The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 41

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER 41

sionaries, untrained though they were in that kind
of work, offered such help as their limited ex-
perience and common sense dictated. Several of
the refugees were ill with smallpox, and all of them
were in dire distress and therefore in great need of
help. Missionary Lawrence Meyer, at that time
stationed at Hankow, had been kind enough to ac-
company me into the interior of the country. Trav-
eling from the Yangtze more afoot than in sedan
chairs, we arrived at Shihnan after a rather stren-
uous cross-country trip and came just in time to
bring our missionaries the long-expected and much-
needed relief. Ever since then, if I recall correctly,
we have had an orphanage at Shihnan. Small at
first, it has now developed into a rather populous
institution. The latest statistics report that at the
beginning of December, 1931, we had eighty-six in-
mates in the orphanage. Some of the children in

> our care are blind, others are deaf, and one little

boy is both blind and deaf. It is hardly an over-
statement to say that nearly all the children would
have fallen into still greater bodily distress than
they suffered when they first were brought to us,
and many of them would have perished altogether,
had not the love of God moved our missionaries to
take them in and provide for their physical and
spiritual needs. It goes without saying that all are
required to attend our Christian day-school as soon
as their age will permit, and nearly all have already
been baptized into Jesus Christ.

The accompanying picture shows clearly the -
condition in which many of the children come to us.

I shall permit Mrs. A. H. Gebhardt, who labors so
faithfully in the orphanage, to give us this boy’s

story. She says: “I am enclosing a picture of one :

of our new boys. The picture shows how he looked
when he came to us about three months ago. His
name is Chen Wan Seng. He does not know how
old he is, but I should judge him to be about twelve
or thirteen years. He has no parents or close rela-
tives. Recently he was staying with a heathen
priest in a temple at Lichwan. This boy gets epi-
leptic fits, but not very often. Since he has been
with us, he has had only one, and that was not
severe. The priest threw him out because he was
not able to do much work. He is not baptized as
yet, but is receiving instruction in the Word of God.
In the orphanage Chen Wan Seng belongs to a labor
group that does all the odd jobs, such as leveling
off places, putting in walks, and the like. Of course,
he also has regular school-hours.

“Tjichwan is about sixty-five miles west of

Shihnan. The county and the county-seat have the
same name. The eastern boundary of Lichwan
County is about twenty-five miles from here. All
the clothes, shoes, and other things are almost ready
for all the orphans. It surely takes a long time to
get so many children equipped. They are just like
our children at home and love to receive new clothes
for Christmas.”

Unfortunately we do not have an adequate or-
phanage building of our own in which the children
can be housed. ‘The girls are kept in the city of
Shihnan, where we occupy a rented building. The

Chen Wang Sen on Arrival at Orphanage
at Shihnan, China, in 1931.

boys are housed about a mile from there on our
own property, where we have a Chinese building in
addition to two residences for our missionaries;
but the Chinese building is an old structure, not
erected with a view to being used for orphanage
purposes and withal not at’ all suited to its present
use. Of course, as long as we cannot supply any-
thing better, it must serve us, and we are glad to
have it. Our missionaries at Shihnan have long
hoped that our Christians in the United States
would help them to house these children in more
suitable quarters. Here would be a real oppor-
tunity for our ladies’ aid societies to engage in a
worth-while undertaking. Also parents whose sons
or daughters have been called home by our Lord