A young missionary goes inland to her first station. "I'm not going to look frumpy!" she declares, and takes all her prettiest dresses. When she comes out in gay colors that are not worn in that backward area, or in short sleeves when everyone else has elbows duly covered, her senior missionary attempts to suggest a bit of alteration in her wardrobe. All suggestions, however, are indignantly rejected. She plunges enthusiastically into work with the children, using pictures very effectively to supplement her limited vocabulary. One day her two favorite scholars do not appear, and she asks her helper, a bright high school girl, the reason. The embarrassed and evasive answer does not satisfy, and she keeps after the poor girl until finally she is told the truth. An hour later her senior missionary finds her weeping in her room. "She said," she chokes, "she said----that their mother won't let them come any more because I----because I can't be a good woman; I dress like a--a prostitute!" What is wrong? Why does the eager young missionary have to go through all this heartache? Just because she is not willing to see with someone else's eyes. Her own standards are the only right ones. She learns by hard experience the fact that other people _do_ see things differently from us, and that it _does_ make a difference. After all, this is their country, and these are their customs. We cannot expect them to adjust to ours. It is the foreigner in the strange land who has to adjust to the ways of that land. To learn a new language, the ear must be alert to hear just that little turn with which a sound is pronounced that makes all the difference between a foreign and a native accent. To become adjusted to a new people, the eye and the heart must be alert to perceive clearly, to understand and take in their feelings and their reactions. May God grant us the seeing eye and the hearing ear! * * * * * "Oh, they're terribly strict at that Bible school!" someone remarks. "There are rules about how long your dresses must be, and how you must wear your hair. I wouldn't stand for it! Why, it's things like that that give Christianity a bad name!" Perhaps. At the same time, one who has shown that he is willing to give up his own standards and conform to someone else's, even though he may not see the reason for those standards, has shown an attitude that will take him a long way on the mission field. The "how I do my hair and what kind of clothes I wear is my own business!" attitude so frequently met with, both at home and on the field, is not a promising one. If we have fully given ourselves to Christ, nothing is our own business--it is all His. CHAPTER 5 _The Right to Privacy_ _"There were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat."_--Mark 6:31 _"But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them."_--Matthew 9:36