Cousins: Peacemakers on the Tibetan Border

by David P. Jones

“Bad Blood on the border!” Sounds like a clichéd line taken from an old cowboy movie full of action and melodrama. Regrettably, mission history sometimes seems stranger than fiction. Just over a century ago, “brothers and sisters” who had worked together for more than two decades on West China’s Tibetan border suddenly became “distant relatives” and religious rivals. This imbroglio between two Christian missions left bewildered Chinese and Tibetans in the region scratching their heads over the controversy caused by ardently-held doctrinal differences. Into this sorry situation came two men, first cousins, William Ekvall Simpson and Robert Brainerd Ekvall, both second-generation missionaries raised in this same border region. Despite being on different sides of the issues, God used them as peacemakers to bring their estranged “brethren” together for cooperation and coordination of their works. Thus, harmony and elimination of wasteful duplication of effort in this spiritual desert came about.

187 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2021