SUDAN UNITED MISSION

Evening Star, Issue 19790, 14 February 1928, Page 11

SUDAN UNITED MISSION

LETTER FR0&1 M CAMERON At a meeting of the executive of the Sudan United Mission, held last night, Mr George W. Gibson being in the chair, the following letter was read from Mr Norman Cameron, who left our city about a year ago to join the staff of the mission. It was written from Abri, in the Anglo-Fgyptian Sudan, dated November 22, 1927: “A short time ago_ I spent a few days at Heiban. A visit to the mission station cannot but impress one with the feeling that the schoolboys, seventy in number, form an admirable, little Christian community. _ln time the older boys return to their villages in the mountain, and carry away with the..i some portion of the teaching and training received. And 60 this mission station, encircled by distant hills and mountains, is winning young recruits for Christ, and is becoming more and more a centre from which radiates the Gospel light of peace and goodwill, where the night of ignorance, superstition, and cruelty has for so many centuries darkened the land.

“Christianity lias already meant much, directly and indirectly, to this land under British rule—law, order, and a measure of prosperity, the abolition of slavery, and the entrance of the Christian missionary. The Sudan is now waiting, like thirsty ground for rain, for the incoming of more missionaries.

“ At Hciban I visited several villages in the mountain. My gujdo was one of the schoolboys, and it was witli some difficulty that T made my way in heavily-shod hoots along the' boulderstrewn track. In one place T. noticed the footmarks wore wont 6in to 9in deep in the hard granite rock. Down through the centuries the bare feet of generations of natives have worn these deep impressions. How slow lias Christendom been to realise her responsibility to the African, who has not yet known the way of life that ho might walk in it! It seems a solemn thought. “Shortly before leaving Abri for Heiban I was present at a native funeral. It was one of the saddest sights I have ever witnessed—the men with drawn faces, the women lamenting and crying out in deep sorrow for the departed. There was no ceremony at the graveside, for they know of none. ne woman was so exhausted with grief that she had to be carried back to her village, while another had to be led away. These people mourn those that have no hope was the thought uppermost in my mind.

‘ Life has been compared by an ancient Briton to that of a sparrow’s ffying from the darkness into a lighted room and out into darkness again, The sight of bats dying across my lighted room at night reminds me' of this primitive idea of the life of unenlightened man—from the unknown, then_ life’s short, span, then for him out into the unknown night. “Often in the stillness of the night I hear the .call of a night bird and the answering call of its mate; ami it seems to me that God, too, has heard in the midst of their night the heart’s cry of these people after something better, and some have heard, be it ever so faintly, God’s answering call. When this great land is ready for His visitation God will surely answer the prayers of His people beyond the measure of their asking. “Our small band of workers is endeavoring by God’s grace and help to lay 'foundations, and there is much cause for hope and encouragement."