Encounter with the Missionary

My family and I are a staunch believer in the faith, and my father makes sure to keep up the tradition of the catholic church. But I have always wondered as to how all these change came into being? How has it influenced my life, my parent's and the women in India?

The earliest missionary began their evangelical work of proclaiming the good news through going village to village teaching the gospel.  Some of the earliest forms of Woman's Work for women were taken up by the wives of the early missionaries. Missionary wives had, in fact, been participants in the overseas missionary enterprise for almost as long as men.

Church History in India

A missionary from the West to the East has its successes and failures, but the success stories make it up of all its shortcomings. Missionary societies initially sent out only married couples and a few single men as missionaries, not women. It is rather hard to trace back the beginning of who and why did women from one end of the globe decided to travel on the other end to make a difference. The opinion of male-dominated missionary societies was that unmarried women should not live unprotected and alone in a foreign country and that the spiritual work of missionaries could only be undertaken by ordained men. Over time, there came to be an increase demand for women missionaries for Christian schools. This was necessary to attract and educate potential Christians and leaders and change foreign cultures that were unreceptive to the Christian message as proclaimed by male missionary preachers.

The following excerpt from one of the famous book, "Gender, Religion, and "Heathen Lands" American Missionary Women in South Asia (1860s-1940s):


 "From the day of my arrival in Naynee Tal, I felt a most intense desire to speak to the people in their own language... Sometimes, when mingling with people, I would feel such a longing to speak to them that it seemed as if I would make any sacrifice if only my stammering tongue could be loosed."
                                                                                                              -Rev.J.M. THOBURN,
                                                                                                            My Missionary Apprenticeship

With almost 19.9 million Catholics in India, the Roman Catholic Church is now one of the largest church in India.