The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 — John Shaqi
The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885Various
History
The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
I. STOCKTON.--Except as, for a short time, more than thirty years
ago, something was done by Rev. S. V. Blakeslee in San Francisco,
Stockton was the first point in California occupied by the A. M. A.
The work was continued there with scarcely a month's intermission
from 1871 till about a year ago, when under financial pressure it was
closed for a time. The intention was to resume as soon as the opening
of a new fiscal year gave me the right to draw against a new
appropriation. Meanwhile it was hoped that a temporary suspension
might lead to a greater interest on the part of the Chinese
themselves, and that we should begin to get urgent requests from them
with pledges of cooeperation such as had sometimes come to us from
other places. It was all a mistake for which your Superintendent is
chastened, and repents. When we were ready to resume, we found the
convenient room which the school had occupied so many years rented
for quite other purposes, and no quarters could be obtained except at
a rental too exorbitant. Most of those among the pupils who had been
specially benefited, and whose urgencies we should otherwise have
heard, had moved elsewhere, and the Macedonian cry which we hoped
would put us on vantage ground for future operations, did not come to
our ears. The Chinese are very numerous in Stockton--at least 1,000
constantly there, and probably 1,000 more who, working here and there
in the great San Joaquin Valley, make Stockton their rendezvous. I
ought not to have suspended work among them, but rather with faith
and courage I should have pressed it with greater zeal, and if hearts
seemed harder there than elsewhere, I should have poured in upon them
more abundantly the light and love of Christ. All that I could
accomplish on this visit was to arrange conditionally for a room in a
building not yet completed, and to intensify my own determination
somehow to carry to those dark, needy souls "the _fullness_ of the
blessing of Christ."
II. SACRAMENTO.--It was good to come into the warm spiritual
atmosphere of our Sacramento mission. The tokens of God's blessing on
our work there are unmistakable. Our readers have heard recently from
our helper, Chin Toy, and I forbear going into details. The best
result of my visit was in the decision of one of our pupils who had
been highly commended to me by his brethren and by Mrs. Carrington,
to enter into missionary work. His name is Chin Kel. I am all the
more hopeful about him because he is distrustful of himself. This was
the only ground of hesitancy with him. The fact that it involved a
_very considerable pecuniary sacrifice_ does not seem to have weighed
with him at all. He will be stationed at Marysville, relieving our
excellent brother Joe Jet for work elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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