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Nyassaland

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 7, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 10.

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Nyassaland

By S. M. KONIGMACHER

S. M. KONIGMACHER
This is another beautiful morning [December 12], but we really need rain more than fine weather just now. If we have another bad season this year, there will be suffering among the natives. The native is very careless about the future. If he has a good crop of corn, he will not look ahead and save part of it, but will eat his fill, and sell the rest for cloth and salt, instead of saving his food and working for cloth and money.
The school year has now closed, and I hope some of the lessons will remain in the minds and hearts of those for whom we have labored. God has blessed our work and helped us.
I opened sixteen new schools in the Malamulo district, and Sister J. C. Rogers opened two in the Matadani district. This makes us, in all, forty-four out-schools, with two main stations. We now have eighty native teachers and assistants.
We also have permission to enter Portuguese territory in the district of Tete. This permission was gained through the American consul at Delagoa Bay. There are at least two missions operating in this field, but we are sure we can find a suitable place to plant the banner of the third angel's message. Surely God is going before us. We are crippled on account of lack of funds. If we only had the money, we could open up the Portuguese country at once. As it is, we must wait, wait, wait.
During our closing exercises of the station school, we were very busy preparing and correcting examinations, and in making shirts for prizes for good work in the native language. These were awarded to the two boys who spelled down the school in the vernacular, the boy who read twenty-five verses of John seven out of the native Bible without a mistake, and to the sixteen pupils who recited fifty-three verses and told where they were to be found. Each pupil had to recite separately. The verses were chosen from the first ten chapters of Luke.
The preceding evening I gave a lantern lecture on the life of Christ. Mrs. Rogers was present, and spoke a few words to the school through an interpreter. Fifty of our teachers were also in from the out-schools. I examined the school in English and in the vernacular, but awarded prizes for vernacular work only, to stimulate a greater desire for their own language. The desire for English is already great enough, yes, too great. All the exercises were carried on in the native language.
On Sabbath two hundred thirty-nine persons were at the Sabbath-school, and the church service was well attended.
We have finished a good brick house for Brother C. Robinson, our new superintendent, and are teaching him the language. He gave his testimony in church last Sabbath in the native tongue, which is very much like the one he knew in Rhodesia. Brother Robinson was formerly connected with the Barotseland Mission.