OCR Text |
Show CHAPTER THREE 3 Nation Ripening to Earnest Lintsing Pagoda One turns to the report from the men and women engaged in direct evangelistic work with a sense of anticipation. The}', after all, are the ones who sense most accurately the wdiole movement of the Christian church in their fields, for city and country, capital of the nation and isolated mountain hamlet, come under their observation, and the results of the indirect approach through hospital and school are conserved under their direction. What will be their verdict as to the present situation ? First of all, one notices a closer study of the field with a view to its definite occupation "in this generation." In T U N G C H O W , a generous gift enabled STUDYING four students from the college and four from THE FIELDS the seminary to spend the summer at work in the chapels. In preparation for the autumn evangelistic campaign, they prepared maps of the districts, and kept record-books, which were deposited with the evangelistic committee. In the PANGK1ACHWANG field, eleven centres have been -.selected from which it is hoped that influences will radiate into all the surrounding regions, and so the whole field be covered. In FENCHOW, a fuller and more exact survey of the western field has been made, both of the fields already occupied and of the unoccupied portions. This took two mouths time and led through twelve counties. The effort was made to gather as complete information as possible concerning the country, its physical characteristics, its products, ways of communication, location of chief towns and cities, the number of villages, the population, the character and dialects of the people. In the T A I K u H S I E N field, two men spent several months gathering |