Reports from Ellis Christian Training School, Lintsing, January 1930, and the Hubbard family's "Watchman" newsletter, Paotingfu, 25 Feb. 1930

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AE^UT THE ELLIS CHRISTIAN TRAINING SCHOOL AMERICAN BOARD MISSION, LINTSING, SHANTUNG, CHINA. January 13, 1930. Dear Folks: Many of you have already heard a good deal about the Ellis Layman's Christian Training School, in which Dean Wickes and I spend most of our time. The school is located in Lintsing, but serves both of our Shantung stations (Tehchow and Lintsing). The school was opened in 1924, and provides a course of three years elementary training for Christian men and women who have not had the opportunity to get an education in their early years. The graduates of this school are not employed as paid evangelistic helpers, but do volunteer Christian work in their own villages aftei leaving school. . I wish you might have been present at our Christmas party on the Monday afternoon before Christmas. There were nearly one hundred children present, from the two Sunday-schools run by the women of our training school. For weeks the women had been getting ready for the party. One group had been practising a play, "How the Lee Family Kept Christmas" (an adaptation of "The Birds' Christmas Carol"). The other group had been drilling the children to sing several songs, and had been preparing gifts for the children. In this year's box from Honolulu there were enough small cloth bags with little toys for about half of the children. We made enough more for the others, using odds and ends of cloth and ribbon; and from other Christmas boxes and the attic of our house we collected enough things to provide a wee gift for each of the children who had been coming regularly to Sunday-school. Though these Sunday-schools were run by the women of the training school, the men students also chipped in; so that we had enough money to fill all the bags full to bursting with peanuts and candy. It was worth all the trouble of preparation to see the pleasure of the children as they received their gifts. They all bowed as the gifts were handed out to them. Some of the smaller children looked so nearly spherical in their thick padded garments that I wondered where they could bend to make a bow.