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T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
January 1926
Our Great Foreign Field in the Homeland Miss M. Winifred Rouzee
Christian Indian evangelist is associ ated with him in the work and the remarkable fact is that from time to time hungry hearts step over that dead line to hear more of the Gospel, and become veritable trophies of grace. Thé conditions of loneliness and hardship prevail for the missionary to a large extent as they do in the for eign countries, excepting the fact, of course, that those in the homeland are nearer to supplies, have a healthy climate, and are under the protection of the. United States government. I asked one woman missionary when she received her Christmas mail. She thought for a minute and then replied, “ Why I think it was about the middle of January, last year.” So inaccessible was her station even in the good old United States! Another brave little woman told me that she was the ONLY WHITE WOMAN in her station! The Indian considers stoicism and silence as cardinal virtues, so you may imagine what isolation means. The great challenge that is be fore the missionary to the Indians now, is really a two-fold one, the reaching of the “ Camp Indian” (the primitive old people who still live in their "hogans” ) and the rising generation which is de manding education as on so many mission fields. Unless their newly acquired knowledge of the white man’s ways is safeguarded by the power o f the Gospel, there is dan ger ahead. The Catholic church is strenuously trying to enlist all Indians, but especially school chil dren and young men and women, in the institutions of learning. The missionaries are striving to perform Herculean tasks. One frail mother of three has been liv ing in part of their church build ing, until the already overbur dened husband can complete the little house. They have been in the church now for two years! She carries all the water in pails, does every bit of her housework, including washing and ironing and sewing, for a pair of husky boys and a little girl, and in addition tries to be an able helpmeet for her husband in the church and in the children’s work which de velops out of a nearby school of four hundred and fifty! (Continued on next page)
attending the South- Indian Conference at staff last summer two of Institute Bible women
This brief story by Miss Rouzee (one of the Bible Women of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles) gives a glimpse of a splendid missionary work which covers a period o f over thirty years. Rev. Fred G. Mitchell, one of a group o f devoted Association men, sacrificed all that men hold dear and, with his saintly mother, has given his life in unceasing devotion to the ser vice of the Red Men. My own heart has been knit with his all these years and it is a great Joy to commend him and his work to our King’s Business Family for prayer and fellow ship.— T. C. H.
were rather suddenly shocked into the consciousness of the fact that here was a great foreign field of which we had been inexcusably ignorant. Just over the border of California there are thousands bowing down to idols, pray ing to and worshipping the elements, as did the Egyptians, and dying with out hope and without Christ. T h i s great company of heathen presents the usual outstanding feature of heathen ism all around the world, which is the worship of the snake. There is no difficulty in persuading the poor hea then that the snake is the type of the devil; he knows it and strives to placate this evil personage by worship ping the snake. What is true over the border of our state is also true to a greater or lesser extent in California and nearly all other states in the Union. We have taken the land away from the Indian and have not even given him a knowledge of Christ in re turn. But God has had choice souls with a vision of the need, and it was our privilege to meet some of these noblemen and noble-women at the Southwest Indian and Bible Conference to which came not only the mission aries but also Christian Indians. To give a recital of the heroism of these missionaries of the cross would read like the eleventh chap ter of Hebrews. You will under stand this statement better, when I tell you that the honored leader of this particular branch of the Indian work had his back broken when he first went to the field, and actually used the ensuing months of painful convalescence as an opportunity to learn the Navajo language. Then he went outvto labor for fifteen years with out a single convert. After this unusual trial of his faith, God be gan to give him the abundant har vest. The story reminds one of Morrison in China. Another mis sionary was being dragged at the end of a rope to his certain death when rescued by a government agent. In one Indian village there is a dead line over which the mission
ary may not go. This necessitates his standing on the line and calling out the verses of God’s Word at the top of his voice only to have the heathen try to drown out “ John three sixteen” with weird whoops and yells. An earnest
Mr. M itchell and D a h -sl-la h ( “T h e- b rav e-m an -read y-for-a ctio n ” ). You would have thought him a brave man if you had heard him preach the Gospel at one of the heathen ceremonies, thereby reaching 300 o f his heathen tribesmen.
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