99.Bon Voyage

99.

Bon Voyage

I visited another missionary--a middle-aged woman living in a beautiful little white New England style cottage in a remote jungle clearing who had somehow managed to surround herself with every gadget luxury and convenience of a resident in a Los Angeles suburb.

These missionaries are all as different from each other as can be; yet all are missionaries of the same Christian denomination.

What about the African converts to Lutheranism?

I suppose different factors have attracted them too. Some needed water pumps and some needed health care and some were curious about movies and generators but I suppose most of all they were profoundly interested in some spiritual element that they hoped to find in the Christian Way.

They are, after all, not so different from you and me--and make their own earthprobe as well as they can.

So, Bon Voyage to all of us travelers -- and keep probing!

Acting with the best of altruistic motives I think, Christian missionary societies have developed schools and hospitals in Liberia.

On the other hand, the rubber produced by Liberia is essential to the American economy; so good relations are politically and economically necessary too, but I think most missionaries would rather not look too closely at this perhaps less spiritual side of their work.

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