# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1929_S93 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) 92 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. ities in the future. The plan is to make Atlanta University in the course of time a postgraduate school. These three institutions look back upon many years of fine work. Spelman Institute has existed almost fifty years and the other two almost seventy years. During these years they have exerted a powerful and far-reaching influence upon the colored race, and not a few of the Negro leaders of to-day are graduates of these schools. Morehouse College and Spelman Institute are Baptist, while Atlanta University was established and promoted by the Congregationalists of New England. Foreign Mission Relief Work. — During the World War the Schleswig-Holstein Mission in India was saved by the United Lutheran Church in America, and this body at that time also took over the Shantung field of the Berlin Mission in China. The Joint Synod of Ohio took charge of the entire Hermannsburg Mission in India. The Iowa Synod, with the help of the United Lutheran Church in Australia, took over the fields of the Neuendettelsau Rhenish societies in New Guinea. German East Africa’s Lutheran missions, carried on by the Leipzig Mission Society, were taken over by the Augustana Synod. The taking over of these various missions probably cost our American Lutheran bodies almost one million dollars. The United Lutheran Church has returned the India field to the Schleswig-Holstein Society, without making a claim for reimbursement, after serving it for twelve years at a cost of a quarter million dollars. The Augustana Synod has returned the Tanganyika (formerly Ger- man Fast Africa) field in Africa to the Leipzig Society and is now working in an adjacent ter- titory. Interesting! — Dr. C. G. Salisbury, at present a missionary among the Navajo Indians, ‘spent twelve years among the Hainanese in China before he went to Ganado. So similar are the languages of the two peoples that Dr. Salisbury was almost able to understand a Navajo conversation from his Knowledge of the Hainanese dialect. The word hogan, for example, means house, or dwelling, in both languages. Of the numerals from one to ten, four are similar, and three are identical. Many of the common words of every-day speech are either similar or identical. The Navajo bears a striking resemblance to the Hainanese both in personal char- acteristics and general features. Dr. Salisbury be- _ lieves the Nayajo is a Chinaman and that he came to America when this continent was joined to Asia. ‘Quite interesting, is it not? Gruesome Famine in Belgian Congo, Africa. — Dr. Church, British missionary, reveals the terrible details of the ravages of famine in the Ruanda dis- trict of the Belgian Congo. The cause of the famine is lack of rain and insufficient cultivation since August. Thousands of natives are in a desperate plight. No food can be procured, and Belgian dis- tribution centers are unable to cope with the vast number of starving, owing to the difficulties of transport. Dr. Church affirms that many thousands died before November, after which the plight be- came more serious, the final blow coming in Decem- ber, when the Uganda government prohibited the export of foodstuffs to Ruanda and the natives, trapped in the fever-stricken area, staggered with failing strength out into the country. Lepers in the Philippines. — The largest leper colony in the Philippines is at Culion. It is, in fact, the largest leper colony in the world. No fewer than 6,000 of the most miserable human beings on earth are to be found there, men, women, and children, exiled from home and their loved ones —unelean, the accursed of the world. It is said that in the last seven years 1,700 of these wretched ones have been cured of their dread malady. The total number of lepers in the Philippines is about 12,000, while there are three million in the entire world. What a light of comfort must the Gospel of Jesus bring into their dark and dreary lives! A number of denominations are doing a blessed work among them. A Missionary Honored. — Rev. G. Raymond Haaf, a missionary of the United Lutheran Church in India, has been awarded the Kaiser-i-hind medal for distinguished service. Dr. Anna S. Kugler, of the same Church, was accorded the same honor by the Indian government several years ago. ‘‘Whoscever Shall Confess Me.” — Some years ago a lad died, and after his death his parents re- ceived a letter from one whom they had never seen. He wrote: “I owe to your son what I can never ex- press. He brought me to God, and yet he never knew it. A good many of us slept in the same room at school; there was a great deal of talking and noise; no one thought of praying. I slept next your son and often wondered why, when I was longer in going to sleep, I heard him rise from his bed and go to the chair on which his clothes were laid. I found out why—it was to pray. So quietly ‘and simply was this done that I felt it go to my heart. He taught me to pray.” Thus we may never know the effect of our actions, but if we live as