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Show I shall be happy if I can leave in each place a strong earnest group of women who are eager to serve, to meet regularly for prayer and Bible study, to learn to read, to know more of child-care and training, and to reach out to others in their own and neighboring villages. For the children, I hope to start a Sunday School with some of the mothers or fathers or young people as teachers. As a practise school in methods, materials etc, as well as for what the children will get out of it, we will have a six weeks or two months Vacation Bible School. There are practically no Sunday Schools in these two big rural fields and Christian Religious Education is almost, if not quite, unknown. In villages where there are few Christians we will have to do more foundation work than where there is an older established. chair ch. We have all agreed to try out this plan for three years and then decide whether it is to be continued, or to go back to our original method or something better yet. As far as we know, no one has tried just this idea so it will mean constant study, experiment and adaptation. For myself, it will mean that I shall be living most of the time in the country with only occasional trips to town for committee meetings and such. I expect to take a girl with me as language teacher and companion and general assistant. She is in her early twenties, the daughter of our blind, evangelist, she hopes to be a Bible woman herself, but for the present must work, instead of going on to school, to help a younger brother and sister in school. It will be good experience for her and a big help to me. One of our most serious problems is that of personnel. We have been trying to get a woman to carry the work like mine in the other team but have found no one yet. Since April we have been searching vainly for a Chinese woman to take Grace Brock's work. All this last year we have had on hands a special gift from a friend of Dr. Hugh Robinson's to hire a Chinese doctor to take his place while he was on furlough and have not been able to get one. Missionaries are still needed for there are just not enough trained Chinese to anything like go around. The other big change we are making is the one at the school. Having had a cat in our educational appropriations of more than two thousand dollars Chinese money, we are cutting our primary school from six grades to four and our teaching staff from eight to two. One will be a high school graduate and the other a graduate of the seventh grade. We will close the boys' school and kindergarten buildings and use only the girls' schools buildings. We are giving aip all attempt to register with the government, having only a small school for the children of our workers and the Christians who live near the compound. Oar emphasis will be, instead, on rural Mass Education. Ths two best men teachers that we have had will spend full time traveling through our big rural field organizing and supervising *"*Thousand Character'' classes. Miss Huang will be with me and Miss Liu is joining the evangelistic staff. Miss Liu has been head of the girls school since Ethel Long went home. She is to hold Daily Vacation Bible Schools in our rural churches, staying about a month in a place. So pitifully few of the village children are in school that life is all vacation from study |