Annie hugs a lively, black-haired youngster and says quietly, “Her mother was seven months pregnant when she swam from China to Macao with this little one on her back. The girl’s been here two years, and she’s gradually getting better. Her mother went back to China, and has probably been liquidated by the Communists.” Another girl reacts to Annie’s pat on the head with the wiggly cordiality of a puppy. “This little one was scared to death of ‘imperialists’ when she came here,” Annie explains. “It took us a long time to persuade her that the Red propaganda wasn’t true.” Her first two patients at Haven of Hope, a brother and sister, have now completely recovered. Both had seen their parents tortured and killed by the Reds. “When the girl came to us, her face was like stone,” Annie says. “For two years I played with her, trying all kinds of funny things to bring her out of that frozen stupor, but she never smiled once. “I wasn’t getting anywhere,” she continues. “Then I tried something different. On July 6, 1955, I put her in a sampan with eleven other kids, and took them all to see the wonderful new building we’d just finished. You know, the first time she got a look at it she broke into a big smile! It was the first time she looked happy. Now she’s fourteen, and her greatest ambition is to be a nurse.” A magnificent chapel, built exactly where Annie had visualized it, was completed in time for Christmas services in 1961. A group of Norwegian seamen donated an illuminated cross to surmount its roof. At night, when their ships sail out from Hong Kong, they can see it glowing above a line of hills that cut back from the sea like the fiords of Norway. To Annie, the chapel embodies the same spirit she expressed in naming the eleven wards at Haven of Hope Sanatorium: Love, Peace, Joy, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Neatness, Temperance, Hope and Courage. For qualities like these, exemplified in her work at Rennie’s Mill Camp and the sanatorium, Sister Annie Margareth Skau was given the Florence Nightingale Award of the International Red Cross on May 18, 1961. Annie regarded the award not as a personal tribute, but as an honor earned and shared by everyone who worked or contributed to make the Haven of Hope a reality. “There is so much that needs to be done for these poor, homeless people,” she says. “Why, we’ve hardly begun the job.” In 1951, the same year that Annie Skau was exiled from Red China, the Communists drove out a remarkable European-Chinese couple who had been helping moneyless families to support themselves by setting up home industries. Their house, with all their savings invested in it, was seized by the state and they reached Hong Kong with a total capital of thirty-four cents.