Ax \.. r V 0 ♦ .j. ^ ❖ ❖ ❖ UDopfe of the Hiseiples of Christ in Porto Rico V ❖ ❖ V ♦I* WoocA_ ❖ Christian Woman’s Board of Missions Missionary Training School Indianapolis, Ind. I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Columbia University Libraries https://archive.org/details/workofdisciplesoOOwood Work of the Disciples of Christ in Porto Rico W ORKERS in Porto Rico are constantly impressed by the passing of the old and the coming of things modern, usually —not always — better. Now is the meeting point. The broad-wheeled ox-cart is hurried to one side by the clanging automobile. The Black mantillad senora sits beside her daughter with gown and hat in the latest New York style. Children speak English at school and Spanish at home. Thatched huts are giv¬ ing place to lightly built wooden cottages. The sewing machine is heard in the land. An electric light shines out from age-old Morro Castle. In the coast towns, at l6ast, the domi¬ nant note is progress, which is filtering back through the hills. A middle class is rising. We are in the midst of the making of Amer¬ icans. One is safe in Porto Rico. The stars and • stripes are a familiar sight. Governor Colton will not be entangled in the petty politics of the island, but talks organized Boards of Trade, better coffee, more carefully packed fruit, larger docks, alike to Republican and Unionist. Every district has its gray-coated, clean-faced, vigilant police corps. The Fourth of July and Washington’s birthday are legal holidays. We feel at home in a foreign land. One may live comfortably in Porto JRico. In every town stores are springing iip which cany American goods and have clerks that speak English “a little.” As to climate, a Lutheran missionary said it was no fun to look at the thermometer—it was always 85. So we do not need your pitying letters, won¬ dering how we stand the heat down here, where it is “so much warmer.” There is usual¬ ly a good breeze. Hats must he securely pinned, paper weights are appreciated gifts and books must be laid with hacks to the east. Where there are children in the mission home, school is an absorbing, sometimes a heart-breaking tojric. Not so in the pueblos of this smiling isle. Even liere we are looking into the future, to ultimate statehood, but Uncle Sam, while believing his nephews shouhl govern themselves, as firmly declares they should know how, so he provides them with schools. Usually each municipality has an American superintendent of schools and several American teachers. In Bayamon there will be ten grades next year, besides classes in music, drawing and night schools. The grades follow closely the work at home, using many familiar text books, with the addition of Spanish. Fifty teachers are under the direction of this alert superintendent, twenty of them teaching rural schools in the twelve barrios of the municipality. The getting of good teachers has been a problem. Several years ago a nor¬ mal school was started in Rio Piedras, where young people who have passed the ninth grade (and this will be raised as the schools in the 4 island advance) may, with no cost to them¬ selves but board, take a two or a four-year course in a modern school, where beside the regular curriculum domestic science or manual training is required. The school has au agri¬ cultural department also, and others will be added. We call it a university, though the university lies more in our hopes than in the reality. One hundred and fifty-nine young people graduated from this school this year. The Commissioner of Education says the sup¬ ply of teachers has met the demand. All of the work of the Disciples of Christ is in the municipalities of Bayamon and Toa Baja, just south of San Juan. Three lines of work are followed—Orphanage, School and Evangelistic. The Girls’ Orphanage work was begun in August, 1900, in the old municipal building in Bayamon.. October, 1909, it w’as moved across the street from the Boys’ Orphanage in Hato 'Tejas, two miles west of town. The girls occu¬ pied two cottages, several rods apart, having three houses between them. Recently the mis¬ sion bought for fourteen hundred dollars the larger cottage, called the Red House, because in the dim past it was painted that brilliant hue. This house, which would remind you of a rather dilapidated summer cottage at home, had long been rented, with its six acres of mountain and I'avine, by the mission and occu¬ pied by the Irelands, Altons and Carpenters as a Mission Home. When conditions made a move desirable, the three-foot native balcony was extended to eight feet and used by tlie 6 girls for dining, sewing, study and sitting room. When our tropical sliowers come pelt¬ ing down witli little warning there is an in¬ stant scurrying of girls with plates of rice and beans or half-darned stockings. Because the girls sleeping in the smaller houses were frequently annoyed, one w^eek in June, 1911, the men of the mission laid aside the pen and, wielding the hammer, put a temporary dormi¬ tory and small room for sick ones on the west side of the house, so that work and worry— yes, and rent money—might be saved. Here twenty-three girls, remarkably modest and re¬ fined when compared with those outside, re¬ ceive daily instruction in housework, sewing, drawnwork and the Bible. In 1902 a tract of land was bought for a home for boys. In December, 1906, a sixteen- thousand-dollar cement building was dedicated, and soon after the boys were admitted. The thirty-seven hoys, with Superintendent Van- neter and his family, make a bustling com¬ munity. The hoys are taught to do the most of the work about the home, to care for the horses, some help on the farm and a class are learning to make shoes. Religious services are held iu the schoolroom conducted by the or¬ phanage workers and the two teachers. All orphanage children are expected to attend church and many of the older ones are mem¬ bers of the church. In the large schoolroom at the Boys’ Orphan¬ age Miss Siler and iliss Lacock conduct the school for our orphanage boys and girls. Eight grades were .covered last year. Our teachers 6 are handicapped by having to teach in one room. For some years the mission has con¬ ducted a three-grade school on Comerio street in Bayamon. This has been taught the past two years by an orplianage girl, Providencia Navarro. The school meets in an old dwelling house from which the partitions have been re¬ moved and the walls roughly whitewashed. At the beginning of the work at Dajous the people were promised a school. In November, 1910, Lorenza Velez, also an orphanage girl, was sent to gather the children of that district into a school, which meets in the chapel. Lor¬ enza and her mother live in a house formerly occupied by Manuel Torres. She visits in the homes and teaches in the Bible School. In 1905 the evangelistic work started by the American Christian Missionary Society in March, 1899, was taken over by the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions. There are now two evangelistic centers—Bayamon and Da¬ jous. Bayamon is the older work. In 1908 the cement church building, a gift of the Kentucky sisters at a cost of nearly seven thousand dol¬ lars, was dedicated. The church has three classrooms, electric lights, baptistry, and when we can secure new chairs and an organ will meet all present demands. A lot has been purchased for a Mission Home, where a cottage is steadily rising. Services are held weekly in the rented school¬ room on Comerio street, where half-clad chil¬ dren and tired-eyed adults swarm over the old-fashioned benches and baby organ, filling 7 the little house and crowding about the door. A lot was bought in June, 1911, and we hope to have a chapel soon. Weekly services are also held in Minillas, where the newly-made converts meet in the thatched-roof home of a hospitable native. The missionary in charge at Bajmmon, beside holding eight services weekly, keeps in touch with the work in the Gutierrez District and the volunteer work in Minillas, visiting each twice a month and meeting the workers weekly for conference and instruction. Five miles northwest of Bayamon is a group of four hamlets, where our native evangelist, S. G. Williams, and his wife, Belen, live and work. In this section we have a wooden chapel at Gutierrez, erected in 1910 in a palm grove, where a lot was given by the man of whom the former meeting place had been rented. The people, though poor, pay nearly half of the cost and freely help the missionaries with their unslvilled labor. They bought their own bell, planted a rose garden in front, recently raised the money to paint the inside a beautifully bright blue, and with the old organ from the Bayamon church are quite happy. The work in the other hamlets is new and as yet the congregations meet in the open air or native homes, which are gladly offered, but are inadequate. Back toward the center of Porto Rico, in the coffee liills, there lives a purer-minded, inde¬ pendent people, with less negro and more Span¬ ish in tlieir make-up. Poor and ignorant they surely are, and as yet little touched by the influences on the coast, though here and there $ the flag waves over rudely constructed build¬ ings, wliere wiggling, barefoot youngsters are tlying to master an education. In such a jilace, twelve miles southwest of Bayamon and three miles away fioni a wagon road, the hill work of our mission was begun at Bajous in April, 1907. In the autumn of the same year the small but already outgrown chapel was bnilt. Manuel Torres, of justly earned fame, lias been the leader and guide of this staunch little Hock. Some relatives of Manuel Torres lived in Barrio Xuevo, three miles away. Serv¬ ices were held there, the missionary in Baya¬ mon kept an eye on the work and in March, 1910, two mission families camped on the mountain top, where, amid fern, trees and palms, through wdiich one caught glimpses of the beautiful Plata—silvei’—River and the distant Atlantic and God seemed very near, a lot had been given for our second chapel in the hills. The men toiled bravely up paths over wdiich ive slowly crept, carrying great loads of zinc and lumber on their heads. Bajous helped with money and muscle and finally the day of triumphant dedication came. It was found that the people here had raised a little more than half the money for their church home. Buring the summer of 1910, Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter moved to the hills and built their pleasant mission home on the Comerio Road, some eight miles from Bayamon. In the au¬ tumn ^Ir. Carpenter began weekly services at low'er Bajous, near his home; six services a month in Naranjito, just w'est of Barrio Nuevo; 9 once a month he goes to Juan Asencio, the barrio east of Dajous, and also as often across the river west to Guadiano. Then twice a month he goes to Dajous and Barrio Nuevo each. To reach several of these places he must follow steep mountain paths where no wagon can go. The work of the Disciples of Christ is not large, nor can it be. If the evangelization of Porto Kico means the placing of the preach¬ ing of tlie Gospel within the reach of every person, it is easily within sight. If it means the training of a pure, self-reliant native church there is work to do in this island where now but one person in each one hundred four professes to be a member of a Protestant church. A map was prepared by the M. E. Mission and sent to the “World in Boston,” which shows Porto Rico thickly dotted over by preaching points under the direction of over one hundred American missionaries. There has been a tacit understanding of the division of the land not quite so definite as Grose would make it appear. Once in two years all denom¬ inations meet for conference—in two cities at least. Ministerial associations are organ¬ ized, our own missionaries meeting with those in San Juan. The intercourse between mis¬ sions is usually courteous; all workers are admitted to the Methodist Rest Home, at Aibonito, to cure tired minds and nerves; at the Presbyterian Hospital, at Santurce, tired bodies are healed whether Presbyterian or Baptist, Catholic or Christian. Our own little district near Bayamon is small and as we ad- 10 vance we soon find organized work in every direction. Bayainon, a town of nearly nine thousand inhabitants, has two missions, the Lutheran ably led by a consecrated young Scandinavian missionary and his wife, and our "own. On the north, between us and the Atlantic, is a line of organized Lutheran churches, at Monacillo, Catano, Pala Seca, Toa Baja and Dorado. On the east, at Rio Piedras, eight miles away, the Baptists hold a strategic position where they are building a native train¬ ing school on tlie edge of the university campus where their students may freely enter the university classes so that they will teach the Biblical subjects only. Farther south are the strong Bajjtist centers, at Caguas and Cayey. On the south Conierio is a M. E. cen¬ ter, holding services in ten surrounding places. On the west, in Candalaria, the next barrio to Hato Tejas, in Toa Alta, in Corazol and Nar- anjito the Presbyterians have long established and carefully trained churches and preaching points. Our work can not be large, but there is no reason why it can not be a good work, commanding the respect of all other missions and changing lives for Christ. Every mission¬ ary feels pledged to do his part in making it so. M. B. Wood. Published by the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions, Indianapolis, Indiana. Price, 3 cents each; 20 cents per dozen. August. 1911. X, . * ^ • ■ ■ - ■ J:-.'; , * .:. y • j?'-;? - \ > •»*'1 . a*.; ■i .V .'It, •: V *1 ' ■ "f • *. -t *!* - - • •>.'■•: ' f • I • y , W 1-^