Unfortunately, the bonds between thousands of Chinese children and their CCF sponsors were soon to be abruptly severed. By December 1949, when the Communists seized power in China, CCF sponsors were assisting 5,113 children in 42 homes throughout the country. Mills had expected that Mao Tse-tung's Red Army would prevail over the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek: he had even been reading books on Marxism and Leninism, "so that," as he puts it, "to a certain degree, I could meet them on their own ground intellectually." What he had not expected was that the work of CCF would no longer be welcome under the new regime.
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It is not known what happened to most of the 5,113 children in China's CCF orphanages... Mills does know what happened to a number of the children whom he had personally rescued from starvation and brought to the orphanage in Canton in 1945. At least 300 managed to walk more than 60 miles down the Canton-Hong Kong railroad line when the Communists took power and to cross over the border into Hong Kong.
"Of the original 700 that I picked up," says Dr. Mills, "about 280 are still in Hong Kong. Five are ordained pastors, having gone through seminary, and another 25 are involved in Christian education. There are nine doctors, four dentists, and three college professors. We have school principals -- I don't remember how many, and many teachers. We have boys who are in the Hong Kong immigration service and the Hong Kong police force. Some of the girls are nurses. There are boys in construction, and others are mechanics and things like that. And there are two who are millionaires."
When, in 1980, Dr. and Mrs. Mills returned to Hong Kong after an absence of several years, the original orphans held a huge banquet in their honor.
"After the speeches," Mills recalls, "one of the boys, who today owns a big restaurant and is very wealthy, walked over to our table and said, 'Pastor, I just wanted to say thank you for what you did for me. when I was a little boy. Everything I have today is because of you.'
"That touched me very deeply, and for a moment I couldn't respond. finally I said to him, 'Yung Wai, it isn't me, it's because God loves us. God loves you, God loves me. Through God's providence we were permitted on this land. So we must thank God, and nobody else. God is the one who has loved us, and has taken care of us.'
"Later in the evening, one of the boys announced that the grandchildren were going to sing for Grandpa and Grandma, meaning us. The little kids were sitting there in front of us, singing all these little choruses that I'd taught their grandparents: 'This Little Light of Mine,' 'Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam,' and Jesus Loves Me.' The parents had passed it on to the second and third generations."
When Mills describes his 18 years in China, he likes to quote a Chinese proverb. He says it illustrates his sense of CCF's philosophy and of the enduring effect of its work. "If you plant for a year," says Dr. Mills, "you plant grain. If you plant for ten years, you plant a tree. But, if you plant for a hundred years, you plant men."