p. 12 | Korea by MIMI SCHARFFENBERG

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 11, 1915

Korea

By MIMI SCHARFFENBERG

MIMI SCHARFFENBERG

I LEFT home Aug. 5, 1914, for a trip among the companies, returning November 29. During this time I visited thirty places. In each place I had special meetings with the women, and tried to teach them to study their Sabbath school lessons. In many of our Sabbath schools we have no teacher to teach the women’s class, and a man cannot succeed in getting the women to answer him; so we have to do something to train women teachers. I hope to have a special institute for the women next February and March.

KAFIR STUDENTS, ALL SABBATH-KEEPING YOUNG PEOPLE

Our work here is strange in one way. We have a changing Sabbath school. Every quarter we have a large list of those who have left us, but with it all the real membership is constantly growing. In one place we may have thirty Sabbath school members perhaps for a whole year, and then the membership may dwindle down to seven or eight. But in general our membership does not decrease; for companies spring up in different places and take the place of those lost in other places. We have forty-five Sabbath schools and twenty-five places where only one or two are holding out alone. Every such place is a gospel lighthouse.

I was pleased to find an interest in the truth on the east coast. In one place, in a mining section, I met Americans who are anxious to know what we believe. They begged for a missionary to settle among them. I promised to send them literature. In another place I had an interesting experience with a wealthy Korean woman whose daughter had died just a few days before I arrived. The mother with her thirteen-year-old daughter had been attending our meetings for some time. One day her friends told her that if she made a Christian out of her daughter no one would want her for a daughter-in-law. This set the mother to thinking, and she said to herself: “That is so. If she should want to marry a Christian, she would have to become a poor man’s wife. No, I am going to see that she marries into a rich home.” So she forbade her daughter’s attending our meetings. Soon after that the girl was taken sick, and the mother called the necromancers. Of course, having gone to the necromancers for help, she lost all desire to pray; and her daughter began asking, “Mother, why do you not pray any more as you used to?” The mother took this to heart, but did not find freedom to pray. Shortly afterwards the daughter asked for the hymn book. She sang several hymns, recited the ten commandments, and a few minutes later passed away. This was too much for the mother, and in her grief she went to the Christians for help, and buried her daughter in a Christian way.

This is the story as the mother herself told me. She had found no comfort and wanted to pray constantly. She stayed with me all the time. On Sabbath after the meeting she asked me to come with her to the grave. I did so, and all the sisters accompanied us. The poor mother wanted an assurance that she would see her daughter again. Although we read to her all the Bible promises, she wanted me to write out an agreement on paper that she could meet her daughter again if she believed, and for this she was willing to give a large sum of money. We spent hours with the poor woman before we could persuade her to go home.

It was well that we went with her to the grave, for otherwise we should not have found out about the idols and spirits that she was still worshiping. That same night I talked with her, trying to persuade her to give up her spirit worship, but she denied having spirits in her house, saying that the few that were there belonged to the rest of the family. The next morning we were invited to her home for breakfast. After breakfast she asked how she could get rid of the spirits in her house. I told her to bring out what she had, and she did. After that we had a Bible study on how to destroy such things. She then wanted everything burned, so we made a bonfire in front of the house. She brought out a big stack of things, but I noticed that the stone crock in which the rice spirit dwells was missing. I had not seen it in that house, but I knew it was in every house. I asked her if she was still trying to keep some back. She said she was not; but when I asked what had happened to the rice spirit, she went and got him, and then the house cleaning began. I did not know that one household worshiped so many different spirits. After we had destroyed everything, we went into the house and had a prayer and praise meeting, which ended in another Bible study. It was a wonderful meeting to me, and I never heard any sweeter music than the music to which I listened in that house when these happy people read the promises in their quaint sing-song way.

This dear woman is now finding comfort. She gave some money for the church building in this place. Her letters are following me up, and she came to another place to see me several weeks later. I hope she will be the means of bringing some of her friends into the truth.