MISSION TO LEPERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22505, 25 February 1935, Page 3

MISSION TO LEPERS

An interesting letter from Mr J. H. Schultz, of the Chandkhuri Leper Homes and Hospital, India, has been received by Miss Dora Wheeler, secretary of the Mission to Lepers. The letter states:— " I believe that all of your parcels have arrived and I wish to thank you now most heartily for the help which you gave us in our work at Chandkhuri. Most of your parcels came before Christmas. May I request you, as far as this may be possible for you, to let the good people know that their help was tremendously appreciated. If it were not for friends like you people in New Zealand and in other countries we would have nothing to give our patients and their children for Christmas. During the last few years there has always been just enough This year we thought for a while that we would not have sufficient, as some of the people who had sent big parcels in previous years sent very small parcels this year, But, fortunately, some other people, as for instance, you, at Anderson Bay, have made up for it this year. These gifts meun more to our patients than we can tell in words. To them they are tokens of lovo and friendship. Lepers have but few friends in thi s world, and we know'how much they want friends. To them such a gift makes all the difference in the world, as they know that there is some one who cares for them." Miss Wheeler has also received a letter from the Rev. E. N, Sharpe, of the Purulia Leper Home and Hospital, Bihar, which states:—

" May I write and say how grateful we all are here for the many things you and your New Zealand friends of the Mission to Lepers so generously supplied ua with this Christinas. Please thank the ladies of Dunedin for the scarves that now are shielding the heads and shoulders' of our brethren here from the cold north wind that daily blows across our baie, brown downs these winter months. Christmas was a time of great joy and peace—so splendidly helped forward by theve gifts of love and sympathy from you and others so far removed. We needed every one this year, for there were 873, including our health children of lepers, to be catered for, and it is a big, big family. Your strange and beautiful New Zealand views and people seemed very near indeed this Christmas, as Mr Crawshaw was with us just before and showed iiß many pictures of vour islands at a lantern lecture he gave here." ;