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A History of the Church in Africa

gave themselves to the study of the Scripture and to prayer. They also
began a prayer meeting that lasted for more than one hundred years.

Figure 8.1—Moravian Missionaries

When Benjamin Ingham from England visited Herrnhut in 1738, he
wrote in his journal:

I must confess that the Lord is really among the Brethren.
Yesterday a boy of eleven or twelve years of age was baptized;
and such a movement of the Holy Spirit pervaded the whole
assembly, as I have never seen at any baptism. I felt that my
heart burned within me and I could not refrain from tears. I saw
that others felt as I did, and the whole congregation was moved.
(quoted in A. S. Wood, 151)

Their involvement in missions came in an unusual manner.
Zinzendorf, while visiting Copenhagen in 1730, met a black man from
the West Indies who begged for missionaries. Zinzendorf returned to
challenge his fellow Christians to respond. They came to the conclusion
that the command of Christ to evangelize the world was a priority. Out
of this community sprang a powerful missionary movement that sent
missionaries to the West Indies, Greenland, North and South America,

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