p. 13 | The India Mountain Mission Home by G. B. Thompson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 25, 1907

The India Mountain Mission Home

By G. B. Thompson

G. B. THOMPSON

MANY are deeply interested in the mission home for our workers in India, and have contributed toward the purchase of this home. All will rejoice to know that a beautiful place has been purchased at Mussoorie, one of the leading hill stations in the Himalaya Mountains.

OUR NEW MOUNTAIN MISSION HOME AT MUSSOORIE, INDIA

In company with Elders Shaw and Miller, and Brother and Sister Burgess, I visited Mussoorie among other places while in India, to assist in locating this mountain Home. After carefully looking over various hill stations and different properties, a place known as “Annfield House,” in Mussoorie, has finally been decided upon. This is a beautiful place, situated in the cool, bracing climate of the Himalaya Mountains, at an elevation of about seven thousand feet, and only fourteen miles from the railway terminus at Dehra Dun. At first, the owner of the property asked thirty thousand rupees, or nearly ten thousand dollars. But later he reduced the price to twenty-four thousand rupees, or a little less than eight thousand dollars.

After the sale was consummated, he wrote as follows: “It is a wrench to us to part with this property. I am inclined to your belief that some other than human agency is at work for us to part with our ‘home,’ for the purpose of your mission, as we are not aware of any definite reasons why we should sell the property, since we have refused other applications for its purchase.” Much earnest prayer was offered concerning this matter; we feel sure the Lord has directed in the securing of this beautiful property. The house, including bath-rooms, contains nineteen rooms, and is fully furnished with about a thousand dollars’ worth of furniture. Only those who have visited this place can fully appreciate what it means to build and furnish a home in these hills, where all the material has to be carried up the mountainside either by man or on the backs of mules. The estate comprises twenty-three acres, and is centrally located, so that it will be a credit to our work, and increase in value from year to year. It is in every way a most desirable place. Brother Shaw writes:— “Mussoorie, the hill station, in which the ‘Annfield estate’ is located, has a population of between twenty and thirty thousand, and, I am told, made up mostly of Europeans and Indians, with their servants, who flee from the plains in the hot season to escape the awful heat. The climate is cool and pleasant, and never gets uncomfortably hot. We believe Annfield, located as it is with the beauty that surrounds it, will bring new life to our worn and exhausted workers whose strength gives way in the hot, low, malarial plains below.”

The securing of this Home not only affords us a place to which our faithful workers in India can go from the burning heat and trying climate of the plains, but it opens our work in a definite way among the millions of Northern India, among whom we have previously not made a beginning.

Mussoorie has been selected by other denominations for a similar purpose. Besides this summer population, about twelve or fourteen miles below lie the plains, which are swarming with human beings without God or hope in the world. Dehra Dun, the terminus of the railroad, is only fourteen miles distant, and has a population of over twenty thousand. This is a healthful place, with three thousand feet elevation, and an excellent field for mission work. Rajpur, seven miles distant, has a population of over five thousand. Brother and Sister Burgess have opened work in Dehra Dun. Dr. Lucinda Marsh, Sister Kuntz, and others are with them, studying the language. They are making rapid progress, and are preparing for work among the Indian people in their own tongue.

Good results are already being seen. A native Presbyterian minister has embraced the truth, resigned his mission work with his denomination, and is now studying the message, preparatory to entering the field as a worker. Literature has been sent to some interested natives at Agra, a few hundred miles to the south, and a company are keeping the Sabbath there.

The climate at the Mountain Home benefits the workers healthwise. In a letter from Elder Shaw, he says he has not felt so well in four years as since being at this Mountain Home. We thank the Lord for this. Other workers have visited the Home, and have received great benefit also.

We feel sure the securing of this Home near the region of the eternal snow of the Himalayas, is an advance step in our mission work. It will provide the way by which workers can remain more permanently in the field.

In order to purchase their “Home,” it was necessary to incur a debt of about one thousand dollars. They are planning to dedicate it in October, and hope to be able to do so without any debt. Let all pray that this Mountain Mission Home for India may be all that the Lord intends it should be in advancing the message.