Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/395

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REGENERATION OF MEXICO.
387

The Southern Presbyterians have also a mission in Tamaulipas, and report 5 churches and 331 members.

The Southern Methodists, who entered the field in 1873, are strongly entrenched in Mexico city, San Luis de Potosi, Puebla, Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Monterey and Saltillo, besides scores of preaching-places and a large ministerial force, both native and foreign. They have a church-membership of 3022. In their central mission they report 65 Sunday-schools and 1300 children enrolled. A self-sustaining boarding-school for Mexican girls has been opened in San Luis de Potosi, and a free day-school.

The Methodist Episcopal Church (North) has circuits centring in Mexico, Guanajuato, Orizaba, Pachuca, Puebla and Queretaro. A large orphanage under the care of their Woman's Foreign Missionary Society is flourishing in the capital, and schools in Puebla, Leon, Pachuca, Miraflores, Queretaro, Real del Monte and El Chico. This mission reports, in 1885, churches, 14; full members, 625; probationers, 674; local preachers, 16; Sunday-schools, 18; scholars in Sunday-schools, 764; contributions, $1102.

The American Board of Foreign Missions (Boston) began work in 1872 in Guadalajara, a city of some eighty thousand inhabitants, situated on the west coast, in the State of Jalisco. They found here at first a wonderful spirit of inquiry among the people. Within a few months there were several conversions. Bitter hostility was soon provoked, and Mr. and Mrs. Watkins were stoned in the street by a company of men and boys. In November of 1872, Rev. Mr. Stephens, an unmarried missionary, visited Ahualulco, a small town about