Timothy: Honoured of God

By Linda McCarthy Shum

This book combines the beauty and simplicity of outback Australia with a blend of Chinese culture, customs and abandoned children. It also touches on the adoption of children and how this powerful way of building families can make the world a better place. Readers become hooked on following the journey of a runaway Australian boy, Timothy, previously referred to as Stinky as he is drawn towards a miraculous connection with Australia, China and the United States, by travelling between the three countries in an unusual way. He learns that his life has meaning and purpose. He learns to put his Faith and Trust in God. This uplifting and inspiring book is sure to allow the reader to run the full gamut of emotions as the story unfolds. Enjoy the journey as God transforms young Stinky into a respected man, the meaning of whose name speaks over his life showing that he really is Honoured of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jan 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493132355

Linda McCarthy Shum

Linda McCarthy Shum was born in Inverell, New South Wales, in 1948. She and her late husband, Greg, have three children and nine grandchildren. In 1998, she joined a team which began working to improve the lives of abandoned children in China. Long story short, she and Greg founded an organization that takes children out of orphanages and puts them in family groups in apartments in the community. Just before they were to open their first family group home, however, Greg died suddenly. Many people rallied to keep things running smoothly so that more and more children can be taken in. Nothing gives her more pleasure than to have a lap full of children. It doesn’t matter whether the children are biological or foster children. She believes they all have a right to a happy childhood and for this purpose, she works tirelessly with a team of volunteers and paid local staff to make this happen. Some have even been adopted. All profit from the sale of this book goes to help raise the children. If you would like to know more, contact Linda on [e-mail] or go to www.eagleswingschina.org. She also hopes you enjoyed the book.

Book preview

Timothy

Honoured of God

Linda McCarthy Shum

Copyright © 2014 by Linda McCarthy Shum.

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4931-3234-8

   Ebook   978-1-4931-3235-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 09/04/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

522100

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

This book combines the beauty and simplicity of outback Australia with a blend of Chinese culture, customs and abandoned children. It also touches on the adoption of children and how this powerful way of building families can make the world a better place. Readers become hooked on following the journey of a runaway Australian boy, Timothy, previously referred to as Stinky as he is drawn towards a miraculous connection with Australia, China and the United States, by travelling between the three countries in an unusual way. He learns that his life has meaning and purpose. He learns to put his Faith and Trust in God.

This uplifting and inspiring book is sure to allow the reader to run the full gamut of emotions as the story unfolds. Enjoy the journey as God transforms young Stinky into a respected man, the meaning of whose name speaks over his life showing that he really is ‘Honoured of God".

Debra Marshall

*     *     *

I have had the privilege of knowing Linda Shum since 2002 as both her pastor and friend. During this time my husband and I have witnessed her ever-increasing passion for abandoned children everywhere but most particularly in China. Her commitment to making life better for these discarded children is unparalleled and through the pages of this book the reader will no doubt catch more than a glimpse of this unwavering dedication to caring for those whom culture has deemed as worthless. Because we know the character of the author we know this book will touch your heart too and just maybe inspire you to reach out and touch those outside your world.

Pastor Christine Roberts

Christian Family Church Gympie

Author’s note: This is a work of fiction. It is a book that took twenty-five years to write and I have tapped in to my imagination and some of the things I have learned throughout my life. Some of the story consists of things I would really like to happen. Any resemblance to anyone is completely co-incidental. Although I did once know a blackboard ruler called Charlie.

I would like to thank all who have helped me along life’s journey. I have enjoyed doing life with you. God is the focus of my life and it is He Who called me to China in 1997. I love China and the Chinese with all my heart. I love the Chinese children in my life as I love the children from my body. I am also very blessed in those as well.

The sale of this book is to raise funds for abandoned children in China through Chinese Orphans’ Assistance Team Inc. This is an organisation founded by my late husband, Greg and myself. With an amazing team of people, we worked alongside the Chinese officials in the welfare system in Jiaozuo, Henan Province. The Chinese Government has made many wonderful improvements so that now, abandoned children are growing up better than ever before. C.O.A.T Inc has, with the blessing of the Welfare Officials, made family groups in apartments in the community, rather than leave them all in institutions.

Chinese people love their children very much, but when they have a sick or handicapped child, poor people cannot cope with such a child so they make the ultimate sacrifice of love and leave the child where he can be found and helped by someone who is able so to do.

In 2013, the Department of Civil Affairs registered us as a legal entity within China. Our Chinese Name is Meng Lin Ertong Jia Yuan (Linda’s Dream Children’s Homes).

I chose the name, Eagles’ Wings for family group homes run because of Exodus 19:4b I raised you up on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself

I have borrowed, with his permission, ideas about eagles and what they can teach us, from Col Stringer’s wonderful book, On Eagles’ Wings. You can find it easily online. Thank you Col.

We want our children to rise high above the storms of life and achieve what God means for them to achieve. All profits from the sale of this book go to COAT Inc. We also need corporate and child sponsorship to help us make ends meet. If you are from UK, you can donate by enquiring with Chris Plummer, our UK rep… at [e-mail].

Australians can donate by going to www.eagleswingschina.org and following the prompts. If you are from USA, you can donate through

www.lovewithoutboundaries.com These three countries have a tax benefit for donors. People the world over can get the blessing of loving a child.

If you change the life of a child, you change the world.

Linda

International Director of Chinese Orphans’ Assistance Team Incorporated (COAT Inc)

Chapter One

The pendulum of the clock on the classroom wall swung backwards and forwards with monotonous regularity. Several blowflies droned their familiar monotone that lulled the reluctant occupants of the individual desks into a state of suspension.

From time to time, Charlie, the blackboard ruler, thwacked a desk, in an unsuccessful bid to bring the pupils back to the present. December, however, is a notorious month for day dreaming. Language Arts is only made bearable for twelve year old boys by their ability to imagine themselves down by the creek in the shade of a big box tree, waiting for a big yabby to grab the piece of rotten meat that is tied to the end of a length of string.

Everything in the room was hot to the touch… the thermometer on the wall had reached 46°C. The air was so dry that the perspiration evaporated as fast as it was perspired. Everyone was plagued by an unquenchable thirst. The only water available to drink was more than warm because ants had built a nest in the water cooler and an echidna, in trying to get at the ants, had electrocuted its self and destroyed the motor of the cooler.

A pall of stuffiness hung over the rows of children who were grimy after the lunchtime break in the dusty playground. Some children were grimier than the others. These were the ones whose cottage homes had stood here in this small village in Western Queensland since the coming of the railway a century ago, and had not yet had bathrooms built into them. Several cottages had tubs, but no water was connected to them. This state of affairs severely lessened any desire to bathe on a regular basis.

Timothy Halloran, (called Stinky by his peers), lived in such a cottage. His state of cleanliness, however, was never a problem for him. When he was hot, he swam in the creek. When he was cold, he found the jumper that his mother had bought for 30 cents at a travelling Paddy’s market. This particular market had set up in the hall three years before. The jumper hadn’t been washed, so why should the boy worry about washing himself. Stinky’s fair hair stood out from his head in a matted tangle. The current plague of head lice infesting schools all over the state would never be eradicated as long as there were favourable conditions for lice reproduction such as could be found in Stinky’s hair.

The boy was so used to the lice, however, that they rarely bothered him any more than to give his scalp an occasional itching sensation, which he did not even bother to scratch.

Stinky sat in the back row of the classroom watching a fly as it circled beneath the rotating ceiling fan. He wondered whether the fly would survive if it were hit by one of the blades, or whether (as he preferred to think), that fly guts would splatter everywhere over the pupils beneath and provide an entertaining break in the monotony.

Mr Whecker stood out the front of the rows of desks with Charlie in his hand… Thwack!

Suddenly Charlie landed on a desk in the front row. Those who sat in the front row jumped dutifully and tried to turn their attention back to the lesson. The other rows of children continued to doze and dream of the summer holidays that were only ten days away. Stinky looked at the clock. He found it difficult to tell the time, but he knew that when the little hand pointed towards the door and the big hand pointed straight up, the bell would ring and he would be released from the prison that was his desk and chair. To him, the blackboard was covered with no more than lines and squiggles. He had long ago ceased to try and decipher what the squiggles meant. Even Mr Whecker, who did not easily admit defeat, had given up trying to teach Timothy Halloran to read. The boy had been placed in the back row so as to be less noticeable and therefore not a constant reminder to the teacher that he had failed.

Mr Whecker was not used to failing. His pupils usually achieved well under his strict regime. Although Timothy Halloran loved and respected the teacher whom he had had for the previous seven years in this one-teacher school in Weelabarobak, the boy had learned little more than how to play in his mind and try to pass away the long, tedious hours that were required by law for children under fifteen to remain in school.

As the minute hand climbed closer to its highest point on the clock, Stinky’s interest in his surroundings, heightened. The piece of meat that the butcher’s wife had given him a few days ago, would be more attractive to the yabbies now that it had started to rot. He put his hand in the pocket of his cotton shorts and he felt the crackle of the newspaper he had wrapped around the meat. The string was slightly tangled in and around the paper, but that would be no problem once he got down to the creek.

Thinking of yabbies made his mouth water and he realized how hungry he was. He had eaten nothing all day apart from one bite out of Sparrow Hawkins’ cream bun. A good billy fully of boiled yabbies would really go down well.

Stinky was just wishing one more time that the bell would hurry up and ring when; Clang-clang Clang-clang!

It happened. A river of children flooded through the double doors. Mr Whecker sat down at his desk with a relieved look on his face and the noise of excited children mingled in the air with the clatter of a train as it was being shunted at the railway station.

Stinky collected the battered AIRLINE bag that served him as a school port and headed happily out the gate. All Queensland children call their school bag a ‘port’. However, very few of them would understand that the word comes from porto, a Latin root meaning to carry.

The children walked and chattered in twos and threes, but Stinky was just as happy to walk by himself. He crossed the dusty road in front of the school and walked through a vacant block of land that grew nothing but bullheads and rolypolies.

The boy was careful to keep to the trodden goat track because fewer bullheads grew where the ground was harder. Although Stinky’s feet were as tough as leather, bullhead thorns were still painful if he trod on them. Khaki burr, though it grew everywhere in profusion, never worried him. He had sometimes walked in them on purpose so that they covered the soles of his feet with a thick layer which protected him when he walked on hot, bubbling bitumen.

Once he was through the worst of the bullheads, he broke into a trot. There was no use going home. Mum would probably have a visitor. Mum usually had a visitor, in the afternoons. Stinky had never understood Mum’s visitors. However there were many things Stinky did not understand.

Lately, he had begun to think that his mother was a little strange. Sometimes, he would have preferred his mother to act like Sparrow Hawkins’ mother. Sparrow’s mother always had some Anzac bickies and a glass of chocolate milk waiting for Sparrow when he got home from school. Both Sparrow and Stinky enjoyed dunking the biscuits in the milk. They would laugh if the biscuit dissolved and sank to the bottom of the glass. Drinking the dregs made them giggle. They usually ended up with a milk-biscuit moustache.

The only thing wrong with Sparrow’s mother was that she wouldn’t let him go yabbying. Sparrow’s cousin had drowned in a borehole and she was afraid that the same thing would happen to her Little George if he went near the creek.

Stinky supposed that no one could have everything. In some ways, he preferred his own life. As long as he kept out of the way of his parents, he was allowed to go where he pleased and do as he liked. Food was always his biggest problem. There was sometimes a box wheat biscuits in the cupboard, but rarely anything in the fridge apart from beer. Dry wheat biscuits are rather hard to get down, so Stinky usually soaked them in water out of the tank, or dipped them in a tin of syrup if Mum remembered to buy one.

Once, Stinky had used a can of beer on his wheat biscuits. The effect was interesting, but hardly worth having it again when he remembered the whipping he had received for taking beer that belonged to his father.

Stella and Jim Halloran usually had pie and peas at the pub, but they rarely thought that Stinky might like a pie. Yabbies, therefore, were a good source of food for the growing boy, but it seemed never enough to completely satisfy him. In winter, the yabbies were less inclined to bite at the bait, but usually enough of them to keep hunger at bay ended up bubbling away in the catering-sized beetroot tin that served Stinky as his billy. He’d found the tin in the rubbish after the ANZAC Day lunch for all the old soldiers.

As he passed the hotel, the boy slowed down to a walk. The pavement outside the building was burning his feet, but he wanted to be sure that his father was in his usual place at the bar. Jim Halloran stood leaning on the bar with one be-thonged foot resting on the brass foot-rail. Sweat stained his faded Jacky Howe singlet and his grey shorts looked as though they had seen better days. It would be a shame to spend the dole on clothing because beer was more important.

With deliberated determination, he raised his half glass of beer to meet cracked lips that were surrounded by scruffy stubble. His body was very rank although he was so used to it, he couldn’t smell it. Stinky also did not notice how badly his father smelled. Other people did, so Jim always had plenty of room at the bar.

Jim’s glazed eyes did not see the boy looking at him through the open door of the bar. Even if he had seen his son, his alcohol-affected brain may not have recognized him. Stinky knew that his father would stay at the bar until he passed out.

Sometimes the publican left Jim on the floor, but mostly he called the constable, who put him to bed in the lock-up. The door of the lock-up was rarely locked, so that by ten o’clock the next morning, Jim was sober enough to collect any money left in the tin by Stella’s ‘friends’ and make his way back to the bar.

With Mum and Dad both occupied, Stinky had nothing to stop his own activities. He passed the hotel and a few more houses before he was out of the village and headed to the section of the creek that he considered to be his own. Other children came there, of course, to swim or catch yabbies, but that did not detract from Stinky’s feeling of possession.

The thick heat of the school room seemed far away as the boy’s eyes lighted on the cool grey trunks of the box trees reflected smudgingly in the brown muddy water of the creek. He secured his piece of meat to the string and listened for the reassuring sound as it plopped through the surface of the water to tempt an unsuspecting yabby to its death.

An hour passed before the boy had filled his billy. He looked with satisfaction at the mass of dark grey squirming crustaceans as they clawed each other in a vain attempt to escape the inevitable. Using a match from the box he had failed to return to Mr Whecker after lighting the incinerator at school, the boy built a small fire to bring water to the boil in the billy. While the water was heating, the yabbies were transferred to the tattered army hat that served to keep the sun from burning further the boy’s already heavily freckled face. Once the bubbles began to rise from the bottom of the billy, Stinky quickly transferred the yabbies to the water. It was a merciful death… quick and painless, although occasionally a yabby was slower to die and showed its distress by throwing off a claw. Stinky felt no remorse at this, for he had to eat, and knew no other way to get an easy meal that was honest. The yabbies in this pile were quite big, for which Stinky was very grateful.

A little while later, a pile of empty yabby shells lay beside the boy reclining contentedly beside the creek. With his hunger appeased for the present, Stinky had time to reflect on his surroundings. Somewhere nearby, a tawny-frogmouth made its peculiar call. It was probably the one that slept in the box tree on the other side of the creek. By now, as the summer sun crept towards the western horizon, the frogmouth was probably stirring from its sleep, to prepare for a night’s hunting. Stinky had often slept all night down