The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 58

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58 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

ing difficulties or to smother experienced disap-
pointments, a prevailing note of hopefulness and
trustfulness dominated the conference from begin-
ning to end. One happy result of this conference
was that every worker present promised to remem-
ber the PrioNEER with contributions in the way of
news paragraphs and longer articles. We are sure
that the readers of the ProNEER will look forward
to these contributions direct from the field with
the same joyous anticipation as does the Editor.
And the Editor is convinced that the good readers
of the PIONEER would be most appreciative if ALL
the workers in our extensive Colored Missions
would decide to follow in the footsteps of the
workers in New Orleans; for it is only by bringing
such contributions direct from the field that the
PIONEER can carry out the purpose for which it was
founded fifty years ago. F. J. 1.

A Letter from India.

Through the kindness of Pastor Prokopy, the
Executive Secretary of the Walther League, we were
favored with the following interesting glimpses
into the life of a missionary in India. The account
comes from the pen of a missionary’s wife : —

“Vife here in India certainly isn’t stale. There
are new opportunities and new things happening
every day. The people are very likable and inter-
esting and amusing. For instance, once an old
grandmother called me her mother and my husband
her father because she wanted some help from us,
and I presume she thought she would surely get it
in that way.”

Our Missionaries’ Homes.

“T suppose you have often seen pictures of our
bungalows, haven’t you? They look like mansions
on the pictures, and they are large buildings. But,
of course, you would not think they were mansions
if you could see them close by. We have to have
large and high buildings on account of the heat.
They are usually built of burned brick, mud, or
stone. Almost all are built with five rooms in-one
row, so that we can have a lot of air. The floors
are made of tiles or cement. We could not have
wood floors on account of the white ants. They
play havoc with things. They even come through

the cracks in the cement floors or tile floors, and if
‘we should happen to have a rug lying on the floor,
_ it would have holes eaten in it in no time. The

ceilings are usually made of straw matting, which

_ is much cheaper than wood. The inside walls are

whitewashed; we could not have wall-paper on
account of all kinds of insects, and what not all.
We have vermin a-plenty out here. If you would
see the roaches I have to contend with, I fear you
wouldn’t think me a very good housekeeper. But
here we have to be satisfied with trying to get rid
of them; however, it certainly is a job. I haven’t
been able to do it yet. I am going to order some
insect powder, especially for the roaches, from
home. We have fine, long verandas around our
bungalows which make a nice place for the children
to play during the morning and afternoon hours,
when it is too hot to play outside.”

Why So Many Servants?

“T’m sure some of you often wonder why we
have to have so many servants out here. I soon
found out the reason after I was here a while.
You see the climate is so much harder on a person
here, and you lose your vitality in this heat. If
we would do all our own work, for instance, carry
water, and other work, we would not be fit to stay
in India very long. We should be only too glad
to do without these servants because their pay means
about Rs. 50 (over $15) from my husband’s salary.
And they are not very satisfactory, anyway. Noth-
ing is so comfortable and handy as at home. We
usually live far away from everybody and from
shops and post-offices, wells, etc. If we lived as
close as the Indians do, we should not enjoy India,
I’m sure. White people in India need lots of room
and air. In the Bergheim at Kodaikanal we have
things much more like in America. In fact, ‘Kody’
is a sort of European colony; natives are not plen-
tiful there. There we do not need so many servants
either; we even have piped water in the houses.”

What Our Missionaries Eat.

“Now something about our food out here. We
eat mostly native vegetables. Almost all these
vegetables taste alike, not much taste to them.
There is little, if any, food value in them. Jf
course, some of the vegetables are pretty good, such
as the cucumber and some of the beans; but even
they are different from those we get at home. We
often buy canned vegetables; however, these are
too expensive to eat all the time. We have them
on hand in a case of emergency. Often people
come unexpectedly, and then it is very handy to
be able to open a can of something. We enjoy the
change when we go to the hills, where we get good
vegetables and plenty of them. It is then that we
do some canning too. We do not always have