I’m reading the first letters and updates from the missionary movement following the Pentecostal outpouring of the early 1900s. Two things amaze me: first, the courage and conviction of the early missionaries that sends them across the world in rickety ships, on donkeys and camels, and carried over treacherous ground by native bearers. Second, the naive and uninformed decisions that lead to tragedy and harm. An appeal in the Sept 20/1913 issue of Word and Witness warns those who want to be missionaries to test their calling, not to rush out on impulse because it is a desperately hard life. The author tells those who speak in tongues that they still must learn the indigenous language because God will not magically give them understandable native speech. And the writer adds that life will be difficult beyond imagination – culture shock of foreign food, ill health, and persecution is to be expected. Only those with a sure call will survive. And many of them will die trying to tell other...
