POINT ME TO THE SKIES
The amazing story of Joan Wales
By Ronald Clements . Monarch/OMF. 320 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978-1-85424-804-6
Point Me to the Skies is an account of a brief period of remarkable mission work carried out among the lawless Nosu people of South West China from 1948 until it was abruptly cut short in1951 by the Communist take-over in China. The story is told through the life of Joan Wales, a young British missionary. Joan’s troubled childhood and struggles to get onto the mission field provide the more-than-ample context for the book’s central theme.
Snatching a window of opportunity, Joan Wales, with three other Western missionaries, exposed themselves to unusual dangers and privations to bring the gospel to the Nosu people, a remote mountainous tribe renowned for its brutality. The setbacks, disappointments and uncertainties they endured recall the heroes of faith of Hebrews 11 who ‘through faith conquered kingdoms…’. Eventually — but, oh, so painfully and slowly — a number of teenage girls and one or two married women come through to real faith in Christ. Then, quite suddenly, the work is over. A moving postscript records Joan’s return nearly 40 years later to discover her ‘teenage’ converts still holding on to the faith they professed all those years ago.
