Miracle Child
By late November 1942, Chaplain Gehring was finally able to arrange for the evacuation of Patsy Li from Guadalcanal. Through a French priest on Espiritu Santo he had her admitted to an orphanage run by French Sisters on the little island of Efate. He delivered her there himself and, while on this mission, met Foster Hailey, a correspondent for the New York Times. Hailey took an immediate interest in the fantastic story of the girl, and sent a series of articles home about Patsy Li and the “Padre of Guadalcanal.”
Years later, Frederic Gehring began receiving letters from a Chinese woman in Singapore named Ruth Li. The New York Times articles had finally come to her attention, and Mrs. Li felt strongly that this must be her daughter (also named Patsy Li), who had been lost at sea in February 1942. The only problem was, she was lost in waters off the coast of Malaysia, four thousand miles from Guadalcanal, when the Lis’ ship was bombed fleeing the Japanese invasion of Singapore. Gehring also knew that his Patsy’s name was a pure fabrication on his part.
Even though Chaplain Gehring discouraged her, Mrs. Li felt compelled to make the costly journey to Efate, via Australia, to see for herself. She finally reached the orphanage in July 1946 to find an awkward, ten-year-old child that she did not recognize at first. Due to the psychological trauma of her early life, young Patsy could remember practically nothing before her years on Efate. Her mother found a scar on her eye and peculiarities of her handwriting that convinced her that this was her child. Within days, Gehring received a telegram: “You have been the architect of a miracle, for I have found my Patsy Li.”210 The priest went to the altar and prayed:
Thank you… for having given Ruth Li the strength to ignore the words of fools like me who would have stopped her from completing her mission of faith. Thank you for teaching me that there is no power greater than mother love that mother love can still flatten mountains, turn the earth upside down, and make the wildest dreams of mortals come true.211
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
—Exodus 20:12