MAIN STATION AT MUHLENBERG, LIBERIA, AFRICA.
MAIN STATION AT MUHLENBERG, LIBERIA, AFRICA.
MAIN STATION AT MUHLENBERG, LIBERIA, AFRICA.
|A Sad Toll.|The Rev. Poulsen withdrew in 1888 after seventeen years of active service in the Rajahmundry mission, and, coming to the United States, died at the age of sixty-seven in the active pastorate. Within a few years two promising young men,A. B. CarlsonandH. G. B. Artman, both trained in the Philadelphia Theological Seminary, arrived, took up the work which so urgently needed them and in a short time died. Two others, theRev. Franklin S. Dietrichand theRev. William Grönningalso laid down their lives, the former after seven, the latter after four years of service. Grönning, a son of C. W. Grönning, was a brilliant scholar, an eloquent preacher and a trained musician. His parentage and his early training had bred in him a deep love for missions and his loss was irreparable.
Not the least heavy of the blows which the mission suffered was the death of theRev. F. W. Weiskotten, who was sent to India to inspect and report on the affairs of the mission. Accompanying his daughter to the field, he died on the homeward journey and was buried at sea off the coast of France in December 1900.
To-day the Rajahmundry mission reports over twenty-four thousand members, about thirteen thousand of whom are communicants. Its missionaries number eighteen and the total number of all its workers is about five hundred and fifty. It owns valuable property and conducts a widely useful medical work.
The first money which was given toward the Rajahmundry hospital was contributed by the children in the surgical ward of the German Hospital in Philadelphia.
|A Touching Story.|The first medical missionary, Doctor Lydia Woerner, describes in an incident of her day’s work the misery of India and its great hope.
“Early one bright sunshiny morning, during the monsoon season, I came through a side street in our town, passing a long, high, gray wall. Above the wall I saw palm, banana, mangoe and tamarind trees, which almost hid the roofs of several houses.
“As I looked I noticed a little green door in the wall. When I asked my helpers about the place, they all knew it by the little green door, which they told me was always locked on the inside. It had several small holes through which the secluded women peeped without being seen. Our Bible woman had tried many times to gain entrance, but was told by voices from behind the little green door that her presence would pollute the place. One of the helpers suggested that we pray to God to open that little green door for us.
“A few nights later, during a terrific storm and a pouring rain, two native officials came with an urgent call to take me to the house of another official. I did not know him nor where he lived, but they told me his wife had been suffering intensely for several days, so my helper and I picked up the emergency bag and started off with them. On the way we were told that every native midwife available had tried to relieve the patient, but had failed. Large offerings had been made to the gods in their favorite temple. Even the river goddess had been implored to give help, by sacrifices thrown into her waters. As a last resort, they had come to seek help from the missionary doctor.
“We were drenched and stiff, as we crawled out of the oxcart. It was very dark. The streets were flooded, but a flash of lightning revealed to us that we were in front of the little green door--andit was open. Outside, under umbrellas and blankets, were groups of men--friends of the husband--who had come to sympathize with him because his wife was giving him so much trouble. The sympathy was all for the husband. Probably, after all the trouble his wife was making, she would give him only a girl child! Inside was bedlam! A crowd of women were shrieking and crying. Little fires had been placed in pots all over the veranda. Smoking censers were swinging at windows and doorways, to prevent the evil spirits from entering the house.
“The husband came to meet me with a lantern. He was much distressed, and besought me in beautiful English to grant him help in his great calamity. This was his third wife. The gods were against him. He had nochild--only three daughters! Not one word of anxiety or sympathy did he have for his suffering wife.
“I saw her lying on an old cot, with a coarse bamboo mat and gunny bag for bedding. She was a beautiful young Brahman girl. The cot was on the outside veranda, exposed to wind and rain. The patient had already been partially prepared for death. She was covered with burns and bruises, and was very weak, but she looked at me with her beautiful eyes, and implored me not to treat her as cruelly as the others had done. It was a weird scene, with the flickering little lamps, the beautiful ill-treated patient, and the curious faces of the women peering at us out of the darkness.
“Under great protest the relatives finally allowed the patient to be moved into a small veranda room. By and by things calmed down, and the people left for their homes. All was quiet, and the patient’s confidence and strength revived. At dawn we left a smiling young mother holding her newborn son in her arms, and a father proud and happy, because now he had achild, an heir to his large estate.
“The little green door opened to let us out. A little child had opened it, and never since that night has it been closed to us or to the Gospel message.”
The General Council conducts a mission in the City of Rangoon in Burma. The native catechist, who has been in charge of the work for three years, writes that he has won thirty souls for his Lord. He says further:
|The Letter of a Native Worker.|“Though the year has been a black one, full of trials, temptations, accidents and poisonous fevers and break of work on account of the present war, such as the world has never witnessed, yet God has brought us through safe and given us the victory. And when the time shall come for the strife and toil, the tumults and wars, the tears and groans of creation to end forever, then shall come the jubilee, the grand coronation song shall be sung by the resurrected redeemed hosts of the Lord, saying, ‘Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof; for Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we shall reign on the earth.’”
In 1894 theMissouri Lutheran Synodbegan work in India in the Salem district of the Madras Presidency, their first station being at Krishnagiri. There the pioneer missionary theRev. Th. Naetherlabored until his death in 1904. In 1907 the work was extended to Travancore. The mission has eleven chief stations and fourteen missionaries.
The women’s societies of this synod are very active, their contribution including not only money but large shipments of garments for the children in the mission schools. The medical work of the mission, the retreat for missionaries in the hills, and the school for missionaries’ children are supported entirely by the women’s societies.
The Joint Synod of Ohiowhich had taken over before the war the Kodur and Puttur stations of the Hermannsburg mission has now agreed to support the entire mission.
TheLutheran Synod of Iowasends contributions to the work of the Leipsic Society.
The Danes and Norwegians in America support the Home Mission to the Santals. The Swedes are a part of the General Council and help to support her mission.
We owe to the Rev. George Drach the closing words of our Indian story.
“To-day there are no less than twelve different missions in various parts of India, supported and controlled by societies and boards of the Lutheran Church in Europe and America, numbering according to the census of 1911, a native Christian constituency of nearly two hundred and fifty thousand. To emphasize their unity in faith and to consult concerning the best method of mission work, as well as to plan for closer co-operation, delegates were sent by the various Lutheran missions to an All India Lutheran Conference at Rajahmundry, held December 31, 1911 to January 4, 1912. This was the second conference of this character, the first having been held at Guntur four years ago.
All told, eighty European and American and twelve Indian delegates came together at Rajahmundry in order to advance by the fostering of Christian fellowship among Lutheran brethren and by practically helpful deliberation, the cause of Christ in India. They represented the Leipsic, Missouri, Swedish and Danish missions of the Tamil country, the Hermannsburg, Breklum, American General Council and American General Synod Missions of the Telugu country, and the Gossner Mission of the North. The delegates came from the South of India where the breezes have not yet spent all the spicy fragrance of which, softly blowing, they robbed Ceylon’s isle; they came from the sun-scorched plains of Central India, where great rivers roll seaward in tepid sluggishness; they came from the far north where the vast, snowy reaches of the Himalayas abruptly bound the view. It was a joy to see them, young men still in the newness of the first years of missionary service, perhaps still studying the vernacular of their fields of work; men in the prime of life who had tested their strength upon the tasks God gave them to perform amid surrounding heathendom, and who had become wise in counsel and strong in achievement; older men whose whitening hair confirmed the story, told by their battle-worn faces, of decades of service against the forces of Satan, and who yet burned at heart with the zeal of young warriors. Moreover, there was not a department of woman’s work in missions that had not its goodly complement of women present at the conference.... Could any other Church, besides the Lutheran, have gathered together in one body such a unique, diversified yet united conference of Indian missionaries and Christians?... The conference marked an epoch in the work of Lutheran missions in India, which, united, strong and zealous, will not be content until they occupy advanced ground in the movement of the army of the Lord Jesus Christ.”