B. L. Anderson was a brother of J. N. Anderson who was the first commissioned Seventh-day Adventist missionary sent to China. The boys were born in Denmark but migrated to America in their early years. Ben went to Battle Creek College, then to Union College, and finally to the University of Colorado to get his education. After graduation he did ministerial work in Wisconsin and was ordained in 1905.
Hearing the mission pleas from his brother for more workers to go in China, he and his wife responded to the call and went as missionaries to Kulangsu, Amoy, in the Fukien Province of South-east China. They arrived there in March of l906. Kulangsu was an island across the bay from Amoy which was on the coast, with the beauties of a tropical isle. Here on a lovely slope above their private beach, they built their home. In fact, the two missionary families, Hankins and Andersons, lived together in an old home while theirs were being built.
Mr. Anderson's work for most of the early years of service was as principal of the Bee Hwa Training Institute for boys. He believed that training the nationals was the most important task to be done so that they in turn could carry the truth to their families and villages scattered far away. In 1908 he became the Asiatic Division Educational secretary and in 1912 – 1914, he was the director and treasurer of the Fukien Mission. And from 1915 – 1917 he was the superintendent of the South China Mission.
Elder Anderson's heart was in Kulangsu and he remained there until he was released from the concentration camp during the second world war in 1944. In fact, he was held in his own home and guarded by a Japanese soldier, while his wife was interned in Hong Kong. This separation was instrumental in breaking down their health and after 44 years of service in China they were forced to return to America. Not many missionaries could leave a longer legacy to the mission cause.
After the death of Mrs. Anderson, Elder B. L. Anderson remained in the home of their Chinese son and his wife in Washington, D.C. as Elder Anderson declined.
After the death of “Aunt Julia,” as she was so endearingly addressed by the younger missionaries, Mrs. Milne wrote a tribute which gives us a very vivid picture of the work of this missionary couple.
Tribue to Julia (Mrs. B. L.) Anderson by one who knew and loved her.
Sunset hour of July 3, 1968, marked also the close of day for another pioneer in mission service as ninety-year-old, dear, modest, patient, self-effacing, blind “Aunt Julia” closed her eyes for the last long sleep. Hers had been a life full of service, sacrifice, disappointment, hardship, and joyful satisfaction.
Born near Poysippi, Wisconsin, January 6, 1868 into the Danish home of a Mr. Peterson, she early learned the arts of home-making and cooking, and became fluent in the use of both Danish and English languages. Her choice of a profession, nursing, learned at Battle Creek Sanitarium, was to stand her in good stead in the many years of service that lay before her as she and her husband, B. L. Anderson, answered the call to China in 1905.
Shortly after their arrival in Hong Kong, they were sent to Amoy to begin mission work – a place where there were few Christians and fewer missionaries. Believing that a mission school is the best source of providing Christian workers, the Anderson's found a beautiful location on a hill sloping down to a lovely sandy beach on the Island of Kulangsu. And there they began to build Bee Hwa School, often dipping into their own slender resources when there was no money available in the struggling young mission treasury. With a rare foresight, brother Anderson bought land, piece by piece, as it became available till at last they had a fine property for the school. Stone cut from their own land was used for the first several feet with brick for the super-structure.
Now that Bee Hwa (for boys only, for co-education was unheard of in China in those days) was a going concern, “Aunt Julia” began to lay plans openly to carry out her own secret ambition. Girls, too, should have a chance to get an education. “Benjy” was persuaded to buy another bit of land higher up on the hill overlooking Bee Hwa.
Slowly the little fund grew. For years Sister Anderson had employed Chinese girls and women in the making of fine “pillow” lace for edgings, doilies, and table linen. This she and her friends in America had sold and every penny had gone into the bank. But the fund grew so slowly, so a dairy was started to sell rich, clean, whole milk to the increasing European and wealthier Chinese population. Now, there are tricks in all the trades, and the delivery man saw whereby he could sell more milk by the simple expedient of watering the milk (and pocketing the difference in the sales). But when Sister Anderson heard about that, she promptly dismissed him, and set about to assure the delivery of clean, safe, grade A milk to her customers by rising at three o'clock in the morning and personally supervising the sterilizing, capping and sealing of every bottle of milk.
In a pond below the hill which had been a favorite bathing place for the water buffaloes, Sister Anderson planted lotus flowers, and this became a source of income from both flowers and their seed pods which are highly prized by Chinese cooks. There was no work too hard, no hours too long, no opportunity too trivial to earn the necessary funds for her beloved project! And what careful planning, what hours of prayerful entreaty to the throne of God went into the building of Bee Hwa Girls' School! Don't tell me the missionary wife has an easy time. I knowhow she skimps and saves and cuts corners wherever she can to make the meager funds go furthest. Stone cut from their own land was used entirely in this building, and as it rose, layer upon layer, the dream of a lifetime was nearing fulfillment.
Never robust in health, and especially since an attack of very virulent smallpox contracted early in her mission experience, while nursing a Chinese patient had almost cost her life, yet she would allow neither malaria, dengue, nor any other illness to keep her long from her teaching or her work among the Chinese girls and women. Days were full of ministry, caring for the sick, providing clothes or food where it was most needed. Then there were visits to be made to up-country chapels where her husband's leadership was developing an ever-expanding work. Ah yes, her days were full, and when furlough times rolled around she still was not willing to lay down her burden for a season of rest.
At last came the proud day when Bee Hwa Girls' School was finished, dedicated, and she could turn it over to the Mission, free of debt, and at no cost whatever to the Mission—her contribution to the upbuilding of the womanhood of China.
We would say that such an accomplishment deserved rest and peace in her declining years, but such was not to be her lot. The horrors of World War II caught her in Hong Kong, and her husband up-country, where he had gone to visit churches and scattered believers. He was able to get from Swatow to Amoy, and was subsequently interned in their own house with a Japanese guard to watch his every movement. However, he did not suffer too much as he was able to get some food and did his own cooking. Not so with “Aunt Julia,” for she was taken to Stanley Camp and suffered the starvation diet and abuse that all internees there endured. Separated from her husband for many months, not knowing what had happened to him, for only rarely could a smuggled letter find its way to her, it is no wonder that she arrived in New York aboard the SS Gripsholm, in the first exchange of war prisoners, alone, weak and emaciated, that her first thought and request was for news of “Benjy,” who was still interred in China.
Friends who had met the ship in New York took her to their Washington home where freedom, love, care, and good food for the next three months did much to restore the emaciated body, but could not restore the eyesight that was gradually failing.
In the years that followed the war, and their return from 44 years of mission service, their every thought and care has been for the many Chinese boys and girls they have helped to educate. “Getting them ready to go back to China to work for their own people, when they can get in,” was the great, underlying reason for all their subsequent sacrifices and efforts.
And when Aunt Julia breathed her last, it was with the comforting presence of one of her Chinese boys and his wife who ministered to her in her dying hours in the nursing home. Aunt Julia sleeps and Uncle Ben lives on in the reveries of the aged, now comfortable in the home of this Chinese “son” who owes his education to Aunt Julia and Uncle Ben.
Yes, her sons and her daughters shall come from far, and many from the land of Sinim shall “rise up and call her blessed”. -R.M. Milne