of illness and I have keenly felt the loss of her congenial, loving companionship these last five years. In a recent letter she said: “Those years in Puerto Rico were the happiest of my life and I’d not trade them for anything in the world. I was never homesick for the U.S.A., but I surely have been for Puerto Rico.” And that is just how I feel about it, too.

“But don’t you get homesick for Uncle Don, Dave and us sometimes, grandma?”

Although your uncles and aunts, Don and Earlene and Dave and Julia, are missionaries in Korea and the Philippines, yet we seem so near, for distance is a small factor when minds and hearts are fixed on Jehovah and his kingdom. It is just as Jesus said, “Everyone that has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive many times more” in this period of time. (Matt. 19:29, NW) How I wish you could know some of those parents and brothers and children I have in Puerto Rico!

Jan, I hope you never lose your desire to be a pioneer and if Armageddon should be still ten or fifteen years in the future, wouldn’t you like to be a missionary?

“Of course, grandma.”

True, you’ll have many trials and you’ll miss your parents when at times it may seem you have no arm of flesh to lean upon, or you may be misunderstood or deeply hurt, but that is when you’ll draw nearer to Jehovah. You’ll turn to his Word, and as he talks to you and you listen you’ll lose those burdens. My love for you cannot spare you from either the discipline or the joy that comes from learning to pursue a right purpose in life, that most excellent way. Yes, pioneer missionary service affords a most excellent opportunity to learn that most excellent way, the way of love, that leads up, up, yes, all the way up that highway to eternal life in Jehovah’s new world.

But It Is the Truth!

● The schoolteacher of a certain Florida second grade had asked her pupils to write a Christmas story. The children were to ask her about any words they could not spell and she would write them on the blackboard where she had already written such words as “Christmas,” “stocking” and “Jesus.” Eight-year-old Richard asked her how to spell “celebrate” and “birthday.” After young Richard had finished his story the teacher, noting what he had written, exclaimed: “Richard, this is not nice!” What had he written? What he had learned from his mother, who is one of Jehovah’s witnesses: “There is no Santa Claus. Christmas is not Jesus’ birthday. We do not celebrate Christmas.”

‘Christian Africa—Pagan America’

● There used to be a time when Americans viewed virtually all the Africans as pagans. Apparently the time has come for the Africans to view the Americans as pagans. According to preacher Roger Coon, a “Christian Africa” may be sending missionaries soon to convert a “pagan America.” Said preacher Coon as he boarded a steamer in Portland, Maine, to return to Nigeria: “Much of the grotesquely huge jewelry hanging from the ears, necks and wrists of so many sophisticated American women surpasses the adornment of African pagans.” Some of the rhythms blared out of jukeboxes, he added, seem adaptations of the nervous beat of jungle drums. “I believe,” declared cleric Coon, “the average West Africa schoolboy knows more about the Bible than does his counterpart in America.”—Aberdeen, Scotland, Evening Express, October 13, 1955.