Description Florence J Murray

Seoul, Korea, Oct 29, 1921

Dear Dr. McKenzie:

You see I have not forgotten my promise to write to you but I’m afraid I’ve been a long time getting started and dear knows where you will be by the time this letter reaches Nova Scotia.  Perhaps it will have to turn around and travel back to the east again in order to find you.  I hope you are still at home and having some real rest.

But you are wanting to hear how I’ve got on sine last we met.  There were there of us travelled together and we had a delightful time all the way.  Most of the trip thro Canada was new to us and greatly enjoyed.  We had four days in Vancouver where we made many friends and we were given a very nice farewell and send off.  The ocean trip was so enjoyable that we were almost sorry (at least I was) to leave the ship at the end of two weeks.  We had a day in Yokohama, a day in Kobe, and another on the train in Japan, and making the most of our time, we saw a good deal.  After a night on the strait, and two more days on the train we reached our station at Hamheung and received a great welcome from foreigners and natives alike.  Korea is a beautiful country and the people are very eager indeed to study and certainly make the most of their opportunities.

Hamheung is not a very large station but it is the centre for a large district.  There are four missionaries’ houses, one of which is vacant at the present time, a boy’s academy, a girl’s school, a hospital, and two congregations on of which worships in the largest church in North Korea.  They are a live and doing crowd.  The W.M.S. of one church supports a Bible woman who gives all her time to evangelistic work.  One of the Y.P. S’s organized and maintains a kindergarten for 100 non-Christian children.  The other runs a night school for non-Christian women and girls.  They have as many as seventy in attendance.  One feels it is a privilege to do something for people who are doing so much for themselves.

I am living with Dr. Kate McMillan and Misses Fingland and Currie, the former in charge of the girls school, the later one of my travelling companions.  We are a very congenial household.  Just not we new people are in Seoul, the capital, a very interesting old city, attending language school.   There are many more attendance this year than there ever were before.  I find the study more interesting and not such drudgery as I expected.  In fact, I am enjoying it very much but am often wishing I could speak it soon and get back at my own particular work.  The hospital at Hamheung is not very well planned for convenience and they are somewhat handicapped for equipment and still more for want of a foreign nurse.  But we hope that all those deficiencies may be made good before long.  In the mean time, I am to go north to Yong Jimg in Manchuria next spring to supply for Dr. Martin while he has his furlough.  He has better equipment there than we have in our hospital at Hamheung I believe and they have the work well organized and under the supervision of a foreign nurse.  The only thing I regret about this arrangement is that it gives me such a short time of uninterrupted study before being obliged to take up regular work when time and attention must be divided between two things each of which is big enough to take most of the time.  However, I must make the best of the situation.  So far I have had the rather poor comfort that can be derived from the discovery that some of those who came to Korea when we did and are now attending language school with us, know even less Korean than we do. 

I am more than ever convinced that this work is the most worth while work in all the world and I thank God every day for leading me here.  If only the people in the homeland could realize the difference that the coming of the Gospel makes to these folk here they would be more eager to do more and workers would be more easily found.  Surely we will soon get a nurse for our hospital here.

I wish you the very best furlough for the rest of the time, then as nice a trip as we have had, and such a welcome as I know you will get.   Yours in his service, 

Florence J. Murray

Address, Hamheung, Korea

Our postage is 5 cents.