Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots; Or, Life in KoreaUnderwood, Lillias H. (Lillias Horton)
Religion
Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots; Or, Life in Korea
Underwood, Lillias H. (Lillias Horton)
Korea -- Description and travel; Missions -- Korea
A Methodist missionary from Seoul writes to “The Korea Field” of 1907.
“In the early spring of 1899 I itinerated through the southeastern
section of the Kyeng Keui province and baptized a man and two of his
family. It was like putting a match to dry prairie grass. Thereafter
until the present day it has been a constant hustle to gather in the
groups of believers springing up all over the territory and organize
them into churches. Before I left on furlough in 1905 the number of
believers had already reached into the thousands; since my return last
fall it has been a continual struggle to organize the work and man it
with efficient leaders and get it ready for a grand rally all over the
district. The little group composed of a man and his family baptized
in an obscure village was the first of a mighty host, for the work
begun there has spread into five provinces and now, as it stands on
our rolls, numbers 298 groups, besides a number of those that are not
yet counted, enrolling 16,202 believers. Daily new groups are coming
into existence and _pleading for guidance and instruction_. Chapels
have been built all over the district by earnest believers _who never
think of asking for foreign aid_ (in money). School buildings have been
secured and schools are being conducted on a modern plan. In this short
while I cannot tell all the wonders that His grace has wrought in this
part of the field, when I think of all the things that I have seen
during the last six months, my heart grows warm and glad within me. For
the best part of it is that people are being saved and are entering
into a live experience of redeeming grace.” This district has a second
time within two years been deprived of the care of its missionary, the
one who wrote this letter having been laid low by violent sunstroke,
and now this great district is in the hands of a new young missionary
who has not yet learned the language.
Here are a few extracts from the letter of one of the Presbyterian
missionaries at Seoul, written to “The Korea Field” of July, 1907.
His district is in North Kyeng Keui. “The first place visited was a
village twenty miles south of Seoul where _no missionary has ever been
before. I found a group of over fifty believers_, all an outgrowth of
the work of native Christians. I was further surprised to find a chapel
almost completed. * * * From morning till late in the evening we spent
examining men, women and children for admission as catechumens and
accepted most of them.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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