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STEWART- McDOUGALL Born, Brandon, M anitoba, Canada, June 15, 1910. Promoted to Glory from Dahomey, W est A frica, Febru ary 11, 1966. Graduated from Biola Institute Course, 1932, Biola School o f M issionary M edicine, 1933. La bored in N igeria 1935-1945 and in Dahomey 1947-1966 under the Sudan Interior M ission. In 1937 married Edna M ae Luft, Biola graduate. Five children: Colin, Donald, M urray, Janet and B ill. Janet is in Biola College; C olin an instructor at Biola; and Donald in Talbot Theological Sem i nary.
this dark place over the border. As we prayed about the need, the Lord asked us to leave the Nigerian work and open work in Dahomey. This we did in early 1947. The task seemed so great one could hardly even plan how to make a beginning, so we used the day-by- day, one-step-at-a-time plan. It was our joy to watch God move ahead at the rate of a station a year for the first ten years, providing needed staff and funds. We were impressed that our God had been ready to move long before we as a mission caught the vision. The most challenging, as well as the most frustrating, aspect o f try ing to plant the church in Dahomey was the many language groups—un written languages and no trade lan guage that would reach all. We our selves struggled with Bariba lan guage trying to learn to tell the story so they could understand it. In time others came to work in the unwritten languages of Pila, Dompago, and Boko. We were able To continue us
e a r E d i t o r : It is better not to take for granted that your readers will know where Dahomey is located. It is a small Republic on the West Coast of Africa, formerly a French colony, and now a young Republic trying hard to find the right way to walk in this big powerful world. We were not really aware of Dahomey our selves during the first years of our service in Africa. We began work ing in Nigeria in the thirties, and there was much to keep us busy meeting the challenge of a growing church amongst the Yoruba peoples. But in 1944 Stewart heard of Da homey from a government official who had returned from a trip there. This man’s remark that the people he saw there were the most degraded he had ever seen, remained indelibly written in Stewart’s mind. He rea soned that this was only so because no one had taken them the gospel. He was teaching in a Bible school at the time and immediately started a prayer meeting with the students for
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___________ ing our knowledge of the Yoruba and some of our missionaries learned Fulani. Then there were those to be reached through the official language, French. So as a mission we were working in eight languages in our small area. Had you visited our daily prayer meeting at headquar ters, you would have noticed a single
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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