Elsie Yueh

“Love the Lord.” These were the words that my dear mother tried her best to speak out in the last days of her life, when she still had her the strength to speak audibly. These words were also a portrayal of her entire life.

My mother was born on January 3, 1919, in Wuma Street in downtown Wen Zhou, Zhejiang Province. Her family was quite wealthy, but unfortunately was in decline in her childhood. As the oldest child, she went to Shanghai alone to study at the age of sixteen. After one year of hard work, she was accepted into the Nursing School of the National Shanghai Medical College. Feeling the emptiness and turbulence of the world, she attended a gospel meeting preached by Watchman Nee, which was held in 1937 in the meeting hall of the church in Shanghai located at Hatong Road, Wente Zone. After hearing Brother Nee’s preaching, she was saved and baptized. She was just turned eighteen years old then. She graduated two years later as one of the top students and was hired by a Catholic Hospital in the British concession in Shanghai. Only then did she have the ability to support her younger siblings financially. At the age of twenty-six, she moved to Chongqing with the medical team. She met my father, Yang Yueh, when she was working at the Army Hospital in Chongqing. At that time, my father was serving in the Air Force Communication Brigade and had not yet received the Lord. However, they fell in love in the era of war and got married on May 20, 1945. Later they moved to Chengdu worked as the leading nurse of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department in the Huaxi University Hospital.

My parents had two sons before they moved to Taiwan with the army in January 1949. My mother gave birth to one more son and two more daughters in Taiwan. She first worked in the Nurse Division of the Health Department of Taiwan, supervising all the provincial hospitals on the island. Like most of the military families in those days, they lived in a poor life and always scrambling to make ends meet. But my mother worked very hard without complaining. To improve the family’s financial situation, she applied to work for the US military medical team in Vietnam for one year. After returning, she worked for the US Yangmingshan Naval Hospital for eight years. Her distant relative, sister Ruth Kuo, helped to take care of her five children while she worked, and they were all well cared for and received good educations. In 1951, my father received the Lord because my youngest sister suffered from bone cancer and experienced the Lord miraculously. Our whole family enjoyed the church life in Hall 3 of the Church in Taipei. In 1971, my mother came to New York City to care for her oldest granddaughter. While she was here, she sensed the need of the Lord’s move in the United States, and she decided to stay and cooperate with the Lord’s move. My mother was strong in her will and perseverance with long suffering. She had experienced the strengthening of her body by the Lord’s mighty power when she studied very hard for three months at the age of 52. She passed the New York State RN license exam the first time she took it. Because of her RN credential, she not only obtained her permanent resident status, but also gradually established a solid financial foundation for the family through her frugal living and wisdom in financial management.

From my childhood, my family upbringing was strict. I witnessed how my mother was very disciplined, being hardworking and frugal. However, to others, she was always willing to help and extremely generous. Because of the Lord’s blessing and her sanctifying of her finance, she was able to be a blessing to many even in her advanced age. In 1981, she helped her six siblings and their families to immigrate to the US from Mainland China as their financial guarantor. She had planned for her four nephews to visit and study in the US. After they found jobs and settled here, their whole families were able to migrate. Now, there are over one hundred of her relatives settled in the US, and most of them have received the Lord because of my mother’s testimonies. Many of them are in the church life. Throughout her life, my mother helped great number of people, spending money, time and pouring her whole being out for them.

In 1983, by the Lord’s leading and through fellowship, she purchased a house next to Hall 1 of the church in New York City so that she could settle close to and enjoy the church life with convenience. She often opened her home for love feasts, preached the gospel and shepherded the saints. She not only cared for and gave hospitality to the Chinese-speaking saints, but she also actively cooperated with English-speaking gospel outreaches, taking public transportation to go out to distribute gospel tracks and visit the saints. Her steadfastness in preaching the gospel at an advanced age made her a pattern to many saints.

My mother once attended the middle-age training in Anaheim in 2001. At the age of 82, she studied diligently, even sacrificing her lunch break time to be equipped with the truth. Many of the fellow trainees in her term still remember fondly of her diligence. She learned to exercise her spirit all the time and in any meetings. She exalted in singing hymns and in calling upon the name of the Lord, full of freshness and liveliness. She often prophesied in the senior saints’ Evergreen Meetings. Her prophesying was usually brief but with profound truth, focusing on God’s economy. She exercised her spirit to speak forth, ministered and watered many, and often uplifted the spirit of the meetings. She was also bold to exercise and spoke forth the word of the Lord in English during the prophesying meetings on the Lord’s Day meetings.

After my father went to be with the Lord four years ago, her physical health was affected in many aspects. Although the outer man was decaying, her inner man was being renewed day by day. In the past two years, she had been in and out of the hospital several times because of the illnesses, such as pulmonary edema and diabetic foot. Before she passed away, she had charged her children again and again to love the Lord because a life without the Lord is meaningless. At 5:00AM on Oct. 21st, she rested in the Lord’s bosom due to cardiopulmonary failure at the age of one hundred years while all her children were by her side. She was indeed a woman who had been graced!

When she lived, she lived to the Lord, and when she died, she died to the Lord. Whether she lived or she died, she is the Lord’s. It is far better that she departed and is with the Lord, but to us who remain, we still cannot help missing her. May all her family, relatives, and descendants be preserved in the church by the Lord, giving Christ the preeminence in everything. Glory be to the Lord!