A Time to Go Home — Bertha Smith

Leaving China and Returning Home

It just broke my heart when after nearly 42 years in China I had to quit and come home. The calendar had gone around again and I was 70 years old. I didn't know I was an old lady. I was carrying about 15 hours of work a day, teaching Old Testament in our seminary, sponsoring a church, a new church that the mission had asked me to start right down in the center of the capital city of Taiwan.

I had my last 11 years in Taiwan, you can't do mission work under the Communists, and I knew that, so I got out and they came in and went to Taiwan, the first Mandarin-speaking missionary over there, and was there nearly two years before any of our other Baptist missionaries went.

Well, there my work was done, it was time to go home. Well, all the other missionaries, the younger missionaries, said none of us can keep up with Bertha. I don't know whether they could have or not, I know they didn't.

Stewardship of the Body as God's Temple

But I have to add here, I don't deserve any credit for my wonderful health. I just inherited a wonderful, strong body, and I've always cooperated with the Lord and eaten the proper things, and I never ate snacks at any time after I got going between meals.

I knew to eat at mealtime. And I took so seriously everything that I was taught. I did what I was taught in school and what my teachers told me to teach, and they told me how to eat, and I ate that way.

And I ate like my mother had taught us to eat. Always had recess in the middle of the afternoon, the middle of the morning when we were small or when we were working. She sent something out to us to eat, but if we were not doing physical, manual labor, we didn't eat between meals after we got half-grown.

Well, that was good teaching. Anyway, I knew to exercise, so I don't deserve any credit for my wonderful health. I just praise the Lord. And up until I began to teach Old Testament in our seminary, if I had ever studied after ten o 'clock at night for any examination, I would have gotten on my knees and asked the Lord to forgive me for sinning against his temple.

I knew my body wasn't my own, and the Lord was living inside of me from the time I was saved. And it was my duty to take care of his temple. Well, I don't deserve any credit for that, either. Somehow or another, I just had that much sense and that much appreciation for the Lord to go to bed at night.

I got up early, but I went to bed at night. Well, anyway, I had to come home, because you can't stay after you're 70, and the Foreign Mission Board has to have an age limit to send people home, because we would never know.

You see, the thing you know with grows old, too, and we'd never know we were old enough to come home. Well, anyway, it just broke my heart. And I was weeping one night over it, and I never said a word outwardly, because I knew the board had to have a time to go home.

I was just so sorry my time had come. And there were just such open doors on the island of Taiwan, and so few to work. And I felt like I'd just learned that the Chinese were so gracious. They had all kinds of farewell parties and said all kinds of nice things.

And I went home one night after one of those farewell services. I don't mean parties. I mean social parties. I mean church parties, church meetings, religious meetings. And I went home and I said to Mrs. Martha Franks, the woman I was living with, well, if very much is true about me that these Chinese are saying, and they think it is, I would just be ready now to qualify as a missionary.

I'd just be ready to begin. And that's just the way I felt, that I could use all my past experience and with all my blunders in the past and just start over. That's really the way I felt. Well, the Lord comforted my heart that night when I was crying over leaving the work there.

And he said, I'm taking advantage of your going home. I want you to go home and do what you can do to help bring a revival to Southern Baptist churches so the whole world can hear the Savior, not just this little island you're working on.

I said, Lord, I'll do my best. And then the next night he gave me the message I was to bring home. I wasn't weeping. I didn't weep anymore. I knew I had a task at home. And he gave me the message that I was to bring home to you and the other Southern Baptist churches.

Isaiah's Call to Expose Sin

Now, what do you suppose it was? Isaiah 58 .1, cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and cause my people to know their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins. Now, there's a difference in transgressions and sins.

Transgression is to trans, is to cross over, go over the border, get out of bounds. And of all people who have been blessed and all denominations who have been blessed with the interpretation of this book as the Baptist, our forefathers, but the thousands, died in Europe to keep this truth alive.

And have we kept it alive? Well, it's not easy just to always show people their sins. But I don't just only show people their sins, by contrast, I show them God's holiness. We had summer conferences, and the Latter-Moon Christmas offering, which we got $200 or $300 apiece in four groups, divided into four groups in China to help people go to a summer conference.

We had buildings, but they didn't have to have a summer resort, we just went to a mission station somewhere where the school buildings in the summer, and had a summer conference. Well, when we went over to Taiwan, and we couldn't send that money to China if the communists took over, we got all of the money, which was $1 ,000 for a conference.

And no, we took that $1 ,000 for two summers and bought land and put up some simple buildings and had a summer conference 15 miles up the hill, up a mountain from the capital of Taiwan, and had a summer conference.

And the Lord just worked gloriously. And it's wonderful to get people that are not saved, especially our new Christians, away from their environment and teach them the word of God. And where there's no opposition and where they're with other Christians and they see how wonderful it is to become Christians, it's very easy to win them.

Well, one year somebody asked a woman in the church, who was a Christian, Are you going to the conference this year? She said, No, I'm not going this year. Miss Smith is the speaker, and she just talks on sand.

Well, she had enough money to go, I mean, her husband had work, and she could go in there. Friends knew she should go, so they urged her to go. And she went, and I didn't say one word about sin the whole week.

What do you suppose I talked about? The holiness of God. The holiness of God the whole week. And, lo, that woman saw her sin. And if she didn't go back, made over. And she told me about this herself later.

So I just have two subjects to talk to people about. And people ask me, You're coming, what's going to be your subject? And I said, I just have one subject. If it's put in one sentence. The holiness of God and the sinfulness of man.

How we're failing God. And how Christian people are failing God. With communism upon us. And a third of our Congress reported now to be communist. One third, no, more than a third. A hundred communists in our Congress in Washington.

And a hundred men there, sincere men, working to save our government. Much which they call conservatives. And then a hundred and about a hundred and thirty-five on the fence, waiting to go whichever will get them re-elected.

And so much communism in our universities. And the children being taught of them so much in our public schools. Friends, it sure is a time. It sure is a time. To show the Lord's people their sins. And I'm trying to do what the Lord asked me to do.

And I'll be showing God's, talking on God's holiness tomorrow morning. And I'm trying to show people their sins everywhere I go. And of course the Lord never lets me off. He doesn't let me off. He shows me mine occasionally.

The Poster of Salvation and the Barriers of Sin

Well, the old Chinese professors, scholars in China had an expression. One picture is worth a thousand words. And we missionaries take advantage of that. And make all kinds of illustrations for the eye.

And those, when China was China, somebody clever could draw one. And send it down to Shanghai to the Christian Publication Society. And have them printed on paper for a few cents each. And people just all over China could buy them.

And they're very wonderful for people that do not have much language. You can start with a poster that people can see. Before you get fluent enough in the language to teach a Bible passage. We have to study two years before we are missionaries.

And stand two years examinations in Chinese language before we are counted as missionaries. Well, here's a poster which was drawn by a British missionary. Who was the private secretary for Dr. Campbell Morgan.

And she did all of his handwork for his annotated Bible. And she says that Dr. Morgan gave her her Bible. Well, she's given it to other people. And this poster is just so, shows so well what people, that I like to use it.

There's a Christian woman praying. Chinese Christian woman praying. Well, she's, this word up here is salvation. It's literally translated saving grace. Salvation. It's done up like a, with many facets.

Like the cut of the diamond in your ring. And this woman is praying for all the graces that her salvation includes. Now, she's really sincere. She really wants all the Lord has for her. So she prays. Well, she's praying.

Now, she's not very well taught. So she's praying for a home in heaven. Well, Jesus told his disciples he was going back to prepare a home for them. And she's had a home being prepared since the day she was saved.

And here she's praying and begging the Lord to prepare a home in heaven for her. And she's saved. He's already done that. That would be like a young woman sitting down by her husband when he comes in from his day's work.

And saying, oh, I wish you'd become my husband. You just suit me exactly. I just give, I would just give the word if you would marry me. I would just, just love to have you for my husband. Now, you know what that man would do?

He'd make an appointment with the psychiatrist for 9 o 'clock tomorrow morning for that wife. And he'd have a right to. And yet we treat the Lord just like that. Begging for something that he's already told us he's doing for us.

Well, she doesn't know any better than that. I hope you do. We ought to praise the Lord from morning till night. Every time we think about it, that we have a home in heaven. And we certainly ought to thank him for the door, the one through whom we will get there.

For Jesus and his death. We ought never to let a day go by without thanking the Lord. For his son who does solve our sin problems. So we can be, we'll stand in him when we stand before God. And we'll be received because we're in him.

Well, here she's praying for the Lord's guidance. And she's praying the Lord will forgive her sins as she commits them. Why doesn't she stop committing them? Save people that the living Lord inside of them don't have to go on sinning and repenting and sinning and repenting and sinning and repenting.

I went over to Greensboro, North Carolina several years ago from my home in South Carolina. To lead a Christian life conference like this. And a handsome, well-dressed man, about 30, stepped up to me between Sunday school and church.

And said, Miss Bertha, I am just heart sick. I just needed your messages so much that I postponed my vacation from summer to this month. I think that was in September or October. And he said, here this morning, I get a telephone call to report for duty Monday morning.

Now I have to go to work Monday morning. I guess the devil had seen to it that somebody else got sick or something. And they couldn't give him his vacation. He said, I am just overcome with the same temptations day after day and day after day.

And I get on my knees every night before I go to bed. And I just confess to the Lord, begging to forgive me for every sin of that day. And the next day I'm no different. I just go on the same. And he said, I read you a book, Go Home and Tell.

And I thought from that book you'd know how to tell, you could tell me how to live victoriously over all these besetting sins and all kinds of situations that I find myself in. And here I can't come to the meetings except today and tonight.

Well, now the devil's clever, isn't he? He didn't want that man to live victoriously. He had him right where he wanted. Well, the Lord came stronger than the devil. And when he's living his life in us, we're not sinning.

He's expressing himself through us. I was in a meeting over in Tennessee one time. And a woman with four little children, and they were little, said she just lost her temper. And just scolded her children.

And she was just not a saved person now. She was just not being an honor to the Lord and a good example for her children. Well, you know she wasn't making her husband happy. Well, she just, she listed her sins just like I've asked you to do.

And then she'd put them all over on the Lord. And about the middle of the meeting when she'd gotten cleansed and all of her sins were given up to date and she'd enthroned Christ in her heart. And she'd invited the grieved Holy Spirit who filled her up, of course, when she was saved.

But she just sinned and sinned and sinned and pushed him back in the corner. Nobody told her how to live saved after she was saved. And she just weaved the Holy Spirit back in the corner. He couldn't express himself through her because she was so unclean.

And, oh, she got cleaned up and she made her wrongs right and confessed to everybody she needed to confess to. And she confessed, I'm sure, to the older babies for scolding them. Maybe when it wasn't their fault.

At least when she was angry. Well, anyway, toward the last days of the meeting, well, I think the next day, a day after, the ninth meeting she came to me after the service, said, Miss Bertha, the Lord hasn't spoken unkindly to one of my children all day long through my lips.

Now, she'd gotten the idea, hadn't she, that she was not to live anymore, that Christ must express himself through her. Every time I get around in that section, that woman comes to see me. Well, over here, she wants the Lord holding her.

And she wants his protection. And she wants his patience. And all of this fruit of the Spirit she wants. Over here, she wants his peace. Now, the Chinese word there for peace is one woman under a roof.

Now, that doesn't mean that two women can't live under the same roof and live in peace. But it means two women can't live under the same roof and be the wife of one man, each of them the wife of one man, and live in peace.

And the Chinese have an expression, when the second wife comes in, peace goes out. Well, now, they can't divorce the wife over there because a woman has no way to live. They're not educated and they'd have nowhere to go.

And they have to keep them. But when they want another wife, they'll just build another room for the house and they'll just room with the new wife. They have to take care of them. And so, of course, those two women don't get along well.

So that's a warning to Chinese not to take two wives. Well, here she is, praying for all these blessings and living like a spiritual pauper. Why? She's not getting a thing she's praying for. She's not worth a thing to the Lord.

Her testimony is not worth anything to the Lord. She's not a good example even to her own children. Why? She's praying behind a brick wall. And every sin, every brick in this wall is made up of some sin in her life.

Idolatry and the Wall Between the Believer and God

What do you suppose this top brick is up here? She's built up this wall sin by sin and sin by sin and sin by sin and she's just left those sins there. What do you suppose that top brick is? That's an idol.

Could a Christian worship an idol? Well, what is an idol? Whatever you give the most of your love and devotion to. I know some men that make an idol of their wives. I haven't found any wives yet making an idol of their husbands.

Do you know why? Now, dear young wives, you forgive me for saying this, but you know that wife wants that man to think he did something so wonderful in getting her that he ought to be just praising her all the time, making over her all the time.

She doesn't know she's got to make over him. That's why some of them lose their husbands. I haven't had one, so I can tell you how to keep them. Well, I know some mothers who make an idol of their first baby and the husband comes home tired from his work.

Oh, that mother, she doesn't even, that wife doesn't have the time to say, Oh, welcome home, I've just been longing for you all day. Did you have a good day? She's telling him what particular way the baby cooed today while he was away.

Just filled up with the baby, doesn't have any time for him anymore. And it's love or attention for him, just filled up with the baby. Oh, people make an idol of all kinds of things, you know. And some women I've known made an idol out of the housekeeper.

I was the guest of a woman one time who was a full-time Christian worker receiving a salary, some cooperative board money. And a neighbor came in to see me the next morning, just long enough to speak to me.

I was going out, and when she left, my hostess said, Oh, just look at the dust on my desk. I'd rather any neighbor I have come into my home and see dust on my desk than Mrs. Wood. Well, that wasn't a baby crying for food.

That desk didn't know it had any dust on it. What was she fussing over? And if she felt that way about a furniture, what's the reason she didn't give up her job and dust the furniture and stay at home?

Oh, she wanted people to think that even though she worked, she didn't neglect her housekeeping. Now, just what about a Christian worker talking like that? Fussing over a little dust. When she's supposed to be a full-time Christian worker, fussing a little bit over dust.

Well, she'd make an idol. We can just make an idol out of all kinds of things, you know. Now, when this woman was saved, if she was the head of the house, and many widows are. They've had so many wars, so many men have been killed trying to get their government established.

When she became a Christian, she invited some of the Christians over to her home to help her destroy her idol. And the first thing they did was to pull down the secretary of all the other idols called the kitchen guard.

And that was just in front of the front door. Paper guard put up on the wall. And it was to keep account of the conduct in the family for the whole year. And before they passed over the Chinese New Year time, they got out all the ancestral tablets and placed them on a long table that reached almost across the back end of that room.

And there they offered food. And all the family came out and bowed down at the Chinese New Year time to those ancestral tablets. And then they had Buddhas, brass Buddhas, also there on that long bench for the idols.

A table it was, a long table. They called it, like we called it a bureau. We used to translate it a bureau. It was an idol table. Well, she took that, and the Chinese, by the way, they burned, take down that secretary of the gods, that paper god, every year and burn it.

And it goes off to heaven to report on the conduct of the family. And if the family had just been too unharmonious during the year, and all the daughters-in-law and the married daughters coming back home and staying weeks back home with the family, as they are permitted to do, and they're supposed to gradually get accustomed to living in their husband's family over there, and the first year they come back home just stay weeks at the time, and they do their embroidering, sit up on that brick platform with their mothers, and the daughters-in-law wait on them.

Well, if they just didn't get along just right, and they were embarrassed over the report that that idol was going to take up, they would put some sweet syrup on its lips before they burned it, so it would make only a sweet report.

And if they thought it was just impossible to sweeten up the report, they'd get some wood glue and stick its lips together so it just couldn't talk at all when it got up there. And then they burned it and put up a new one, and made new resolutions to get along better the next year.

Well, of course they didn't unless they came to know the Lord. And the Christian woman would always burn that idol, and then they'd make a fire and burn up all those ancestor tablets after they'd had a teacher come and copy them all in a family book.

And then they'd bury all the Buddhas and make a clean breast of idolatry because they'd become Christians, and they'd let everybody in their village or in their section of the city know that they were now Christians.

Well, here's this woman worshiping an idol. I don't know what it was, but there's something in her heart that had come and taken the place of the Lord Jesus Christ after she was saved. And here she is, the Lord came to answer her prayer.

Materialism, Speech, and Discontent

And down here she wants everything she sees, just wants everything she sees. Now, she may know she can't have it, but that doesn't keep her from wanting it. Now, I'd like to bring this woman over here now.

You know, when young people marry over here, they want everything that they had in their home. They want every convenience their mother had in their new home, and maybe it took the mother 30 years to get it.

And that young man just loves his bride so much, he just goes in debt, and he buys and buys and gets the house furnished just like she wants it. And he's just so sorry he can't buy her a car, and the neighbors have to come and take her to the WMU circle meetings and take her visiting to the sick.

And he just, as soon as he can, he buys her a little second-hand car, and he tells her, now you go take people to your circle meetings and to the hospital visiting and pay back to your neighbors for the other people that have taken you.

And he's so happy he could buy that car. What does that woman do? She fills that car full of other women, and they go all over the country hunting antiques. Got to have something old. Got to have something old.

Just pretend to get enough money to pay up for the new things that they've had. Got to have something old. Never satisfied. Hunting something else. Reaching out for something else. Trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Well, well, isn't it so? Now, down here, she just gets upset, and her tongue just slips, and she just says a lot of things that she wouldn't want everybody to hear. And down here, she just loses her temper and reviles the cat and scolds the dog.

And here are two words. Each has a mouth and words coming out. Now, we speak of people having a long tongue. The Chinese say that person is a person of too many words. And to talk a lot is a mouth with just words coming out.

And here are two words together. Each of them have a mouth. One is a mouth with words coming out, and the word for a mountain. She just sees little things like a mountain and just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks.

And over here is a word that's just not very, she's not saying very complimentary things about them. She's talking about all their faults. And then that has the mouth and the words coming out. Just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

Repentance and Life in the Spirit

A few years ago, I was invited up to Indianapolis to lead a prayer retreat for the women of the Southern Baptist churches. They had 140 Southern Baptist churches. And six months before, I'd led one for the pastors up there, and so the women wanted me to come and give them a turn.

Well, they'd rented a Northern Baptist camp eight miles from Indianapolis, the nearest ones they could get. But it's beautiful October weather and the leaves are pretty, and it's a beautiful drive out there.

The first day, we were out in a beautiful, in a little pavilion for the meetings. And the pastors told the women, they'd better all take a cushion from this breath we'd have them on their knees. Well, it was surely nice to have the cushions, because when I told them about their sins, I sent them off at the close of the first day and sent them off at noontime at first to go up into the woods with their cushions and everybody go get under a tree alone and list their sins.

And into the time the day was over, I sent them up there to get all their sins transferred to the cross of Christ. I'd had a chance to tell them what the Lord had done about their sins. And by the second day, we had a terrible wind and 140 people had to pack into a little chapel that really wouldn't have seated comfortably more than 50 people.

But anyway, I talked that first half day about Christ not only taking our sins to the cross, he took us to the cross. We died with him. And when we come and take his death as our death, God the Father charges the death of his Son to us.

And he looks at us as if we had been punished for our sins, because he sees Christ punishing our sins. And when we take Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit baptizes us into the living Lord. And that's the only baptism of the Holy Spirit there is in the Bible, by the way.

We are placed into Christ. Baptism has never meant anything but to submerge in. We are submerged into Christ and forever afterwards, God the Father sees us standing before him in his Son. And when we get our sins forgiven up to date and we make a break with this big eye, a definite break with it in the name of the Lord, refuse to let it dominate our lives anymore, we can invite the grieved Holy Spirit to come out of that grieved corner where he's been and ask him to fill us up anew.

He's never left us, he's just there, but he just can't express himself through us. Because we're so unclean, he's so too grieved. And when we're willing to take that position of death and live there, why, then the Holy Spirit can fill us up.

And he magnifies Christ through our personalities. We enthrone Christ instead of ourselves. We come down, get over the throne. And he magnifies Christ through our personalities and keeps us in that place of death.

But anyway, the next morning, they started getting up and praising the Lord, one by one, one by one, just as fast as they could, one right after and sometimes two or three at a time. Telling the Lord, no, they got up first telling the Lord they would take that place of death.

I would have liked to have gotten them on their knees to do it, but they didn't have any room to kneel. They were packed in so tight. And they started telling the Lord they were taking that place of death.

In the name of the Lord, they refused to let this old sinful self, which was never going to get any better, dominate their lives. And they were ascending to their death in Christ and they were accepting that as a stance in which to live from here on out.

And they were enthroned in Christ in their hearts. And then they invited the grieved Holy Spirit to come out of that grieved corner and take over and make this real in their everyday living. Well, it was just glorious.

There was only one woman of 140 sitting over our window that didn't get up and take that step. We had a dear woman from South Carolina who had had three wives in China, but he died before the last one did.

He lost two and married a third, came on a furlough and took a precious young woman back out there. And she and the state secretary for the WMU couldn't get in the building. Now, she was retired and her daughter married a preacher up there and she'd gone up to visit the daughter and got in on that retreat.

And they had to sit on a backless bench out in the foyer. The little chapel had a cement floor. And when we started that time of prayer, when they were each one getting up and praying their own prayer to the Lord, those two just got on their knees on that cement floor back there.

And that woman lifted her voice to the Lord and just praised him, that missionary, that after 35 years of praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit, she'd never known before how to let the Holy Spirit fill her.

And she thanked the Lord that all of her sins that she'd listed were put under the blood. And she told the Lord she was making a break right now with that big eye. And she was enthroned in Christ as Lord of her life.

And she was accepting that stance of death to herself and asked the Holy Spirit to take over and fill her. And afterwards I said, Have you been a missionary 35 years? I remembered when he married and came back.

I heard about it. I was in North China but hadn't kept a record. And she said from the day she knew she was going to China, she started praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit and lived there 35 years out there, praying every day to be filled with the Holy Spirit and never knowing how to let the Holy Spirit fill her.

Well, it was a glorious time. In the afternoon, about mid-afternoon, they all started home. And one woman wrote me. Well, about 10 days, I began to get letters from her. And one of them said that my problem was my tongue.

Oh, I just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk all the time. And the Lord just showed me how despicable I was in the sight of him. And I thought I'd die if I went back home and just lived the same life I'd always lived.

And she was in the car alone and driving along. She said, Now, Lord, what can I do? How can I cooperate with you so you can keep me from all this incessant talk? And she said, the Lord told her to stop at the first drugstore and get a roll of adhesive tape and stick up her lips.

Well, she just did it. And then she started along. And then she said, Well, this won't do. My husband will think I've had a wreck. Well, she just pulled outside the road and pulled out a notebook and wrote him a little note.

And he came out to greet her and she handed him that note. Don't you know he was one happy man? That woman wrote me that he went in and told the children, Our mother just wants to be quiet with the Lord a while.

Perhaps she'll explain to us later. But we'll all just do our best to cooperate with her and do everything we're supposed to do without her telling us to do it. And she said she never dreamed that, she wrote in the letter to me, she never dreamed that a house could run so smoothly and everybody go do just what they were supposed to do without her directing them every minute, telling them what to do.

Well, she kept that adhesive tape on her lips for five days. And she just removed it to eat and brush her teeth. And she ate in silence. And she said the seventh day, her husband, who had just been a church member, was gloriously saved.

And two days after, but the ninth day, he just got himself so related to the Lord that the Holy Spirit could just fill him up. And their home was made over, made over. There came a heaven on earth because one woman learned to keep her tongue.

Jealousy, Partiality, and the Need for Grace

Well, down here, here's somebody she doesn't like. And this one has a mind and a heart in it. And with a mind and a heart, she doesn't like that person. That means she wills not to like that person. And she says, well, that person, she's not my kind.

Well, I'd like to ask this woman, are you the Lord's kind? If the Lord can put up with you, who are you that can't put up with that woman? And maybe that woman didn't have the pastor you had. Maybe that woman didn't have the son's school teacher you had.

Maybe that woman didn't have the parents you had. She didn't have somebody to pray for her and teach her the word of God and teach her self-control and how the Lord can control her. Maybe she'd miss all of that.

And here she is, she wants nothing to do with this woman because she's not her kind. But down here, here she's jealous of somebody. Jealous of somebody. I suppose of all the monstrous sins in the catalog, jealousy must be the worst.

Because absolutely you don't get one thing for being jealous. Now, if you steal something, you get the object, at least the object you stole. What on earth do you get from being jealous of somebody? You don't change any situation.

How can you get one thing on earth from it? Well, down here, there's something in her house that's not hers. My dear sister was a college history teacher. The last one left in my family of eight. Well, there were nine.

We lost one little brother when he was ten months old. And four girls and four boys grew up. And our parents, I grew up in a family of ten, and they had the glorious privilege of being in the middle. In the middle, if you have older ones, you learn to look up to them and take authority.

And they were to look after us always, no matter where we were. We were to do what they were if our parents were not there. Only our parents was above them in our lives. We listened to all of them that were older than us.

And then I still had the responsibility of looking after those younger than us, so I had to take responsibility. So I say that's the choice place to grow up is in the middle of a big family. My sister was the second child, and she just helped Mother bring up all the rest of us.