Farewell To Missionaries

Under the auspices of the Otago Missionary Association, a farewell meeting, presided over by the Rev. Thomas Miller, was held in York Place Hall on Thursday evening for Miss Bessie Webster, who is returning to China after being on furlough, and for Mr G. Allan, who is returning to Bolivia. Miss Webster has spent 40 years in China with the China Inland Mission, and Mr Allan is the founder and director of the Bolivian Indian Mission.

In a short address, Miss Webster recounted many of her disturbing experiences in the missionary field, and said that in China to-day the people were beginning to understand the mystery of the Incarnation. They were also beginning to take Scripture and study it for themselves without always relying on what the missionaries told them.

Discussing the present-day conditions in Bolivia, Mr Allan stated that things had greatly chnaged since the mission was founded 39 years ago. He did not consider that the door was closing in any way to the preaching of the Gospel, and the Government was sympathetic towards the work. The Indian race in Bolivia was waking up after being under Spanish influence for many years, and the fact that the New Testament was now printed in their own language made them realise that the Gospel was for them. The recent war with Paraguay had made a new Bolivia, which was previously a sleepy hollow, but the people were now starting to reorganise their method of living. Sovietism, he thought, would not make much progress in Bolivia. There was only a population of 3.500,000, concluded Mr Allan, but there were vast tribes which were as yet unreached by the mission.

A welcome was extended to Mr Trevor Gibbs, a missionary-designate to China, who expects to sail next year, and to Mr and Mrs Hudspith, of the Bolivian Indian Mission, who are at present on furlough.

During the evening, Miss L. Armit rendered the solo, “I Hear Ten Thousand Voices Singing.”