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Show CONCLUSION. THE care for about 2700 inpatients, 10,000 outpatients (1940), 315 boarding-students in the schools, 30 student nurses, and innumerable people in the country is at present carried on by seven foreigners in the station. Their lives are simple and rich in hardships. It is lucky that there is always plenty of work which keeps them in good spirit, and it is lucky that one can adjust oneself if it is necessary. The Chinese are good friends to them and the feeling that they are responsible for these friends to a certain extent gives satisfaction. Even I to whom conditions in the interior of China were so shocking in the beginning have learned to appreciate the lighter sides of Chinese country life, and now even I am convinced that Chinese houses are indeed cleverly built because with a minimum of cheapest material they protect best against heat in summer and severe cold in winter, and it did not take me long to like Chinese children. They are my pets in the hospital, especially after their third bath which cleans them up at least partly, but I confess: if they are dirty I don't mind it either. Missionaries are like parents who love an ailing child most because this child needs much more attention and more care than a perfectly healthy one. The country people here are always badly in need of help and advice: they are ailing-children to us. Missionaries in spite of so many misfortunes and disappointments, are optimists and know that seeds of social work will grow fast and bear plentiful fruits as soon as more normal conditions return to China. And social work based on the teaching of Christ is the main claim of the mission station in Tehchow. The belief that missionaries are a sort of queer people who live in strange countries only to convert people and that a mission station is a sort of a "baptizing factory" seems to me still widespread. In this brief essay I have tried to say that mission work means active religious work. To heal, to teach, and to love is certainly more effective than preaching that it should be done. How extensive mission work can grow nobody knows. But it may be that it will sometimes leave countries of lower civilization and return to those of higher civilization which are probably in even greater need of unselfish work for prosperity and peace and a fight against hatred. |