In all this how plainly God has been leading me. I had not a thought of
such things in my lifetime, nor, indeed, in the next generation, and
yet my steps have been led, apart from any plan of mine, right to the
line of God's planning for the country. First Itu, then the Creek, then
back from Aro, where I had set my heart, to a solitary wilderness of
the most forbidding description, where the silence of the bush had
never been broken, and here before three months are past there are
miles of road, and miles and miles more all surveyed and being worked
upon by gangs of men from everywhere, and free labour is being created
and accepted as quickly as even a novelist could imagine. And the
minutes says "I am to return to Akpap in April!" Okoyong and its people
are very dear to me. No place on earth now is quite as dear, but to
leave these hordes of untamed, unwashed, unlovely savages and withdraw
the little sunlight that has begun to flicker out over its darkness! I
dare not think of it. Whether the Church permits it or not, I feel I
must stay here and even go on farther as the roads are made. I cannot
walk now, nor dare I do anything to trifle with my health, which is
very queer now and then, but if the roads are all the easy gradient of
those already made I can get four wheels made and set a box on them,
and the children can draw me about.... With such facts pressing on me
at every point you will understand my saying _I dare not go back_. I
shall rather take the risk of finding my own chop if the Mission do not
see their way to go on. But if they see their way to meet the new needs
and requirements, I shall do all in my power to further them without
extra expense to the Church.
"This," she characteristically added, "is not for publication; it is
for digestion."
There had never, of course, been any intention on the part of the
Church to draw back from the task of evangelising the new regions. But
the various bodies responsible for the work were stewards of the money
contributed for foreign missions, and they had to proceed in this
particular part of the field according to their resources. Both men and
means were limited, and had to be adjusted to the needs, not in an
impulsive and haphazard way, but with the utmost care and forethought.
All connected with the Mission were as eager for extension as she was,
but they desired it to be undertaken on thorough and business-like
lines. The difference between them and her was one of method; she, all
afire with energy and enthusiasm, would have gone on in faith; they,
more prudent and calculating, wished to be sure of each step before
they advanced another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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