The Mission Proceeds

Herbert Sowerby - From The
Geni Website

On the surface, the Protestant Mission seemed to be satisfied with their progress. Admittedly, they had not yet evangelised China as a whole, but they were proud to report that at Yichang and Shashi, twenty-nine converts had been baptised and that fifty pupils were attending their Sunday schools and day schools. Furthermore, ‘an evangelist and catechist under Mr. Sowerby's guidance had reached out to six places within a few miles of I-chang (Yichang)’

1891 proceeded with even more promising projects proposed. Herbert Sowerby applied to the Mission for 600 US Dollars to complete the Yichang Mission House and Ann Fanny Wombwell put in her claim to the Woman’s Auxiliary for funds to put up a small building for her girls’ day school. Ten girls were attending her school already, and Ann Fanny’s pitch was that more space was needed to satisfy what was sure to be a growing demand for enlightenment.

The work at Yichang and Shashi carried on, Herbert assisted by a Chinese Deacon, ten catechists and teachers, and three volunteer bible women, as he travelled up and down the great river to supervise the projects. The mission report proudly stated that at the two stations:

 …forty-nine had been baptized, twenty-three confirmed, and after four years' work there were forty- five Chinese communicants. Four Sunday and day- schools and a night-school for workingmen had in all thirty pupils. 

These missionaries were if nothing else, incurably optimistic, convinced that from small things greater things would surely come. 

As it happens though, by no means all of their number were convinced that such figures represented a significant breakthrough.