TL;DR:
Explore a significant Christian missions event for each day of September. Highlights include Trans World Radio's first regular broadcast from Guam, the arrival of four Salvation Army officers to begin ministry in India, and missionary nurse Betty Ann Olsen's death while she was being held captive in Vietnam.
World Missions Events for Each Day of September
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses . . ." — Hebrews 12:1, NIV
September 1, 1877 — Karl Ludvig Reichelt (1877–1952) was born in Norway. He went to China in 1904. In 1922, with the goal of sharing the Christian gospel with Buddhists and Taoists, he established Ching Fong Shan in Nanjing. After that center was destroyed during civil unrest in 1927, Reichelt eventually moved the ministry to Hong Kong, where Tao Fong Shan was established. One of his goals was to create an institute that "as far as possible corresponds to that of a Buddhist monastery."
September 2, 2003 — Public Security Bureau officers raided a house-church gathering in Nanyang County, Henan Province, China. Reports said that approximately 170 Christians attending the service were fingerprinted and fined. Most were released, but 14 church leaders reportedly remained in detention and faced the possibility of imprisonment.
September 3, 1889 — Sadhu Sundar Singh was born in Punjab. Raised in a Sikh family, he converted to Christianity and became an itinerant Christian evangelist.
September 4, 1977 — Trans World Radio's Guam station began regular broadcasts using two 100,000-watt shortwave transmitters.
September 5, 1810 — The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was
founded by the General Association of Congregational Churches. In 1812, the board sent out a
number of missionaries, including Adoniram Judson, Samuel Newell, and Samuel Nott, to
India.
September 6, 1849 — E. R. Baierlein, a German missionary who ministered among Ojibwe people in Michigan, was
ordained and installed. He erected a log church with a belfry and a log cabin for his home. As he
cleared some land, he set some aside as "God's acre" and named the place Bethany. In a
remarkably short time, Baierlein became proficient in the Ojibwe language and had a book printed that included
portions of Luther's Small Catechism.
September 7, 1890 — Swedish-American evangelist Fredrik Franson arrived in New York
after holding revival campaigns in Germany. On October 14, he began a training course in
Brooklyn with the announced purpose of sending missionaries to China. He taught similar
courses in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Omaha. About two hundred young people of Scandinavian
descent attended. From those who offered themselves for missionary service, Franson selected
fifty. By February 5, 1891, all were on their way to China, each supported by local churches.
To direct this undertaking, Franson organized the Scandinavian Alliance Mission of North
America. Today, that organization is simply called TEAM — The Evangelical Alliance
Mission.
September 8, 1920 — In an article in his journal Young India, Mahatma Gandhi
asserted, "It is my firm opinion that Europe (and the United States) does not represent the spirit
of God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan. And Satan's successes are the greatest when he
appears with the name of God on his lips."
September 9, 801 — Ansgar, the "Apostle to the North," was born.
September 10, 2001 — The Southern Baptist Convention's international missionary count exceeded 5,000 for the first
time.
September 11, 1922 — Robert Henry Codrington, a 91-year-old Anglican missionary to Melanesia, died. He was one of the nineteenth century's most accomplished missionary scholars and contributed significantly to early anthropological and linguistic research. Among his writings are The Melanesian Languages (1885), The
Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folklore (1891), and The Story of a
Melanesian Deacon: Clement Marau (1906).
September 12, 2000 — Pastor Yesu Dasu was killed by unidentified assailants in Karimnagar, India.
September 13, 1888 — Jonathan Goforth, who had arrived earlier in Chefoo, set out on an exploratory tour of China's North Henan region. He later helped establish churches in China and was associated with revival movements among Korean Christians in the early 1900s and in Manchuria in 1908.
September 14, 1985 — Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon released Benjamin Weir, an
American missionary. He had been their prisoner for 16 months.
September 15, 1921 — Raymond R. Brewer sailed for Shanghai, China, where he became
Dickinson College's representative at West China Union University. He started the
Dickinson-in-China program.
September 16, 1863 — Robert College opened its doors in Constantinople with Cyrus Hamlin
as its first president. Hamlin — educator, inventor, architect, and missionary — had gone to
Turkey as a missionary in 1838, where he worked with the Armenian minority and established
Bebek Seminary to train young men to become pastors and teachers among the Greeks and
Armenians living in Turkey.
September 17, 1597 — During an uprising against Spanish rule, Guale leader Juanillo went
to St. Catherine's Island off the Georgia coast, where Spanish missionaries Miguel
de Añón and Antonio de Badajoz were killed. Accounts indicate that Guale allies had warned the missionaries of the uprising.
September 18, 1964 — Congolese rebels ransacked a missionary hospital at Wasolo. They
murdered two of the Congolese nurses — Constant Kokembe and Boniface Bomba — and took
missionary doctor Paul Carlson hostage.
September 19, 1882 — The Salvation Army "invaded" India. When the authorities in India heard that the Salvation Army was coming, they visualized the landing of a formidable force
that might cause communal riots resulting in violence and bloodshed. So, the Bombay police assembled in force on the quay at Apollo Bunder in present-day Mumbai for the Army's arrival. When
the four Salvation Army officers on board the ship stepped ashore, the police superintendent approached, asking, "When will the rest of your army land?" Major Frederick de Lautour Tucker
replied, "We are the whole Army."
September 20, 1864 — Aaron Buzacott, a London Missionary Society missionary,
died. Born in 1800, Buzacott was sent to the South Pacific in 1827. He traveled through Tahiti and began serving on Rarotonga in 1828. With John Williams and Charles Pitman, he translated the Bible into the
language of Rarotonga.
September 21, 1992 — Islamic gunmen attacked Christian radio station DXAS in the Philippines,
killing pastor and broadcaster Greg Hapalla and technician Greg Bacabis.
September 22, 1853 — Charles Carter arrived in Ceylon as a missionary of the Baptist
Missionary Society. He made such rapid progress in language study that he preached
his first sermon in Sinhalese at Biyanwila just four months after his arrival.
September 23, 1595 — Led by Fray Juan de Silva, the Spanish began an intensive missionary
campaign in the North American Southeast. Within two years, an estimated 1,500 Native Americans
in what is now Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina became Roman Catholics.
September 24, 1939 — Juji Nakada, Japanese evangelist, died. In 1901, he had invited
Charles and Lettie Cowman of the U.S. to establish a Bible institute in Japan. Nakada's vision and invitation helped lead to the founding in Tokyo that same year of the Oriental Missionary Society, now called One Mission Society (OMS). This interdenominational mission organization in the
Wesleyan tradition specializes in evangelism, church planting, radio/TV broadcasting, and
theological education. Headquartered in Greenwood, Indiana, OMS operates in more than 80
countries with more than 300 cross-cultural missionaries.
September 25, 1856 — Methodist missionary William Butler reached Calcutta.
September 26, 2002 — French troops evacuated nearly 200 residents from a U.S.-led school for missionary children in conflict-divided Côte d'Ivoire. Those evacuated included approximately 160 children ages 5–18 who had sheltered at the school while gunfire continued nearby.
September 27, 1995 — Missionary Sam Sasser died. In 1960, Sasser began serving as a
missionary in the Marshall Islands and Samoa. He helped plant 26 churches. He had requested
that his heart be buried in the Marshall Islands; the request was reportedly carried out.
September 28, 1870 — Scottish missionary James Gilmour completed his first Mongolian
trip from Peking (Beijing) to Kiachta (Kyakhta). For much of the next 21 years, he would spend his summers with
nomadic Mongols on the plains of Mongolia and his winters with Mongols in Peking.
September 29, 1968 — On or about this date, Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary nurse Betty Ann Olsen died while being held captive by the Viet Cong. She was buried along a trail by Michael Benge, another American captive who had been working in Vietnam for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Olsen, born to missionary parents in Côte d'Ivoire, had gone to Vietnam in 1964. Taken prisoner by the Viet Cong, Olsen and two other missionaries were
chained together and moved north from one encampment to another through mountainous
jungles. The grueling months-long trip took its toll. Physically depleted, the missionaries became
sick from dysentery and malnutrition and were beset by fungus, infection, leeches, and ulcerated
sores.
September 30, 1816 — John Williams (who would eventually be called "the apostle of
Polynesia"), Robert Moffat (who served in Africa), and seven other young men were appointed as missionaries by the
London Missionary Society.
