Moderator’s Wife Travels Widely With Husband

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31783, 13 September 1968, Page 3

Moderator’s Wife Travels Widely With Husband

Travelling is nothing new for Mrs E. G. Jansen, wife of the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, who is visiting presbyteries throughout the country. She is used to being “of no fixed abode.”

In 20 years of marriage, Mrs Jansen has worked with her missionary husband in China, Hong Kong and the New Hebrides, where they will return later this year. The couple have no children and Mrs Jansen has been accompanying her husband on official trips since his 12month term as moderator began last November. They are in Christchurch for two weeks.

“I often get roped in to do a bit of speaking to women’s and children’s groups in the presbyteries we visit. I am very interested in women’s work and in the service and status of women in the church,” Mrs Jansen said yesterday. Went To China

After her marriage after the Second World War, Mrs Jansen went to China with her husband, who had been working as a missionary there previously and had been interned for four years. “China is a fascinating country, mainly because of the age of the civilisation.

What impressed me most about the Chinese people was their tremendous capacity for hard work,” she said. After about 18 months under the Communist regime, which did not want missionaries, the couple went to Hong Kong, where they stayed for six years. Mrs Jansen, a trained secondary school teacher, taught at a Christian girls’ school. (“I went to relieve for six months and stayed for six years.”) “The Christian Church does a tremendous amount in Hong Kong, where, once again, my chief impression was the terrific persistence of the people. In a country where Christians are in the minority, you learn to appre-

ciate the difference the Christian religion brings to the basic principles of living, such as honesty.” The biggest problem in Hong Kong was the overcrowding of the people and the needs this created.

“Wherever you go, there are always beggars approaching you. A lot are professionals, but not all are, and when there are rows of beggars on the streets, you know how little your contribution can help,” Mrs Jansen said. “We found the best way was to have several families who were our special responsibility and to just try to resist the beggars on the streets. You can never be quite comfortable again after seeing terrible poverty. A

lot of people here think this is exaggerated and have no conscience about the hungry people of the world.” Ten years in the New Hebrides, where Mr Jansen is the principal of the Tangoa Training Institute, followed before the couple returned to New Zealand on furlough last year.

The institute prepares students for a three-year Government training as teachers and also takes Presbyterian theological students. Last year, there were 70 would-be teachers and five theological students.

Mrs Jansen teaches English and works with the wives of the theological students, teaching them elementary English, arithmetic and Bible study to help equip them for life in the villages when their husbands return as ministers. The institute is about 15 miles from Luganville, which is one of the two ports in the New Hebrides and has a population of about 4000. Great Changes “Fantastic changes” had occurred on the islands in the last 10 years, particularly in transport, education and work opportunities, Mrs Jansen said. Air services had expanded greatly and now included an internal airline. Tourism was becoming increasingly important. “The rapid rise in the standard of education makes possible indigenous leadership and the missionaries are now almost in a supporting role, although I think it will be another 10 or 15 years before self-government is possible,” she said. The New Hebrides is ruled jointly by Britain and France, in the only condominium government in the world. Last year, for the first time, a census was taken. It revealed that 86 per cent of the population was Christian, a little over 100 years after the arrival of the first missionaries.