On this day in 1844, Henry Nott, Missionary to Tahiti, died.

In 1797, Nott, with a group of fellow missionaries, landed on the island of Tahiti, with the dream of starting a flourishing mission.  When they arrived, they found a people engrossed in strange and dark practices, but who were strangely glad to have the missionaries with them.  It soon became obvious, however, that their friendliness came from a desire for gifts, not to know the truth.  Soon, floods of natives came to the mission, seeking tools and other supplies of the missionaries.  When the supply ran out, they resorted to robbing the missionaries, taking many of their needed supplies.

The difficulty of the field, the constant danger they faced, the lack of supplies, drove many of the missionaries mad.  But like a rock in the midst of the storm, Nott worked to hold the mission together in the midst of severe persecution and hardship.  Of all the missionaries, he was the first to learn the language, which allowed him to preach to the people without using an interpreter.  During his first sermon in their language, he said, “O Tahitians, I come with a message of infinite compassion to those in deep distress. I bring glad tidings of salvation to those in sin’s control. I proclaim a gospel of comfort to those in sorrow’s gloom.”

When the other missionaries had been killed, or ran away, or forsook the work, Nott remained to fight for the gospel.  Just three years after the work began, Nott remained alone as the only missionary among the Tahitians.  Still he worked on.  After twenty years, he saw his first convert baptized, the king of the Tahitians.  The following sums up the ministry of Henry Nott:

Thus, after more than two decades of tears and toil, occurred the first baptism in Tahiti. Twenty-two years of hardships and disappointments, and Henry Nott began to see the travail of his soul satisfied. In all the thrilling annals of missionary heroism, is there to be found anywhere a devotion to duty in the face of manifold perils, a fortitude under accumulated sufferings, and a fidelity that held on so long with no evidence of harvest, to surpass that of the bricklayer of Tahiti?

The harvest was at last ready and the reapers were busy. During the ensuing decade hundreds of baptized Tahitians became eager students of God’s Word and earnest seekers of souls. Some of them, and also some of the missionaries, went forth to take the gospel to Borabora, Raiatea, Huahine and other dark islands. Nott preached in the huge Royal Mission Chapel on Sundays and Wednesdays, and went on preaching tours through Tahiti and other islands. On Eimeo a building, formerly used for the offering up of human sacrifices and other abominable practices of the Areoi Society, was solemnly dedicated as a house of Christian worship. With 3000 people in attendance Nott preached the dedication sermon, using the text: “Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.”1

Source:

Giants of the Missionary Trial by Eugene Myers Harrison 1

On this day in 1873, David Livingston, missionary, explorer, and pioneer, died in the heart of Africa.

In 1873, as Livingston was making one of his exploration trips into the heart of Africa, he fell extremely ill.  He grew so weak that the natives that traveled with him were forced to carry him back to the nearby village.  That night, Livingston died.  The next morning, his faithful native assistants came into his tent to find his body kneeling in prayer and his soul with his Master.

Livingston’s assistants, knowing that Livingston was an important man back in his motherland, realized that the English would want to take David’s body back there to be buried.  So they embalmed his body and made a makeshift coffin out of tree bark.  They then carried his body over 700 miles of jungles, swamps, and hostile territory to get it to a port to take it back to England.  But before they embalmed the body, they removed the heart and buried it under a tree in the heart of Africa.  They said,  “Livingston’s heart belongs in the place he loved so much.”

Source:

Westminster Abbey

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On this day in 1816, George Bowen, missionary to Bombay, was born Middleburn, Vermont.

As a boy, George was raised hearing about the truths of God’s word.  But at the age of seventeen, after reading Gibbon’s book, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, George decided to turn his back on the teachings of his youth.  For the next eleven years, George lived life to the fullest that the world could offer.  But it never satisfied.  When a dear Christian friend died, George realized the follow of living for this world and gave his life to Christ.   He was now a new man.

His father was a man of wealth, but  George determined to sacrifice his home and prospects, and to devote himself and his whole life to the missionary service among the heathen.At the age of thirty, he was sent to work in India.  After his first year there, he wrote to his board, asking that he no longer be given as salary.  He desired to live like the Indians, feeling that this would help him better reach them.  So he took a job as a teach, living in a native bazaars and among the sadly-degraded population.

George would work in India for the next forty years  He died in Bombay, India at the age of  72, still doing the work he loved.  A friend said of George at his death:

This amazingly devoted man had gone to India with high hopes for the ministry of the gospel. And he’d given everything toward that end, his heart, mind, body and spirit.

Source:

Obituary of George Bowen in the New York Times

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On this day in 1796, Walter Henry Medhurst was born in London, England into the family of an innkeeper.

As a young man, Walter was sent to  Hackney College to be trained as a printer.  But while he was studying, he began to read about the Foreign mission movement that was shaking England.  The more he heard of the work going on, the more he wanted to be involved!  After finishing his schooling, he applied to the London Missionary Society.

The Society gladly accepted him and, because of his training as a printer, sent him to Malacca, a small country on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula.  The society was hoping to start a major printing center in Malacca. Strategically placed in the center of India, China, Korea, and Burma, Malacca was an ideal place to build a printing press that could service the entire region.  On his way to Malacca, the ship took a three moth stop at Madras.  During these three months, Walter met a young woman named Elizabeth, who he fell in love with.  The day before the ship continued its journey to Malacca, the couple was married and finished the trip together.

Once in Malacca, Walter worked to establish the printing station and to learn the different languages that were dominant in the region.  The rest of his life would be spent traveling to different post, starting printing presses, writing books, and translating and writing material for the missionaries to use.

Source:

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christians

On this day in 1819, Ann Judson wrote the following letter to her sister:

My dear Sister,

Being left alone in my room this afternoon I know not how I can spend it more pleasantly than in writing to a dear far distant sister whom I never expect to meet again until we arrive at our Father’s house in heaven. Though it is seven years since I left my native land and scenes of my earliest years, they are as fresh in my recollection as though it were but yesterday and the wound then inflicted every now and then opens and bleeds afresh. I believe very few females who have left their native country have had it in their power to make such sacrifices as myself.  When I think of my pleasant home and dear Bradford friends, the flattering prospects and sources of enjoyment which I left, I am often led to wonder how I was ever made willing to forsake them and deliberately embrace a life replete with vicissitudes as the present. But my dear sister Mary, a little sacrifice for the cause of Christ is not worth naming and I feel it a privilege of which I am entirely undeserving to have had it in my power to sacrifice my all for Him, who hesitated not to lay down his life for sinners. I rejoice that I had a pleasant home dear friends and flattering prospects to relinquish and that once in my life, I had an opportunity of manifesting my little attachment to the cause of Christ…

Source:

Memoirs of Ann Judson

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On this day in 1832, the American Baptist Home Mission Society was organized after a two day conference in New York City.

All such persons as now are, or may hereafter become members of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, formed in the city of New York, in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty- two, shall be, and hereby are constituted a body corporate, by the name of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, for the purpose of promoting the preaching of the Gospel in North America.

These were the opening words of the charter that founded the American Baptist Home Mission Society.  During the early 1800s, America began to see a major expansion into the West.  Cities began to grow up overnight.  Thousands began to make the long exodus to the new frontier.  The massive, sudden growth of the west began to concern many of the Baptist.  What would happen to these new cities if they were started without any churches or Biblical teaching?

Several Baptist were already working to make a difference.  John Peck, after hearing Luther Rice preach at a meeting, invited Rice to his home, where the two men spoke late into the night.  That night, Peck dedicated his life to Foreign Mission work.  But just a few weeks later, Rice sent Peck a letter, urging him to look to Western plains of his own land, which threatened to become as heathen as any foreign nation is men didn’t act soon.  Peck agreed and soon headed to Saint Louis to start the first Baptist churches there.  In his diary, he wrote:

I have now put my hand to the plow. Oh Lord, may I never turn back, never regret this step.  It is my desire to live, to labor, to die as a kind of pioneer in advancing the gospel.  I feel the most heavenly joy when my heart is engaged in this work.

Isaac McCoy was another early Baptist pioneer in the west, working among the settlers and Indians of Michigan and Missouri.  These men, along with a few others, worked tirelessly to spread the Gospel among the rapidly growing population.  But it proved too great a task for so few men.  They needed help!  Peck wrote to Baptist churches along the Eastern United States, urging for action to be taken.  In one of his letters, he predicated that although the population of Missouri and Illinois was only 400,000 at the time, in fifty years, it would be over 3,000,000 (In fact, it was almost five million when the census was taken).  All Peck could see was millions dying without every hearing of Christ if the Baptist Churches didn’t act soon.

Peck returned east for nine months to promote the need of his field.  While traveling through Massachusetts, he meets Jonathan Going, a very influential Baptist minister who was well educated and had pastored several churches in New England.  Going joined the cause for West and became a powerful force in creating the Society.  Along with several other influential minister friends, Going petitioned to extend the Baptist General Meeting on Foreign Missions to include a meeting on the need for work among the Western frontier.  The petition was gladly accepted and during the meeting, the Baptist churches agreed to join together to form the American Baptist Home Mission Society, with the purpose “to preach the Gospel, establish churches and give support and ministry to the unchurched and destitute.”

Source:

Historical Sketch on the American Baptist Home Missionary Society

On this day in 1874, Susan Strachan, wife of Harry Strachan and pioneer missionary to Latin America, was born.

Susan was born in Cork, Ireland, where she was baptized into the Church of Ireland as a baby.  But as a young lady, she attended a small gathering of believers, where she heard the true Gospel for the first time and accepted Christ.  Soon, she decided to give her life to serve as a foreign missionary in the Congo.  She went to study at Harley College in London, where she met a man named Harry Strachan, who was also preparing to serve in the Congo.  However, when the two young people separately went before their board for review, they were both rejected for work in the Congo due to medical issues.

Susan was instead appointed to work in Argentina after finishing her studies.  A year later, Harry also arrived in Argentina to work as a missionary.  Reunited, the two friends were married.  But before the marriage, Susan, having realized that she had never been baptized according to the scriptures, was baptized.

After the wedding, the couple was sent to Tandil, where they worked for the next fifteen years.  While working in Tandil,  the Strachan began to realize that their job was to reach more than their city.  They needed to reach the entire continent!  This soon became their ministry focus and consuming desire.

When their mission board in England refused to work with the Strachan in their new goal, they resigned and formed the Latin America Mission, which had the goal of reaching all of Latin America with the Gospel.  Together, this couple used their new organization as a tool to reach the vast number living within Latin America.  Their work continues until today.  Over 200 missionaries work with LAM, and they have started seminaries, a hospitals, camps, schools, radio stations, a publishing house, and Christian bookstores.  But the most important legacy that the Strachan’s left behind to their board was how to do the work.  There were five major principles that they lived by and that they taught their missionaries to live by.  The following principles is taken from a book written by Dayton Roberts, a missionary with LAM:

1. Identification with the culture and the people. Harry and Susan showed a deep sense of identification with the Latin American people and culture. The local newspaper was as important to them as their morning coffee, and they followed local politics avidly. They embraced local customs and concerns with genuine involvement and appreciation.

2. The priority of evangelization. The mission was born in the heyday of Protestant liberalism in America. The mainline thrust of evangelistic mission had peaked at about the turn of the century, and the early decades of the 1900s were characterized by events such as the 1910 conference in Edinburgh, which described Latin America as already Christianized, a 1914 consultation in Cincinnati that gave rise to a comity agreement that restricted evangelistic outreach in Latin America, and another conference in Panama in 1916 that gave birth to the liberal Committee on Cooperation in Latin America. The climax of this wave of Protestant liberalism came with the publication in 1932 of Re-thinking Missions: A Laymen’s Inquiry, edited by W.E. Hocking, criticizing evangelistic mission and seeking a more tolerant, nonproselyting objective for the Christian church overseas.  These factors undoubtedly sharpened the Strachans’ sense of the priority of evangelization, but it was something they were already committed to, and it brooked no discussion. Kenneth emphasized the evangelistic campaign ministry after his father’s death by initiating the Evangelism-in-Depth movement, thereby giving maximum expression to his parents’ priorities.

3. Compassionate response to human need. Nothing illustrates this quality better than the reaction of the Strachans to the miserable street urchins they encountered in San Jose. Ragged, dirty, and sickly, the street children begged, occasionally worked at selling newspapers or shining shoes, and more frequently resorted to theft and violence to secure a living.   Susan wanted to do something about it immediately. Harry reminded her – and she agreed with him – that God had led them to Costa Rica to start a ministry of campaign evangelism, and until the Lord should lead them explicitly in other directions, they must not allow themselves to get diverted from this purpose.

4. Willingness to break new ground. “Is there a better way of doing it?” This is a question Harry asked himself frequently. He was certainly quick to experiment with different methods and venues, traveling local trains back and forth to give out tracts and a word of witness and converting a horse-drawn coach into a bookmobile.

5. Personal passion for Christ. The ultimate goal in life for Harry and Susan was to love, obey, and exhibit the person and gospel message of their Lord. In the long run, nothing else mattered.

Source:

The Legacy of Harry and Susan Strachan

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On this day in 1859,  a group of missionaries assembled at Tanna, a small island in the Pacific, and passed a resolution in regards to their fellow missionary, John Paton, and the tragic death of his wife and son:

“This meeting deeply and sincerely sympathizes with Mr. Paton in the heavy and trying bereavement with which the Lord has seen meet to visit him in the death of his beloved wife and child; and the missionaries record their sense of the loss this mission has sustained, in the early, sudden death of Mrs. Paton.  Her earnest Christian character, her devoted missionary spirit, her excellent education, her kind and obliging disposition, and the influence she was fast acquiring over the natives, excited expectations of great and future usefulness.  That they express their heartfelt sympathy with the parents and the other relatives of the deceased; that they recommend Mr. Paton to pay a visit to Aneityum for the benefit of his health; that they commend him to the tender mercies of Him who was sent to comfort all who mourn; and they regard this striking dispensation of God’s providence as a loud call their own souls, and more diligent in pressing the concerns of eternity on the minds of others.”

On March 3rd, John’s beloved wife Mary had died.  Here sudden death had taken a toll on John and many of his dear missionary friends worried about the effect her death would have on John and the ministry.  Many of them begged John to leave the New Hebrides islands and to take a trip around the Pacific Islands, so he could recover both physically and mentally.

To the kind pleas of his friends, Paton responded:

But, with a heart full of gratitude to them, I yet resolved to remain, feeling that I was at the post of duty where God had placed me; and besides, fearing that if I left once the Natives would not let me land again on returning to their island, I determined to hold on as long as possible, though feeling very badly and suffering from the pain.

On this day in 1775, Peter Böhler, a Moravian missionary and pastor, died.

While studying at the  University of Jena, the German-born Peter came under the heavy influence of one of his professors, Nicolas Ludwig Zinzendorf.  Zinzendorf helped the young man to understand the truths of God’s word and the importance of living a holy, sanctified life.  When Zinzendorf became leader of the Moravian Church, his first official act was to ordain Böhler to the ministry and to send him to the growing American colonies as a missionary.

While in London preparing to go the the colonies, Böhler met a young man named John Wesley, who had just returned from two years in the Americas.  On his trip back to England, Wesley had, in the midst of a storm, seen the inner strength several Moravians who were also aboard had.  This experience helped him to realize that he was not truly saved.  When he met Böhler, he was a young man who was searching for truths and answers.  These young men spent weeks together, traveling England together and speaking about the Bible and the work of Salvation.

When Böhler arrived in the colonies, he began to work among the colonist, slaves, and Native Americans in South Carolina and Georgia, building a strong Moravian church.  When religious persecution forced the Moravians to flee, Böhler lead them to Pennsylvania, where they built the cities of Nazareth and Bethlehem.  For five years, Böhler worked in the colonies.  After that, he returned to England to work in the church there and moved up the Church leadership to become the Bishop of the Moravian Churches in England and America.  But church politics held no allure to Böhler, especially when compared with the work he had done in America.  So he resigned his office as Bishop and returned to the Colonies as a missionary.  He spent ten more years there, before retiring to England.

Source:

Peter Böhler

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