Honoring Sergeant Carter by Allene Carter Read Free Book Online Page A

at the Metropolitan Hotel at a cost of 20 rupees and registered with the American consul the next day. With the help of a friend they found rooms on Dhurrumtollah Street and a landlord willing to wait for payment of the 150-rupee rent until they received funds from home. On the following night they held their first meeting for potential converts. “We have fired the first gun for holiness, so our work and your work has begun in Calcutta,” they reported.
    The funds they hoped to receive would not be great. In June, the church treasurer reported that only $6.25 had been collected to support the Carters’ missionary work. The monthly donation fluctuated, reaching a peak of $89.46 in March 1926. It was apparent that the Carters would have to find support among their new converts in India.
    Shortly after the Carters arrived, Calcutta was drenched with monsoon rains, heavy downpours that often caused flooding. The rains would be followed by adry season that all too often resulted in drought and famine. As if the contrasts of flood and drought were not enough, India was beset by frequent epidemics. The most recent one, in 1924, had killed over 300,000 people. Calcutta was a city of extremes of wealth and social circumstance, where many lived in hovels while others lived in palaces. It offered fertile ground for missionaries. Hunger, disease, and despair made thousands of Indians ready to welcome any message of hope.
    After only a month in Calcutta the Carters were having great success in winning converts. “The rain does not stop us or the people from coming out to meetings,” Evangelist Carter wrote. Mary preached at one meeting at which eight souls were converted. In all some sixty-five converts to Christianity had been gained. The meetings were sometimes held at the Thornborn Methodist Episcopal Church, but this was only temporary. “We are hoping to have a place soon which will be the First Holiness Church of Calcutta,” Carter reported. “Don’t you feel like shouting?”
    All was going well. The family had moved into new housing that was made available free of charge. The children were also well. William had suffered from some kind of infection in his legs, but this cleared up. “Sister Carter and I got right down on our knees and prayed through on his healing.” Evangelist Carter’s sole complaint was that they had gotten only one letter from home since arriving. “News from home is scarce and you will never know howlonesome a person can get in India in a city of a million inhabitants, until you have been here.”
    Received into the homes of several Indian families, Carter reported observations he thought would interest the folks back home and give them a sense of the great work required in India.
    The people are of every shade of color from white to very black; some have red hair, some blond hair and some with their hair shaved off, with just a little queue hanging down their backs. They think that when Jesus comes, He will take them by this queue and lift them up to heaven. The people here wear ankle bracelets, nose rings, ear rings, nose jewels, arm bracelets and rings on their toes; so you see it will mean something for them to give all this up. We will have to teach them to wear clothing as many only wear a cloth about their loins. One of the great problems that confront us is the animosity between the Anglo-Indian and the real Indian. The Anglo-Indian has a white father or mother and is very proud of this extraction, and feels the full-blood Indian is his inferior and vice versa. They have separate churches and missions, but we are preaching and God is getting them together.
    It is interesting that Evangelist Carter focused on the “great problem” posed by race mixing and color consciousness among Indians. Perhaps this was an expressionof his sensibility as a black man (or, as he preferred, an “Ethiopian”) raised in racially segregated and