Faithful Servants
by Thomas Ray
Arthur Carson and Laura Harding both committed their lives to serve the Lord on the foreign mission field. In 1883, Laura Harding went to Burma to teach in a mission school. Her fiancé, Arthur Carson, remained in America to complete his theological studies. After graduation, he arrived in Burma in 1886 and he and Laura Harding were wed. Arthur volunteered to be the first American missionary to work among the people known as the Chin, a people who had never been exposed to the gospel.
The Carsons located their mission among the Chin that lived on the border of Upper and Lower Burma. Arthur Carson’s first love was evangelism. He and his wife frequently made extensive trips throughout the district in order to share the gospel with the widely disbursed Chin. The Carsons labored for ten continuous years establishing churches and schools. Finally, after ten years of constant labor, another missionary couple relieved them for a much-needed furlough. After their furlough, Arthur Carson volunteered to establish a post among the Chin living in the almost inaccessible mountains of Upper Burma.
The Mountain Chin were extremely suspicious of foreigners and unbelievably superstitious. Upon their arrival, Laura Carson was appalled by what she saw. As she looked upon the half-naked and filthy Chin she began to cry and said, “Arthur, I can’t do it! I thought I could go with you anywhere that God called and stay there and work with you. But, I have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. I can’t live my life in this awful place among these loathsome people.”
Arthur, in an attempt to comfort his wife, told her, “You do not have to stay if you do not want to, just try to get some sleep.” The next morning, Laura Carson looked into the face of a beautiful young half-naked native girl. She later wrote, “I saw beneath the grime and filth and saw the need of the soul.” Not once in the next 21 years did Laura think about abandoning her post.
The Carsons established their mission at Haka, which was strategically located and enabled them to minister to the scattered Chin tribes. The task that lay before the Carsons would test their commitment and faith. They had to create a written language and translate the Scriptures into the Mountain Chin’s own dialect. They established schools to teach their children to read and a hospital to relieve their suffering. Their trials were many and difficult. It would take six long years before they had their first profession of faith and baptism. This was the beginning of a great awakening among the Chin.
During the next three years Arthur Carson would baptize 100 converts. After nine years of labor, the Carsons had established three churches and four schools, and had trained one native preacher with several others in training. They were required to translate every lesson into the Chin language. They also translated Mrs. Judson’s The Catechism and 42 hymns, and Arthur Carson had almost completed a translation of the Gospel of Matthew.
The Carsons always devoted a portion of their time to make evangelistic tours into the most remote parts of the Haka District. It was on one of these tours, about ten-days travel from Haka, that Arthur Carson was stricken with appendicitis. Although he was in unbearable pain, he managed to return to the mission station. Surgery was performed, but his appendix had ruptured and he only lived two days. He found great comfort when his wife informed him that she would remain and would carry on the work they had begun together.
Laura Carson, the woman who said, “I can’t stay,” would labor for an additional 12 years until failing health forced her from the field. During those 12 years, she completed the Gospel of Matthew and the other three Gospels, plus Acts and a dictionary.
In 1899, when the Carsons arrived in the Chin Hills, there were no Christians. Amazingly, in 2011 there were 57 Chin-affiliated Baptist churches in America. In their homeland there are numerous churches, but the most amazing statistic is that over 90 percent of Chin professed to be Christians. Arthur and Laura Carson gave their lives that the Chin might know Christ and his transforming power to save.