Within 2 years Mackay was the only one of their missionaries left alive in Uganda. He actually survived 12 years. Yet such devotion to duty is extremely rare today. With all our technological advantages we still lag far behind the nineteenth-century missionaries in terms of actual effectiveness. It's not that we lack the tools, but the tenacity.
Inventions are a poor substitute for integrity, initiative and innovation.
Computers cannot make up for a loss of character. We have lots of programs, but it is persistence and perseverance which fulfil the Great Commission. In the military, we were taught that to obtain our objectives we had to be willing to be expendable. Missionaries must face that same expendability. Johan Krapf, missionary to East Africa, lost his wife and two children within months of arriving in Africa.