The Korean Missionary

	An unusual sight in an English market town

Cambridge market was in full swing, with ladies in ethnic skirts selling handmade jewellery and imported incense sticks and bearded men offering wooden jigsaw puzzles and cheap tools of dubious quality. Right in the middle of all this bustle and commercialism, I came upon a young couple in full Korean national costume who were neither selling nor buying.

It turns out that he is doing a degree in theology and his thesis concerns open-air preaching, so naturally he had to get some experience of his subject. I couldn't stop myself grinning as he exhorted the heedless multitudes to "Lepent and berieve the gospel" - and then it struck me: his less than perfect English can be no worse than the less than perfect Korean (or any other native language) of the missionaries we sent to foreign lands.

It says a lot for the courtesy of the "natives" that they listened without laughter as their language was mangled: it says a lot for Christianity that so many of the aforesaid "natives" forsook their ancestral religions for the worship of God - and of course, thousands every day continue to do so.