The Apostles to The Chins
IN 1883 Laura Hardin was sent to Burma as a missionary under appointment by the Women's American Baptist Foreign Mission Society of the West, and as-signed to work as teacher in the Mission School at Bassein.
Three years later she was married at Bassein to Rev. Arthur E. Carson, who had then just arrived from America under appointment by the American Baptist Missionary Union and designated for work among the Chins, being the first missionary sent to that people. After substituting for one year in Prome, while the missionary regularly assigned to that station was away on furlough, Mr. and Mrs. Carson established the first Chin Mission at Thayetmyo near the border between lower and upper Burma.
They acquired the language, secured a mission compound, erected buildings, established schools and churches; did some translating; carried on a persistent campaign of evangelism, touring a considerable district inhabited by Chins for that purpose.
This foundation wo was continued with good success for ten years without interruption before a missionary was sent to relieve Mr. Carson for a furlough, long overdue.
After that furlough the Foreign Mission Board in response to the challenge of still more remote tribes of Chins, in the depths of paganism and degradation, un reached and untouched by any Christian message or in-fluence, authorized the Carsons to advance the frontier of Christian work and influence back into the almost inaccessible hills of Upper Burma and establish a Mission among the semi-savage Chin tribes there.
This was nearly eighty-five years after Judson began his wonderful missionary work in Burma. But the soil to be cultivated was virgin soil, and the task not less difficult than that undertaken by the great first foreign missionary of our American Baptists. Although pagans, the Burmese, as Judson found them, at least had a language, a literature, a commerce and a civilization; but the remote hill tribes of Chins had none of these.
After a tour of this remote hill section and consultation with representatives of the English Government. which had come into control of that part of Burma only a few years before, Mr. Carson selected Haka as the strategic place in which to establish the new mission. The English Government had put a small military out-post there, and would not consent to the missionaries going to any place in that dangerous territory where there was no military post.
The long and dangerous journey to Haka, the difficulties of transporting to that remote and almost inaccessible fastness in the mountains, the necessary house-hold goods and supplies for a year, the curiosity and inquisitiveness of the natives about seeing for the first time a white woman, the long efforts to overcome the suspicions and prejudices of uncivilized and savage tribes, and to acquire their strange unwritten languages under those conditions, are all depicted in this book with graphic vividness.
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