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Show July 27, 1932. Dear Friends, Some of you have already heard something of our plans for this fall, especially of the changes at the Ellis Layman's Training School. Believing that the test hope of the church of Christ in China was an earnest, intelligent and self-reliant body of laymen we have made the training of the lay leaders of the Lintsing and Tehchow fields our job. The school has been in existence some seven or eight years and we have had five graduating classes. A good many of our graduates and those who have been in our school but for various reasons could not stay long enough to graduate, have been doing splendid work in their home churches and communities. Perhaps a half dozen have been taken on to the regular staff in Tehchow or in some other mission. Still we were far from satisfied with our results compared to the great need. Many of those whom we most wanted to reach could not leave their homes and their work to come to the city for training. They were needed at home and there was the item of expense for travel, clothing and food away from home. Some who came, after a taste of education and life in the city, found it hard, to settle down again in their home villages. So, this spring we decided to try a new experiment, the same purpose but a new method. We would close the dormitories and class rooms in Lintsing temporarily, and move our school to the villages. The staff would divide into two teams of about three each, one in the Lintsing and one in the Tehchow field. Each team would live in a village for three months at a time. There we would try to reach not the one or two who might be able to go away to school, but all ages and classes and sides of the village life. We would help the Christians to realize their problems and work with them for three months in meeting them. We hope to bring them a deeper, richer spiritual life and a new vision of service, to help them to reach out to others with the Good News and the new life. We will help them to start literacy classes that all in the village, whether Christian or not, may learn to read and write, and perhaps organize a primary school, if they have none. We would try to give them new knowledge of the world about them, of new methods of agriculture, chicken-raising, health, hygiene and sanitation. Our doctors in Lintsing say that in our section one-third of all the babies die of tetanus before they are two weeks old and another third of intestinal troubles during their first year, through ignorance of rudimentary cleanliness. They told me the last time I was in the country that if flies would eat anything, that proved it was not poison. Others say that flies eat out the poison so make it fit for people to eat. No wonder there is so much dysentery and cholera! While the whole team will work together on many problems, such as health and wholesome recreation, we will each have also our special responsibility. Mine will be work with the women and children. Of course, we will have to study the local situation and make our plans accordingly. |