The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 103

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

103

I put on my best smile) : ‘Nsom, the sun is setting,
our feet are weary, and we feel hunger; may we
sleep in your village to-night” And with the hos-
pitality peculiar to this Bulu tribe he offered me the
best of the village. Whenever a Bulu chief receives
me as his guest in his village, I lie down under the
starry Southern sky as unconcerned and calm as in
my own room. I know that, as much as lies in his
power, he will keep me from harm. Of course he
cannot rule the animals, and that often worries
him. THe came to me and said, ‘Ah, do not do such
a thing and sleep outdoors; that gives us shame.

about pots, and hunting, and fishing, and gardens,
and firewood, and all the time mean something alto-
gether different. I knew they wanted to hear of
my God. Then the porridge was done. We put the
leaf bundle on the ground and sat around it, my
carriers and I, untied the grass, said our blessing
on it, and began. Supper over, I again went to
Nsom: ‘Nsom, you know I am sent by God, don’t
you? Now, our God wants us to tell everybody
about Him who does not know Him; would you
mind if I just told your people a little and had
a meeting in the palaver house? Well, as I had

Native African Village.

Two, three nights the leopard has come in the town
looking for goats; do not do that. The best hut in
the village will we give you. And I had a hard
time to persuade him that white folks are made
queerly; they cannot sleep in smoky, close air.

“A long time I sat with Nsom by his hut, enter-
taining him with all kinds of secular things.
I ground my peanuts on the rock for the evening
porridge and went around in the huts. The people
wanted to hear my message; they did not say so,
they were afraid, for what you say alone in the
darkness of the hut will come yet before the ears
of the chief, and he has unlimited power over you.
No, it would not do to say so, but —men all over
the universe can carry on an audible conversation

been so nice to him, he himself called his people
together; but to be sure that nothing would be done
of which he would not approve, he took the only
chair the village possessed and sat outside the door.
What a house full of brown humanity! Brown
limbs everywhere! In that semidarkness of the
flickering firelight only the big, black, earnest, and
expectant eyes stood out clearly. We read Mat-
thews 25; we sang, we prayed, we told of Christ,
and the people were deeply affected by what they
heard. Yet when we asked for those who wanted to
follow Christ to stand up, not one stirred. A quiet-
ness which spoke louder than words reigned. We
went out into the moonlight night, my boys and I,
but we had gone only a few paces when Nsom’s