it is, only the monotonous sound of the motor and wind shaking the awnings that breaks the silence. At 3 o'clock we drink tea up here. And here I sit writing to all my friends a couple of hours, just about every day. Not surprising that Mr. Jensen in his poem wrote about me 'of letters she seems to write a mess.'
"Especially on Sundays, I miss God's people. How I long to sit in God's house among you. The captain talked about me holding a meeting here if I wished. To this I answered, 'Yes.' He also said, 'Maybe they will laugh and hardly come out.' Yes, in a way this is unfortunately the way this type of Danish person is. Americans seldom laugh at such things.
"We passed through the gulf of Aden out of the great Indian ocean, where we one day passed a small coral island called Minkoy, an island that is 700 yards long and has a population of about 3,000. There are no gardens. They live on coconut, rice and fish. They read and write. I saw many lovely coconut palms there. The next day we sailed along the coast of Ceylon [Sri Lanka]. We were told that on Ceylon you find the Garden of Eden situated in 'Kandy'. It was a beautiful coast with mountains. We saw the town of 'De Galle' in the harbor of which was anchored a big man-of-war [combat ship]. I counted 30 small fishing boats. The captain steered the boat alongside one of them and Mr. R. took a picture. There were three Indians on board. It was a funny little boat.
"We are now approaching the Malay peninsula, where we shall anchor in Singapore, called 'London of the East', from where I shall mail this letter. We expect to stay there for two days. Now we hear phonograph music. Mr. R. brought one along. He and Mr. G. are not continuing further than Singapore. From there we need a week to go to Hong Kong, where we shall stay a day or two. Then three days to Shanghai. From there I take a mail boat to Dalny [Dalian], another two days. Otherwise, I should go all the way around Japan, which takes 14-18 days. 'Annam' on the other hand, also goes to Dalny, but I need to hurry to [Beijing] to start my language study.
"Jan. 14. Yesterday early in the morning we caught a glimpse of Sumatra's coastline, the mountain 'Gold Elephant' and a tongue of land called 'Diamond'. With our binoculars we were able to see something like pine trees all the way down to the sand and the sea, and then at 12:30 at night we saw the most marvelous sight in the sea. It looked like hundreds of electric lights lit up in the water, big as plates, caused, according to the captain, by jellyfish moving around in the water full of phosphorus. So beautiful! Simultaneously the moon rose from the bosom of the sea and cast a silver streak over the ocean. No wonder that we only turned in to go to sleep at 2:30. Mrs. J. always wants to enjoy herself. She never sits down to rest for a while. She wants to be up late every evening. I got to bed at 11, and am always disturbed when Miss P. comes in.
"I look forward to being in China soon, it seems in around 14 days. Tomorrow, we arrive in Singapore. I pray God to meet missionaries there and maybe attend a meeting in the evening. We are really close to the Equator but shall not pass that parallel. I often think about you and pray for you. The important thing is to be faithful until death! They often laugh at me, because of not participating in this or that, and that can make you feel hurt right into your heart, but then God shows me that there is anyway no happiness in their pleasure. They even make fun of me because I write so much.
"So now a thousand dear greetings to all of you.
"In God's peace, yours ever,
"Anna"
Translation from the Danish by Preben Jorgensen.
The image above is a painting of the harbor at Point de Galle by Sir Whately Eliot.
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