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Show A new impetus was given to the work by the receipt of a Special gift of $605.50 for new evanglistic work this year. This has resulted in opening four new preaching centers at Wucheng, Sangyuan, Linghsien, and Cheng-chiak'ou. In addition a Tungchou graduate has been engaged to take four month's training at the Y. M. C. A. in Tientsin after which he will travel about thru our Hsien cities, getting in touch with and working for the students and reading class of men. Furthermore the balance of this money has been used to send to over 150 selected men in our principle cities a weekly Christian newspaper called the Christian Intelligencer, hoping by this method to reach not less than one thousand reading men thru the ;T-.ails weekly with the Christian message Later it is expected to follow up this work by sending these men a selected list of ten books, one at a time, at regular intervals. It is also hoped that these 150 men can be persuaded to give us a list of ten friends each so that we shall have a mailing list of nearly 1500 educated men in the future. Thruout the year we have received into church membership a total of 60 members by bapiism, 63 on probation and 10 infants by baptism. The total number of baptized Christians in our field will number 925. The problem which faces us most keenly is the one of getting the native church to recognize its responsibility in the matter of self-support. With the exception of the region in which the Independent church works and the out-station of Chiu Ch'eng which contributes $75 Mexican a year to the support of the pastor, there is no self-support thruout our field above the matter of local incidental expenses. How to bring this about is a difficult problem to solve. Without som: radical change in our policy of mission work it will not come about for another generation. One cause for disappointment is that of our seven students graduating at Tungchou college, all of whom are volunteers for the ministry under the new Volunteer movement inaugurated by the Y. M. C. A. not one has made any advances to take up evangelistic work. They have all expressed a willingness to go into every sort of work except the direct preaching work. _ This deoartmsnt of work has centered in the Porter EDUCATIONAL „ ,. . , _. , , , „ , . ,, WORK Boarding Academy, ol) boys have been enrolled in the Academy and Grammar grades. In addition to this central boarding school there have been 15 day schools owning allegiance to us here with a total of 239 pupils. Many and perhaps a majority of these pupils are non-christian. The faculty of the Boarding school at Panjchuang has been increased by the half-time of a Chinese Classic teacher who gives his time to the correction of Chinese essays. A conference last February which was attended by all the teachers of the primary schools was helpful in arousing new interest and in unifying our work. A splendid spirit of fellowship has characterized the working of the faculty of the Boarding School. All the practical responsibility has been carried by the Chinese. The receipts of the Boarding school have been largely increased during the past year. Within the past four years receipts have risen from $200 gold to $700 or more per year. This latter amount will be increased very largely as soon as the older students graduate. The Academy is in a fair way to. becoming self-supporting within the next few years. |
