nineteen hundred and forty-six - Amazon Web Services

286 SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION
teaching classes. There have been 1,636 professions of faith, and many have
reconsecrated their lives as a result of the teaching of the word. Some of the
most gratifying results have been obtained in our leper colonies. These unfortunates
are very responsive to any efforts made to serve them spiritually.
Our pastors are being taught to follow up this work by training these newlywon
converts for church membership. The Sunday schools are reorganized and
rejuvenated.
Sunday school lessons, both in English and in Yoruba, have been printed
locally and distributed to the churches. Some of our Sunday school studycourse
books are being translated into Yoruba, in order that the proper emphasis
may be placed upon training teachers. The Sunday School Board at Nashville
has helped considerably by allowing us to reprint portions of the lessons both
in English and Yoruba. Dr. Moore's Points for Emphasis is becoming very
popular among the teachers. We need trained, district workers to supplement
the present staff, in order that our Sunday schools may function properly.
There is a serious shortage of Bibles, especially of those printed in the vernacular.
This handicap should disappear by the end of the present calendar year,
as paper becomes available in Europe.
Plans are under way for the establishment of a publishing plant in the l
town of Ibadan. We have secured a plot of ground suitable for this type of
work, and should be able to start building operations during the coming dry
season. With the rapid increase in the number of literate people, we should
be able, as never before, to serve our constituency during the next decade
through the medium of the printed page. One of our immediate tasks is to
provide suitable reading material for our Christians. At present the only
reading matter available to most of our Baptists in Nigeria is the local newspaper.
A central book shop with several branch shops is badly needed in connection
with our publishing plant.
MEDICAL WORK
This important phase of our work was initiated in this country with the
coming of Dr. George Green in the first decade of the present century. The
Hospital, with dispensaries in nine towns and villages, continues to minister to
multitudes of people who have no medical service other than the local medicine
man. A maternity welfare center has been opened in a very needy area. We
are beginning to see the necessity of spreading the benefits of our medical
service out into the towns and villages. We realize that it is impractical to
locate doctors in small towns and villages; but, by opening dispensaries with
missionary nurses in charge, the benefits of medical service can be extended to
areas untouched heretofore. Our doctor pays periodic visits to these dispensaries,
giving advice to the nurses, and performing such services as they
are unable to render. An attempt is being made to enable some of the schools
to furnish dressing service to the children. Trained workers are provided,
usually one of the school staff, for this form of limited medical service. The
dispensaries are reaching thousands of people with the gospel. Great numbers
of the patients would not go to church or street preaching, and so hear the
gospel story for the first time while sitting in the small chapel of a dispensary
or in the hospital chapel.
Last year 102,983 patients passed through the outpatient department of the
hospital and the dispensaries; 9,395 cases were treated; and 1,255 were admitted
as inpatients. One can see from the following table those who benefit from our
medical service, and the opportunity for evangelism which is ours among the
pagans and»Mohammedans:
Patients from Baptist constituency 520
Church of England 418
Pagan v 580
Mohammedan .' 476
Methodists 84
Apostolic 12
Roman Catholic 28
African Church 42
Sudan Interior Mission 56
Infants 1,568