Will those who love the Lord pray for my Missionary friend, who is living alone in India amongst the Hill tribes. What need of patient continuance to go on thus, amidst such hardships and discouragements. In a recent letter, she writes: ―
“ ... We have had a time of sickness, people lying about all over the villages. Not like the epidemic of last year, but just fever...
I think perhaps, they are undermined by the run of bad harvests, and not enough to eat. I am hoping that the worst is over.
“Two man-eaters are at large―further up the hill―ours, who were eating the corpses, had left. I do not know if these are the same two. They have eaten and killed several young men. One with a load of leaves on his back was picked up and his load also, and he went off with them, and here among the villages two jackals are after the children. Great cowardly brutes they are as a rule, but these have got bold. They have already picked up one little boy and eaten him... and four or five other little ones have been rescued just in time (as they were about to spring). A whole pack of jackals are howling round the villages at nights.... The people hate the sound of them.... So you see what life is for my poor hill people. I have asked the authorities if they cannot send some hunters to rid the place of these creatures ... I do hear, since the agitators had the forests burned down, that there is not enough food for the wild animals, and they will eat anything they can get now... Does it not remind you of the devil and the way he watches to catch unawares?
“We had... a perfectly appalling thunder storm. I never knew of such a storm-flashing, crashing, pouring. It was really too dreadful. I had just taken a lantern and gone to the dining room when there was such a crash and the place shook as in an earthquake, but no one could get out to see what had happened.... A tree had been struck, but I knew then it was victory somehow, for a sense of triumph came over me, and I called out ‘Victory,’ and ‘Hallelujah to Jesus,’ in the midst of the uproar. It was like the Spirit of God rising within me to praise. God is truly wonderful.”
In her last letter she says: ―
“ ... If there are to be saved ones, from this place, you must stand by me in prayer, and get others to do the same, that God’s Holy Spirit may be so poured out on the hill tribes, so mightily, that break will come, and those who love the Lord―for I believe some do-may get courage to confess Him openly. They cannot face giving up wife and children.”
It is pathetic how they cling as children to my friend, and their dread of losing her is great. One said “What is to become of us then, cast out by everybody, and no one to stand by us.” How great the value of one soul!
A. A. L.