[Sidenote: David Livingstone.] This section of Africa cannot be passed without a mention of that other hero, David Livingstone, the missionary, scientist, and explorer, who said, “I am tired of discovery if no fruit follows it”, and “The end of geographical achievement is only the beginning of missionary undertaking”, who was a king among men and who considered it his only glory that he was a “poor, poor imitation of Christ.”
There is a very particular reason for including a mention of Livingstone in a history of Lutheran missions, because his impulse to become a missionary was directly inspired by a Lutheran, Karl Frederick Gützlaff, whom we shall study in Chapter V. Livingstone was interested in missions and had resolved “that he would give to the cause of missions all that he might earn beyond what was required for his subsistence.” When he read Gützlaff’s appeal on behalf of China he determined to give himself. For various reasons Africa rather than China was determined upon for the scene of his labor.
The first German movement toward a missionary possession of the German colonies in Africa was in Bavaria where a group of men who had been influenced by Krapf, planned a Wakamba mission. Their society is generally known by the name of their headquarters, _Bielefeld_. One of the leading spirits and a director of this society was Bodelschwingh, the famous leader of Germany’s Inner Mission movement. Bodelschwingh, like Francke, was an illustration of the fact that they who do mission work at home do also mission work abroad.
The principal field of the Bielefeld Society is Tanga and the country lying behind it. In 1907 it began a new mission in the northwest corner of German East Africa, a densely populated district between Lakes Victoria Nyanza, Kivu and Tanganyika. In its two fields the mission has thirty-five missionaries and about two thousand Christians.
[Sidenote: Careful and Painstaking.] The careful and painstaking methods of the German missionaries are indicated in a description of the winning of their first converts in their newer field. Three years after they had begun to work, a youth appeared for baptism. He was followed by six other young men. Then a number of girls asked for instruction and presently a leprous woman whose interest had been gained by the tender care of the missionaries. For more than a year these inquirers received instruction. At the end of that time four young men and three young women were considered worthy of baptism.