Junior Christian Endeavor Societies.
It would take pages to tell what Junior Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, and similar organizations are doing for the children of Asia and Africa, and how through them the children of Christian households are being trained to live and work for Christ,—a training which most of their parents lacked in childhood. A missionary from Japan tells how a little fellow prayed at the Christian Endeavor meeting, “Oh God, I just want to thank you for the good time we had last Saturday, I can taste it yet; help us not to forget what we promised then.”
Japanese Children at Worship
A Junior Endeavor Society in the Madura District in India helps to support a Sunday-School in a near-by village, the children bringing their offerings of one pie each (one sixth of a cent) with noble regularity. In one boarding-school in Persia, four or five Endeavor Societies flourished some years ago, and, when the girls went home for their vacations, they led the singing in the village churches, teaching the congregations new hymns learned at school. Each girl saw to it that a Christian Endeavor Society was formed in her village during the long summer vacation. Often the school girl would be the only member of the Society who could read, but she gathered the village children about her, and taught them to repeat Bible verses, sing hymns, and offer simple prayers, and a great deal of training and teaching can be accomplished in one summer vacation!
The power of the Bible.
What marvelous power there is in the Word of God! A Mohammedan boy in a fanatical Persian city, which had often been visited by colporteurs and missionaries, went one day to the bazaar where he saw a New Testament being torn up to serve as wrapping paper. He remonstrated with the shopkeeper, and finally bought what was left of the Book. Through its influence both he and his mother were led to Christ. In another Persian city, the missionary holds a Bible lesson for boys under fifteen every Friday, when they do not have to be at work. Picture cards sent by thoughtful friends in America are earned by boys learning the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, or verses from the Sermon on the Mount. Some of the boys always repeat the lesson at home to their mothers, and some say openly, “If what the Bible says is true, the Mohammedan religion is vain and useless.” Truly, “the entrance of Thy word giveth light.”
Do American children prize their Bibles as does this Korean boy?
A Korean boy and his Bible.
Every day in the village of Nulmok there is an exodus of small boys to the mountain for fuel. Wood being scarce, it becomes necessary for each household to furnish a fuel gatherer. This army of boys is winding its way to the mountains some five miles off. Each boy has tied to his jikcey, or rack carried on his back, a small package of rice. This is his dinner, for it is an all-day job. As they make their way up the well-nigh barren slopes, one boy notices that his friend Kaiby has a second little bundle tied to his jikcey, and so he hails him to know why he is carrying two dinners.
“Oh, one is for my body, and the other is dinner for my soul,” he replies.
After a morning spent in raking over a small area of the mountain, each boy has succeeded in getting together his bundle of dried grass, and all sit down beside a mountain brook to eat of their dinner of cold rice and a relish of greens or pickled cabbage in season. Soon Kaiby has finished his meal and is untying his second bundle; taking out a book he begins to read aloud, slowly, while the other boys gather around to hear. It is about a great Man, who, when the people wanted to make him king, went to the mountain to pray.
Day after day at rest time Kaiby got out his book and read from it, and the other boys were interested. About this time, Ki Mun Ju, the Bible Society agent, came again to the village with Bibles. After supper, Kaiby, accompanied by several other boys, asked if there was not a smaller copy of the New Testament, as a number of the boys wanted to buy a Bible, but their only opportunity to read was at rest time on the mountain, and a smaller copy would be more easily carried. Needless to say, the colporteur did not fail to bring some on his next trip, and now many of the boys have their own, and frequently the hymnbook which they treasure next is tied up with it.[91]