Girl Missionary Wed Head-Hunter’s Son

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29366, 19 November 1960, Page 2

Girl Missionary Wed Head-Hunter’s Son

To be the wife of the son of a head-hunting chief was a proposition put to students at a missionary seminary in Tokyo at the turn of the century. A Japanese pastor converted the chief of a Formosan mountain tribe, and his son decided that he wanted a Christian wife. A young Japanese girl volunteered, and spent the rest of her life spreading the Gospel among the people of her adoption.

This was the beginning of missionary activity in that area, said Miss Doris Trefren. a deputational field representative for tile Oriental and Inter-American Missionary Society, in Christchurch yesterday. Miss Trefren. who is at present travelling throughout the world for the society, was for 20 years a missionary on the Chinese mainland, and recently spent five years in Formosa. * ‘The door is wide open for Christianity in Formosa, and the Church is making great advances,” said Miss Trefren, She said the original education system set up by the early missionaries accounted for the high state of literacy among the people. LITTLE TENSION Miss Trefren found little tension among the people of Formosa. “They feel that they have good military protection,” she said. The Oriental people were fatalistic in their attitude—"so long as a bomb doesn’t drop on them, they don’t worry. They are not as concerned about the situation as people in America.” Through the government land reforms, 80 per cent, of the farmers now owned their own land, she said. Government housing had been built for those persons who had moved in from the lesser islands. "There is no refugee problem, as there is in Hong Kong for instance,” said Miss Trefren.

The population of Formosa was made up of three groups. The Taiwanese numbered about six million; their ancestors had come from the • mainland of China. There were five million Chinese

who had themselves come from China. In the mountains were eight aborigine tribes, who did not know their origin. They were all formerly head-hunters, but now Christianity was making great headway, said Miss Trefren. She herself felt the call to become a missionary when she was five years old. When she grew up she- trained as a teacher, taking her B.A, degree at Seattle Pacific College, and her Bachelor of Sacred Literature, at Venard College, lowa. LAY WORKERS TRAINED After several years of teaching in America, she went to China as a missionary in 1931. Missionaries of the Oriental Missionary Society trained national lay workers, said Miss Trefren. For some years she had run a training school for the mountain tribesmen of Formosa. Radio work is another activity of the society. Miss Trefren has recorded songs in Mandarin which are broadcast by the Far Eastern Broadcasting Company, which has its headquarters in Manila. The society, which operates in-12 countries of the world, also broadcasts from Quito, Equador, and has its own radio station with headquarters in the British West Indies.