The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 54

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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4.

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

and thirty-one persons, by actual count, were with-
in sound of the sweet Gospel hymn with which the
service was opened.

“Tt was a strange audience which greeted the
preacher as he rose to tell the ‘old, old story” Every
face bore evidence of interest, every eye was fas-
tened onthe speaker, and a more orderly, attentive
congregation it would be hard to find anywhere in

the world. ,
A Forceful Object-Lesson.

“Tt was Foreign Mission Day, and the preacher’s
theme was “The Widow’s Mite.’ During the sermon
he used a very forceful object-lesson. The measure
of value in this part of Africa is the hank. ‘The
kank is a stick of cassava, about fourteen inches
long and an inch thick, done up in a plantain leaf.
The cassava is a tuber, the root of a plant much
thought of by the natives. The root is dug up and
soaked in water for many days in order to remove
certain deleterious ingredients. It is then crushed
and beaten very small and after a thorough washing
is wrapped in plantain leaves and is ready for use.
From one variety of this cassava root comes the
tapioca of commerce. The boys at the boarding-
school at Elat are paid one cent an hour for working
in the gardens. The payment is made with one
stick of cassava.

“The preacher took one stick of cassava (lank),
cut it in two, then cut one half again in two, and
then cut the half of the half, and held up the small
piece as illustrative of the amount given by the poor
widow in the gospel. The audience watched and
listened attentively and then gave vent to their
suppressed feeling in one great ‘ugh, ugh, ugh!’
It was evident the point was understood and
appreciated.

The Great Event of the Morning.

“The great event of the morning was the of-
. fering. It was taken at the close of the service.
A platform had been erected near the entrance, and
the people were bidden to bring their gifts to the
platform, where the native elders stood ready to
receive them. With much eagerness the crowd
pressed forward. Old women with wrinkled faces
brought their ‘ank or bundles of peanuts, done up
in plantain leaves; young women, whose apparel
consisted of a plantain leaf in front, tied by a bit
of bush rope to a bustle behind, brought wooden
bowls or safety-pins or spools of thread; young men
came with their gifts: fish-hooks or sugar-canes
_ or cash (German marks), while old men and young
_ brought matches, gun-flints, baskets, etc. Nearly

all the gifts were brought in plantain leaves. It
took a good-sized wheelbarrow to carry away the
plantain leaves after all the bundles had been
opened.

“More than five hundred separate offerings were
given. Tere is a list of articles handed in at this
offering for Foreign Missions. It is well to remem-
ber that a few anks constitute a fair day’s wage
for a full-grown African man and that the great
majority of these fellow-Christians of ours in Bulu-
land are very poor. I have yet to see a Bulu house
with either a chair, table, or lamp. It means some-
thing for these poor people to bring an offering
for foreign missions.

The Offerings on That Mission Sunday.

“6 kanks micaba 4 yams

269 kanks peanuts sugar-canes
kanks plantains 16 agate buttons
(7 toa kank) string beads

7

~

147 hanks ngon seed 1 monkey’s tooth (used
(mueh prized) as ornaments, much
27 kanks cassava esteemed )
15 plain baskets 3 needles
1 peanut basket 1 small fish (much
2 wooden bowls valued)
15 boxes matches 21 fish-hooks
1 pencil 1 German-silver ring
1 bottle pomade 1 brass ring
1 bar soap 357 checks (given for
1 bottle hair oil work; equal one
1 aluminum comb kank each)
25 native spoons 25 German marks
2 ebony hairpins § cutlasses (small)
106 tin spoons 1 cutlass (large)
1 tin dessert spoon 2 four-yard cloths
1 tin tablespoon 1 plate
1 package fish-hooks 9 eggs
1 fish-hook (tied in 1 bottle (used for
plantain leaf) medicine)
1 safety-pin (tied in 1 quart small egg-
plantain leaf) plants
8 safety-pins 5 squashes
1 file 3 bundles shelled
1 spool thread peanuts
2 gun-flints 7 chickens (alive)

“The people had been fully informed that their
gifts would be used in sending the Gospel to other
lands than Africa. It is a long step from the raw
heathenism of the average Bulu to the high type
of Christian evidenced in the Elat church on
Foreign Mission Day.”

On the Friday preceding the Foreign Mission
Day the Elat school had its athletic day. One hun-
dred and fifty attended. ‘The people were greatly
interested, and yet only this small number was
present. Something seems wrong with the African