“DOOR OF HOPE.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 118, 18 April 1934, Page 8

“DOOR OF HOPE.”

MISSION IN SHANGHAI. Working quietly in the city of Shanghai, carrying out a service that is moulded along the highest aims of Christianity and humanitarianism is a mission called “The Door of Hope.” Since it was commenced in 1901 with one missionary that number lias grown to 17 at the present time. There are 500 Chinese girls under the care of the mission now, and since its inception thousands have passed through its doors to enter upon married life.

At present in Palmerston North is Miss I. Houghton, a member of the mission, and this morning she told a reporter something of the great work that is being carried on in a city having a population of over 3,000,000. From throughout the different provinces of China girls a.re brought, in many cases bought as children, to become social slaves in Shanghai, she said. They became slaves, under domination, and came to the mission when they found opportunity of escaping from the life of social outcasts. Some were mere children when they were rescued, some were older. Upon entering the mission, which is of an interdenominational character, the girls take up a new life. It is entirely a faith mission and is devoted to soul salvation and growth in grace. Besides study of a religious nature and a certain amount of education, the inmates undertake knitting, embroidery and other occupations, and usually marry in their late ’teens or early twenties. One of the stipulations of the mission is that the girls shall marry Christians. When they come to the mission in the first place they are taken to the Municipal Court and there are given to the mission, being in effect then legally owned by the mission. Some of those passing through the care of the mission later go out to their own people as missionaries, and the whole of the staff of teachers and nurses in the mission are girls or women who have gone through the mission themselves. Girls from the mission never go out into domestic service. . , Among the missionaries who are working at “The Door of Hope” are members who claim as their own country England, Wales, the United States of America. Germany, and Australia. Miss Houghton herself_ conies fyom Geelong, Victoria, and is just at the conclusion of a six weeks’ tour of New Zealand. She will sail by the Monterey on Friday for Sydney and in September returns to China, having finished her 12 months’ furlough at the end of a five years’ term with the mission. Two years ago, in the progress of the Sino-Japanese. war, the mission was forced to leave its own property outside the Settlement in Shanghai and move within the Settlement. _ The mission property was totally ruined, hut none of those from within the Settlement were hurt. Even so, shells passed overhead and fell in the streets in some instances.