Through lands that were dark: Being a record of a year's missionary journey in Africa and MadagascarHawkins, F. H.
Religion
Through lands that were dark: Being a record of a year's missionary journey in Africa and Madagascar
Hawkins, F. H.
London Missionary Society -- History; Missions -- Madagascar; Missions -- South Africa; Missions -- Zambia
Evangelistic and educational work is carried on in Kafukula itself and
in the district of which it is the centre. Services and classes for
inquirers and catechumens are regularly held, and the missionary visits
the whole district three times a year, conducting services, inspecting
schools, interviewing inquirers and carrying on the usual missionary
activities. There are seventy-nine teachers connected with the station
whose wages range from £1 (one senior teacher alone gets this; the next
gets 9s. 6d.), to 1s. 6d. a month, and these wages are only paid during
the six or seven months that teaching in the schools is carried on. If
the teacher is placed far from his home he gets in addition 1s. a month
for food. There is also an evangelist, paid at the rate of 6s. a month,
who visits and preaches in the villages. There are 1,300 scholars in
thirty-two schools, and their education consists of reading, writing,
very elementary arithmetic and the memorising of the Lord’s Prayer, the
Commandments, the Beatitudes and other passages of Scripture and hymns.
Valuable medical work is also carried on. Some of the teachers acquire
a little knowledge of the English language, which they are proud to
show off on occasion. After our meeting with the teachers we received a
letter in English, signed by some seventy of them and addressed to the
Directors, from which the following extracts may be given as specimens
of their English scholarship. The opening sentence is as follows:
“We are exceedingly glad to write you this little note to give you
a hearty greeting to you all in this district, so that the old men,
women childrens, boys and girls and whose tribes of this country are
anxiously to send you a good compliments as they couldn’t reach there
to see your faces or to gathered in the same Church.”
It goes on: “But we were very glad to receipt those representatives
who came from their long journey as far as when they came from and we
had a very good general service and Mr. Horlick was one who had held
the service in our Church and it was interests wonderful to hear from
him about his describes preaching he told us many things about jesus
christ our saviour and how a man would follow the secularity of the
kingdom of God.”
The letter concluded as follows: “We thanks you very much for sending
us these Deputation to visit us and to hear many things from them
how do you loved us. We haven’t more information to tell you about.
farewell, Sirs with lots of salutation to all. We hope you are whole
in good health we should like to hear if you are better.”
“Mr. Horlick” requires some explanation. The natives were not familiar
with the names of the strangers who had come amongst them, but seeing
on the walls of the verandah a glazed sheet, which had arrived a few
days before, advertising the merits of “Horlick’s Malted Milk,” they
assumed that this “banner with a strange device” had some reference to
their visitors. Hence the mistake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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