Never again let it be asked in church or missionary society of a young woman starting for the foreign field, “Are you going out as a missionary, or only as a missionary’s wife?” At a conference for outgoing missionaries, a beautiful, talented college graduate, leader in many activities and full of capacity and consecration, said to a returned missionary,—“I am to be married, and have listened and listened at this conference to know what particular work is waiting for me, but there has been nothing for me as yet.” When it was pointed out to her that by means of her paramount duties and obligations as wife and mother in a missionary home she would have an opportunity of living the missionary message such as few of her fellow missionaries might have, her beautiful face lighted up with a look that illumined it. The making of a missionary home was a vocation indeed to call forth all the highest powers of her consecrated womanhood.
E. A. Lawrence on missionary homes.
Mr. E. A. Lawrence has stated so clearly the possibilities and opportunities of the missionary home that he is worth quoting at length.
There is an element of missionary life which is seldom presented, yet most important. It is the mission home.... It underlies the whole of the work, and discloses the ideal of Protestant missions more clearly than any other point....
The first thing the Protestant missionary does among the heathen is to establish a home. He approaches them not as a priest, not simply as a man, but as the head of a family, presenting Christianity quite as much in its social as in its individual characteristics. This Christian home is to be the transforming centre of a new community. Into the midst of pagan masses, where society is coagulated rather than organized, where homes are degraded by parental tyranny, marital multiplicity, and female bondage, he brings the leaven of a redeemed family, which is to be the nucleus of a redeemed society.... It is on this mission home that everything else is founded—the school, the college, the kingdom itself....
When they are at their homes, this new institution, with its monogamy, its equality of man and woman, its sympathy between child and parent, its co-operative spirit of industry, its intelligence, its recreation, its worship, is at once a new revelation and a striking object-lesson of the meaning and possibility of family life. Whether they come to his church and school or not, the natives seem always ready to visit the missionary’s home, and to remain there so long, and to conduct themselves so familiarly, that it sometimes becomes necessary to teach them by object-lesson another feature of the Christian home—its privacy....
If the family in its very existence is an important missionary agent, having a distinct work to do, not only for its own members, but for the natives, ... then there must be a distinct acceptance of this office by its members, and it must play its part in the outreaching work of the missionary. The natives must be brought in contact with this domestic sphere. The walls of the home should be at least translucent, that its light may continually shine through to them; its doors should be often open, its table often spread for them; a distinct social as well as Christian fellowship should be cultivated.[26]
At the missionary’s table.
“Given to Hospitality” might be the true epitaph on the headstone of most missionary wives, and untold lessons in love and deference between husband and wife, obedience of children, interesting and profitable table conversation, self-control, and courtesy, are taught in the missionary dining room as they could never be taught in church or school room.
Planning the day’s work.
“Won’t you write an article on the orderly management of a home for the paper published by the mission?” begged a young Christian teacher who was spending her vacation week as a guest in the missionary home. “The work of each servant and person in this house is arranged for every day, and everything goes on quietly and regularly. Our women have no plan for their day’s work, and I wish they might know how you do it.”
“I was taking dinner at the home of Mr. C.,” said a native pastor, “and his little boy cried for some more of the food he liked. Instead of giving it to him, his mother actually sent him away from the table to stay until he could be pleasant! I never heard of such a thing, but I went home and told my family about it.”
Learning to cook.