Word: valorie
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...cold, cramped apartment in central China, Valori Morrison gathered her six daughters around her and quietly began explaining the week's biblical lesson. The scripture she had carefully written out in both English and Chinese was taped to the dingy wall: "It was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you." It was, she thought, one of the most important lessons that Hannah, Victoria, Esther, Loice, Mary and Charity could learn. It was also the only thing that...
...Morrisons came to China more than a decade ago to spread that message of faith. Bruce arrived from New Orleans, where he had studied forestry at Louisiana State University. Valori came from a family in Iowa filled with evangelical zeal: one sister was spreading the gospel in materialistic Hong Kong, another in war-ravaged Bosnia. But China's 1.3 billion souls have always been a big lure for evangelists, and the Morrisons eventually set up a home in Wuhan, a river-port city with a long missionary tradition. Bruce taught English at a local institute and Valori home-schooled...
...Christian youth meeting earlier this month, as worshipers were milling around the church foyer, Gong suddenly walked up to Bruce, muttered a few words, pulled a knife and stabbed him just below the heart. The 37-year-old American was pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital. Valori showed up minutes later, and as a last prayer, repeated the scripture she had been teaching her daughters...
Sitting in her apartment just days after her husband's murder, Valori does not cry. Her calm and even cheery demeanor puzzles her local friends, as does her desire that Gong?who will almost certainly face a swift execution by firing squad?be spared the death penalty. "In China, widows cry and scream for revenge for weeks," says one of Bruce's colleagues, who started attending church several years ago. "But Mrs. Morrison just sits and reads the Bible." Equally surprising is Valori's desire to remain in China. "I have spent all my married life here," she says...
...limit publicity about the murder, which can only embarrass China as it tries to polish its international image to help its bid to bring the Olympics to Beijing in 2008. "We like her very much, but the Christian woman should return to America," says a local policeman. For now, Valori sits quietly in the tiny apartment she wants to keep as home. Hannah, Victoria, Esther, Loice, Mary and Charity have said their prayers and are tucked into their bunk beds. The prized upright piano she and Bruce bought last November sits in her bedroom, ready for the morning's hymns...