Lakher Pioneer Mission

Reginald Lorrain

2010-01-10T01:51:00.000-08:00

I have transcribed Reginald Lorrain's diary of his four years in Canada before he began the Lakher Pioneer Mission. I now have completed a life of Reginald 32,000 words. This is on its way to Lychhua Lapi in Mizoram who may be able to have this printed.

May be the full diary some time.

I have nearly finished my researches at the BritishLibrary in the Lakher Mission Papers. One more session reading A B Lorrain Foxall's letters home and I should be sending the manuscript to Lychhua next month, February 2010.

Martin Walker

2009-08-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

Chapter 6

1934 - 1948

Growth War and Change

6.01

The Missionaries were in England on furlough during 1934-35. The most significant event of the visit must have been Bruce and Tlosai’s wedding. They married at Penge Congregational Church on the 20^th September 1934. There is a suspicion that Reginald did not take easily to Bruce’s aspirations to marry his daughter. Even after he reluctantly consented to the engagement he would not allow any announcement to be made for two years. No word of the tryst appeared in the Lakher Pioneer until just a couple of months before the event. When he finally made the announcement he indicated to the home supporters that he would be happy to send a formal invitation to any who would like to attend. In the event there were over 100 guests, with both families well represented, the cake was reported to have weighed 40 pounds (18 kilos). The happy couple honeymooned for a fortnight on the Isle of White. In the next newsletter Reginald announced that his son-in-law had changed his name by deed pole to, Albert Bruce Lorrain Foxall. As Reginald’s health failed over the ensuing years he warmed more and more to Bruce, touchingly referring to him in latter Lakher Pioneer as, “my Son”.

6.02

The Lakher Pioneer Quarterly remains the principle historic record of the Mission through this period.

News from the Mission became sporadic through the war years and such news as there was became subject to general censorship. Bruce wrote regular family letters home throughout the whole of his 49 years with the mission. Scripts for the first two years are incomplete but by 1931 his letters were being carefully preserved by his parents with each page consecutively numbered. After his parents death my mother began to save Bruce’s regular family correspondent, later others including, his best man and nephew Alfred Hinsley ensured that a substantial collection of his letters would be deposited with the Lakher papers in the British Library. Bruce also kept a modest diary, the first half of these are with the deposited papers but neither of these collections gives the sort of overview of events that can be gathered from The Lakher Pioneer. They do however add personal anecdotes and give hints of otherwise unreported undercurrents in the relationship between the Lakher’s and the Missionaries.

6.03

Between 1934 and 1948 the Mission underwent radical changed, the most obvious being the passing of the pioneer. Reginald Lorrain came to a people isolated by their mountain jungle habitat and by their unique language; the government of British India had only recently begun taking an interest in the whole northeastern frontier region. Lakher society operated without currency and had no political or economic links to the outside world. As the Mission developed it became the centre of a micro economy encompassing:- education, church, publishing, health, welfare and commerce. By 1948 the Lakher’s no longer looked to the mission compound for their day to day need; a majority of villages had built their own schools and churches, the state was on the verge of taking responsibility for education, village preachers and ordained local ministers were caring for spiritual need and a progressively literate people had been sucked into war and government employ. The relationship between the Lakher people and Reginald’s successor would be quite different.

6.04

The Mission’s Annual Report for 1934 commenced with a reiteration of the 1928 statistic; then there were just 600 Christian Learners and 100 Baptized members, in contrast the current figures demonstrated a huge leap forward. During 1934 alone there were 166 Baptisms; bringing the Baptized community to 515. In the same year 621 Lakhers asked for their names to be set down as Christian Learners, making a total of 2,373 Lakher Christians. New names were also recorded from the other three tribes within the mission’s area:- 2 Lushai’s 19 Chin’s and 7 Kumi, bringing the grand total of Christian Learners from the four tribes to 3,086. A substantial team of Lakher Evangelists continued touring during the missionary’s furlough. They made 52 tours, visiting 150 villages of which 58 had not been visited before; they gave out over 500 ABC sheets on their travels. From these basic ‘ABC sheet primers’, many would learn to read and write. Medical work came to a stop for the duration of the furlough, as did printing and the sewing class. While in England in 1934 Reginald was able to tell his supporters that the home mission village of Serkawr had a total of 74 households of which 37 were Christian and 37 were not; of the 120 men in the village 75 were Christian and of the 154 women 107 were Christian This was an interesting turn around from the early days when the men responded to the Gospel while the women resisted the missionaries, the new situation would have been due in no small part to Maud’s sewing class. Serkawr village built their own church while the missionaries were away, Reginald reported later that it was very fine and large, quite the best church in the district. This village church was yet a further sign of the growing self-reliance of the Lakher Christian community. Later there were hints of tension; the villagers prefer their own church to the mother church on the compound, Reginald directed that the villagers may attend their own church on Sunday mornings but all should assemble on the compound for the evenings. Other villages built their own churches too with their own church councils and schools, mostly from their own resources and by their own efforts. Each Church provided Sunday worship led by the village’s own Church elders. Communion could only be administered when Reginald, Bruce or one of their two ordained pastors were present. There was a growing demand for more frequent Communion but this could only be satisfied at the most four times each year, and for some of the distant villages, less.

6.04

On 14^th September 1935 the missionaries set sail for India. Young Peter Richard, the orphan boy whom the Lorrain’s had adopted, was loath to leave England having enjoyed his days in a South London school. Reginald had recruited a new colleague, Miss Colbran. A letter from home was waiting for her at Port Said the contents of which so completely unsettled her that she could go no further and left the ship to return to England on the next available vessel. This was a considerable disappointment to the whole mission and a fruitless expenditure of scarce resources. Even as they sailed east there were dark forebodings of things to come. They had news of the Italian occupation of Abyssinia, also a mysterious submarine shadowed their steamer for more than a day in the Mediterranean and when they arrived at Aden there were nine naval cruisers at the port. Bruce wrote in the Lakher Pioneer about their journey up the Kaladan to the mission station. He reported that with all their baggage the journey was very hard going. As they got nearer home the welcome began to build. A mile out of the village there was a welcome arch and a grand reception with seats for the home comers and speeches. The whole of the ensuing mile into Serkawr was lined with folk, each of whom expressed their personal greeting with an obligatory a handshake. Reginald wrote later, “How they love my girlie – how well she knows the people and their language”. On their return the usual work was necessary to restore of rebuild some of the property, re-establish the boundaries of the compound, make good the garden and paddock fences and beat back the ever-invasive jungle. Reginald had secured a further £400 from the home supporters to buy the materials for a bungalow for his newly married colleague and daughter. This project would take Bruce and Reginald most of the following year. Reginald ordered four new iron water tanks in Calcutta; they were made and carried up into the hills in due course. A new school hall was needed, another project for the first year. A home supporter had presented them with a radio, which they now began to enjoy. To hear the chimes of Big Ben and listen to the BBC News made their isolation seem so much more bearable. Radio reception varied with the atmospheric conditions but if London were not available, Calcutta or Singapore would do. They heard the King’s speech on Christmas day; an even greater surprise was to tune into two Sunday services broadcast from Corydon parish church.

6.05

At last other mission societies were pushing into the hills from the south and the east, making it necessary for Reginald to establish working arrangements with his neighbours. The Reverend Hacking of the Bible Churchman’s Mission Society was stationed at Paletwa on the lower Kaladan River. Reginald and his party visited him on their way back from England and agreed that they would hold a conference at Serkawr. They also invited two local workers from the British and Foreign Bible Society; Mr H Hodgson, Calcutta Secretary of the society and Reverend Williams who worked in the area. Hopefully they could agree on common boundaries and so make more effective use of their scarce resources. When the visitors duly arrived they confessed their surprised at the rigours of the journey. It took them eight days by boat, all of it hard going upstream followed by three days steep hill walking. The conference soon came to an agreement on sensible divisions of the territory, relieving each other of distant outposts. Reginald had another issue that he wished to pursue with his visitors. He had already put in a lot of work into translation of the Kumi language, building up both a dictionary and developing a grammatical structure for its written form, he pleaded for a common approach in translation. He got his agreement, how effective all this was is not recorded as both of the visitors left their posts quite soon after retuning from the meeting. Reginald reported in 1936 that they were looking further south to the Jao people but he did not mention them again. Later agreements were made with the Baptist Missionaries to take into their care some villages with their churches to the north of the Kaladan, also arrangements were made for churches in the Haka sub division of the Chin Hills. In 1937 Burma was formally divided from India, at first it was suggested that the whole of the Lakher area should be in Burma, this boundary would again come to hem in the Lakher Pioneer mission as it had done in Reginald’s early days. The Mission was involved in further conversations in 1938, for which Reginald and Bruce travelled 6 days east to meet with L.B. Naylor, the Government District Commissioner, the Reverend Cope and the Reverend Strait of the Baptist Missionary Society. The Baptists agreed to seed all of their territory east of the Kaladan to the Lakher Mission with some 200 Christian members. This would save them the peril of crossing the Kaladan during its frequent floods. The Reverend Cope had been with the Chin people at Tiddim for 29 years, sadly he died very shortly after returning to his mission station.

6.06

New Schools and Churches continued to be built during the furlough demonstrating how much the momentum of the immerging church had passed beyond the mission compound. Reginald had much cause to thank God for his blessing on the work through this time. On their return over 60 newly literate scholars came in from the villages claiming their New Testament. It was the normal practice to award this volume to any who could successfully demonstrate that they had learned to read and write. Four men presented themselves at the mission station having travelled in for several days to claim their New Testaments, this was surprising as until that time there had been no record of Christians in that particular village. The pace at which literacy was now developing was rapidly depleting the remaining stock of New Testaments bringing the need for a reprint sooner than the Missionaries expected, Reginald and Bruce promptly set to work revising the text of their current edition. They began sending amended scripts to the Bible Society at Calcutta and very soon had endless proofs to check. In the event the Lakher New Testament would be out of print for more than a year and when it reappeared the missionaries would find it necessary to make a small charge for each copy. They came back from furlough to find seven thriving Sunday Schools with fifteen teachers and with a total attendance of three hundred. Very soon all the usual activities on the compound were back in action except for the social evenings; flour and tea were unavailable for a time and Maud could not put on the usual scones and jam with gallons of tea. The Christmas tree ceremony in 1935 required 374 presents. Other village churches were beginning to put on their own Christmas celebrations, so another central event began to loos its sway to the growing confidence of the local church. Medical work restarted almost immediately upon their return. A boy was kicked in the eye by a horse, it was feared that he would lose his sight. Reginald cleaned the wound up and put seven stitches in the eyelid, the boy recovered with no loss of sight. They stitch up a man whose gun has exploded in his face. Most years there was a serious bear or tiger mauling for Reginald or Bruce to attend to but day after day 60 to 80 people turn up at the dispensary for help and advice. There were teeth to extract, the odd scalp to stitch back on and bones to set.

6.07

Money remained a constant worry for the society, the longsuffering treasurer Mr JW Macdonald announced in 1935 that the mission was under threat of closure if new funds were not found very soon, Miss Fudg’s legacy saved the day but the future was grim. Despite this the treasurer urges the home supporters to find the funds for a purpose built dispensary on the mission compound. The current arrangements were Reginald would stitch and dress wounds on the bungalow veranda while Maud dispensed from he storeroom or pantry window were most unsatisfactory. Medical work he declared, should be conducted from a dedicated building of solid construction and it was not good enough that the missionaries should still be using their own home after more that a quarter of a century. During 1941 Mr Macdonald only managed to get £277 to the missionaries, almost back to the subsistence levels of the first years of the mission; even worse the total for 1943 was just £246. Sadly it in July 1942 Mr Macdonald died, the mission’s longstanding faithful servant went to his reward. Through more than 30 years he had encouraged, hectored and cajoled the mission supporters to stump up the funds needed to sustain the work in farthest India. He never admitting to a surplus and always championing Reginald’s latest vision for enlargement of the work.

6.08

In a 1936 Lakher Pioneer there is a little account of school life in Serkawr. Tlosai’s was head of the village day school, it catered for children aged 3 to 14 years. Girls remained with Tlosai throughout their education but boys joined the original mission school at the end of year three. She had 60 children in attendance who were taught in 4 grades. The first class was led by a young Lakher women aged 17. She had 14 of the youngest girls and boys. Class 2 was lead by the widow of a Lakher Evangelist, in that year the 15 children were nearly all boys. Class 3 also taken by a Lakher woman and contained both boys and girls aged from 7 to 11. Some were very nearly able to read and write fluently while others had been awarded a New Testament upon demonstrating their literacy. Class 4 was led by Tlosai and was made up of 15 girls, all literate, the boys having transferred to the mission’s original big school. The daily routine, according to the children’s ability would be work with slates or pencil and paper, the top class in particular had a weekly pattern as follows:- Monday the girls would work first on arithmetic and then follow exercises from the Primer. Tuesday was ink day, they would produce fair copies of passages from the primer. Wednesday’s tasks were dictation and geography, Thursday, Scripture and singing and Friday was art day with drawing and colouring. Soon a weaving class would be added to the school’s curriculum. Every school day started with an Assembly consisting of a hymn followed by a scripture reading and the Apostle’s creed, there would be a prayer of the day and the Lord’s Prayer. Each Friday the older girls would lead the assembly. Every child who attended for the week received an Anna’s worth (1/16 of a Rupee) of sweats, soap, cotton, garments or salt. All were expected to wash their cloths and bathe on Saturday ready for church on Sunday, and a 1 Pice coin (1/12 of an Anna) was issued, to be put in the monthly Church Collection. Tlosai completed her account of school life by remarking how difficult it was to teach cleanliness in a land where water is a scarce commodity. For some time Tlosai had been suggesting house-to-house carol singing through the village at Christmas time, eventually she got her way. She took a group of group of school students and they duly sang a carol at every house through the village. They came back loaded with gifts, which realised 17 shillings to add to church funds.

6.08

Bruce recorded that they were all unwell with fever upon their return but it soon became clear that Reginald had lost his resilience. There were fewer accounts of him making journeys around the villages and he left Bruce to open several of the new churches. Reginald’s was not able to write his usual quarterly letter to the editor of the Lakher Pioneer was late and he apologies saying that they all had been ill. He was present at the 1936 great church gathering, now called ‘The Convention’, which was at Zyhno, the village at which the head-hunting incident took place in 1917. Their rebuilt and enlarged church was to be opened to coincide with the event. The first meeting of the Convention took place in a village house and was taken by the leader of Zyhno’s church, followed by a night of singing hymns that lasted until dawn. The next day the new church was opened with the usual ceremony which consisted of a hymn sung at the gate of the enclosure in which the church was set, then another hymn as the whole company processed around the building. Reginald opened the church door and declared the church open and the assembled company followed Reginald into the building. All 235 seats were quickly filled and room found for a further 70 to stand and many more unable to get inside, the service of dedication continued with Tlosai speaking first followed by Reginald who gave the main address. After the service there was a joint meeting of the church councils from each village that had a church, a sign of the gradual move by the missionaries from direction towards collaboration. The village chief held a reception in the afternoon and the day finished with a great magic lantern show to a crowd estimated at 500. Reginald gave the address on Sunday morning at the communion and in the afternoon pastor Leito led a great open-air service outside the chief’s house. Reginald remarked that he had not seen such fervour from a Lakher preacher. Leito spoke of Lakher folk law and showed how Jesus met all their needs. Immediately following this event Reginald fell ill with the fever and was close to death for more than a week, remaining frail and week for many weeks. The following year the great Lakher Christian gathering was held in Saiha at the usual time of October. They were delighted to declare that the number of Christians in that village had risen to over 400. Again the church was rebuilt and enlarged to coincide with the occasion.

6.09

While in England they had been given a large quantity of printing type. Bruce and his assistants could now set much more up at one time and take on several projects at once so allowing the work to proceed much more efficiently. He produced a 1000 ABC sheets, this basic aid to literacy now ran to eight pages. As well as the basic ABC material it included a list of 100 basic words, the Apostle’s creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the 10 commandments, a child’s prayer, grace before meals, all this as well as the story form St Luke of the paralyzed man let down through the roof and the Old Testament story of wrestling Jacob. Many used these basic materials with the aid of a literate friend to learn to read and write. The Bugle Call magazine written for circulation in the villages was also re-launched immediately with a print run of 750 and the promise of 1000 for the following year. Reginald and Bruce made plans to keep the Bugle running as they saw the foreboding signs of war, they produced several years editions in advance and dispatched them month by month form their stockpile. They recorded the use of ¾ of a ton of paper during 1936, it cost more to bring bulk paper into the hills from Calcutta than the price asked for it in Calcutta shipped out from UK. Towards the end of that year proofs of the revised New Testament began to come up form Calcutta for checking. This took so much time that it pushed out any further translation work for the time being, except that as Reginald recovered slowly from fever he revised and extended his translation of Pilgrim’s Progress. Both Bruce and Reginald kept the translation of the whole Bible as their long-term aim. As Reginald’s health deteriated he urged Bruce to complete this task while he was still young. Tlosai began to help her father with his work on Pilgrims Progress, as well as joining in the enormous job of proofreading the newly revised text of the New Testament. By the end of 1937 the old stock of New Testaments was completely exhausted, as a stopgap they set too and produced half a dozen 16-page Bible story booklets. In due course Reginald’s new translation of Pilgrim’s Progress came off the mission press. It ran to 200 pages and had 24 illustrations, presumably drawn by Tlosai.

6.10

Reginald was awarded King George IV Coronation Medal on the 29^th September 1937, almost 30 years to the day since he and Maud set foot in Serkawr. Maud received a companion medal, both awarded in recognition of their tireless service. They travelled to Aizawl, the district centre to a great gathering to receive their decorations from the district governor. There were grand events held all over India to celebrate the coronation, possibly the last on such a scale in British India. Reginald reckoned that they had tramped 1400 miles to make the round trip. They held their own celebration of the King’s Coronation on the compound complete with flags and bunting. Later on the day of the coronation they listened to the radio commentary form London, but despite their radio the Mission Station remained a very isolated place even after 30 years. Reginald noted that they were still 20 days from civilisation and they had just been 50 days without post. Nevertheless change was afoot, there were rumours that the Indian Government planed to takeover all mission schools and provide universal education. In the same newsletter Bruce reported the grand opening of a new church at Siatah; significantly Reginald was not there. Again it would seem that his declining health prevented him from being present at the sort of event that he normally would not have missed. That weekend was a bonanza event. First they visited the school, which boasted 14 girls and 18 boys, then on the Saturday Pastor Heisa conducted 6 Christian Weddings later the same day there were 30 Baptisms. On the Sunday Tlosai opened Siatah’s new Church and Bruce lead the Communion Service with 8 villages taking some part, 10 children were dedicated and 136 took Communion. It was not until the 12^th of November that year that Bruce and Tlosai were able to moved into their new bungalow, even then the cookhouse was yet to be built. That brought the total of houses on the 28 acres compound to fifteen.

6.11

The great news of 1938 was the announcement of the birth of a daughter to Tlosai and Bruce, Violet Louise who was born at Serkawr on the 16^th of April 1938.

Violet

After that first issue of 1938, the Lakher Pioneer magazine did not appear again until the end of the year. In fact the only news under Reginald’s name would be the annual reports. The next Lakher Pioneer did not come out until the middle of 1939 followed by another late in 1940. By this time the war was making its impact on shipping causing long delays in the mail. The grand Church gathering in the autumn of 1939 was held in Siatah, a village to the south on the Burma border. Reginald was not well so Bruce took Peter Richard instead. Again in 1941 Reginald only wrote the annual report which arrived late in the year. Bruce wrote 5 newsletters through this time, which the committee published as separate newssheets not in Lakher Pioneer format. In October 1940 Bruce mentioned that the government were mapping every detail of the hills and that the people employed on the work had a doctor who stayed most of the time with them. He wrote about the problems of church discipline, the village church elders decided to bar from Communion any Christians who went back to the beer drinking. They were deliberating whether to bar them for 2 or 3 months and only restore the providing they were genuinely penitent. On a tour that year Bruce sustained an insect bite on his ankle that turned septic. He was not able to leave the compound for 6 months and continued to be trouble by it for much longer. At last, the revised edition of the New Testament arrived from the printers in Calcutta. They were now being sold rather than given away as it was felt that a book purchased would be a book valued. Reginald and Bruce were making steady progress with the translation of the Old Testament. Peter, a growing young man, played the organ in church each Sunday and turned his had to a little hymn translation, he produced; ‘There is a happy land, far far away’.

6.12

In December 1940 the missionaries were invited to Lunglei to meet the governor of Assam and his wife Lady Reid, this took them away from the compound over Christmas. The governor gave Reginald a 150 Rupee grant for their medical work, and his wife presented 50 Rupees to Maud for her work amongst the women.

Maud Lorrain

A very welcome gift of cash arrived from a family member enabling them all to take a break in Calcutta. Bruce’s ankle healed completely as soon as they left the hills.

Reginald Lorrain

While in Calcutta they took the chance to visit a dentist and get some long overdue repairs made. In his October 1941 letter Bruce made a request for prayers by the mission supporters, particularly because there was much unrest and opposition in the villages. One of their compound workers left to start up a shop in the village; Bruce believed this to be the first shop to be opened in the Lakher hills. Reginald’s only official word came in his brief annual report late in 1941. As 1942 opened it became clear that the war would have a dramatic effect in the hills, even the annual convention was cancelled because rice and all foodstuffs were in desperately short supply. They had just two pastors and one of them had a sick wife who for quite some time could not be left. Bruce plodded on with the Old Testament translation adding Isaiah while Reginald finishes Proverbs meanwhile the wireless kept them in touch with the pains and gains of the world at war. By February 1942 there were planes overhead every day and soon news came of the evacuation of Rangoon and later they could see the smoke and hear the bombing of that city. Bruce’s three letters that year and Reginald’s annual report in November told little of the state of war around them, this was not surprising as all communication was censored. Later a wistful note reflected how they miss the company of the military, from this it would appear that troops were constantly about. The mission station was provided with an official radio throughout the period of hostilities but the missionaries did not receive one important signal. It was a directive from the District Government to evacuate the mission station. At the end of the war when the radio was removed the missing signal was found crumpled behind the radio. The culprit who hid the communication was never identified. This was one of the many stories I remember Tlosai telling when they stayed with my family during the 1948 furlough.

6.13

In the February 1942 newsletter Bruce wrote simply, “war draws nearer through the hills”, and then went on to describe 40 Serkawr ladies gathered to knit pullovers for soldiers, all using bamboo needles, presumably working with a cotton rather than wool yarn. In his August letter Bruce reported that there were many local people frightened by the Japanese advance; nearly all the students had left the school, men went off to join the Assam or Bengal regiments or the Labour Corps, labour on the compound became unobtainable, few crops were planted, flower and sugar was very short and all kinds of transport virtually at a standstill. The missionaries attempt to make sugar from local grown cane. They producing a heavy brown substance, good enough for the morning porridge, but they could not obtain tea or coffee. Reginald had been commissioned to write a history of the hill tribe by the government and he kept himself busy with that. He opens his 1941 Annual Report with the statement that the mission had only received £277 during that year. Their income had sunk back near to the level of the earliest days. He declared that it was their intension to stay at the mission station until they were forced out, presumably by Japanese coming over the hill. As a precaution they had allowed the jungle to grow into the compound reducing its visibility from the air. As he wrote in November 1942 he could hear frequent explosions in the distance confirming that the enemy was near by. He was able to report that communion has been held during the year in 20 villages. Just 2 pastors and 2 evangelists have conducted 33 tours, they had been forced to abandon or diverted to avoid Japanese occupying forces. One pastor had to take abruptly to the jungle to avoid capture when he saw Japanese soldiers entering a Lakher village where he was visiting. Despite many difficulties the church grew by 1405 that year with 135 Baptisms. When Java fell to the Japanese the main source of Quinine was cut causing the price of the main malaria treatment to escalate. Paletwa, the first town down the Kaladan was bombed also Akyab the seaport at the moth of the river. To add to the alarm planes appeared day after day in droves evacuating personel to the west. The Lakher folk around built secret huts in the jungle and laid in hidden stores of rice and all agreed to share survival rations if necessary. Every one, including the missionaries packed emergency baskets so that they could grab them and leave at a moments notice.

6.14

Bruce was able to announce that 4 new churches had been built during 1943 bringing the total of village with their own church to 43. Reginald wrote, “ So that while things are difficult, food scarce and the enemy near at hand, with the immediate future a great uncertainty; the work of the master increases and the power of the Gospel is felt. While you listen to the Radio, we listen too in this faraway land. We are on the spot and we are staying put until the time of peace comes or unless the master calls us home before.” But the preoccupation of 1943 was Reginald’s health. In January they radioed for a doctor to attend him, when the medic arrived he immediately advised that Reginald should be moved to hospital. He flatly refused to go saying that; if he went the local community would gather that the whole situation was hopeless in the face of the invading army, he was convinced that they would leave in droves. By the November Reginald had become much worse and again a doctor was sent for, this time he agreed to go to hospital as he judge that the tide had turned against the Japanese. But it became clear that he was now too ill to travel, he died at Serkawr on the 1^st February 1944 and was buried in the compound cemetery. To the sum of all his works he had added in his last days the translation of the Psalms, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Exodus. On his death he village chief of Serkawr came up to the bungalow with a gift of a packet of tea and some eggs. He expressed the sympathy of his community and said how great their debt was to Reginald.,through his work on their language there were young men educated enough to be employed by the government. The chief announced that there was to be a collection so that an engraved memorial stone could be ordered from the planes for Reginald’s grave. On the following Sunday the morning service was made a memorial to Reginald. The service included 12 Baptism that had been delayed, they including Peter, now aged 15 and 2 daughters of Thytu, Reginald’s first Christian leader. The service coincided with the monthly communion at which 128 shared; a fitting memorial to the Pioneer. Maud wrote to the mission supporters in England suggesting that they might have support the printing of a revised dictionary in his memory. By then Reginald master text ran to ten volumes of manuscript. These vast volumes containing the fruit of his life’s work on the language. He constantly updated and added to these to date to the day he died.

6.15

January 1945 ushered in the first hope of a post war restoration. At last Bruce reported that they could find labour but the rate had risen by three times. The mission school began to function, but there was much to restore, most of the village church councils had ceased to function and the general Christian lifestyle had slipped. Bruce convened a representative church council and just eight delegates arrived but they fixed the date and place for the next convention. Later in the year the school on the compound reopened with 15 girls and 26 boys. In May they heard on the radio that Akyab, the port city at the mouth of the Kaladan, had been retaken by the allies. From the earliest days Reginald had encouraged the church to support other causes by their collections, however meagre, Bruce reported in his annual report for 1944 that they had sent 63 rupees to the Bible Society in Calcutta, always the top of their list. Through the war years they had made their contributions, however small to the war effort. That year they sent 63 rupees to the Red Cross and 57 rupees to the Royal Air Force Benevolent fund. Cash was becoming common in Lakher society so that most folk now offered money for their medicines rather than the old system of eggs or rice. Previously Maud had rarely written for the Lakher Pioneer except to thank supporters for gifts of material for sewing and other projects, following Reginald’s death a number of varied pieces appeared under her name in the home news sheet. In October 1945 Maud wrote. “So many things go wrong, people leave one after another, Japs so close.” Then to her great relief the war turned and the enemy was turned back almost on their doorstep. For a couple of years or more it would appear that they had been constant hosts to a stream of military. They said that it had been hard work for Maud and Tlosai to do all the entertaining for their visitors. They made welcome many English military as well as a constant flow of government officials and Indian officers. All this had to be done without the ready labour which they had been so used to. However the divers company of both Indian and European visitors was sadly missed when they the need for their presence passed and they were again bereft of visitors from the wider world. Maud wrote that she was cheered by the return to church of many, she reported that it had become necessary to provide more seating in church. On August 15^th 1945 victory was finally announced in the east. A two-day holiday was ordered throughout India and for the first time for several years the Magic lantern was in use again. At last they could try to bring the work of the mission back up to speed. Church councils were reconvened and 14 village schools were soon up and running and the was mission out of stock of school books and hymnbooks but for the time being their was no paper for the mission press.

6.16

Again Maud wrote to the home supporters at the beginning of 1946. She told of a bumper Christmas service with over 300 in church and lots of gifts left for them in the aisle. She organized the Christmas tree again and found from ‘The Good Lord alone know where’ 230 presents. She mentioned that they had at last unpacked the baskets of emergency stuff that had been prepared against the day when they might have had take to the jungle. Maud was mentioned in the New Year’ Honours list for the Kaisor – I – Hind Silver Medal and she was happy to announce that the Royal Asiatic Society had undertaken to print the revised Lakher dictionary in memory of Reginald. In his annual report Bruce gladly announced that the mission workers were back but the compound would take months to restore to its trim working order. They had now 2 Pastors, 3 Pastor Evangelists and 5 Evangelists who together had made 48 tours over 1114 days. There were 28 churches and he and the Pastors had conducted 53 communion services. The 1946 Convention was at Loba village where Bruce opened their new church for the occasion. On that Sunday they promptly had to take the back off the church to allow the assembled company to get within sight and sound of the action. There were over 600 present of whom 214 Baptized persons took communion. Bruce mentions for the first time his Bible school for pastors, preachers and evangelists. The event lasted for two weeks. In 1945 there were 22 in attendance and the following year 37. 2,000 copies of ‘The Way of Salvation’ arrived from the printers. Copies of this and been presented to every Lakher in the Assam and the Burma Rifles. There was little news from the mission field during 1947 apart form Bruce’s Annual Report, still no paper available. Supplies and the Post still seemed to be very difficult, food was scarce too but the church continues to grow. He reported that there were currently 3 Pastors, 9 Evangelists and 1 pastor Evangelist. These workers had visited 46 churches as well as villages without churches on 118 tours over a total of 1949 days. The chance came for a little exploring came, Reginald had always intended to find a direct rout west from Serkawr to Chittagong, he was sure that such a line would save the 6 days tramp north to Lunglei before turning west to the coast. Bruce and Peter pioneered this rout in 10 days but the terrain was far to difficult for it to be a practical alternative. Finally the last piece of news to arrived before the Missionaries came back to England was that Peter had married and would not be accompanying them to England. His new wife was Sapi, one of Tlosai’s schoolgirls. Peter and she had been school friends together all their life. As they left for England Peter was busy applying to the government for a post as a schoolteacher. The government’s takeover of the mission’s schools and its engagement with the universal provision of education seemed imminent.

6.17

There are one or two personal recollections which have stayed with me from that furlough when the missionaries stayed in our home for most of the year. As a 9 – 10 year old I was full of wonder at the talk I heard. One story concerned the death of James Foxall, Bruce’s father. At the end of the rains in autumn 1940 a tiger came around the village. I recall them telling how the jungle would let you know when a tiger was in the area. Bruce said that even the Europeans would pick up an atmosphere of foreboding, this would assail a person when they went to leave the house, even causing them to turn back. The tiger had killed a domestic animal and taken it off into the jungle. Usually the beast would be back on one of the following nights to finish off the carcass. Reginald gave a description of making a platform and staking out the seen with a gun so that they could rid the district of the tyrant animal. Bruce was on his own on just such a solitary night watch about the time of his father death. As he half slumbered at his post a telegram boy appeared with a message saying “father died 30^th October and there is 7 shillings and six pence to pay”. On 9^th November just such a telegram arrived with a request for 7/6 as his contribution to the children wreath. On another occasion Tlosai was speaking of the mysteries of the east. She had grown up as a child of the jungle and the village, her busy parents being to preoccupied with building a mission with their bare hands in a most remote place. Consequently Tlosai was as familiar with the ways of the tribe and the village as she was with the compound and her European parents. She explained that little delegations would arrive at the bungalow in one cause or another; Bruce would be some time before he had grasped the purpose behind the visit, or he might even conclude the interview without grasping its thrust, Tlosai would read instinctively the purpose of the Lakher visit. Bruce’s diary makes it clear that the cost of that furlough was paid by his mother.

6.16

Reginald and Bruce’s Annual Reports give an overview of the mission’s progress into the war years. The church grew relentlessly year-by-year but as the war drew India into its global effect, all sorts of shortages made life difficult. When most able-bodied men were drawn away to join the armed services or the labour corps it becomes almost impossible to run the mission compound as a going concern. Japan’s entry into the war put India’s northeast frontier into the front line of the Allies’ resistance. At its peak the active Japanese advance reached right into the Lakher territory; hostilities came within earshot of the missionaries in Serkawr village.

Here are his membership statistics through those years.

Baptisms New Christian Lakhers Total Christians

Total Bap. Learners total

1934 166 621 2,473 3,086

1935 77 299 2664 3,385

1936 146 748 628 3,255 4,013

1937 133 566 3,715 4,579

1939 127 1,077 948 4,445 5,410

1940 194 1,271 546 4,866 5,956

1941 134 1,405 457 5,212 6,413

1942 300 1,705 608 5,820 7,110

1943 69 1,774 318 6,089 7,438

1944 85 1,859 261 6,317 7,699

1945 194 2,053 627 6,815 8,326

1946 766 2,819 1,490 8,125 9,816

1947 623 3,442 1,142 9,132 10,956

Christian Marriages and Dedications and new Christians amongst the Lushai, Chin and Kumi people follow the trends set above. It is remarkable that during all the disturbance of the war years when the mission almost cesses to function; the church continued to grow. Numbers at Communion, and at Easter and Christmas are quoted but these become more difficult to interpret as other village churches sprang up and diverting attendance from some of the mission’s great festivals at the mother church. The work of local Pastors and Evangelists continued through the 1930’s. Their itineries were continuous and effective and played a significant part in the rapid growth of the church. During the war there were only two Pastors at work and that under the most difficult circumstances. But the Church prospered! Little is reported about the development and progress of the Evangelist movement except for Reginald’s bald statistics of: tours made by so many evangelists and total days on tour. In his 1936 report he does mention unspecified difficulties and powers of darkness; Bruce’s diary alludes to a refusal by the evangelist to go out until they had an agreement to reduce the amount of touring expected of them.

And finally; a happy event was recorded at the end of 1936, the former mission colleague Miss Hadley, now married to the Reverend H Ball of Gloucester gave birth to a son.

2009-08-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

Chapter 5

Consolidation 1928 - 1934

Colleagues and Local Evangelists

5.01

The Missionaries returned to England in 1927. This time Reginald travelled over 10,000 miles addressing meetings to promote the mission. The Annual General Meeting of the Society was held on the 21^st January 1928 in Westminster Central Hall with the Revd Ernest J Barton, the minister of Penge Congregational Church in the chair. One of the new missionary colleagues,

All Nations Bible College - Bruce Foxall standing far left

Bruce Foxall, recently graduated from All Nations Bible College, was introduced to the meeting. Miss Irene Hadley and Miss Gorst also joined the mission in place of Miss Ramsey. Reginald asked the annual meeting for £500 to pay for his larger party’s return journey. He also wanted to build a new schoolhouse and to acquire a rotary printing press. They left for India in the early autumn of 1928, making their way into the hills by way of the Kaladan River. At Akyab at the mouth of the Kaladan, a Lakher was waiting to welcome the party home. At every stage up the river more Lakher’s appeared until on the last day three hundred came down to bring them into Serkawr. They arrived at the mission station on 12^th December 1928. A Gayal was killed and a great welcome fest was quickly prepared for the missionaries and their new companions. Bruce Foxall recorded his first impressions of the mission bungalow with its polished wood floors, “It seemed like home, no better place on earth”. Very soon Reginald had his new recruits writing pieces on their observations for the mission’s quarterly news letter; The Lakher Pioneer. Miss Gorst reported on a Christian funeral of a child, Irene Hadley on Maud’s Store Room Window and Bruce Foxall on a visit to a sick child. As with miss Ramsey, but much more so, we begin to see the mission through others eyes. Reginald seemed to leave them to tell the stories of people and life on the mission while he confined himself to statistics. Each year his annual report becomes progressively more like a company report with summaries and tables of data.

5.02

As the 1927-1928 furlough began there appeared to be a step change in the Lakher Church’s progress. In the missionaries absence three Lakher Christian men were dedicated as Evangelists. They were commissioned go to every village throughout the tribe, they were to visit every house in each village on their itinerary and they were to hold a service in every house at which they found a welcome. The results were immediate! The evangelists return from their first tour with the names of three hundred and sixty-four new Christian Enquirers. A Deacon was appointed for the Serkawr church to stand in for Reginald in his absence, the school thrived with 24 boarders beside local day attendees and the Sunday school continuing without break averaging sixty-one in attendance. The total of those enrolled as Christian enquirers doubled during the furlough year. The touring Evangelists quickly became a major feature of the mission’s work, by 1933 there were men out on tour continuasly.

5.03

Reginald’s first task on return was to repair and put in good order all the compound buildings and clear back the intrusive jungle growth. By this time the Mission property consisted of:- a School House, the Mission Bungalow with its Cook House, the Meeting House (Church), out houses, the Boys (adult school) Hostel and its Cook House, Printing Room, Office and ten mission workers houses. He also added a fowl house, a new wood shed and granary. In an attempt to ease the water supply problem Reginald bought two water tanks, presumably of iron, they each held over 300 gallons. He did not tell how these 4 foot plus cubes of heavy metal were carried to the mission. They worked well, harvesting rainwater from the bungalow roof, and saving the labour of carrying water from 400 feet below. At that time there were generally more than one hundred living on the compound. That year one of the mission workers died leaving a widow. The mission was faced for the first time with a dependent. They took on her support and providing her with a home on the compound. Reginald’s next big project was to build a new enlarged general hall to be 42 x 25 feet, It replaced the existing schoolroom. The new building would continue as before to serve as school room for the adult learners, church and socials hall. The new building could hold up to 500 people. Reginald declared his new hall to be a great triumph, although it was a bamboo structure and not made from sawn timber.

5.04

Reginald now set out a demanding program of study for his new recruits. His aim was to make them proficient in Lakher language and culture and they were committed to long hours of work. It was nearly two years before they were discharged from their studies. In his usual thorough manner he devised searching examinations, and expected, and got from Bruce Foxall and Irene Hadley, excellent papers. He awarded each of them a pass with a mark of around 75%. His third recruit, Miss Gorst, did not settle to mission life in the hills and asked to be released to returned home after the first year.

5.04

Miss Ramsey and Tlosai had started a primary day school for local girls before the furlough. Irene and Tlosai soon had it up and running again with ten girls in regular attendance. It would appear that Bruce spent some time with a new boy’s primary class too. There now appears to be two streams of education emerging and it is now necessary to try to differentiate between these. The new girl’s school seems to be the beginnings of conventional primary education. Until now school has been Reginald’s original adult based learning. Reginald always referred to his students as boys even though they ranged from eight to over forty years; I have mostly changed his usage to students in anticipation of the current difficulty. In the annual report or the year 1929 the adult school began with 32 students and ended the year with 52. Each boarding student was costing £6 to maintain for the 10-month year. One Matu student joined the adult school that year. As a result of the famine the previous year the 1930 school was smaller with more dayboys. The girl’s day school soon rose to 25 (still not certain how many are primary and how many are adult learners) but by 1934 there is a note in the Lakher Pioneer to the effect the younger boys had been integrated into the girl’s school. It would seem that the first regular pattern of primary education for Lakher children had been firmly established.

5.05

Reginald and Bruce quickly commissioned the new rotary press. It was a great improvement on the original machine; turning out 600 copies per hour. The print room had to be enlarged to 34x24 feet to cope with the added production. Together they produced a new enlarged hymnbook and a 2,500-word Matu dictionary. In 1930 Reginald returned to his bible translation work; Genesis and Malachi were in hand, later he finished the Psalms. He reprinted the Kumi dictionary for the Matu tribe, enlarging it to 5,000 words; he also got out in Matu a revised primer and a collection of ten hymns. It is remarkable how much quicker Reginald was getting this new language translated and onto the press. One can only conclude that there were similarities if not many duplicate usages, even so his volume of work was still formidable. By the end of 1931 funds were tight and they ran out of paper, bringing printing work to a temporary stop. The full edition of the New Testaments was now in general circulation. Reginald reckoned that there were 50 copies in Serkawr village alone being read each night and hundreds through the Lakher hills. In his next year’s annual report he claimed that the New Testament was being read in 43 out of the 80 Lakher villages. In 1931 Reginald handed over charge of the Printing room to Bruce. The local monthly magazine which was begun before the last furlough and was sent out to the all Christian in the villages now ran to 300 copies. In 1932 they printed 400 copies of each edition. The next year it was renamed ‘The Bugle Call’ and reached a circulation of 464. When he heard of a Lakher learning to read and write with just the aid of the Bugle Call Reginald devised a four-page primer to go out with the magazine, Bruce printed 1,000 of these. Many learnt to read and write at home through this primitive distance-learning course.

5.06

Bruce wrote a piece for the Lakher Pioneer in which he described Sunday worship at Serkawr. Men & boys would sit on one side of the church with women & girls on the other.

Albert Bruce Foxall 1903 - 1977

There was a male choir, which led the singing, and everyone had hymnbooks. At the scripture reading many would follow in their own new testaments. Communion, he observed to be in the style of the Baptist or Congregational Churches. Each year attendance at Serkawr’s Sunday services grew steadily. The Christian socials become more and more popular with up to 200 present. to organize English party games were for such numbers must have stretched the team’s ingenuity. Soon more than twenty percent of the home village could be claimed as Christian. With the passage of time inevitably there was a growing demand for Christian burial. A Serkawr graveyard was dedicated and fenced off complete with a Lytch gate. Sunday school attendance in 1929 averaged 78, of these 16 were new Christian enquirers. From the Sunday school that year there were 8 baptisms and 2 Christian marriages. On the compound there were 4 infant deaths, 3 adults and one worker died. Reginald recorded 200 Christian enquirers from other tribes. 1929’s tally of baptisms was: 115 Lakhers and one Matu. In his Annual Report for 1929 Reginald declared that the Monsoon had been very severe, he could count 100 landslides from the bungalow. Forty-seven inches of rain fell in just fifteen days. The Kaladan rose eighty feet above normal cutting them off for six weeks. The mission boat was swept away and lost. Reginald recorded that 1929 was a famine year as a result of the bamboo flowering. Every 48 years the bamboo in the Mizoram hills flowers and then the whole plant dies leaving vast swaths of rotting vegetation, even if it is cut the bamboo cane is useless that year. The rotting canes create a bumper food event for rats. They multiply to plague proportions soon polishing off the bamboo and moving on to all other crops and invading village stores. Consequentially there follows a year of famine throughout the hills. There is a puzzling aspect to this report as records show this phenomenon to have occurred in the years 2007 and 1959, which should make the next previous event 1911, not 1929 as recorded by Reginald! To add to the mission’s troubles that year, wild dogs killed a number of their farm animals. The famine was followed by a bumper year in 1930, then by a very dry year in 1931. The missionaries reported that 1933 was also a long hot summer resulting in lots of illness and death; a whooping cough epidemic swept through the hill then dysentery, all exacerbated by under nourishment due to the persistent shortage of food. In the heat of that year a cyclone struck and took the school roof completely off.

5.07

Irene Hadley painted another vivid word picture, to and to Miss Ramsey’s, of Maud’s Pantry Window. They were in the storeroom with the window open for business at 6am, soon they were trading eggs for salt, paper or soap. Sick child were brought to window and many other transactions and activities carried forward. Miss Gorst’s account of a Christian Wedding set the scene with all the school turning out on the compound. When they were all ready they march of to fetch the bride and groom back to the Church for the wedding service. Quite a contrast to the first Christian wedding that was conducted quietly in the Bungalow with just the couple and the missionaries. At the church door rice was thrown over the couple; the missionaries yet again importing their own customs to enrich their converts life style. Another innovation, the Christmas Celebrations, began to take place amongst Christians in other Lakher villages. Several more Lakher villages erected their own meeting rooms – church buildings. In 1931 in an off hand line in the Lakher it was reported that an orphaned new born had been taken on by the baby’s Christian aunt. It will be recalled that the Lakher tribal custom dictated that when a mother died in childbirth the baby was untouchable and must be abandoned in the jungle. The missionaries had intervened to save children in the early years; the Gospel was now changing attitudes and saving lives in many ways. Another important milestone came with the survival of the first Lakher twins. Twins were traditionally regarded as a bad omen and would be quickly consigned to the jungle. About this time Irene tells of the first such to be accepted by the parents and successfully reared. Their survival was secured by having them quickly dedicated as Christian children; that which was dedicated to the Lord Jesus could not bring bad luck! While the Reginald and Bruce were away Tlosai heard a rate in the storeroom, instead of the rodent her search reviled a fresh wet cobra skin. She fetched Irene and together they search very, very carefully for the snake, eventually it was found behind the stove drying off. They sent for the schoolmaster who came and captured it in a basket and then disposed of it safely. Even after 25 years the compound remained only a few steps from the wild. Another event occurred which would stay in the mission’s story; a newborn child was brought to the mission with the request that the missionaries would rear it as its mother had died. The child was baptized Peter Richard and grew up as one of the Lorrain’s family. At the centenary celebrations his aged widow Sapi was present and their son Reginald and daughter Lillian together with several of his younger children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

5.08

Bruce began to report in much more detail on the medical work, telling of a typical session assisting Maud with the day’s dispensary. Many iron tablets were handed out for anaemia, iodine for goitres, a poultice as applied to a swollen leg and a septic splinter drawn with a poultice so that it could be seen and cut out. He recorded 276 patients in one week, 59 of them on one day. In the autumn of 1931 Bruce went off on his first solo Evangelizing tour of the villages. He was away for 10 days. The typical programme for his village visit looked like this: On arrival he would pitch his tent and give out sweets to the children, next, with the aid of pictures, he would tell a scripture story; the prodigal son seemed to be a favourite, he would also get out and play his violin to accompany hymns. The instrument was a novelty in the hills. At 4pm he would open a field dispensary and at 6pm he would hold a Gospel meeting. He took back the name of a good number of new Christian Enquirers, twenty from his first village alone. He continued this daily programme through the villages until he reached Saiha. There were now 190 Christians on the church list from the village. He stayed over the Sunday and joining 150 in worship. When he left he had ten more new names to add. What a difference from the pioneer days when five years toil only yielded two names. Reginald and Maud’s twenty-five years of faithful labour had not been in vain. Bruce discovered on his travels several who had been learnt to read by poring over the Bugle Call magazine with the help of a friend. Later in another piece in the Lakher Pioneer he told of the death of a Christian child. The mother, who was not a Christian, came soon after the funeral to put her name down as a Christian Learner. She said that she could not bear to be eternally separated from her child. The father also came a little later to put his name down, but he had a problem. He asked if it would be all right if he took another wife so that he could have another son. Bruce told him that it would not be in order and he should keep his wife and comfort her in their loss.

5.09

Money was always a problem. Although the supporters raised their annual giving over the Mission 25 years from the initial £150 to more like £1,000; Reginald’s vision always out anticipated the funds available. The ever growing demand for medicine lead the missionaries to introduce a small charge of eggs or rice for some medicines. Another blow to the mission’s logistics was the recall home of Reginald’s brother Herbert. While Herbert was the Baptist Church’s Missionary stationed in Lunglei he had acted first as Reginald’s sponsor to the Lakher people and forever after his agent. Lunglei was really Serkawr’s local Post Office; from there Herbert would recieve and send on the mission’s goods and services. Reginald was meanwhile developing his Kaladan rout through Burma but never to the same effect as their first rout into the hills. He persuaded the home Mission Committee treasurer to raise the cash for an outboard motor for his latest boat. He had several goes to produce an effective river craft; the latest one was constructed on a bamboo frame over which he stretched oiled canvas. It was 51 feet long and 16 feet wide and could carry 12 people safely. When the Kaladan flooded to the record 80 feet about normal this was the boat that was lost having not been drawn far enough up. Reginald recruited a further missionary in 1932 to come and evangelize the Kumi people over the Burma border. The new man arrived with his wife and children on the coast but the Superintendent at Chittagong would not grant the necessary permission for him and his family from coming up river for three months. When they finally arrived the new missionary was clearly not a well man. Within three months Reginald had packed them off back home. The poor man was hospitalized in Calcutta for some time before he was fit enough to embark for England. Only two of Reginald’s four recruits completed their full tour this time and his final recruit, Miss Marjory Colbran, who joined them on their return from England in 1935 but could not bring herself to go further than Port Said. Irene Hadley completed her tour with honour but did not wish to return after 1934. Only Bruce Foxall continued with the mission after that date. Bruce, a very eligible young bachelor, obviously made a hit pretty soon with Tlosai. They were engaged around 1932 but Reginald would not allow them to make that public for a further two years.

Bruce and Tlosai

The first that the Mission supporters knew was through an announcement of the Lakher Pioneer of that quarter in which the young couple will marry. They married at Penge Congregational Church on 20^th September 1934 and honeymooned on the Isle of White.

5.10

The gathering pace at which Christianity spread through the hills during the 1930’s can be gathered from Reginald’s annual reports. In 1932 he recorded 56 baptism and 1075 Lakhers on the Christian role, 202 Lushais, 216 Chins and 1 Matu. By 1933 there were 21 Christian Marriages and 148 Baptisms, the Christian role aquired 777 new Lakher names bringing their total to 1852, 14 more Lushais, 152 new Chin names but still only 1 Matu. Reginald noted that on one Sunday that year there were 317 in church, 94 partook of the communion and 15 were baptized. The hymnbook had been enlarged to 191 items and the reprint ran to 1,000 copies. For 1934 he recorded 45 marriages, 600 baptisms and a grand total of 3086 Christians in the hills of whom 8 now come from the Matu/Kumi people. There were 385 recipients of presents around the Christmas tree and 189 attended the Watch Night Service to see in the New Year. In another new development they took 16 village children for a holiday. They all stayed at their retreat bungalow close to the river crossing. Great excitement ensued when Reginald to them all for a trip in his boat with the aid of the outboard motor. Despite the roaring success in the hills the home treasurer was struggling to supply enough funds to keep the mission in business. At the end of 1933 he complains to the Larker Pioneer readers that he had only been able to balance the books with the aid of a recently received legacy of three hundred pounds. But Europe was deep in its own troubles of recession and the gathering confrontation of nations.

2009-08-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

Chapter 4

Consolidation 1920 – 1927

Over the Burma Border

4.01

Again in England, Reginald and Maud embarked on a hectic round of speaking and making contacts across all the mainstream denominations. Reginald recorded in his meticulous way, 3,300 miles covered, taking their mission story to any who would give them a hearing. They approached various mission societies but not for the first time, without tangible result. The Missionaries were present on the 4^th of May 1920 for the AGM of the Society. The meeting was held at Sion College on the Victoria Embankment, London. With the Annual Report for 1919 they presented a shopping list of resources that would best help the work forward. Maud needed sewing materials and cloth for her sewing class, Reginald wished for a quarter of a mile of pipe and a pump to bring water up to the bungalow, a dynamo, beehives, a printing press and most important, a doubling of the ongoing general income. He also requested £250 to print the latest edition of his 7,000-word Lakher dictionary. An enlarged and revised, but still incomplete, New Testament was ready to be printed, free of charge, by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Reginald and Maud also declared that they were looking for an assistant for mission work and as a governess to Tlosai. Reginald must have got his way as usual because early in 1922 they set off on their 96-day journey back to the mission with an assistant, 20-year-old Miss Ramsey, a printing press and loads of new resources.

4.02

The Lakher Pioneer quarterly magazine through 1920 -1927 does not reveal anything like the detail of the Serkawr Mission Station as it had in times past. In the early days Reginald reported for the home supporters each small increment of progress, through these next years much of what can be gleaned is only in the Annual Reports, and that often presented as statistics. Reginald’s interest seems to have been captured by the new horizons over the Burma border and down the Kaladan.

Reginald's map from 5 years in unknown jungle

A few revealing pictures from the station do appear through the occasional articles written by Miss Ramsey. One such is a piece about Maud’s ‘Pantry Window’. Each day Maud would transact all sorts of business through this vital portal. She might barter for goods or services, or respond to some urgent or trivial welfare need. This ‘Mutual Friendly Society’ over which she presided, generated or converted resources to help sustain the 40 or 50 people resident and active on the compound. She also acted like Joseph in Egypt, buying surplus in times of plenty and lend back in times of famine. Her enterprise could also provide hard currency for the locals who had become subject to a government poll tax. Maud’s Pantry Window was also the emergency dispensary for those who could not wait until the 4pm clinic. Through her say with the Mission Miss Ramsey appeared to contribute mostly by assisting Maud with her many duties including the sewing class and by partnering the fast maturing Tlosai with the Sunday School and other works.

4.03

The great ‘Spanish Flue’ epidemic of 1919 that killed more people than the whole of the 1914-18 war did not spare these farthest borders of India. For all that; during the Missionaries absence the work in India had continued, making steady progress. The school had been kept busy under Reginald’s Lakher deputy, however with a smaller intake to lighten the load. He was more than pleased with the results when he returned. Ten more names had been added to the Christians roll during the missionary’s absence. Very soon the whole enterprise was back in full swing. Weekly needlework sessions were re-started and the class quickly grew to 26 girls and women. The very next newsletter reported Maud desperate for cloth of any sort for her class to work. Early in 1923 the class rose to 45 and ran completely out of material causing its temporary shutdown. Maud recorded her thanks to the folk in England for sewing materials in the first of 1924’s quarterly ‘Lakher Pioneer’ Journals. She reported that the class was back in business with 22 regular girls and women, of whom 7 were baptized. Reginald soon had his printing press established in its own building. Two of his previous students joined him as trainee printers. Ruefully he admitted that there was much to learn about printing. Their first job demonstrated an essential difference between Lakher and English, they ran out of ‘A’s on the first page, the Lakher language ends every syllable on a vowel, so he needed thirty times as many ‘A’s as would be required for English. More supplies were ordered and he would like £20 for a paper cutter. Soon he was making very good use of his new facility; printing school and church resources books and pamphlets. The new school Geography textbook was one of the first jobs. With the innovation of printing on the Mission Compound Reginald’s finished scripts could be set up and printed in days or weeks rather than the 12 months it had taken to post stuff out to Calcutta, wait for proofs to return and be checked perhaps twice then printed and finally carried into the hills.

4.04

Early in 1924 the mission staged a great Christian gathering at Serkawr.

people arriving for the 2007 great centenary gathering in Serkawr

The event lasted three days and attracted some 200 Christians. All the meetings took place in the open air except for the Sunday Morning service. There were eight Lakher’s able to share in the preaching. The proceedings were inaugurated with a service of welcome on the Thursday evening. On Friday there was meetings with praising, singing and preaching and in the evening a two-hour magic lantern session. For the slide show Reginald used his time-honoured fromula of: funny slides, followed by the Gospel, finishing up with Pilgrim’s Progress.

A 2007 playlet of the Missionaries first arrival in 1907

Saturday morning was left free. In the afternoon there followed a great service at which 24 Lakher’s were Baptized. Eleven women and girls and thirty men and boys stood in the congregation to recite their belief, they then trooped off to the watercourse to be baptized. Reginald observed that there must have been many a rejoicing Angel looking on that day. Afterwards tea was taken and the day finished with a great evening meeting. Fifty-five Baptized Christians participated in a service of the Lord’s Supper on Sunday morning. Reginald declared this wonderful service to be the largest gathering to share this Christian ordinance in Lakher land up to that date. The rest of Sunday was taken up with an afternoon service and an evening service with farewells.

4.05

Saiha village is a Lakher community some two days walk away from the mission station. The mission’s earliest school students came from this village and one of the first satellite schools flourished here for a short time. Reginald was able to report in 1924 that the Christians in Saiha had built a church; they also reopened their school. A decade of ups and downs would follow before this village could boast a steady Christian community. From time to time active members would number more than fifty then relapse until the faithful few could be counted on one hand. Other satellite schools and church groups followed the same early pattern of mixed success. These outlying enterprises would achieve much greater stability and progress after the home visit 1926-1928 when the enlarged team of European Missionaries and the new band of Lakher Evangelists became established. Thanks to Miss Ramsey we have the first account of a dramatic event at Zylow, a nearby village, for whatever reason Reginald had made no mention of this. A very disturbing throw back to the previous century’s head hunting days occurred there in 1917. The village men went out on a raiding expedition to another village and took twenty men from there as their prisoners. On returning home they ritually sacrificed three of these unfortunates and then brutally murdered the remaining seventeen out of hand. Strong government action brought the miscreants to heel and that was the last of such activities. Remarkably by 1924 there was a thriving satellite school in Zylow which in its first ten months boasted eight scholars who learnt to read and write. The school closed at the end of that year for shortage of new entrants but not for very long. When the new Missionary Colleagues arrive in 1928 they were soon recording in the Lakher Pioneer, the doings in Zylow. It is with no little thanksgiving to God that in this last bastion of evil, a band of unwavering Christian saints went on very soon to build their own church.

4.06

Reginald had long pestered the local Assam Government officials for permission to enter Burma but without success. In 1924 he tried a different approach going directly to the Burmese Colonial Authorities, this time with a better result. On 21^st November 1924 he, set out with Maud, Miss Ramsey, Tlosai and four Lakher men, to blaze a trail down the Kaladan river to the Indian Ocean, a journey of more than 200 miles. The first hundred miles of river was completely uncharted, no European expedition had attempted this journey before.

Reginald's pioneer journey down the Kaladan River

The unexplored stretch contained many obstacles such as rapids that had to be portaged around through virgin jungle, not to mention the full gamut of jungle creatures, large and small. As they went they visited the Lakher villages on the Burma side. They did not join the Kaladan directly below Serkawr but cut due south through uncharted jungle. This was presumably to meet the river where it flowed west before going south. At the river they were able to acquire two dugout canoes and proceeded downstream. They camped beside the water wherever they could, only occasionally being fortunate enough to find a suitable village that would give them hospitability. They made contact with the Matu tribe and leaving two of their Lakher men there for the two months until their return journey. They were to begin to evangelize this people and to learning their language. Reginald already was froming plans to extend the mission to include this tribe. Eventually they arrived at Kondor which was then the upper limit of the river’s navigation. Here they boarded a small river steamer that plied between Kondor and Paletwa. Thereafter they made their way by established transport down to the coast at (Akyab) Sittwe. On arrival they visited the deputy commissioner before sailing to Calcutta for a short break. On their return journey the Deputy Commissioner again entertained them and on seeing them off remarked that he would not consider their journey without more than 100 rifles and many more coolies. Pushing back up river was hard going with some hair-raising adventures. One night as they settled down in camp they surprised by a rogue elephant. The local’s scattered making for large rocks beside the river, knowing that the elephants could not penetrate such difficult terrain; Reginald and his three ladies took to one of the canoes and sat the night out in midstream. The party finally arrived back home after three months. Reginald was soon appealing for fresh funds to support work with Kumi and the Matu tribes, which they had encountered on their epic river journey. He immediately began to devote a great deal of time to a translation and literacy programme for these fresh contacts. Throughout the story of the Lakher Mission the Burma India border would recur as a constraining factor. That year Reginald also visited the great exhibition in Calcutta. Three Lakhers accompanied him; these men had never left the hills before. The next edition of the Lakher Pioneer contained a lovely account of the journey and the visit retold by on of his ‘Innocents Abroad’. His unedited description of the journey, the great exhibition, and all the wonders that he encountered in the great city, is a classic piece.

4.07

Reginald was keen to return to Burma to the Kumi and Matu country as soon as the rains finish in 1924. He had spent the past months turning out a primer and other material in the Kumi language on the new printing press. As he left to visit and evangelize some of the villages of his new territory, he also dispatched two Lakhers to evangelize the Pachypi people. This tribe lived to the to the south and spoke Lakher. Reginald had now extended the mission’s influence over a further 3,000 square miles of remote hill country thereby doubling the area to which they were the sole outreach agency. His report in the Lakher Pioneer inevitably finished with an appeal for more funds to resource these new mission fields. Despite these further pioneer endeavours a note of tiredness can be detected, he declared that their typical working day was now just 6am to 7pm. For the first time he began to record the years that they have given to the mission. This strain would recur in his reports together with a yearning for a co-worker through to the next furlough in 1927. Reginald undertook another epic journey early in 1925. He took twenty men and cut a path through 100 miles of jungle directly south to Paletwa on the navigable reaches of the Kaladan River. This route followed no existing line and was made entirely by compass. Later that year after the rains he was invited to join an official expedition by, the new District Superintendent, Mr Perry. They travelled into closed Lakher country over the Burma borders. The party was a large one of over 100 with twenty-five Sepoys (Indian Soldiers). Reginald remarked that it was very strange to march with fixed bayonets. On their way out they passed Reginald’s path cut to Paletwa, it had obviously become a new and well used route showing all the signs of constant traffic, probably to fetch salt. The Superintendent’s party travelled ten days east and then into the Khahria range, making the summit at 6,350 feet. From here Reginald could see the whole of the Lakher tribal Land and well into Chin Hills. Quite soon they were again on the Burma border, this time on a mission tour of the Lakher villages to the northeast. He took along Maud, Tlosai and Miss Ramsey and the magic lantern. There tour included an ascent of Pypi, (the Blue Mountain), height 7,100 feet. The altitude brought a welcome relief from the lower hill climate and they saw many interesting botanical specimens on the way. Again the view was breathtaking over their own and the Chin Hills. It should not come as too great a surprise that Reginald’s report on the Mission for 1924 is rather downbeat. He must have been absent from the mission station on his several expeditions for a significant part of the year. He complained about behaviour in the school, about training Lakher staff only to lose them almost immediately, of converts who came on for a time and then return to their old habits. To add to their difficulties money from home was decreasing. Reports from the mission station during 1926 echo with tiredness and the need for a furlough was in the air. Reginald’s writing in the Lakher Pioneer, apart from his annual report tell less and less of the main work of the mission, such enthusiasm that he displayed seemed to be confined to his escapades into the new territory. For all this there were some great new developments coming out of the Mission Station. One of the temptations that ensnare their new Christians was the frequent beer fests. To these Reginald resolved to offer an alternative activity. He devised a monthly social which they started in the mission’s meeting room. It consisted of an evening of: party games, hymn singing, magic lantern show during which Maud’s famous scones and lemonade was served. These events were very successful right from the first evening. They started with over a hundred attending and the numbers grew a little every time. Another initiative was a monthly magazine that they printed and sent out to the Christians in the villages. Later the publication would be titled ‘The Bugle Call’. The first print run was just 150 but soon extended to 200 and more. There were reports of the magazine being passed around the villages and even an account of a person learning to read in remote places with the aid of just a borrowed copy. The other events of Harvest Festival and Christmas with the Christmas tree continued to be highly valued and very effective in the home village.

4.08

In his review Reginald reported on a number of disjointed subjects. He had to overhaul the bungalow, replacing several of the post on which it stood. It had been a very dry season with fire spreading wildly on the hill slopes. More than once they come very near to having the mission compound burnt out. He set to work to organize the cutting of a fire break road right around the hill two or three hundred feet below the mission. Men came in constantly from villages near and far in search of paid work to ease their desperate needs. Reginald had plenty of work but very limited funds forcing to ration his offers of employment. He reported for the first time in some detail on the medical work. There were three conditions which made up the bulk of their hundred of so daily dispensary calls: anaemia which was often caused the poor rice based diet, thyroid trouble dew to the lack of iodine in the natural water supply, and endemic malaria. Maud would manage the dispensary leaving surgery to Reginald. Bamboo was used everywhere for building and for all sorts of domestic applications. Splitting bamboo could resulted in a razor sharp edge, this could be used to skin animals or as spikes in animal traps, but it could also caused horrific accidents. Such trauma provided the high drama of the Mission’s medical practice, on these occasions Reginald would be called in to clean out and sew up these often-extensive injuries. During 1926 the mission arranged a great students reunion to which 80 past graduates came. Reginald’s best man in the print shop was called back to his home village just as about half of Pilgrim’s Progress had been printed when. He was annoyed to lose a good man who he had spent so long training. Eventually Reginald completed the translation of the whole New Testament. The previous edition had lack several of the epistles, some of these Reginald had found the most challenging of all his translation work during this nineteen-year project. The revised manuscripts of his earlier work and the newly completed translations would now go to the British and Foreign Bible Society for printing. This volume is possibly Reginald’s most enduring achievement.

4.09

When it was time to leave for their furlough Reginald decided take the Kaladan River route out to Calcutta. This time they made the journey with full baggage. They came to grief shooting some rapids with fully loaded canoes. One of the boats was swamped as it passed through on of the rapids causing all in it to be tipped out into the water. The baggage was all retrieved further down stream without loss but a Serkawr man was drowned. The whole party was thrown into great distress, eventually several men were sent back to the village carrying the body. At the next village the party was at first refused hospitality because they were still tainted by the death of their man. The night was wet and cold but only after a long discussion was a compromise reached; it involving Reginald paying for a pig for the village to sacrificed, they were only then allowed shelter for the night. At Calcutta they met Reginald’s brother Herbert who was still with the Baptist Missionary Society at Longley. During the journey voyage to England they visited the Pyramids of Egypt and Jerusalem, and the way celebrate Tlosai’s eighteenth birthday.

4.10

Reginald and Maud were clearly great pioneers of the most heroic sort, the epitome of the best of the Victorian Colonial Missionary bread. By the mid 1930’s their dedication and self-sacrifice would have firmly established the twin blessings of the Christian Gospel and literacy amongst the Lakher people, neither were yet universal but the way was opening for this achievement. The good news of the love of God for every corner of humanity was being heard and was transfroming lives in those remote hills. The Lorrain’s teaching and most of all their lives proclaimed afresh: “that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever shall believe on him will be saved”. As the Mission passed beyond its 21^st year the tide was flowing stronger and stronger: the church was numbered in thousands, Baptisms each year would grown to three figures, Christian marriages became more common and literacy and Christian learning be disseminated into a band of indigenous preachers and teachers. Pioneers bring success because they are single minded, focused and doggedly persistent, that is, until they achieve the breakthrough that is their goal; then success itself could be fraught with difficult. It is one thing to scale the impossible but quite another to settle into domestic life and build on that which they have pioneered. Reginald was no exception! Through the past seven years his attention has been grabbed by new challenges beyond the Burma border with the result loss of impetus in the established mission. A note of tiredness has crept into his reporting, he longed for a colleague, counted the passing years he confesses to no longer working the heroic dawn to midnight hours. The school had experienced disruptive students, he struggled to find time for his New Testament translation and he was dispirited by setbacks in the growth of his new Christian community. In Miss Ramsey’s place Reginald and Maud would bring back two assistant missionaries. The new talent would reinvigorate the mission. Reginald also would have a fresh challenge, which would be to induct his new staff into the work, culture and language of the Lakhers. In true from he would layout a course of study and set them exacting examinations for which they would be required to commit long hours through their first two years. As they became competent they would join the new team of Lakher Evangelistic and together would transform the work. Taking the scale of the Mission’s achievements from addition to multiplication. By the next furlough in 1934 the full potential of Reginald and Maud’s pioneer work would be clearly discerned as the Gospel of Jesus laid claim to a growing band of followers.

2009-08-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

Chapter 3

Consolidation 1912 – 1919

3.01

The Mission’s quarterly supporter’s magazine, ‘The Lakher Pioneer’, is our main source of information from 1912 onwards. It ran from 1912 until 1970. The British Library has a bound collection of these amongst the Lakher private papers.

3.02

The Lorrain’s Missionary’s furlough in England did not seem to equal holiday! During their home break Reginald wrote, ‘Five years in unknown jungle’ (274 pages). The book’s purpose was to publicise the Mission and to build up support. During their stay, he and Maud travelled many miles, speaking to any church or group who might show interest in their work. Without a tie to any mission societies, they appealed to any church that showed an interest, regardless of denomination. Time spent with the home committee officers and their existing supporters also proved most fruitful. They attended the Keswick Missionary Convention, here Reginald was able to arrange fringe meetings. He was well received and came away with £100 cash and a number of new supporters. The fruit of all this work was that they would return to the Mission Station with renewed backing and more realistic financial support. Reginald also took the opportunity to gather other useful resources.

3.03

Mission finance was the major issue at the 1913 annual meeting. The assembled company were informed that the total expenditure of the Lakher Pioneer Mission to-date including keeping the Missioners in the field for five years and their passage out and home had been less than £1,000. This was a remarkable feat, only made possible by the frugal management of the Missionaries, and one suspects not a little subsidy from Reginald and Maud’s own very limited personal finances. They had indeed achieved so much with so little. The Mission’s Treasurer now called for a yearly allowance of not less than £250. He also appealed for:- £250 to build a suitable permanent mission bungalow, an annual sums of £50 to be spent on preaching expeditions throughout the Lakher district, and £100 each year to finance the school and associated educational work.

3.04

On the 10^th October 1913, with their home support renewed and the Mission income more than doubled the Lorrains set sail for Calcutta aboard the SS Holywell. They were able to take back with them: - the first batch of St John’s Gospel (printed without charge by the British and Foreign Bible Society), Reginald’s Catechism and his Hymnbook with 70 hymns. From the Religious Tract Society he had obtained, a good number of specially printed coloured leaflets in 8 different designs, as well as several thousand leaflets containing Bible portions printed by the Scripture Gift Mission and 500 copies of Miss N Snowdon’s Prayer from the Daily Prayer Union. Finally, the Day Star Text Mission has produced a 10ft banner text in colour that read; “The Blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from All Sin”. All of these materials printed for the first time in the Lakher language. The Missionaries acquired a portable organ for £10. The mind boggles at the thought of all these items being shipped and transhipped and finally carried for 12 days up and down jungle mountains tracks teetering along the edge of precipices. Soon after setting sail Reginald and Maud received a telegram from the committee informing them that sufficient funds were now in their bank account to build the new bungalow. After spending some time in Calcutta organising local supplies, they set off on the 29^th November by ship for Chittagong. From there they travelled inland up the river system arriving at Demagiri on the 13^th December. Their final days on foot brought them to Lunglei by the 20^th of December. After resolving to enjoy Christmas with Reginald’s brother Herbert and his wife at their Mission Station, the new arrivals promptly went down with fever. The intrepid family recovered sufficiently to set out for Sherkor and home on New Years Day.

At the end of their first day’s travel they had failed to make the safety of a village. There were tigers in the district so they had to build a temporary stockade out of their boxes and keep a fire going all night. Eight days after leaving Lunglei they crossed the Kolodyne and ascended the hill to Sherkor. In contrast to their first arrival when the village had given the Lorrain’s a cold reception; the welcome just grew at each stage into the hills. They were met first by two of their school students at the riverhead village of Demargiri, at Lunglei there were more, and so on at each stage of the journey until, as they entered the village the entire populace turned out to greet them, and especially to marvel how Tlosai had grown in the year’s absence.

3.05

Their bungalow had suffered storm damaged and was in a poor state. The journey had cost £200, this was double the homeward trip. The extra expense had to be taken from the £350 set aside for the new Bungalow. Undaunted Reginald immediately set to work on establishing their new permanent mission station and home. Construction of the new bungalow preoccupied him for the next eighteen months. He obtained a lease on a new plot of land straddling a ridge half a mile from the village and 400 feet higher. Levelling the site was gruelling toil with both rock to break out and tons of soil to move, all by hand. Always Reginald led the project from the front. The Bungalow was to be constructed of hardwood; with the cookhouse it consumed the timber of thirty mature trees.

Rear of the 1913 Bungalow in 2007 with cook house to the right

The timber was all felled from the jungle, often at some distance. He had a team of four local men who became his sawyers, recruiting and motivating them proved an ongoing worry. After a fair quantity of wood had been cut and stored in the old bungalow, disaster was only narrowly averted when its cookhouse caught fire and quickly burnt down, it took a heroic effort to prevent the old bungalow with its precious store going too. The onset of the monsoon season slowed the work to a crawl, it was late in 1914 before the post and beam frame could be erected. Reginald reported that his carpenters only had sufficient skill to assist him and he laid every piece of wood and drove every nail with his own hands. The corrugated iron sheets for the roof were on the way but required 200 men to carry them over the hills. During the rainy season Reginald turned his hand to making their furniture. Next he went in search of bamboo from which to make wall and ceiling panels. Bamboos are split open along their length then flattened out into strips, about 3 inches wide. These are then woven into wall panels. Lakher’s have long used this system. Providing the panels are under a weatherproof roof they will last many years. Reginald located a good thicket of bamboo deep in the jungle and had around 7,000 cut and carried back to the compound. The first building to be completed was the freestanding cookhouse. Reginald had nailed down his corrugated iron roof but not yet screwed it with screwed when a tropical storm blew in and ripped the roof off. He retrieved the iron sheeting and refitted it, this time fixing each piece with screws and nails, later complaining that working on the hot metal roof under the tropical sun was the most exhausting job of all. When the bungalow was finished he declared that his new home should service for 30 to 50 years. I can testify that both his furniture and the original building bore sturdy testament to his workmanship in 2007 nearly a Centenary later. It is still there today, his beautifully sawn and planed hardwood floorboards, each a foot wide and running the width of the building, windows and doors all made on the spot and nothing that would disgrace a craftsman with all his machinery to hand. The family’s health dramatically improved when they moved into their new home.

2007 visitors on the veranda of Reginald's original bungalow

The building caught the fresh breeze, the hard floor made living much cleaner and the roomier accommodation made their life much less stressful.

3.06

One of the first events on the new Mission Compound was to Tlosai’s 5^th birthday party. The chief of Sherkor village and one hundred and fifty guests attended the young lady’s anniversary. Tlosai certainly was a popular young lady and long before she knew it she was becoming a very effective missionary. The Lorrain’s began to share their celebrations of Christmas too. They produced a semblance of a Christmas tree and stocked it with presents for all the schoolboys and other attached villagers. A great project had to be put in hand each year to find and wrap enough goodies for each person, items such as pencils, small knives, any of the boxes and tins that had come with supplies, combs and any other trifle which would serve to make each of their folk know that they were part of the Christian family.

3.07

Soon the 1914-18 War began to have an impact even upon this remote mission. Food and raw material prices rose sharply. Reginald was very moved by the plight of some of his missionary colleagues who were German Nationals. He observed that they were in a desperate state having been cut off from all home supports by the naval blockade of Germany. Reginald made an appeal in the Lakher Pioneer for funds to support German Missionaries in India. A fund was set up and ran for a year or so until he reported that the Indian Government took this responsibility. No explanation is given as to whether the German Missionaries were interned or allowed to work on with government support. The Lakher Pioneer Mission’s income for 1914 was £513, a vast improvement over their subsistence in the first five years of the mission. Money was transferred in cash by the Indian Post to Lunglei were it was collected by the Mission. On one occasion Reginald sent two men to fetch his mail from Longley. When they arrived it was too late in the day to set off back so they left the mail sack on the Post Office porch until next day. On their return they found that the sack had been opened and £40 cash taken. On hearing their woeful tale Reginald set off in haste to Lunglei to see if he could trace the culprits but without success. The loss of nearly 10% of their year’s income was a heavy blow to the mission. As the war dragged price of basic commodity prices were forced, fundraising at home was more difficult and a bad harvest in the hills was causing a local food shortage too. Reginald began devised a sort of community bank. Previously he had been able to buy more rice than he needed and when the harvest failed he lent his stock back to families in trouble. He supplied 2,400lbs of rice to the needy during the year, claiming it back for his community reserve when conditions improved.

3.08

The school was soon as busy as before. In the 3rd quarter of 1914 Reginald reported that he had 36 boys in school, at the year’s end they celebrated their fiftieth graduate through the school since the work started. Reginald complained that he was finding it increasingly difficult to run the establishment without a decent building and appealed to the home committee for a further £150 to fund this project. In the same letter Reginald reported that Laila one of his (40 year old) schoolboys has asked for his name to be added to the roll of Christians. Soon there were twelve names of the Christian roll; almost entirely due to the work of the school. He was now able to use one of his past students as a trainee teacher; this freed more of his time to build and equip the bungalow. He built a temporary school house measuring 22’ x 10’, this was the classroom; sleeping arrangements for the students were split between the stranger’s house, which Reginald had built in the village to cater for visitors to the Mission and a temporary hut on the compound.

Two schools were set up in distant villages with past students acting as teachers. One of the new branch schools was at Shiaha. Shiaha became the capital of the Lakher district. Reginald paid a visit to his outlying schools and was very pleased with the progress. At Shiaha School he found that all but the five youngest could read the Gospel of St John, recite the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and write in a good hand. The five young ones could write their letters and read the first pages of the school Primer. He resolved that any village that wanted its own school could start one. Within a year he lost confidence in his staff and closed all the satellite schools until better-trained teachers become available. A Lakher from beyond the Burma border came to the school. This was a great breakthrough because although the Lakher tribe straddles the border the Lorrain’s could not get government permission to enter Burma. The Mission Committee Treasurer and Editor made strong appeal for £250 to build the schoolhouse in the Lakher Pioneer pointing out what a vital tool the school was in the work to bring the Lakher’s to faith. About this time one of Reginald’s youngest pupils, an eight year old, asked for his name to be added to the list of Christians. Reginald questioned him closely to see if he understood the significance of his actions. He pointed out that he could no longer join in, or even be present when his family made sacrifices or other pagan rites. The little fellow said that he understood all this very well, in fact a few days previous his father planned a pagan ceremony and he had told him that he could not stay in the house that night, he left to find another place to sleep. Towards the end of 1916 the Mission reported that there were forty-three names on the Christian Roll. They came from seven villages but almost all were first associated with the school. Another significant breakthrough came when the first girl asked to be enrolled as a Christian. She intended to marry one of the Christian lads, until that time the Christian boys could not find girls of faith to marry. Through the Mission’s early years the Lakher women had been the most resistant to the Gospel. On numerous occasions women had held their men back from conversion. The old Serkawr village chief’s wife in particular was an implacable objector to the Christian Gospel.

3.09

At last during 1917 Reginald had the resources to build the schoolhouse. Again a hilltop site had to be levelled with a considerable amount of rock to break out and remove. He constructed this building to the same high standard as the bungalow with a hard wood post frame, planked floor, plated bamboo walls and iron roof, laying every piece of wood and iron with his own hands. The building was first planned to be 20’ x 40’ but ended up being extended by another 20’. It could be divided into two separate rooms as well as a study from which Reginald could see into both rooms. 1917 saw 42 students in school with the added satisfaction of Serkawr’s village chief sending his son to be educated. School numbers levelled off at 41 in 1918, the number of names on the Christian roll rose from 60 to 74 then fell back to 73 when a student fell prey to a great measles epidemic which swept through the hills. Reginald now produced desks for the schoolroom and the stranger’s house in the village was rebuilt and a decent sleeping house for the school erected. The student’s lodging room measured 38 x 20 x 13 feet. Even though Reginald was clearly becoming more and more exhausted the project still kept rolling off. Soon there are 92 Christians on Roll and to their great joy two have been Baptized, and the first Christian Marriage had taken place.

3.10

Mrs Lorrain began a weekly sewing class for girls. Her new project had a remarkable effect enabling the Mission to begin to gain the confidence of Lakher women, but the class created a new logistic problem; they were dependent on receiving a steady supply of fabric pieces from Mission Supporters at home. Frequent appeals went out in the Lakher Pioneer for fresh supplies. Through the sewing class the girls began to ‘Gossip the Gospel’ taking a lively interest in Maud’s instruction. They also began a Sunday School which quickly attracted a good number of villagers, mostly thanks to Maud’s Sewing Class. Like Richard Rake’s Ragged Sunday Schools, the agenda was divided between Christian instruction and learning their letters and practicing their reading with Bible passages.

3.11

Reginald set himself the great task of translating the whole of the New Testament by the end off 1917, the 10^th anniversary of the Mission. The Bungalow’s construction preoccupied him for the first year and only when this was complete could he really devote time to this vast project. By the middle of 1916 he reported his progress: - 7 chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, the book of Jonah, the epistles of Jude, John, Peter James and Romans, even parts of the Book of Common Prayer. Reginald added 10 new hymns to the small hymn book, these were: Jesus lover of my soul, How sweet the name of Jesus sounds, Stand up stand up for Jesus, All thing bright and beautiful, There is life for a look at the crucified, O Jesus I have promised, There’s a home for little children, When morning guild the sky. Reginald declared that hymns are a very effective way to teach the faith. He revised and enlarged the school primer adding much reading of general knowledge, also a new catechism with questions and answers on the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. He had ready to print some eight-page assortments of scripture portions. 1918 became the target year to complete the New Testament translation. During that year Saro, Reginald’s stalwart help for the earlist days with translation asked to have his name added to the roll of Christians. By the end of the year they were able to Report to the Mission Supporters; two thirds of the New Testament printed as separate books, work in progress to complete the remainder, an Arithmetic Book at the printers and a Geography Book being written. The Book of Common Prayer (Church of England) largely translated. His eight page booklets, at the Indian printers at a cost of 13 shillings and sixpence for 300. Later in the year the new Hymn Book is in use with 174 hymns, but the New Testament still needed Mark, Luke, 2^nd Corinthians, Galatians and Ephesians, and the new School Primer and Arithmetic Books are in use. Finally Reginald reported that there were 40 workers employed on the Mission Compound.

3.14

Each year in his Annual Report Reginald gave a very short paragraph to the Medical Work of the Mission. It seemed that he delegated much of the run of the mill prescribing to Maud. They record seeing over 2,000 patients in one year. Only two events merit special mention. One of Reginald’s sawyers got his leg caught under a heavy trunk and was carried in with about eight inches of lower leg bone exposed. Reginald immediately set too to clean the wound and sew back the large flap of skin. In due course the man recovered full use of his leg. On another occasion two boys were sent across the river to fetch a wizard because their family has been having a lot of bad luck. They began to mess about as boys are do beside the river when a bear came out of the jungle and attacked one of the boys. After mauling the lad’s head the bear made off leaving the lad’s companion the badly mauled boy the village. The family call on the Missioners for help. Reginald found that the boy had several large puncture wounds through his scull. He cleaned up the wounds then stitches and dressed them leaving the boy with his family to see what time would bring. When news came to the wizard that the family had been calling for him he set out across the river to visit them. Upon arrived he learnt of the lads injuries and promises to do his best for him. First he said that the family must remove the dressings and wash off the missionary’s medicine, the wizard would then spit in the wounds. The family refuse and sent the wizard away, the lad recovered. Adding to the communities growing confidence in their missionaries.

3.15

A woman in the Serkawr died in childbirth leaving a newborn infant. Lakher tribal custom dictated that the baby sould be placing in the jungle in a clay pot and abandoned. Reginald had been called to the birth and aware of the child’s predicament, requested that he should take the baby and care for it. After some argument the father agreed but few days later he appeared at the bungalow demanding his child’s return. Reginald reluctantly agreed with the proviso that the child should be brought each day to be bottle fed by Mrs Lorrain. This worked well for a time until Maud contracted Scarlet Fever, ‘they suspected from the filthy rag in which the baby was wrapped’. Reginald still insisted that the baby should be brought to the bungalow each day to insure that it came to no harm. Now the family was issued with the daily bottle of milk with strict instructions for it’s feeding. This was possibly the first Lakher child to survive its mother’s death in childbirth. Although Maud became very ill, the episode was another small triumph for the love of Christ. Christmas 1915 was not a happy time. The strain of the year’s incredible achievements took its toll. Maud was still isolated with Scarlet Fever when Reginald went down with Rheumatic Fever. To add to their troubles Tlosai went down early in the year with Typhoid. These disasters would have sent many a lesser couple running for home. Herbert and his wife came to their rescue. His journey from Lunglei was much easier because the track had been upgraded to a standard government bridal, path one yard wide prescribed gradients. The journey was reduced from eight days to five. Herbert was amazed at Reginald’s achievements; he found the compound full of order with many remarkable developments in the School and the Mission.

3.16

The ‘Lakher Pioneer’ conveys glimpse of the hostility of their tropical environment. Several Tiger stories tell of their encounters with the king of the jungle. Tigers often raided domestic stock dragging the kill off into the jungle. If the carcass could be located a platform would be built in a nearby tree. Reginald would mount a nightly stakeout waiting some times two or three nights for the beast to return to its prey. Sometimes the night was too dark to get a successful shot off and ‘Mr Stripes’, as Reginald called him, lived to hunt again. Cobras were a constant danger; they reported killing more than 20 assorted snakes about the compound in just one season. When the rains came the jungle would come alive with leaches. Any penetration into the deep foliage required frequent stops to remove the creatures before they got established. Leaches gorge on blood until their matchstick size is transformed into something as thick as a thumb. Failure to pay close attention results in a wound that may ulcerate for months. Tropical storms too were a constant hazard. Over 100 inches of rain falls most years. Occasionally there are hailstorms with dangerously large hailstones and from time to time wild earthquakes.

3.17

When Reginald had completed the bungalow project he leased 28 acres of land to cultivate for his own Jhum. He, as always, sets out to revolutionise the way things were dune. The normal method of cultivation was slash and burn. The jungle vegetation would be cut down and left to dry for about six weeks. When all was tinder dry, the hillside would be set light, burning furiously. Crops would be planted as soon as the ashes had cooled and if they had times everything right, the rains would very shortly begin. The local practice was to plant an assortment of seed all together:- rice, maze, Job’s tears, sesame, sorghum, beans, etc. Reginald was a man of order and planted each crop separately. His first year he harvests a big crop of sweet potatoes, enough for six months and was able to give about 1,000 away. With his staples of rice and maze he harvest ginger, melons, edible hollyhocks and mustard. Crop husbandry, theory and practical, became part of the school’s curriculum, thereby ensuring that he had no shortage of labourers. Reginald’s new methods became quite a talking point, villagers from near and far came to observe and comment. Reginald also grew anything he could to supplement his family’s and the school’s diet. He planted bananas, discovering how vulnerable these trees were to tropical storms when heavy with fruit. He found he could grow both citrus and coffee in the hills; a century later the government is making grants to villagers who will plant these. Many of the European plants he tried needed to be protected from the power of the tropical sun; he found a bamboo lattice cover would do this. The horticultural enterprises led him to introduce an annual Harvest Festival, this quickly caught on and attracted a good crowd of villagers.

3.18

In March and April 1917the Lorrain’s went on a district tour, visiting and preaching in several Lakher villages, setting foot where Europeans have never been seen before. Reginald used his Magic Lantern slides to great effect. His two-hour programme would start with amusement and entertainment then progress through instruction to a call to let the Good New of Jesus Christ change his hearer’s lives. For such a novel open-air event the whole community could be guaranteed to turn out.

3.19

The Great War affecting Mission giving; their income for 1917 was just £450. Postal deliveries were badly affected, sometimes delayed and sometimes lost at sea. The school came under war strain too. A rumour went around that the government would take any man who could read and write and send them to serve in France. There was political unrest all though the North East Frontier hills, the Lakher’s could not be isolated form this. The neighbouring Chin tribes to their North were in revolt for a time, and food everywhere doubles in price. During 1919 the Lakher Pioneer journals indicate that The Lorrain’s were becoming more and more exhausted, their Furlough later that year could not come soon enough. Maud Lorrain down with Typhoid and was ill for two months. The harvest and Christmas events were cancelled due to sickness. Two ex schoolboy who had been conscripted into the military come back from France and before they left there was an unusually terrifying earthquake. Reginald described the experience as if the hills were being shaken just like a speeding railway carriage.

3.20

Whilst taking nothing from the heroism of the ‘Five Years in Unknown Jungle’ era, the achievements of this five years were staggering. When they left for England in 1912 there were just two Lakher Christians on the roll, this time they would leave nearer two hundred. Maud’s work with the girls sewing class had dramatically changed the mission’s impact upon the village community. Reginald had built a permanent Mission complex of buildings that would stand the mission in good stead well into the era of the Mara Church’s independence. Despite this major building project, he continued to direct the growing schoolwork and kept up a formidable output of translation and publishing. The work had taken dreadful toll on their health. When they arrived in Calcutta they could not precede to England for some weeks; Maud in particular needed time to recuperated. Brother Herbert Lorrain left for England a little time before them and happened to be present when his and Reginald’s father, died. Before their furlough was over the brothers and Maud had lost two more parents between them. The Mission continued steadily in the Lorrain’s absence with a past student in charge of the school and others responsible for worship and keeping the compound functioning as a going Mission Station.

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Chapter 2 1907-1911

Five Years in Unknown Jungle

2.01

One his return home from India in 1911, Reginald Lorrain published ‘Five Years in Unknown Jungle’. This was a substantial book size report of the Mission’s progress so far. This chapter is entirely gleaned from that book. It also appears to be almost the main source of much that has been written about the Mission so far.

2.02

To preparation for his great task Reginald spent a year 1905/6 at Livingston Missionary College in London. He and Maud set about assembling what resources they could muster for their new life. Without the backing of a Mission Society they were dependant on their modest circle of friends and supporters including members of their own Penge Congregational church. We can only guess how much of their own resources they ploughed into launching their project. They lived through the next five years on little more than £150 a year. This might be adequate at that time for a modest lifestyle in England but; oil, flour and other basics, when carried into the remote hills, could cost several times their market price. Maud and Reginald married at Penge Congregational Church on 12^th November 1906. On 18^th of January 1907 they bid farewell to friends and family at Euston Station and set out for Liverpool docks. They sailed of the Steam Ship Glasgow, arriving at Calcutta on 16^th of February having called at Port Said and Colombo. Reginald’s brother Herbert and his wife arranged to meet these ‘innocent aboard’ and induct them into the ways of India. Together they stay for several days at the Baptist Missionary Society’s house in Calcutta while further supplies were bought and pack for the hills. The next stage of the journey was by train to the river port of Goalundo on the Ganges. Here they boarded a steamer for a five-hour journey down stream to Chandpur. The steamer and the rail companies permitted missionary and their families to travel 1^st class whilst only paying for 2^nd. On this occasion that was a great relief as the boat was packed with over 1000 passengers. From Chandpur there followed an overnight rail journey to Chittagong. From here on the trappings of 20^th century life began to slip away. They consigned their baggage to dugout canoes travelling themselves by light river steamer. Although only sixty miles the journey became a three day ordeal after they ran aground more than once on sand bars and were obliged to wait for the tide to get off. To add to their discomfort there was a plaque of red ants on board that ruins the food they had taken along for this part of the journey. At Barkal they left the steamer and were obliged to join their baggage and travel by dugout canoe. Rapids now obstruct any further navigation except by these light craft. Each canoe was about 35 feet long by 4 feet wide and formed from the whole trunk of a tree with the centre literally ‘dug out’.

The boats had bamboo matting hoods covering all but a few feet at the bow and stern with a 4-foot gap in the middle. Headroom under the covers was limited to about 4 feet. The Lorrains travelled, one couple in each boat. The boats provided a small living and sleeping area for the passengers and room for their boxes. The three-man crew ate and slept under the front 6 feet of the covered area. They travelled and slept in these basic boats for several days. From time to time rapids obstructed their progress, on each occasion the boats would be unloaded and hauled around on trolleys while the baggage was carried to the new launching. At Demagiri they left the water to finish their journey by pony and foot. Some of Herbert Lorrain’s Lushei Churchmen met them at the riverhead to escort the party the last four days to Lunglei. The new Missionaries were now in the jungle-covered hills that were to become their home for the rest of their lives. Reginald recounts his first impressions as they made their way to Lunglei, “Up hill, down hill, mile after mile, steadily we rode on, seated on our little mountain ponies, along paths that were only a few feet broad, where on the one side was a high wall of jungle and rock, on the other steep slope hillside which was also covered with jungle, consisting of bamboos, trees which are evergreens, palms of various species all intertwined with vines”. By the time they reached Herbert’s station at Lunglei Maud and Reginald’s journey had already taken nearly three months. The hills are subject to heavy tropical monsoon rains from April into September, as the travellers arrived the weather was already beginning to break. Their final destination was still some eight days walk south but it would be impractical for them to attempt to settle in until the rains had cleared. Reginald did not waste his time; he immediately sets about getting a working knowledge of the Lushai language whilst shadowing his brother in his general mission work. The Lushai Church was already becoming well established after several years of dedicated work by the Baptist Mission under Herbert and his predecessors. The Church had been praying regularly for some time for the conversion of the Lakher tribe, consequently a great welcome was laid on for these new Missionaries. It took weeks for all their baggage to be brought up form the riverhead; Reginald going down himself to supervise the loads. Baggage for hill porters would be made up into packets of around 30kg which they would carry bearing the load with a headband across the forehead while the bundle rested on the porter’s back.

2.03

On the 19^th September 1907 Reginald and Herbert with their wives set off for their new Mission Field.

Most of their march south was alone the tops or upper slop of one of the great ridges, their last obstacle being the mighty Kaladan River. On arrival at the crossing they found the Kaladan still in spate and treacherously littered with tree trunks and other debris wash down by the monsoon rains. The government provided a dugout ferry at the crossing. The ferrymen took each load slowly some way up stream before being swept hundreds of yards back as they battled to cross to the far bank. After getting people and goods across, the ponies had to be persuaded to swim through the torrent. At last the party was safely across and all that remained was to make the last days ascent to village of Serkawr. The village chief and elders were aware of the plans of the missionaries but were less than enthusiastic about their arrival and made little effort to disguise their feelings. When no one came out to enquire or welcome the travellers as they enter the village the party made their way to the largest house, which proves to be chief’s Thylai’s home. Their reception by the chief’s allowed for only the minimum of hospitality although the party was allotted a hut to use and asked to return that evening for a council. When they gathered later on Thylai’s veranda Reginald explained through a Lushai interpreter that they had come to live amongst the Lakher people. They wished to befriend and help them and to tell them of the wonderful love of Jesus. Reginald asked if he might have a piece of land somewhere near the village on which he would build his own house. This was granted. Herbert and Reginald ask the chief and his elders if they were pleased that these white people had come. The response was positive but it would take most of the ensuing five years before that response could be called enthusiastic. After two hours the council was over and the brothers returned to their wives to take a frugal supper and give thanks to God that at last their long and tedious journey was now over, and that they had finally arrived in the land to which the Lord had called them some two and half years before.

2.04

Reginald and Maud had three great tasks before them. First they must build a house to provide a secure base from which to operate, it would also be essential to get to grips with the Lakhers unique language and lastly they would need to gain the confidence of these people, only then could their Mission begin to flourish. They soon found that to compound the villager’s indifferent they had entered a cashless society. Initially they could find no means to tempt Lakher’s to work for them or any acceptable currency by which they could induce the locals to sell them rice or vegetables. Fortunately the Government Official at Lunglei took pity on them and direct some of his Lushai men to work with Reginald for several weeks, long enough to get the new bungalow built. Maud was delighted with her new home and although it had a plaited bamboo floor and a thatched roof it was clean and dry. It would have to do until they returned from England after their next furlough, then Reginald would build a substantial bungalow with jungle sawn hardwood and a corrugated iron roof. For some months they struggled desperately being totally dependant on unreliable and costly supplies carried into the hills. Maud was the first to make a breakthrough through. While summers can be unbearably the thermometer may drop to 15c in the winter months. As autumn drew on Maud saw many little ones shivering miserably, she set too with her sewing machine making up little jackets for them out of any old clothes or bit of material. The parents soon came asking for Maud to run up something for them from their own cotton cloth. The Lakher’s spun their own cotton and wove fine pieces of cloth. In no time she was swamped with requests so to control the demand she made a small charge of eggs vegetables or even cash. Eventually Reginald too discovered that he could import salt into the hills in bulk, the Lakher’s would readily barter with him for this scarce commodity. It took them towards a year to stabilize their position within the local economy, during those first months they were times when they could lay hands on little or nothing to eat, Reginald often going out into the jungle hoping to shoot something to put in the pot.

2.05

They laboured on the bungalow with the Lushai helpers for more than two months. Clearing the site was backbreaking work; quantities of rock needed breaking out and shifting and then the best that could be done to get a bit of level ground. They had to go in search of Bamboo from the jungle, some for structural posts and beams and some to be split and flattened to be woven into wall, floor and roof panels. Bamboo ties were needed to fix the whole structure together; nails were not used in this type of structure, finally the roof panels must be covered with thatch to make all weatherproof. The bungalow was built to the Lakher pattern and though durable enough these buildings were subject to storm damage. It would do for their first foothold in community but was less than adequate for their permanent workplace and residence. Meanwhile Maud was attempting to create a domestic regime without many of the commodities and conveniences of post Victorian England. Yeast for bread making presented her with a great difficulty. She experimented with banana yeast but this proved susceptible to weather conditions and unreliable. Often finding herself without the means of making bread for weeks at a time she eventually acquired a packet of hop yeast that proved satisfactory. Life continued to be difficult for the next two and a half years. It took them time to learn how to anticipate their frugal needs weeks or month in advance to allow for supplies to be carried in from so far and still they were only very slowly discovering ways to recruit local labour. Reginald was obliged to start each day with hunting for wild meet in the jungle and then carry water up four hundred feet from a spring below. He must also forage for firewood before he could even begin his mission tasks. Once the bungalow was completed Reginald set about making furniture. Their packing cases provided the timber for a table, for the remainder he had to develop his jungle skills and use the ubiquitous bamboo. Over the following months he produced chairs and many other useful objects to furnish their home.

All this time Reginald was diligently taking every opportunity to comprehend and record the Lakher language, quickly making notes in his pocket book as each object that came to hand was named. Towards Christmas their loneliness was relieved when a substantial British lead military force passed through the village. The soldier’s mission was to exact penalties from the village of Zongling for their kidnapping raid. The primitive road that gave the missionaries access to the area had been cut the previous season to allow the military access to that place. It was from Zongling that raiders had crossed into the lowlands to recapture their runaway slaves. They would now be made to pay a fine of twenty guns and to give an undertaking to cease raiding. For Reginald and Maud it was a great boost to entertain the Indian Army officers, the first Europeans that they had seen since Reginald’s brother and his wife had headed off back to Lunglei.

2.06

Reginald visited in the village regularly, eagerly learning any new word or language construct. But he did not feel able to address an audience publicly for more than a year. One day in October 1908 Reginald was in the village when the wife of the Chief from Saiha, a village about two days walk distant, asked him to tell them something of God’s work. With great trepidation Reginald agreed to come back later and address them. A large crowd had gathered to hear him in the open space in the centre Serkawr. First he sang a hymn, which he had translated into Lakher, and then he preached his first sermon. To his amazement he seemed to be free to speak clearly in this strange tongue. He came away praising God for the gifts of Pentecost. From then on he held regular meeting each week in the village. Early in 1909 Reginald set off on a three day preaching tour. On his route he came to the village of Tisopi where a man named Saro volunteered to support him as he spoke. Saro repeated Reginald’s words to those who where not able to hear or make out what the visitor was saying. Reginald asked Saro to come to Serkawr and help him with the translation work. Saro’s wife became angry at this request and threatened to divorce him if he had any more to do with the Missionary. A few days later Saro arrived at the Mission Station and offered his service, his wife kept her promise and promptly divorced him. Saro was quick and intelligent, soon mastering his letters and learning to read and write his own language. Together they laboured on the primary task of creating a dictionary. By the end of their five-year stay Reginald was able to put to the printers an English-Lakher and Lakher-English dictionary containing between 7,000 and 8,000 words. It took Reginald well into 1910 to produce a workable Lakher grammar.

2.07

During 1908 Reginald open a school. At first four Lushai’s and then several Chins came making eleven in all but within a couple of months they all left for various reasons. Some weeks later two Lakher men in their late twenties from Saiha came asking to be taught. It was necessary for Maud and Reginald to feed their students and with as yet no schoolroom the bungalow veranda had to do for classroom. It was the beginning of the rainy season and not very comfortable also being only two scholars they were not very happy. Presently they asked if they might go back to their village for a little holiday but promised to return. After three weeks they were back with a friend. Another short semester followed in which they learnt to spell out their words and pronounce them. Again a short break was requested. Reginald’s efforts came to the notice of the government officials who offered to provide local labour if Reginald would build a schoolhouse, in due course this structure took shape. The new schoolhouse was 25 feet long and 15 feet wide and had two little classrooms on either side at one end, making a ‘T’ shape and a small spire was placed on the ridge as it was to be used also as a church. On 24^th August 1908 the school reopened, the original three brought three more recruits, by mid September there were eleven scholars. Feeding these boys and men placed a huge burden on Reginald and Maud’s disposal finances but they resolved to continue as long as they were able. Their schoolboys ranged in age from eight to thirty-five years. Reginald made an appeal to the supporters in England for extra funds to for the new work but without any immediate response. By November they could no longer afford to go on. The school was closed and remained so for nearly a year. Although this seemed to be a disaster it gave Reginald much needed time to enlarge the dictionary and to produce written material for his next students to use. On the 13^th September 1909 the school reopened with the original three boys, by the end of the year when they closed for a six-week Christmas break, there were sixteen. Through 1910 attendance rose to twenty-two, one student named Riato having completed a whole year. Again Reginald and Maud closed the school for Christmas 1910, thereafter they resolved never to close the school, instead they would send home just four students at a time for a two month break. Reginald reckoned that it cost £3 to keep each man or boy in school for each year. During 1911 some friends in England began support the school and the Indian Government granted £12 a year for the support of four students, even so Reginald and Maud were left with a significant shortfall, which they made up form their own meagre resources.

2.08

One can hardly imagine how Reginald struggled to produce enough translated material to service both his Gospel Evangelism and the work of the school. He had only one hymn translated when he held his first public meeting and preached his first sermon in Serkawr. By the end of their second year he had thirty-seven hymns. His great priority was to translate the Bible into Lakher; St John was in draft form soon after the school reopened in September 1909. Everyone who joined the school, as soon as they could recognize and pronounce letters, began coping the Gospel of John out into their own exercise books. Reginald went through five redrafts before he submitted the gospel to the British and Foreign Bible Society for printing. He wrote a school primer for students to worked their way through, exercise by exercise; the Indian government coming to his aid again by printed this first school textbook. By the end of 1910 Reginald had embarked on a catechism style work entitled, “The Plan of Salvation from Genesis to Revelation. Initially each student coped this into his own exercise book learning it by heart in question and answer form. A typical school day began at five minutes to seven with the head boy ringing a loud gong calling all the students to line up at the back of the Mission Bungalow. At seven o’clock sharp Reginald would go out and salute them in military fashion to which they would respond in the same way. The assembled company was then given a list of tasks to be completed nine am. Some were allotted weeding or digging in the garden. The mission garden was by then making a substantial contribution to the economy of the household and school, at the same time doubling as a horticultural class. The Mission garden plot soon became a considerable local attraction with Lakhers from neighbouring village coming to view Reginald new methods and the novel plants he introduced to the hills. Another group of students would spend the first two hours in the care of the mission ponies, cows pigs and goats, grooming and foraging for fodder; again learning important lessons in animal husbandry. At nine o’clock the gong would call the students, each would then be equipped with a cake of soap together they would descend the four hundred feet to the spring and wash from head to foot. At 9.30 the school assembled for worship, this consisted of a hymn and prayer. Quite soon the students took responsibility for this duty from Reginald. Lessons would get under way with the students sitting around on the floor or on the small boxes that served as schoolroom furniture. Some would be learning their letters with the aid a slate, others beginning to read and write words and sentences, all with the aid of Reginald’s primer. Mostly students would work in pairs with the more advanced leading the newer arrivals. There would be a continual hum as instruction continues two by two. Reginald observed that the strangest thing seem to be how well they learnt despite on boy reading out loud a quite difficult piece of text while his neighbour concentrated loudly on another. At noon there would a one-hour break during which the students could eat and took free time, the afternoon session followed in similar lines until three or four o’clock depending on the season. Students lived in a bunkhouse near the school. They cooked the food provided for them, fetched their own water, gathered wood from the jungle and cared for their own needs under the supervision of the missionaries. Each Wednesday evening there was a combined and service and singing practice, on Sunday mornings there was Sunday School, Sunday afternoon a meeting and in the evening, weather permitting, an open-air meeting in the village. The students would all attend the village meeting, gathering round to sing the hymns with great gusto. There would often be more than a hundred villagers present at these weekly events. After the short gospel message questions would often come from someone in the crowd, once started many more question would follow giving Reginald ample opportunity to teach by dialogue. Each evening the students gather around their own fire, often singing hymns and adding their own sincere prayers. By this stage the school has become the backbone of the mission, touching every village throughout the Lakher tribe. When Reginald and Maud come to review their first five years of pioneer mission work they could report that two students had asked for their names to be enrolled as Christians. Despite this poor numerical response they had put in place heroic groundwork that would give them the satisfaction of seeing great return for their labours in years to come.

2.09

Before setting out on their mission adventure Reginald, oblivious to any need for further theological training, had undertaken a year’s medical study at Livingstone College in London. This was to serve them in good stead for their own needs and the Mission’s. Only brother Herbert at Lunglei stood between them and about a month’s journey to the nearest hospital. Reginald brought modern medicine, however basic to the Lakher community. Lakher people had a clear faith in one great God but when illness or misfortune struck they put this down to the work of evil spirits. To turn around their misfortune they would sacrifice domestic animals. Very early in their stay Reginald became aware of a sick child in the village. He went to the village and hailed the child’s father, he could not enter the house because of the totems that had been arranged around it. The father told him that he had made many sacrifices but without any improvement in his son’s condition. Reginald offered to come down with his wife and pray for the boy and administer such medicines as he could, but first the man must remove the totems and throw them over the cliff. After some serious thought the man invited Reginald and Maud to come to his son. His family were horrified by his defiance of the evil spirits and pleaded with him not to take the risk but he resolved to grasp this last chance for his son. Reginald and Maud came and did as they had promised. They asked that the noisy beer drinkers would leave, a beer feast was part of the customary sacrifice regime. Next then they attended to the boy who apart for his sickness had become quite neglected. The drugs worked, the child was fed and properly cared for and in due course recovered! From then on Reginald and Maud conducted a growing medical practice amongst the community, Maud appearing to take the burden of the daily dispensary hour. Reginald made little of the medical work in his book, ‘five years in unknown jungle’ apart for exceptional cases and summary comments such as, eleven hundred people seen and dispensed to this year.

2.10

On 18^th September 1909 Maud gave birth to a daughter. This event created a great stir in the local community. Every aspect of the new arrival’s life was the subject of the utmost curiosity throughout the whole Lakher people. The child’s white skin was an object of speculation; what was the Europeans secret food or device by which they procured this phenomena. Maud’s management and feeding of the child also created much curiosity.

To everyone’s surprise the child received no boiled rice, only milk. To even greater amazement the child thrived on this unusual diet. This child may well have been the cause of the first significant decline in infant mortality in the hills. Reginald describes the Lakher practice of feeding all newborn’s, from their first moments on boiled rice. The mother would take a little boiled rice and after chewing it well pass it to the baby’s mouth. Most children would come to a crisis quite soon on this diet; this was called the ten-day fever. If the child rallied after this they may well survive but many succumbed and quietly expired. When it was gossiped aboard how well the mission child progressed, mothers were encouraged to try imitating Maud’s style of childcare. Very soon Reginald and Maud were informed that the child was to be known as the ‘Tlosai Zuq No’, which means Lakher Princess and from then on Reginald’s common title became ‘Tlosai Paw’, Father to the Lakher Princess and Maud ‘Tlosai No’, Mother to the same. This child’s advent gave the Pioneer Missionary’s their first big breakthrough in their relations with the local inhabitants. Through her early years Tlosai’s birthdays would be honoured by a party quest list including the village chief and towards a hundred others. When it came time for the family to leave on their first furlough the village chief lead the plea that their Lakher Princess would be brought back to them soon. In due course the baby was given the names: Louise Margaret Tlosai Lorrain, but ever after to be know simply as Tlosai, weather in the Indian hills, or England. Reginald’s description of Tlosai’s birth gives a whole breath of meaning to the term ‘Delivery’. Herbert and his wife arranged to come down from Lunglei to support then at the birth. When the visitors arrived on the opposite bank of the Kaladan the great river was still in its monsoon spate choked with an unpredictable mess of trees and other jungle debris. For three days they were obliged to wait helplessly with their destination in sight high on the opposite ridge. During this time Reginald’s wife contracted Typhoid fever. On arrival she was immediately put to bed and nursed in the best isolation that they could manage. Within a day or two Maud’s labour began. After three full days struggle she had still not given birth and was becoming critically weak. The brothers were facing the harsh prospect of both losing their life partners within a very few hours. Herbert recalled that he had brought along a small consignment of drugs, which he had not yet fully explored. He and Reginald turned to their medical textbooks and concluded that one of the new medicines may just help Maud. The drug worked and quite soon Reginald was cradling his firstborn. Herbert’s wife’s fever passed its crisis about the same time and both ladies recovered form their dark vale experiences. One can only marvel at the mercy of God and the cool fortitude of these Gospel Pioneers.

2.11

Five Years in Unknown Jungle makes few references to the medical work of the Missionaries. In their first year Reginald recalls one notable event. He became aware that a family had a very sick child. The father had made, as was the custom, several costly sacrifices from his domestic animals, the tribal belief being that illness and other misfortunes were the work of malevolent demons, they would only relent if they were sufficiently appeased. Reginald was walking in the village when the man came out of his house, he called to him offering to bring his medicine and pray for the child, but the man must first throw over the cliff the magic totems and cordon that had been arranged around the house. The man said that he had little left to sacrifice and would accept Reginald’s help. Later that day Reginald and Maud when to the house, finding as promised that all the totems had gone. Inside there was as was, customary at illness, a beer fest in progress causing a great deal of noise and argument. They asked for the visitors to be removed, finding first that the child had been neglected; they gave what medicine they had and prayed for the boy also making sure that he received better attention. He recovered. Reginald only seemed to attend to serious medical needs while Maud held the daily dispensary.

2.12

As Reginald and Maud’s first five years of Pioneer work drew to its close he describes their daily routine, “we rise at five and are rarely to bed before midnight”. He had set himself goals to attain before they returned to England one of these was a working dictionary. Maud would toil well into the evening on her sewing machine while Reginald entered all the newly learnt words from the day into his dictionary. They returned to England with the manuscript for an English – Lakher, Lakher – English dictionary with between 7,000 and 8,000 words, ready for the printers. The little hymnbook of 37 items needed enlargement; Reginald’s next edition would contain 88 hymns. One can only be amazed at the industry of this pair; he also produced in the local tongue, a new primer for the school, a grammar for the Lakher language, St John’s Gospel, the book of Jonah and a Catechism style plan of Salvation through the Bible. Reginald recorded constant calls to dispense for people sick, through their medical work he claimed to have made contact with every village in the Lakher district. The Missionaries were not allowed to visit Lakhers over the Burma but through their medical work and the school they have many contacts with them. Beside his projects the school took up a large piece of Reginald’s day, he constantly visited and held meeting throughout the villages. As they set off for their home break there is much for which to praise God. A sound footing for future work had been laid and the little family had been preserved and had prospered far out from their roots by the mercies of God. Although Reginald could only claim two names yet entered on the role of believers the groundwork had been done. The Lakher people had already begun to take hold of their twin endowments of Gospel and Literacy.

2009-08-25T03:41:00.000-07:00

The Lakher Pioneer Mission

Written by Martin F Walker

from Mission papers and family letters lodged in the British Library

and from conversations in 2007 & 2009 in India

1.01

I was visiting a relative, in pursuit of some family tree material when the name of mutual cousin came up. Our relative, Violet Lorrain Foxall, lives in India’s North Eastern Frontier hills in Mizoram near the Burma border. She is the granddaughter of a Pioneer Missionaries, who in 1907, with his wife, were almost the first Europeans to be seen in this area. My relative informed me that shortly there was to be a great ‘Centenary Celebration’ of the Mission’s founding. Our faraway cousin hoped that a family member would make the journey to India for the event. As we speculated together who might go, it became clear that our clan members were not a very eligible lot; the keenest all seemed to be to close to their 80^th birthday or had dodgy hips or knees. I went off thinking that I might be the only one fit and able to make the trip. The very idea brought memories flooding back from my childhood. In 1947 my family welcomed four houseguests who came to stay with us for a whole year. Our visitors were, Violet then aged nine, her mother and father and her widowed grandmother. These four were the Lakher Pioneer Mission family. Violet, being just a year older than me soon found plenty to do. I had been given a brand new bicycle and my old hand-me-down was available for this visiting learner.

Violet with Martin Standing and a friend seated

Her father and mother, Bruce and Tlosai Lorrain-Foxall, were kept busy giving talks to their mission supporters, while the elderly grandmother, Maud Lorrain, widow of the Pioneer Missionary, kept the family in order.

I listened in on many table conversations and was taken along to Magic Lantern Show illustrating the mission’s work. All this was rich food for the young ears and imagination of an eight year old. They told terrifying jungle stories of their isolation, of tigers and pythons, of cobras and monkeys, bamboo forests and the ways of the East. The Missionary’s bravery filled me with admiration whilst I quietly prayed that the Good Lord would not call me to follow him to such dangerous creepy crawly places. Uncle Bruce’s most terrifying party trick was to roll out the skin of a 22ft python that he had shot. Their visit left an indelible impression that was kept alive by the mention of names and places in the prayers of our little church. Bruce and my father had been best pal in their youth, often known as David and Jonathan. Some years later my dad would court and marry Bruce’s sister Minnie, cementing their friendship for life. Now I had the opportunity to visit this mythical place that had meant so much to my family. This would be the journey of a lifetime.

The Lakher or Mara People occupy the southern end of Mizoram

and over in to neighboring Myanmar (Bruma)

1.02

In preparation for the centenary visit I looked out a copy of “Five Years in unknown jungle”. This was the pioneer, Reginald Lorrain’s, substantial report on the first five years of the Lakher Pioneer Mission. I also read John Whitehead’s “Far Frontiers”, he charts in his book, people and events of the North East Frontier region of India during the years 1857-1947”. Some years of John Whitehead’s military career was spent in the hills around the end of WWII. He wrote mostly form a British India point of view.

The Centenary September 2008.

1.03

On arrival in Calcutta I met up with four more travellers from England who would share this 21^st century adventure into the hills. We were booked on the midday flight to Aizawl, the capitol of Mizoram province. Our most seasoned traveller on this journey was Revd Janet Wooton, recently Moderator of the International Congregational Church Fellowship.

Janet Wootton

Janet had discovered our Mission when she was visiting churches just over the (Burma) Myanmar border. They told her that the Mara people straddled the border and that they all owed their Christian conversion to the Lakher Pioneer Mission. In 2005 Janet found her way to the Mara Church on the Indian side, there she was introduced to the Lakher Pioneer Mission. I could now talk to someone who, just two years ago slept in my cousin’s house and ate at her table, Instead of relying on vague family snippets and forty year old memories. Another traveller was the Revd John Taylor. John was currently the minister of Penge Congregational Church in South London. Penge was the home church of Reginald and Maud Lorrain, Pioneer Missionaries. John had heard vague stories of these missionary protégés of his Church but had no first had experience of the Mission. He brought along two young men from his congregation to make up our quintet of travellers.

Calcutta Kolkata in the rain

Although the monsoons are supposed to end in August, the plug had been out of the Calcutta sky all the previous night so the taxi to the airport had to negotiate deep flooding and the plane took off at a crazy angle through some pretty heavy weather. In just over an hour we were approaching district capitol Aizawl, sinking steadily below the mountaintops then turning into a deep valley. The airport is quite modest with access only in and out at same end of the runway. There is very little flat ground to be found in Mizoram, just two percent plateau and four percent bottomland. It was only recently that enough ground could be levelled for an airstrip to handle passenger jets. Our plane, a European Airbus A320 dropped us off and went on to make other Assam domestic calls.

1.04

The welcoming committee at Aizawl consisted of a senior pastor, Revd Lychhua Lapi and a church elder Molua, also Violet’s son Michael and his cousin Francis. On our way into town we ran into the first of many landslides. The overnight rain had destabilised a streambed and brought thousands of tons of soil slipping down 1,000 feet to the road, and on a further 1,000 to the valley floor. There was a mile of lorries, tankers and buses waiting for the road to be cleared, our drivers just pulled out and forged on up the queue until the first vehicles coming through the newly cleared mudslide forced them to give way. Calcutta taxi drivers have a hair-raising way with traffic, it was clear that their mountain cousins where up for it too. Most places in the hills are built beside a single road but Aizawl has a dozen layers all perched on a 70-degree hillside. To keep things moving there is a one-way system that takes the traffic all-round the town. After our grand tour of the system we arrived near the top of town at a government tourist lodge. The lodge is perched on the end of a small promontory with a rare piece of flat ground in front, about big enough for a five-a-side football park. A second reception committee awaited us here headed by a state Deputy Secretary for Culture. He was very proud that members of his family had been among Reginald Lorrain’s first students at the mission school. The Deputy Secretary came to our room later and told us how sad he was that the Mara Church was now divided. He implored us to urge the Lakher Church everywhere to reunite. The work of the Lakher Pioneer Missioners had paved the way for the whole tribe to turn to the Christian Faith, now a thriving local church it seemed able to afford the luxury of division. Currently there is a Maraland Baptist Church, a Maraland Presbyterian Church, a Maraland Evangelical Congregational Church and the Maraland Congregational Church. All my life I had known of Lakher Land and the Lakher Pioneer Mission, now I discovered on arrival that the place is known as Maraland. The mystery was explained; the Missionaries where introduced to the Mara people by the neighbouring Lushai’s, they called them Lakher’s, now the Mara’s prefer to be know by their own historic name. Another difficulty with which I have had to struggle is the variation in spellings between the founders colonial usage in the Mission papers and contemporary usage. After editing several chapters I realise that it was getting very confusing, some names even migrated through several versions. I have resolved that except for the ‘The Lakher Pioneer Mission’, I will attempt to stick to contemporary usage.

1.05

After the reception we found our rooms and were advised to order a meal over the internal phone to be taken in our rooms. My roommate for the duration was The Revd. John Taylor. We now had first sight of the week’s programme and began to share notes in preparation for this adventure. We had been told to expect a single long day’s run to make the 220 miles from the capital to Serkawr; this turned into two very long days. The following morning our first task was to report to the local visa office to have our permission to enter Mizoram recorded and chit ties issued to go south. Next we went on a search for a cash point to top up our wallets. Wonder of wonders the machine knew immediately about my building society cash balance in England and spat out the maximum daily amount, 12,000 rupees, (about £150). Tarmac roads run all the way from Aizawl to the Burma border in the south. These are built and maintained by the Indian Army Boarder Roads Corps. The Hills appear to consist of smooth rock sheets that seem to lie nearly on end at about 70 degrees and run for hundreds of miles in close parallel north south ranges. The thin topsoil readily landslides off these great ridges, especially during the rainy season. We were to see many landslides in our journey but only a few would cause us delay. Four of us set off in the first vehicle and waited a few miles down the road for the second. While we waited I noticed trucks going a little further down the road to a spot apparently dedicated as the civic tip. It seems that no one has any interest in the jungle choked valley bottoms so all and sundry can freely throw their rubbish into the abyss. An hour later a replacement for the other 4x4 hove in sight, the first one had failed on the car park. We spent the next hour driving down to the bottom of the valley and over a river. This was followed by an equally long clime to gain the next ridge. The north east frontier’s great north south mountain ridges soar up to between 4,000 and 5,000 feet with valleys more than 2,000 feet below. Mostly the roads and the communities have been built near the top or even right on the ridges. Roads only make the long decent when it is necessary to cross the valley to the next ridge. I guess that when India collide with Asia and put up the Himalaya Mountains the sea to the east was a shallow sheet of sedimentary rock, the collision must have shattered this sheet like ice and then piled it up nearly on end in this vast interminable jungle fastness.

Road side refreshment in Mizoram

Standing John Taylor present Pastor of Penge Congregational Church

seated tow of his previous congregation members

1.06

Presently we made our first refreshment stop at a ‘road house’; a bit of a shock at the time, but in the light of experience to come, one of the better venues. Omelettes of one sort or another seem to be always available but by this stage my digestion was suffering from culture shock as well as being thrown about in the back of a 4x4. Our next stop to get a puncture fixed was at a modest town called Serchhip. Here we stood in the street for nearly an hour and watched a busy builder’s merchant store nearby. Tradition hill houses were built of bamboo with a frame of long hardwood poles, platted split bamboo for wall panels and a thatched roof. Houses nearly always need long foundation poles at one end because of the slope of the hillsides. The builder’s merchant was doing a roaring trade in cement and steel reinforcing bars, we soon discovered why, most new houses are now built on long pillars formed from steel reinforced concrete. Later that evening the engine in our 4x4 stopped abruptly, it was soon clear that one of the auxiliary drive pulleys had sheared. Our two drivers went off in the other vehicle to organise a relief car and look for a garage to make a replacement part. We were left stood on the jungle road for a couple of lovely quiet hours as the dusk gathered. We stood in awe as thousands of moths deploy for their nightly foraging from a nearby rotten trunk. The steep hills were covered with lush jungle growth dotted with banana trees and in places great groves of bamboo. In other parts there were plots of young trees beside the road, these we discovered to be commercial teak plantations, that and bamboo seemed the only commercial timber.

1.07

It was to this beautiful but wild and inaccessible place in 1907 that Reginald and Maud Lorrain came. In the 19^th and early 20^th century every church in England had its part in the great world mission movement. Young men and women would wrestle with the call; clergy and people would raise funds, pray and boost the cause. Reginald Lorrain, at the age of twenty-four was no exception. In 1902 this young man had returned from a four-year spell working as a Cowboy on a ranch in the Argentine. His first intention was to settle to a banking carrier in London. It soon became clear that Reginald’s heart was not in business but out on the mission field. For the next three years although engaged to Maud Ulander he had tried hard to find someway of getting out where the action was. In frustration he was beginning to resign himself to a life of banking and matrimony when a letter arrived from his brother Herbert. Herbert was then a missionary at a Baptist Mission station in the Eastern Indian hills on the Burma border. He told Reginald of a whole tribal district south of his station to which no one had yet gone with the Gospel. Reginald took this cause to heart and after prayer resolved to become their missionary. On 11^th February 1905 he submitted an article to a Mission Magazine announcing the launch of the ‘Lakher Pioneer Mission’. He approached the Baptist Missionary Society, the London Mission Society and other missions asking to be trained and sent to the Lakher people. His requests met with little success, mission agencies claimed that they were too overstretched just then to take on new fields but they would consider him for work in their existing missions. All this was very frustrating for Reginald who was now sure that God was calling him to the Lakher tribe. Having exhausted all channels he resolved to dedicate himself forthwith as the Lakher’s Pioneer Missionary regardless of any other agencies support. Reginald resolved to postpone his marriage for a year, resign the job at the bank and enrolled at Livingston Missionary College. The year of study would give him basic medical skills that would be vital in years to come. But as yet the infant Lakher Mission had no formal support and Reginald had only just begun to publicise its existence. On the fateful morning when he must give in his notice at the bank and enrol for college he still had no funds for the task. When he came down to the breakfast table in his lodgings he found a letter waiting for him, it contained a cheque for £45. A person previously unknown to Reginald had read his article and after the briefest of enquires sent enough money to support him for several months. He took this as a clear sign to go ahead in faith. The Lakher Mission has continued in the same way for 100 years without the support of any but its own band of dedicated supporters.

1.08

At this very time in the dense hill jungle on the Burma border a raiding party from a Lakher village known as Zongling crossed into British India in pursuit of escaping slaves. The Lakher tribesmen recaptured their escapees and strung one of them up causing his death. The incident triggered a response from the British administration. The army was sent in to punish the village and discourage them from further raids. The military spent weeks cutting a two-foot wide track through the hills from Lunglei right to the guilty village. This rout just happened to pass through Serkawr village. Without this track the Lorrain’s may have found the jungle cliffs virtually impenetrable, instead they had a basic rout to the site for their new home and the Lakher Pioneer Mission Station.

1.09

The region called by the Lorrain’s ’Lakher-Land’ covers some ninety villages belonging to a distinct tribal group. They are known today as the Mara People. Their neighbour’s the Lushai’s gave them the name Lakher, Herbert Lorrain worked amongst the Lushai’s and first described the Mara’s as Lakher’s, Reginald took it up and so it remained until the Mara’s began to run their own local government. The current (Burma) Myanmar boundary cuts off a portion of Maraland. The Burma regime has a reputation for ruthlessly controlling its borders; this appears to have little effect on the Mara people who seem to come and go across the boarder without difficulty. Groups crossed the boarder on several days to attend the Maraland Gospel Centenary in 2007. The distinctness of the Mara language presented the missionaries with their first problem, communication! Herbert sent his brother off with a Lushai who could understand a little Lakher. With this man’s help Reginald set about the task of mastering the language. He had to devise a phonic system so that he could record on paper the sound that he heard, then a grammar. He and Maud burnt the late night oil over their card reference system gradually amassing a workable dictionary. There first printed work was a primer for use in the school that Reginald established in his first months, soon they had a translation of St John’s Gospel, eventually the whole Bible was available in the Mara language. The Mara Churches now claims the area to be completely Christian. Most other district throughout the northeast frontier hills region also became Christian. Today there is a thriving indigenous Mara church, led by local pastors and elders. It is strong and vigorous enough to afford the luxury of division even so the Lorrain’s Mission Bungalow is becoming one of the local church’s historic sites. I was deeply moved by my visit to the home of the pioneers of the modern Maraland Church. The bungalow built in 1913 and largely untouched is now venerated as the cradle of the Mission. Violet, and Mark her husband, frequently have visitors who just want to look at this special place. Although it is their home they are becoming more and more aware of its historic importance accepting that it will soon becoming some sort of museum.

1.10

The history of this mission is unusual, in that had a mission society taken it on, the Lorrain’s would have served their time and passed the baton to successors; instead they stayed and made the mission their home. Reginald became ill as the Second World War developed but the family ignored a directive from the British administration to leave the hills and Reginald died at his post in 1944 with the sound of the Japanese invaders within earshot. At first the Lakher’s paid little attention to their new missionaries. The incomers made small inroads with events such as the successful treatment of a sick boy but the most substantial and enduring connection with the local population was Reginald’s school. Each year more students came wishing to learn to read and write and willing to hear the Christian message, their numbers only limited by the Mission’s shortage of funds. Almost certainly the single most significant event in the early years was the birth to Reginald and Maud of a baby daughter. They gave their child the names, Louise Margaret, but the locals called her ‘Tlosai’, Lakher Princes. That became the name by which everyone knew her for the rest of her life.

1.11

The Lorrain’s employed several assistant missionaries through the late 1920s and early 1930s, most of whom stayed for two or three years. In 1928 Reginald recruited Bruce Foxall to his staff. Bruce promptly fell in love with Tlosai and they married in 1932. Together they continued the work of the mission after Reginald’s death. Bruce revised and completed Reginald’s translation of the Bible and saw the full volume come into circulation in 1956. He further developed the training and ministry of local pastors until by the mid 1960 the Maraland Church was becoming quite independent. Indian Independence hastened the redundancy of the missionaries. A local freedom movement caused a clampdown by the Indian state and who became suspicious of all foreigners. By the 60s and 70s the missionaries where losing the fight to prevent divisions within the church. Now Bruce and Tlosai lie buried with Maud and Reginald on the mission compound. There child Violet Married Mark, a Lakher head teacher. They still serve the local church and live in Reginald’s bungalow. Their four children and grandchildren live in the village and district.

1.12

The Maraland Gospel Centenary in September 2007 was a great event. A temporary shelter was erected from Bamboo and light plastic sheeting to seat 2,000. It was very moving to see this place filled three or four times each day throughout the Centenary Week with a changing congregation from all around the district. The presentation of Maraland Bibles to about 40 women’s fellowship members seemed to encapsulate the Missionaries achievements in one act. Not for the first time in history the translated Bible had brought the double blessing of the Gospel and a literate society. The Gospel centenary was a demonstration of the power of the Good News of Jesus Christ and witness to the fruitfulness of the missionaries preaching. Although the language was impenetrable to our English ears the Centenary meetings were stirring events. Each village brought a Gospel Choir dressed in distinctive uniform. The boys wore grey or green slacks and matching white or cream shirts, the girls in long skirts and tailored tops. I recall uncle Bruce on his 1947 visit say that the Lakher’s could not sing in tune, that certainly was not the case now. One village choir boasted a core group of pop gospel singers with a regional reputation. A large drum drove the singing, dictated the meter exactly; any tendency to slow the pace was punished with a deafening double whack bringing everyone back to conformity. We each preached with the aid of an interpreter, and listened to other sermons with or without interpretation. The week was a wonderful and memorable event and a great witness to the love of God displayed through his mission church.

1.13

Janet Wooton had with her a catalogue of the Mission papers and publications that have been deposited in the India section of the British Library. She challenged me to read these up as a retirement project. This I have began to do. It seems that, apart form Reginald Lorrain’s book “Five Years in Unknown Jungle’ the story of the Mission has never been written up. There is a complete bound set of the Mission’s quarterly journal, ‘The Lakher Pioneer’ in the British Library. They run from 1912 to 1970 and record in general terms for the home supporters, the progress of the Mission. From his arrival in 1928 Bruce wrote a letter home every three or four weeks, first to his parents and on their death to my mother and father and later to others, these too are all in the British Library together with a substantial quantity of his diaries. My hope is to gather from this material and from a further visit to Mizoram a fair record of the Mission over its 100 years. Perhaps as my manuscript’s progress is posted on the Internet others will feel free to advise and contribute to the story.