1927-09-19: ​​~TOUR STOPS~---images---audio---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
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1927-09-19: ​tour stops---images---audio---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
C O P Y
Toronto
September 19, 1927

Miss Sibyl G. Hosking,
Catabola, Bie, Angola.

My dear Miss Hosking:-

Your last letter with its startling news was on my desk when I returned from vacation.  Needless to say, I wish you every happiness and do earnestly pray that life may bring you every joy and rich fulfillment.

Of course, you appreciate that this matter had of necessity to come before our Executive Board.  You will recall that you entered into a contract with us really for life service, and only the Board could release you from this contract.  Mrs. Gunn, as the official Secretary for Africa is writing you in this same mail, conveying to you the decision of the Executive but as I know you will receive it at the same time I feel quite free to discuss it with you, even though this is now an unofficial letter.

You will learn from Mrs. Gunn’s letter that the Board requests you to remain at your post until the reinforcements arrive in the person of Dr. Strangways and his wife.  We cannot but feel that the medical work at Chissamba is too important just to be closed up, and that even at the sacrifice of a little personal happiness, the work must be the first consideration.  When this matter was before the Board, I said quite frankly that I felt sure the Board had only to make this request to have your ready acquiescence.  We know so well your spirit of devotion and sacrifice that we feel sure once you realized the need that you would be more than willing to fall in line.

I may say that while the Board does not begrudge any of their missionaries their happiness, you will see as a Board our responsibility is for the work for which we set you forth.  We accepted gifts from our constituency for this purpose, the money was not ours which we spent upon your outfit, and travel, and language study, and we cannot but regard our stewardship seriously.  It was given for the work’s sake.  Fortunately Dr. and Mrs. Strangways left Canada on the 2nd of September and will be very shortly settled to their task of Portuguese study.  It seemed to the Board that a year’s engagement or even fourteen or fifteen months was a very reasonable matter, most young people are engaged for a year before proceeding to marriage and so in every way it seemed that the request for you to remain for the time being was most reasonable.

Now, my dear, I have to write you something which it gives me great pain to say, but you would have to know it anyway sometime and we all feel that it would cause you less suffering to hear before you are a wife than after.  The fact of the matter is, Dr. Stokey has not proven a satisfactory missionary to the Canadian Church, and its Mission Board.  It is not necessary for me to go into the matter fully, because the question is entirely between Dr. Stokey and the Foreign Mission Board, but I am willing to say this, that if he had been serving a business concern instead of a Christian Board, he would have been recalled long since and discharged.  Men have their standards of what is right and fair, and our men consider that they have been patient and long-suffering in the extreme.  But this means that persistently I hear the rumor that when Dr. Stokey comes on furlough, he will not be returned to the Field under the Canadian Board, and that if he goes back it will have to be under the American Board.

Now, as you know, Dr. Stokey had one term of service in the Field before, and we have always been informed that the American Board would not return him to the Field when he came home on furlough.  We heard this from some of our members who are close to the American Board, and we received more than one protest at the time of his appointment from those who felt the Canadian Board should not send anyone out to the Field whom the American Board refused to send.  In the meantime, of course, they may have altered their opinion and attitude and I see that there are some of the American stations requiring physicians, and it might be that the American Board would send Dr. Stokey back to fill one of those appointments - That I cannot say, I can only judge the matter by their previous decision and action as repeated to us.

But this I wanted you to see clearly, that if you marry Dr. Stokey there is great probability of your missionary service being at an end.  Now if you love him so much that you feel that it is God’s purpose that your life and his should be be linked together, then I have nothing to say, except to express the hope that every blessing will be yours.  But when I look back to that service in Guelph Church, when you were consecrated and dedicated to a life of missionary service, and where you voluntarily took certain vows, then I feel you cannot but weigh the matter very carefully.  It is a question of which you desire most, to continue your missionary service or to marry Dr. Stokey.  As I say, the American Board may return him, but I feel rather certain because of action already taken that he cannot go back to the Field under the Canadian Board.  The Canadian Board gave him his opportunity, but he chose to throw it away.

Now I realize, of course, that this is a very hard and bitter matter, and I know that it will cause you deep suffering and for that reason I regret it exceedingly.  You can understand that because we knew of these things, we could not have the joy in your engagement that would have been our if circumstances were different.  You have done so exceedingly well in the short time you have been in the field and we did look forward to the great service which you would render throughout the years.  It would be a matter of deepest sorrow to us to see that service terminated so soon after it had begun.

I am not writing you of other things in this letter, it is purely personal, and one of these days I will write you some things regarding the work  Of course, from now on, more and more Mrs. Gunn will assume full responsibility for the African work, and while I shall miss it all very much yet it was far too great a task added to my duties as General Secretary.

With warmest love and every good wish, believe me, 

Yours very sincerely,

(Effie A. Jamieson)

General Secretary.​
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1927-09-19​: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
C O P Y
I don’t know why this is a copy.  It seems to me we ought to have the original.

2.
You will recall that you entered into a contract with us really for life service, and only the Board could release you from this contract.
So Sibyl signed up for slavery?  Must be one of those weird Canadian customs.

3.
You will learn from Mrs. Gunn’s letter that the Board requests you to remain at your post until the reinforcements arrive in the person of Dr. Strangways and his wife.
Here is Mrs. Gunn's letter:
4.
We know so well your spirit of devotion and sacrifice that we feel sure once you realized the need that you would be more than willing to fall in line.
I am reminded of The Pirates of Penzance, in which the Pirate King says to Frederic:
Speak out, I charge you by that sense of conscientiousness to which we have never yet appealed in vain.
And what's with them thinking Sibyl doesn't understand the need?  She's been complaining for two years because she's the only medical staff at Chissamba, with no doctor assigned there.  She knows the need better than anybody in Toronto.
​
5.
Fortunately Dr. and Mrs. Strangways left Canada on the 2nd of September and will be very shortly settled to their task of Portuguese study.
​All of the missionaries to Angola had to go to Portugal first to learn Portuguese, since at the time Angola belonged to Portugal.

6.
It is not necessary for me to go into the matter fully, because the question is entirely between Dr. Stokey and the Foreign Mission Board, but I am willing to say this, that if he had been serving a business concern instead of a Christian Board, he would have been recalled long since and discharged.
Excellent.  Throw unspecified accusations at Sibyl's fiancé and then say, "Of course I can't talk about it."
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