The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 13

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

13

Items of Missionary Interest.
By the Eprror.

A Happy New Year! — We wish all our readers
a Happy New Year. May God bless them with His
grace and grant them strength to do the works of
the Spirit with joy! May He fill them with a
burning desire to make the Savior known to those
who still are ignorant of Him and His salvation!
May theirs be a life of prayer for the glorious work
of missions, and may they be permitted with us all
to see in this new year many triumphs of the Cross!

A New Series of Missionary Sketches. — God
willing, the series begun in this number of the
PIonEER under the title “Wonders of Transforming
Grace” will be continued through the year. The
romantic story of the Pitcairn Islanders will be fol-
lowed by an account of the marvelous work of the
Gospel among the freed slaves of Hog Brook, Sierra
Leone, Africa.

Winston-Salem, N. C.— The colored church at
Winston-Salem is at the time of this writing near-
ing completion. Up to now our people have had
to hold their services in a Presbyterian church.

Negroes at a Mosque. — A visit recently made
by a missionary at the mosque of a Mohammedan
sect in Chicago revealed the fact that of the twenty-
nine persons in attendance twenty-seven were
Negroes and two Indians, one of the latter being
the leader. When testimonies were asked for by
the leader, three Negroes present emphasized their
racial grievance and claimed that Christianity is
only a white man’s religion. Only fourteen of the
persons present took part in the service.

Japanese-American Christians. —In Los An-
geles alone eleven denominations are working among
the Japanese. The Presbyterian and Congrega-
tional churches have combined in building a
$100,000 church for the Japanese; the Methodists
have a $45,000 building, the Baptists one valued
at $40,000, the Christians a building costing
$70,000, and the Reformed a $30,000 building.

The Episcopalians have the largest Sunday-school. .

Bearing Witness. —In South India it not in-
- frequently happens that the caste people become
Christians through the influence of their Christian
outcaste servants. At the present time native
Hindus are being admitted into the Christian
Church at the rate of about three thousand a week
or 150,000 a year. E

A Hand-Written Hymn-Book.—In Korea a man
recently copied the 250 hymns of a certain hymnal
because he was too poor to buy a printed book,

though the price of it was only about eight and
a half cents. For lack of this small sum this Chris-
tian spent over two hundred hours copying the
songs. And still there are people who want to make
themselves and others believe that foreign missions
are useless and not appreciated by those to whom
the Gospel is brought!

The Solomon Islands.— Not many years ago
the Solomon Islands had only heathen inhabitants ;
to-day there are more than 200 Christian villages,
hundreds of keen, devoted native teachers, and 8,000
converts.

Papua Once and Now. — After twenty-five years
service in Papua a missionary writes that he has in
this time seen “raw savagery, cannibalism, and
skulls” change to “peace, liberty, safety, and friend-
liness.” He deplores the lack of workers in the field
and speaks of the great amount of blessings that
could be brought to the Papuans if only a greater
number of devoted laborers were available.

The Strength of Islam.— The total Moham-
medan population of the world is said to be about
240,000,000. ‘Two countries of Asia, Arabia and
Afghanistan, are wholly Mohammedan. India, with
its 70,000,000 Mohammedans, has the largest Mo-
hammedan population of any country in the world.
It is in Africa, however, that Islam is making its
largest advance at the present time. The first

. Christian missionary to the Moslems was Raymond

Lull. Henry Martyn, Ian Keith Falconer, and
William Whiting Borden are names famous in
modern Moslem missionary history. Samuel Zwe-
mer, of the American Reformed Church, is doing
much literary missionary work among the Moslems.
of Arabia and Egypt.

Karens Must Share the Gospel.— Writes a Karen
Christian: “The Karen Christian is never happy
to keep the Gospel of Christ to himself. He must
share it with some one.” But is this not true of
every person in whom Christ dwells? Should this -
not be true of every person who prays, “Thy king-
dom come”? Can a person be a sincere Christian
and not feel the constant urge to tell others the
good tidings of great joy which, he knows, are for

_all people?

Moslems Ask for Mission-School. — Mission-
schools are increasingly succeeding in attracting
Moslem pupils. While in former years it seemed
almost impossible to induce Moslem parents to send
their children to mission-schools, it is so now that
influential Mohammedan parents come and beg that
their children be received. Thus another door is
being opened for the Gospel.