At San Buenaventura the new mission house, finished several months ago, gives great satisfaction. It is not the property of the Mission, but has been built for it and is rented to us at cost. We can rely upon the use of it as long as the work continues in that place,—that is, if the building lasts so long. We were paying $12.00 per month for a low, ill-located and ill-built, untidy shanty, yet the best place that could be had. We now pay $8.00 per month for a neat, commodious building which furnishes not only an attractive school-room, but living rooms also, for which our brethren pay a small rent, and thus make for themselves something very like a Christian home. Four of these brethren were recently baptised and received to the Congregational Church.
No mention has yet been made in these columns of the new mission house in Oakland which we hold by the same tenure as that at San Buenaventura. It could not be better located, is a very neat structure, substantial also, and planned expressly for our work. It, too, is rented to us at cost. A hint of what goes on there, and of what goes out from there, aside from the labors of the school, may be found in these few sentences from a letter of Yong Jin: "One scholar promised to be Christian was two weeks (i.e. two weeks ago), and he will join our Association to-night. I hope his soul will be saved. I had preaching on the street last Sunday and before last Sunday. I shall go next Sunday too. I hope you pray for me and this school. May [may be] I can conquer the evil and bring more number to the school and to the Association. I believe God has a great power."
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.
MISS D.E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.
We are glad to see the State Organizations increasing. Now let every one become a working Union, bringing funds into the treasury of the American Missionary Association, toward meeting the imperative needs of its Woman's Work, and we shall rejoice indeed.
Our Industrial Teachers are heavily taxed just now in providing sewing material for classes. We need basted patchwork, and basted under garments for the sewing departments throughout the field, but especially [pg 320] for Anniston and Mobile, Alabama; Memphis and Jonesboro, Tennessee; Tougaloo, Mississippi; and Austin, Texas. One missionary writes, "I find my classes very large. In beginning I have about one hundred girls in sewing, about thirty in Household Economy and Cooking, and later I shall have a large class in Nursing. This work added to the care of the Mission Home will, I fear, be more than I can carry, unless I have help, and I do not see how I can let one bit of the work stop. I am sure there are plenty of good friends at the North who will gladly help when they know."
We have added a special industrial teacher to the force in Trinity School at Athens, Alabama. Miss Perkins writes: "I am charmed with the school and the inside of the building. I wish each day that our Northern friends could look in at Chapel. I think they would feel repaid in great measure by the goodly sight. I was glad to find a Christian Endeavor Society in the school, it seemed so like home."