“One day early in the fall,” writes Miss Alice B. Caldwell of Marsovan, Turkey, “while walking in the school garden I noticed two little girls strolling up and down the path arm in arm. They were chattering in their vivacious way, and one of them was making her crochet needle fly as fast as her tongue. On my inquiring what she was making, she held up a dainty bag, and several little interpreters informed me that it was for the Christian Endeavor Bazaar. After that day I saw many busy fingers on the playground making the most of the hours out of doors.
“The Junior Endeavorers help to support a little girl in a Chinese school, and they were getting ready for a bazaar to help make the money for their adopted child.”[114]
Children from missions fields helping to save America.
If we are touched by such stories as the above, which can be multiplied many times over, what is our feeling about those who are serving and helping our own Christian land because they were won to Christ in childhood on the mission field? We are thinking of one young woman whose parents became Christians under missionary influence, and who grew up in a Christian home among many persecutions and adverse circumstances from without. When, in the course of time, her widowed mother immigrated to America, the girl, already a devoted Christian, entered a training school in this country. Today she is working in six languages for thousands of immigrants in a New England city,—doing a work that few Americans could ever hope to accomplish. Merely as a business investment or a patriotic effort, the money contributed to the Mission Board, which brought about this result, has been more than profitable.
Here is the record of another good investment made in China:—
Some years ago there entered the True Light Seminary a bright little girl of thirteen, who, under the wise and gentle training of Miss Noyes, gave her heart to Christ and united with the church, becoming thereafter one of the best pupils in the school. Her great desire was to become a teacher, but since three years of age she had been betrothed by her father to the son of a heathen family—the betrothal by Chinese law being almost equivalent to a marriage—it became her duty to fulfil the promise made for her, and at the completion of her course of study she married the man of her father’s choice. The marriage did not prove a happy one; the husband’s business took him much away, leaving his wife alone, and at the end of three years he died suddenly of plague. The young wife, thus unexpectedly set free for service, at once took up her desired work, and after teaching for three years in Hongkong was called to a position in a Congregational school in Canton....
In the spring of 1910 it came about that one of the benefactions of Mr. Andrew Carnegie came to the Occidental Home in San Francisco, and when the question arose as to what should be done with the gift it could but seem that the long-sought opportunity had come to secure a Chinese teacher to live with the girls in the Home and to train them in their own tongue.
So it came to pass that Yeung Mo Owen, or Mrs. Yeung, as she is known in America, led in these various ways, became an inmate of the Mission Home in San Francisco, teacher of Chinese to the girls, both in the Home and in the Occidental Board Day School, and incidentally a blessing not only to the Home and to the Chinese Church, but also to Chinatown, and to the Board itself....
“I have never seen such a lovely face, never been so impressed by a Chinese woman,” said one long in the work in California. “Now you see what our native Christian women are like,” quickly responded a missionary who was present.[115]
Missionary children at work.
The story of the Child at Work for Christ would not be complete without making mention of the missionary children who in such large numbers are trying to do their share toward bringing the Kingdom of Christ to this world. “If one life shines, the life next to it must catch the light,” and the joy and privilege of mission service in all its beauty,—and in all its trial and discouragement as well,—are well known to the missionary boy and girl. Even little four year old Annie had her share of discouragement when her parents returned to their field of work after a furlough during which Annie had forgotten all languages but English. When she heard her mother speaking of women’s meetings and various forms of work as she took them up, one by one, Annie decided to do her share also. Picking up her dolly, she trotted down to the gate to be a missionary to the little Turkish girls next door. Sadly she came back again to report, “Mother, the children cannot speak the American language.”
Let no one think that because missionary children are “used to” the country and the language, the climate and food and presence of the “natives,” it is always easy and natural for them to return to their parents’ field of labor. Just because they have been familiar with it all from childhood, the surroundings and opportunities of the homeland,—their own rightful heritage,—seem desirable beyond words and hard to relinquish. To the missionary children who return to the field, the halo of romance surrounding the step is non-existent,—they go with open eyes to what they know about. And yet they go, large numbers of them, and it might be well to ask of your Mission Boards whether their services are valuable to the cause or not. A newspaper clipping a few years ago gave these statistics:—
“Nearly one-third of the missionaries of the American Board of India and Ceylon are the children or grandchildren of missionaries who were sent out by the Board two or three generations ago. In the three India missions, including Ceylon, there are now ninety-five American laborers, nineteen of whom were children and eleven grandchildren of missionaries.”
It would be interesting to get the statistics of other Missions and Boards on this subject and to compare the results of their work with some of the psychological statements quoted in the early chapters of this book regarding heredity and early training.