p. 16 | A Foreign Mission Field in New England

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 20, 1911

A Foreign Mission Field in New England

A WRITER in the Outlook gives us a glimpse of a Portuguese mission field in New England:—

“It is by a curious irony of fate that this historic little town where the Pilgrims first landed, and which was afterward settled by the purest of New England stock, descendants of the Pilgrims, should to-day seem like a South European town. . . . The names on the shops are Coreas, Silvas, Cabrals, Mantas; the very language of the street is foreign.

“So true is this, that it strikes even the children. A little Provincetown boy once landed at Ponta del Garda at St. Michael’s, in the Azores. He looked around at the handsome, dark-eyed children, the sailors loafing at the waterfront, and the signs on the shops, and his comment was, ‘Why, this is just like home!’ And no wonder; for it is from the Azores that the first immigrants came.

“It is one of the ironies that time plays on a country that this landing-place of the Pilgrims should to-day have more Roman Catholics than it has members of any other denomination. And not only so, but part of the service in the Catholic Church is always in an alien tongue; for the priest preaches in Portuguese for the benefit of the new arrivals, and then in English for the children of those who know English better than the tongue of their fathers.”