WEST CENTRAL AFRICAN MISSION.
Self-Supporting Mission Work.
UNDER date of May 20, says the Missionary Herald, Mr. Currie writes from Chisamba:— "Four lads have just been in to report their efforts for Christ when on their journey to the coast and back with their own truck. They are among the younger members of the church, but they have neither been ashamed nor afraid to call their fellows together around the camp fires, and sing, read, and speak to them the things of Christ. "I am sometimes oppressed by a sense of responsibility as the conviction grows on me that our young men are going to be and do very largely what they see we are, and are striving honestly to do so. During the past year our young people preached Christ to all the districts within two days' march from this station, with the exception of the districts immediately in the neighborhood of Kamundongo station. In addition to this they attended twelve caravans sent from this station to the coast. Some of their number also attended two caravans to the interior, to about the neighborhood of the Kasai River, going on these occasions with their own goods, to teach and preach as they went. It is safe to say that in half the districts visited last year the message was almost or entirely new to the people; while as for the interior it is well to note that there is not a single station from here to the French station in the Barotse Valley, and only one station (Plymouth Brethren in Kavungu) between here and Lake Moero, so that any effort to preach the Gospel in connection with a caravan going in either of these directions is almost sure to touch people to whom it is yet unknown. "In one sense the native agency under my care is all self-supporting, and is not at all dependent on mission support. Young men going to the coast with a caravan look after the loads, for which they are paid, and preach the Gospel without stipend, and if they carry their own trade, they get nothing for services rendered in the cause of Christ. The church this year pays half the support of the evangelists and all their rations while working among the villages, and the rest I pay for out of the returns of the Industrial Department."