Latin America was famously “neglected” at the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference in 1910. But the continent was not entirely overlooked.
In preparation for his presentations at Edinburgh, Samuel Zwemer asked a young Robert Speer to produce “a map of South America” and to “mark upon it the sections of the continent in which missionary work was being done.”
“When I got through,” Speer reported frankly, “it was pitiful to look at the map: around the coast, and not all around, but only here and there, were little sections which nowhere reached more than several hundred miles into the interior…. while the great body of the South American continent was left unmarked.”[1].
This was the backdrop of Carlsen and Weinhardt’s interest in South America, many years ago. Something was going “neglected.” They aimed to give their lives to address the situation.
The story of our calling to South America long ago begs a question for today. What peoples and places are “neglected” in our day? Do they still demand our lives?