26/12/2021
Rusitu Mission
Rusitu Mission station is located in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe in Chimanimani (formerly Melsetter), approximately 5 miles from the boarder of Mozambique and 75 miles south of Mutare (formerly Umtali).
In 1897, three missionaries sent by the South Africa General Mission, Harry Raney, John Coupland and Dudley Kidd set out on a lengthy and hazardous journey from the coast up into the Chimanimani area. Shortly after they arrived at Rusitu, Copeland died of malaria.
Harry Raney went on to be one of the early leaders of the mission. He was joined by Douglas Wood who served between 1900-04 and produced the first ChiNdau grammar and wrote the first hymns in that language in 1903. In that same year the first local man was converted, and the settlement grew significantly as a result of Africans from across the border with Portuguese East Africa coming to live near the mission.
In 1902 Rev. John Edgar Hatch (1871-1945), an American who had been a chaplain during the Boer War, came to work with the mission at the Melsetter station. In 1907 he married another American missionary named Julia Flora Winter from the Silinda mission station. She had arrived in the field in 1904, and worked as a translation assistant. A year after the marriage, Julia gave birth to a baby boy, Lawrence. Tragically, just two weeks after giving birth, Julia died of black water fever, a serious complication of malaria. She was just 35 years old.
The widowed Hatch moved to Rusitu in 1911 and married his second wife, Catherine Mackenzie (1875-1959). Together they continued to bring up Lawrence. It was this couple who were holding the fort at Rusitu on their own when Rees and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Howells arrived in the middle of 1915 to support them.
For fifteen months from October, 1915, the Revival continued in Gazaland, centred on the mission stations at Rusitu and Silinda. But then in 1917, Rees and Lizzie were invited to a gathering of missionaries with the South Africa General Mission in Durban. Rees expected to be one of many contributors, but was asked to speak each day for the entire period of three weeks. Eventually, an invitation was extended to the Howells to go on an extended tour of all the outstations of the mission. The journey took them over 11,000 miles, visiting five countries — Swaziland, Pondoland, Bomvanaland, Tembuland and Zululand. They would continue to travel with the Revival until 1920, when they returned home.
By 1930, Clyde and Hattie Dotson from the United States and Miss. Elmina Doner from Canada had joined the mission. At that time, Rusitu Mission consisted of five brick buildings: two missionary homes, dorms for girls and boys and a clinic. Mr. Dotson became head of the mission shortly thereafter.
