# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1929_S112 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. Soo ee eeeeeeeeeeeeesSSSSs0€@0@— S_a—MODMwO0Ooa=onm?=' a former minister of the Chinese government in Washington, heard of the self-sacrificing labors of Dr. Lake, became interested in the work of the Christian missionary, bought the island from a fishing company, and presented it to him. Tai Kam is said to be a beautiful, well-wooded spot with an area of almost seven miles. It is situated two miles from the coast of China and about forty miles southwest of the Portuguese colony of Macao. The colony is now in possession of sixteen buildings and has accommodations for two hundred lepers. There is farmland enough to make the colony self-supporting. F. J. L. a >—___— Sowing the Seed. A Christian worker in Arizona tells the following concerning a rough-looking cowboy who one day came to him for copies of the Gospel according to St. Mark: — “T went to San Francisco and threw away much money in revelry. I slept late after a night of dis- sipation. When I awoke, I saw a little book on the table near my bed. It was the Gospel of St. Mark. I angrily threw it on the floor. I did the same thing the second morning. Awaking the third morning, I saw that same little book. This time I took it with me to a near-by park and began to examine it. I spend the day reading it. In it I heard the Son of God say to a leper: “Be thou clean.’ I heard Him say to a paralytic: “Thy sins.be forgiven thee’ I heard Him commend the widow for her mite. I saw Him take little chil- dren in His arms and bless them. I heard Him say, ‘Could ye not watch one hour? I saw Him die. It broke my heart and changed my life. I am a different man. “Now, stranger, I spend much time giving away copies of the Gospel of St. Mark.” A colporteur who works in the Rocky Mountains was traveling high over a mountain pass in the dark one night. For some reason or other his car could not make the grade to the summit, 9,000 feet in altitude. The road was wild and desolate, and the only persons he met were some Mexican sheep- herders. He decided to spend the night with them. In the hours about the camp-fire he told the story of the Man of Galilee and read from some of the little gospels. In the morning he left with his hosts the Gospel of San Juan (St. John) in Spanish. Months later, a hundred miles away, two Mexicans stopped him on the road and reminded him of the night he had spent with them and asked for another gospel to take the place of the one which they had worn out with reading. They believed themselves fortunate to have received a copy of the gospel in their own tongue. “No, I do not care to have one of your Bibles. However, if you have a book in which the Lord’s Prayer is found, I will buy it,” said a man to a col- porteur of the American Bible Society in Central America. The sower of seed was equal to the oc- casion and, handing him a Gospel of St. Matthew in Spanish, replied: “Here is the book you are looking for, and it costs only one cent.” From it he read the Lord’s Prayer to him, and the man bought it at once. What Christianity Does. “As for me, I think one religion about as good as another. It’s mostly a matter of climate and race and tradition.” “That’s so,” said the other man. is sentimentally attractive. done ?” _ A man seated across the aisle who had the air of a foreigner suddenly leaned forward and said very politely: “Pardon me, but your remarks, which I could not help hearing, deeply interest me. May I say why?” “Surely, go ahead,’ the first speaker replied, looking curiously at the foreigner. “Thank you, sir. I am an Armenian. I was born in Bitlis. Bitlis has about forty thousand people. Have you a town of that size you can think of in America?” “Just the size of my town,” said the second man. “Take your own town, then, and call it Bitlis; and say of your town these things: no hospital, no doctor, no dentist, no church except the mission, no press, no telephone, no sanitation, no water system, no nurse, no public school. And that is your town here in America. That is, you understand, my town of Bitlis in Turkey. “The one bright spot in my town is the Chris- tian mission, which supports a dispensary and a school and is the hope of life. During the recent uprising against the Armenians, in which over three hundred thousand of them were massacred, the mis- . sionaries in Bitlis, aided by those in Van, at the risk of their lives, saved me from torture and death. All my relatives were murdered, and our property “Christianity But what has it ever