David Livingstone :: essays research papers

David Livingstone is a Scottish missionary and physician. He spent most of his life exploring Africa. He helped Europeans learn a lot about the continent of Africa. Livingstone was born in Scotland. His parents were really religious so David followed his dad’s footsteps. David is a really hard working person, the reason why he would want to go to Africa was because he knew that there weren’t a lot of Christians there; he also knew that not many people there knew about Christ. At age ten he began working in the local cotton mill, he had to work long hours and he got too little pay for what he was doing. When he didn’t work, he would just stay at home to study, and in 1836 he entered Anderson's College in Glasgow. He was mainly interested in theology and medicine. In 1838 the London Missionary Society accepted him as a candidate, and two years later he received a medical degree from the University of Glasgow. The First War between Britain and China ruined his hope s of becoming a medical missionary to China, but the missionary society arranged a new placement for him in southern Africa. He was supposed to be preaching in the southern part of Africa; however, due to the fact that he wasn’t successful, he went to the north. While he was there, he worked with an individual named, Robert Moffat. Later on he married his daughter, Mary Moffat. For the next 15 years, Livingstone was constantly moving into the African interior. He was strengthening his missionary determination he was also responding entirely to the delights of geographical discovery; he was building for himself a Christian, a courageous explorer, and a fervent antislavery advocate. As a missionary, David Livingstone quickly believed that what he was supposed to do is to not remain in one spot, preaching the gospel to the few local people willing to listen. Instead, he should keep on moving, reaching new groups and extending to them to be more familiar with what God wanted them to do with Christianity. Eventually he would expand this idea into a belief that his role was to open up Africa's interior to broader influences from Western civilization. Once that occurred, he would work hand in hand to end slave trading and uplift African peoples. Such motives drove Livingstone. He worked really hard as a missionary but he still had the desire to keep on exploring.