SOLOMON ISLANDS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 79, 2 March 1929, Page 12

SOLOMON ISLANDS

MISSION WORK EXPLAINED. The Baptist Church was comfortably filled last evening with an interested and sympathetic audience to listen to Mr Mallis, director of the South Seas Evangelical Mission, who spoke upon mission work in the Solomon Islands. Rev. F. A. Crawshaw said that it gave him great pleasure to introduce Mr Mallis, but it seemed strange that he, the speaker should be operating the lantern to illustrate a lecture in Palmerston North upon work he himself had been engnged in as a missionary in the Islands. The pictures screened were some of the finest yet shown of mission work. The portraits of converts were remarkable as showing the happy transformation of their features effected by the Gospel. “At Onepusa there are 200 native Christians in training as teachers. They gather from, all the islands around for a two years’ course in order to qualify for the. work. But this number is quite inadequate for the demand and the mission could do with twice as many.” Pictures were shown of several fine dwellings unoccupied for lack of missionaries; and the lecturer appealed for candidates for the work. Certain slides showed country which was a veritable paradise of tropical beauty, while others depicted forbidding mountainous regions thickly covered with bush. Tiny hamlets were scattered, said the lecturer, in the fastnesses and upon the sides of the mountains. The pioneer gospeller climbed upwards of three thousand feet, and had to keep carefully to a narrow track, maintaining his hold and footing by branch and root in order to reach some of the dwellings. Natives were pictured busy with copra, housebuilding, fishing, conoeing and drilling for relaxation after the sedentary school work. A baptismal scene was screened and for this the natives, said Mr Mallis, have exhausted the resources of the Bible for names. “The candidates for baptism are very particular to be well under water, being disconcerted if their hair should be uncovered in the operation. Hundreds of Christians and heathens watch interestedly the proceedings, but all observe the greatest quiet and reverance during the ordinance.”

A portrait was screened of an old witch doctor converted to Christianity, who, in his time, had caused scores of deaths by. witchcraft. Previous to the advent of the mission no one w.as deemed to die from natural causes. When a native died the witch doctor was consulted, and by incantations he indicated the individual—innocent or not—responsible for the death. The headhunter was then sent for to kill one of the condemned one’s family, father, mother, or child. A missipn,ary, upon whose - plantation a native had. died, lost his life in this way. Two men watched for him and crept up to a meeting during the singing of a hymn. A shot rang out"and the missionary passed to his reward. But the natives said : “We don’t seek the missionary’s death; he is good. Wo want to get the white trader.” The people built their own meeting houses. One building was covered with corrug-

ated iron. For funds the natives went to work on the plantations and donated their wages to the cause. The unevangelised heathen were eager for the Bible, and constantly appealed for missionaries to-be sent to teach them the Word of God. It is remarkable that the Evangel mission ship uninsured, except above, lias been wonderfully, preserved, and h?s gone scathless through storm and tempest on all her errands of-blessmg. The meeting closed with prayer.