The American Missionary — Volume 35, No. 3, March 1881Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 35, No. 3, March 1881
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
One five-dollar bill given to Miss Boynton, designed especially for
table use, provided us with various essential articles: jelly cups
being exchanged for drinking glasses, a needed coffee-pot, tea-pot,
cups, saucers, etc. A set of silver teaspoons helped to supply
a deficiency. Sheets, pillowslips and towels replaced worn out
articles of prime necessity. Thus, while our personal wants have
been so thoughtfully provided for, other friends have generously
remembered the poor and needy Freedmen among whom we labor, very
many of whom are suffering for the necessities of life. Within a
week two well-filled boxes of good second-hand clothing came to
Rev. O. D. Crawford, forwarded to him by friends in Dubuque and
Waterloo, Iowa, the distribution of which has called forth tears
of gratitude, and invoked blessings on the heads of the donors
from many a poverty-stricken soul. I would that space permitted
me to depict some of the distressing needs of the poor right at
our own door, that the generous heart of the North might be opened
to relieve. I shall hope to avail myself of a future opportunity
to give a more minute account of our work, its growing needs and
opportunities.
* * * * *
MISSISSIPPI.
A Changed Home.
Miss Koons, of Tougaloo, Miss., relates the following interesting
narrative:
Two of our young men, brothers, were converted last fall term.
Their step-father was a hard drinker; their mother not a Christian.
When they returned from their Christmas vacation, one of them,
greatly troubled, told me what an unpleasant vacation they had had,
so much so, that he felt as if he could not stay, but must come
back to us. The step-father was drunk continually, and kept about
him other drunken associates, abused the mother, and by his conduct
so grieved the boys that they felt they could not endure it.
They went home in June and took charge of the farm. They held a
little prayer-meeting every Wednesday evening and Sunday morning
with the mother and step-father. They also went together to
the house of a near neighbor—a terribly wicked man—and held a
prayer-meeting with the family every Sunday afternoon. The story
of the Prodigal Son was the means of the conversion of one of the
brothers, and some weeks after his conversion he came in to ask
where it might be found in the Bible, saying, “I have been hunting
for it for two weeks, and can’t find it.” He says now, “I often
read the Bible to my mother, and explained to her that story of
the Prodigal Son, to the best of my knowledge.” During the summer
the mother was converted, afterward the step-father, and then the
neighbor for whom and with whom the boys had been praying. His face
was of joy as he told of the conversion of his mother, who “could
not bear the thought of her boys going one way and she another,”
and he exclaimed, “Oh, Miss Koons, our home is a different place
now!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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