HERE where we see so very few European believers, a letter from one of the workers at headquarters is always an encouragement. Satan tries to make us think that all we can accomplish on a mission station is not worth while. The continual round of petty trials and annoyances and discouragements compel us to flee often to our Refuge.
The mission now has over one hundred pear and apple trees of a good variety, over three hundred cherry and nearly three hundred peach trees, also a few pears, apricots, and prunes, making about a thousand fruit trees. Then there are about a thousand each of grapevines and blackberry bushes, as well as red raspberries, loganberries, a few currants, gooseberries, and strawberries.
HAULING STONE FOR THE NEW STABLE AT EMMANUEL MISSION, BASUTOLAND
Last Tuesday I returned from a week's trip into the Orange Free State, where I sold about $55 worth of vines for cash. The severe drought and the war made selling rather slow. This year the mission has sold over $150 worth of vines.
This week we are pushing the work of laying the brick of a native boys' dormitory. Brother Campbell and I do the laying. Owing to the war, I fear we shall have to delay its completion, for we shall have to wait until materials come down to normal prices again.
From forty to eighty persons come each month for treatment for all kinds of ailments, or to have teeth pulled. Many have bad colds or tuberculosis. It is customary to sleep with the head under a blanket the year round; I have never found an exception yet, though there may be some. Our school is in operation as usual.
Basutoland is practically treeless, but its grassy hills furnish pasturage for great numbers of cattle, sheep, goats, and horses belonging to the Basutos.
