said from her very heart, “ Come in, Lord Jesus, come in today.” Mary followed next. “ I do receive Jesus as my Saviour,” she said. And with similar words the others responded — Faith and Eileen, Marie and Joan. Joy knew no bounds in the Junior class that first Sunday of the new year. With a happy smile, Miss Day turned to Marjorie and said, “My dear girl, I am so glad you chose that verse for your year verse, and more than that, that you were not ashamed to confess and own Jesus as your Sav iour.” And to all the girls she said, “ I am sure this will be the happiest year of all you have yet spent, because you each have a Saviour who has promised never to leave you nor for sake you.” C o t t o n F o r S h o e s „ O n e b y o n e Foli picked the fluffy white balls of cotton. Gingerly he placed them in the wide-mouthed basket. This was his cotton.—his very own cotton. In other years he had helped in the family garden, but this year he had asked his father to let him have his own garden. Foli’s father was a very wise man. He knew that a cotton garden was a lot of hard work. “What is it that you want that the money from a cotton crop will buy?” he asked Foli. “ I want a pair of shoes,” Foli an swered shyly. Foli’s father was great ly surprised at such an answer. Some of the men in the village had shoes, he thought. He himself had even seen some women at the government post wear shoes in the office. And he had a pair that he wore on Sundays. It may not be such a bad idea at that to want a pair of shoes. “ If you can work hard and do not ask for any help,” he said to Foli, “then you can make your own gar den.” When the rains had soaked the ground until it was soft and yielding, Foli happily began to clear a patch of ground for his garden. The grass came out easily, but the brush and the rocks clung stubbornly to their earth bed. Foli worked until his hands were full of blisters. At one time he would have thrown down the hoe and given up in disgust, but
not buy a pair of shiny black shoes like his father’s, thought Foli. But it was enough to buy a pair of white canvas shoes — and he could keep them clean with the white chalky rock from the river. With a happy smile Foli lay down on his mat to sleep and dream of future years and bigger cotton gar dens which would give him money to buy bicycles and other wonderful things. Bible Arithmetic M u ltip ly the num ber o f Jaco b 's sons by the num ber o f loaves m en tioned in the feeding o f the five thou sand. A d d the num ber o f years the C h ild ren o f Israel wandered in the wilderness. Su btract th e age o f our Lord Jesus when H e began H is pub lic m inistry. T h e answer w ill be the num ber o f palm trees the C h ild re n o f Israel found at Elim . (C heck your answer w ith Exodus 15:27.) Search the Bible for Trees Trees are always interesting. M a n y o f them lose th e ir leaves, others take on the b eautiful fa ll colors o f red and brown and gold. T he B ib le gives us the nam es o f m any trees. Y o u w ill learn th e names o f some of them by fillin g in th e b lan ks in the fo llo w in g and m atching the verses w ith the references listed: Isa. 4 1 :1 9 Ju dges 6:1 1 1. “ Jesus answered and said unto him . . . when thou wast under the tree, I saw thee." 2. A n d he (Zacchaeus) ran before, and climbed up into a ....................... tree. 3. A s the .................................. tree among the trees o f the wood, so is my beloved among thesons. 4. The righteous shallflourish like the ..................................... tree. 5. A n d there came an angel of the Lord and sat under an ......................... tree which was in Ophrah. 6. I w ill plant in the wilderness the ................... ........, the ............................ (acacia) tree, and the ......................... , and the .............................. tree: I w ill set in the desert the ........................... tree, and the ................................, and the ................................ tree together. 7. The beams of our house are , and our rafter of 8. A n d o u t o f the ground made the Lord G od to grow every tree th at is pleasant to the sight, and good for food: the ............................ . also in the m idst o f the garden, and the tree o f ............................. o f good and evil. John 1:48 Psa. 9 2 :1 2 Song o f Sol. 2:3 Gen. 2:9 Song o f Sol. 1:17 Luke 19:4
he saw his father working hard in the garden nearby. Foli felt too ashamed to quit — he was afraid his father might think he was weak as a girl. So he worked on. Once the ground was cleared, he laid strips of bark down in long rows to guide him when he planted the seed. One day he went with his fath er to the big cotton shed near his village where a white man gave out cotton seed. “Why don’t we use the seed we saved from last year?” Foli asked his father. “The white man says he has some seed that will give us better cotton plants.” his father replied. And so they planted their seed—father in' his garden and Foli in his. Foli carefully put four seeds in each hole. When this was done, he watched the green plants come out of the rain-soaked earth. He hoed the ground and pulled the weeds as he had done before in the family garden. At night he. would hear the grum ble of the big hippos as they foraged for food. Foli prayed that they would not find the small green-plants in his garden. The months went by and then the cotton was ready to pick. The white man had been right. Each bush was heavy with white fluffy balls of cotton. Everyone agreed that they had never seen such a good cot ton crop before. Cotton marketday dawned bright and hot. Foli ate his morning manioc in auick gulps and then hurried out of the cool hut. With a big heave Foli hoisted his cotton basket from its rack outside the front door of the hut and placed it on his head. Down the road he hurried with the great basket of cotton jogging up and down, up and down, on his head. At the cotton shed he lined up with the others of his village. When his turn came, a white man weighed his basket and handed him a paper. He saw his cotton dumped with the oth ers in a big pile; then he went to col lect his money. Another white man took Foli’s paper and handed him 2,000 francs ($12). Foli held the money a long time, looked at it al most unbelievingly before he put it In his pocket. It was the first money he had ever earned! That evening Foli laid his money out on 'his mat. He laid aside 200 francs—he wanted to do as his father did, give God His part, a tenth. Next Sunday he would put it in the offer ing plate at church. Then he laid aside 1,000 francs— that would be for clothes. There on the mat was 800 francs left of all his money. Eight hundred francs would
JANUARY, 1962
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