During the war years, Mills managed to arrange shelter for the children he rescued, but feeding them was far more difficult. He appealed to the foreign relief agencies based in China's wartime capital of Chungking, far to the northwest in Szechwan province. Before long, a number of donors, among them the Australian legation and the Canadian Red Cross, had sent him enough money to buy rice for the children.

Ironically, it was the ending of the war that put the children in danger of starvation again. When in August of 1945, the Japanese surrendered, the relief agencies pulled out of Chungking, thinking that their work was done. Dr. Mills soon learned that he would have to find another source of funds to support the children. His response to the crisis was characteristic: he asked his 700 charges to help him pray.

"I told the kids they'd better pray the Lord would find another source of supply for us," he says. "If not, it would only be a matter of about three weeks when our rice would be used up, and we'd all have to go back on the street as beggars again."

The children prayed, but prayer had to be accompanied by action. Mills set out for Canton -- about four days' journey from Toishan at a time when there were virtually no roads in the district. Arriving on a Sunday, he went to church. The speaker at the International Church in the International Settlement was a certain Reverend Erwin Raetz of the Dutch Reformed Church, from Grand Rapids, Michigan. While greeting the congregation after the service, Raetz asked Mills what had brought him to Canton. "When I told him what I was doing," Mills remembers, "he said, 'That's quite a coincidence. I've come back to China representing China's Children Fund of Richmond, Virginia. I suggest that you write to Dr. J. Calvitt Clarke and ask him to help you.'"

As a contract chaplain for the American Advisory Committee, Mills had special mail privileges which enabled him to dispatch a letter to Clarke in Richmond with unusual speed. He remained in Canton for the next two weeks awaiting a reply. At last, he says, "I received a cable from Dr. Clarke. He was taking us on, lock, stock, and barrell -- 700 children. To us it was a direct answer from heaven."