Returning home to our station from an unusually strenuous autumn's touring, I planned as usual to give the month of December to the children's sewing, so as to leave January largely free for a Bible-women's training class. But my health broke down, and I could make scarcely any headway with the thirty-five or forty garments which had to be made or fixed over, before the children returned to their school in Chefoo. By the eighteenth of December we decided to cancel the class on account of my ill-health; and to all the women, except one whom I entirely forgot, I sent word not to come. As the days passed, the burden of the almost untouched sewing became very great. At last I cried to the Lord to undertake for me. And how wonderfully he did! On December twenty-eighth, when I was conducting the Chinese women's prayer-meeting, I noticed in the audience Mrs. Lu, the very woman to whom I had forgotten to send word. She had come a long distance, with her little child, over rough mountainous roads, so I felt very sorry for my thoughtlessness. Mrs. Lu accompanied me home, and I gave her money for a barrow on which to return the next day. I then sat down to the sewing machine. The woman stood beside me for a little, and then said: "You are looking very tired, Mrs. Goforth; let me run the machine for you." "You!" I exclaimed, astonished, "why, you don't know how." "Yes, I do," she replied. She was so insistent that at last, in fear and trembling, I ventured to let her try--for I had only one needle. It took but a few moments to convince me she was a real expert at the machine. When I urged her to stay and help me, she replied that, since the class was given up, she would return home on the morrow. That night I was puzzled. Why should the Lord lead this woman to me--the only one, so far as we knew, who could do the machine work--and then permit her to leave? I could only lay the whole matter before the Lord, and trust him to undertake. And again he answered. That night a fierce storm came on, lasting several days and making the roads quite impassable. Mrs. Lu, finding herself storm-tied, gladly gave all her time to me. The roads remained impassable for a whole month, during which time I did not once need to sit down at the machine. * * * * *