Journal of the North Africa Mission Now Online

Last year I was approached by the Arab World Ministry of Pioneers for help in digitising the journal of the North Africa Mission for the first time. This journal dates back to the 1890s and is a unique record of the work of Christian missionaries across North Africa. Among the contributors are a number that caught my eye:

• Lilias Trotter (1853-1928) who founded the Algiers Mission Band in 1888.
• Karl Wilhelm Kumm (1874-1930), founder of the Sudan United Mission, who was married to Grattan Guinness’s daughter Lucy Guinness. Grattan Guinness had been one of the people responsible for the founding of the North Africa Mission in 1881 and, later, the Regions Beyond Missionary Union (now Latin Link) in 1889.
• Arthur Thomas Upson (1874-1958) [Abdul-Fady Al-Qahirany] worked in Egypt with the North Africa Mission and founded the Nile Mission Press.

Anyone researching the lives of these missionaries, or any of the many other workers with the North Africa Mission, will want to consult this journal. All of the issues I was sent are now available for free download. Click here to access it. If anyone has any of the issues that are not included here, please let me know.

Among the hundreds of articles is this interesting entry, noting the passing of Pastor Thomas Spurgeon, which records C.H. Spurgeon’s keen interest in the work of the North Africa Mission:

We have to record with regret the death of Pastor Thomas Spurgeon, one of the Mission’s referees. His father, Pastor C. H. Spurgeon, was a great friend of the Mission, and for some years supported four of our missionaries through the funds at his disposal, and he also allowed us the use of his name as a referee. After his death, Pastor Thomas Spurgeon kindly came to help us at one of our annual farewell meetings at Exeter Hall.

North Africa No. 128 n.s. (Jan-Feb. 1918): 11.