George Schmidt, Magdalena, and the Bible Beneath the Pear Tree

 By Simonetta Carr - Posted at Place for Truth:

When the Moravian missionary George Schmidt left South Africa in 1744, he left behind a few converts, a copy of the Dutch New Testament, and a few trees he had planted, including a pear tree that had grown to provide some shade to his prayer meetings and Bible studies.

Leaving South Africa was not his choice. He had been sent there in 1737 by Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, leader of the Herrenhut community of earnest Moravians, in response to the news of the poor conditions of the Khoi Khoi people. There was a Dutch Reformed Church already there but, according to the accounts received by Zinderdorf, its members had made little effort to evangelize or assist the indigenous populations.

Schmidt was 26 when he arrived in South Africa, a butcher's apprentice by trade. As a Christian, he had suffered much in his native Bohemia, where Protestantism was being persecuted. He had barely survived a six-year imprisonment under the harshest conditions.

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