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Show A LINTSING NEWS LETTER. Peiping, China, June 3rd. 1931. Dear Friends: It seems almost incredible that it is nearly a year since I sent you the last news letter. The year has been a very busy one. Early in August our evangelistic workers and a few delegates from the churches gathered for a ten days conference under local leadership, which proved harmonious and helpful to deeper thought on spiritual themes. The Chinese head of our evangelistic work has been kept by poor health from spending much time in the outstation field, and the work there has suffered from lack of capable guidance. This is a testing time for Christian faith in China, and while that of some has been found lacking, on the part of many it has burned with a new vigor. This year I have had a .fairly heavy schedule of teaching in the Laymen's Training School besides other work, having sixteen hours a week, all using the Chinese language and Chinese books. On Sundays I have mostly gone with a group of the students to one of the villages, where they are conducting a little Sunday School and Christian services. On several occasions I have made a trip to one or another of our outstations to conduct communion services, and have three or four times done the same in Lintsing. This has been the year of the fact finding work of the Laymen's Inquiry as well as of evaluation work undertaken by us at the suggestion of our own Board and carried on in cooperation with the laymen from America. We succeeded in arranging with the Laymen's Inquiry to have their main work of investigation in China done in the field of our North China Congregational Union, whose Promotional Board now carries on the work formerly done by the North China Mission of the American Board. Much time was given by many of our workers to this work of investigation, which extended to every department of our activity. Personally, besides filling out a number of questionnaires and spending three afternoons instructing our preachers in the use of the schedules for themselves and their fields, I spent a week in February surveying church work in three parishes southwest of Peiping, escorted by my former colleague Pastor Wang, now the Superintendent of evangelistic bands in this field. This survey work has set large numbers of our Christians thinking in a somewhat new way, and may prove worth while on account of that alone. We now have better maps of many of our parishes than existed before and new plans for work are in the air. Investigators from other Stations who went into our Lintsing country field told us of a number of strong points they saw in our churches there, which helped to renew our courage. From the tenth to the twenty-sixth of this month the evangelistic workers in the Lintsing field are to have a short course in hygiene and public health at the Memorial Hospital in order better to serve their communities. At that time also it is expected to discuss with them plans for a reorganization of the evangelistic work in order to make it more effective. Plans for the special development of Christian service in two parishes are under way. Having had two attacks of low grade fever during the year, lasting over a month in one case, I am in Peiping for examination at the Peking Union Medical College. I hope they can get rid of the source of the trouble for me, perhaps my tonsils. I also need to have some teeth removed, they say, and must spend some time at replacement. There is no dentist in Lintsing worthy of the name. We rejoice in an important addition to our Lintsing staff in the persons of Rev. and Mrs. Lewis L. Gilbert, formerly of Yale-in-China, with their two children. Though their time is still |