The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Page 3

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ee RS Ee TE ISTE! ATT MER hy Ee ne ae Te See

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. 3

order to offer them the best advantages of a Chris-
tian Home.

A beginning has been made to train our own
catechists, evangelists, schoolteachers, Bible women,
and pastors. Only lack of qualified students and
instructors has prevented the extension of our edu-
cational system into a real college, a normal school,
and a theoretical theological seminary. If it pleases
God, we hope to expand the present educational in-
stitutions in the very near future.

Evangelistic touring-services are less frequent
to-day than in the earlier stages of our work,
especially in India, because of our inability
properly to provide in a spiritual way for
those souls that already are under our care.
However, as the number of our workers is
augmented, we plan to do far more touring
than at present.

Divine services are conducted regularly’
at all stations and outstations. The mis-
sionaries are assisted by native pastors,
evangelists, catechists, and schoolteachers, as
the case may be.

At present, medical work is carried on
only at two stations in India (Ambur and
Vallioor) and at one station in China (Han-
kow). Recently we have not been privileged
to send out American physicians. Our medi-
cal work is in the hands of American nurses
and native physicians. Prospects are very
bright, however, that we-shall be permitted
to call one or two American doctors in the
near future.*

Zenana work, that is to say, work among
the women and girls in their homes, is still
in.its early stages. In India we have one
deaconess who is preparing to enter this
blessed field, and in China we have two
women engaged in it.

Housing of our missionaries is done as circum-
spectly as possible. All our missionaries live in
residences built for air and comfort. As a rule, our
missionary compounds are very roomy. Whenever
we must rent, we engage the most suitable buildings
available.

At Kodaikanal, in the central part of South
India, and at Kuling, in China, we maintain moun-
tain homes for our missionaries, to which they
retire for a season during the very hottest period of
each year. At Kodaikanal, India, we also conduct

* Miss Bohnsack, M. D., was commissioned for medical
service in India on November 3, 1929. She sailed for India
on Thanksgiving Day.

a boarding-school for the children of our mission-
aries. The school is in charge of an American in-
structor.

In looking back, we can only thank God for the
gracious blessing vouchsafed our labor in the past.
Looking forward, we see opportunities so vast that
we are constrained to continue to cry: Lord, send
forth laborers into Thy harvest. Matt. 9, 38.

In the following pages an attempt is made to go
a little more into detail, so that a clearer view may
be obtained of the extent of our work. .

cao
Trivandrum: field ,,

Nagercoil fie

Map of India Showing Both Our Northern and Our

Southern Mission-Field.

INDIA.

The latest census of India classifies its ikaya pop-
ulation religiously as follows: Hindus, 216,734,586 ;
Mohammedans, 68,735,283 ; Buddhists, 11,591,268 ;
Sikhs, 3,338,803; Jains, 1,178,596; Animists,
9,774,661; Jews, 21,778; others, 18,000; Chris-
tians \(all shades), 4,754,079.

There are said to be 45 different races in India,
using 170 languages and dialects. The Hindu pop-
ulation is separated into compartments by castes, of
which there are possibly as many as 2,500. The
members of one caste do not intermarry with those
of another caste, nor do they dine with them. The
religious and social exclusiveness of the castes