OUR WORK AND WORKERS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1897

OUR WORK AND WORKERS.

Five candidates were baptized in the Oakland church on the 20th inst.

DURING the past year, sixty-one members have been added to the church in San Francisco, largely the result of personal labor on the part of the lay members.

ELDER N. C. McCLURE reports a good interest in Eureka, Cal., where he has been laboring for some weeks, assisted by Brother F. M. Burg. Since the camp-meeting at that place, the brethren have refitted their church building and canvassed the city with literature.

DR. J. E. CALDWELL, who has been about two years in the Tonga Islands as a medical missionary, is now translating some of our literature into the native (Maori) language. He says that “a literature to put into the hands of the people is now the first urgent need of the work in this group of islands.” He also says that the medical work has given them a standing in the community which they could not have enjoyed had they attempted evangelical work alone. For some time the doctor had been in charge of a government hospital, but he expected to have a private establishment ready for operation by the first of the year. More than 3,300 treatments were given by the doctor and his helpers in the month of July alone.

A SWEDISH minister has recently come out from the Baptist denomination, giving up a regular salary to identify himself with the Seventh-day Adventist people. He now seeks a more extended knowledge of the Bible by attending the Bible school at South Lancaster, Mass.

THE church at South Lancaster, Mass., are taking 1,000 copies of the SIGNS for missionary work. When we consider that this church is largely composed of students, whose occupation is a constant outlay rather than a source of income, this report ought to set many others to thinking.

OF the work in Germany, Elder J. N. Loughborough reports a church of over one hundred members in Berlin. These hold meetings in two places in the city on the Sabbath. During the brief stay of Elders Loughborough and Conradi seventeen were received into the church. Of these eleven were baptized in a small lake in the suburbs of Berlin.

ELDER O. A. OLSEN says, in the Review of December 29: “We are receiving very encouraging reports from the special season of prayer. It has proved to be a season of refreshing indeed; and the best of it is that the good work begun continues with increasing interest. We have reached the time when the message is to rise and go with power. The only thing that will stand in the way will be our own negligence.”

ELDER G. W. REASER reports the baptism of two persons at Fresno, Cal., and Elder B. L. Howe reports the admission of five members to the church at Sacramento, the result of labor by Elder Osborne at Rocklin. Elder Reaser also notes the faithful attendance at meetings of an aged couple in Kern County. They have charge of a little company, and, tho past the age of three score and ten, they ride fifteen miles every Sabbath, regardless of weather, in order to keep the work moving.

THE Adelaide, South Australia, Register, in its report of the Seventh-day camp-meeting near that city, gives the following epitome of an address by Mrs. E. G. White, on the subject of “True Education”:— “The first and most important mission field for all parents was the circle of their own families. Children were by training fitted either for the service of Christ or of Satan. The great defect of almost all modern systems of education was the worldly tendency of the teaching. The fashions, fancies, and maxims of this world were allowed too large an influence. Selfishness and ambition spoiled many promising characters. Children were not brought near enough to God and God’s best handiwork—nature. It was almost impossible to properly educate a child in a large city. Children ought, as far as possible, instead of being crowded into cities and city schools, to be taken out into the country for their education. Their mental and physical training ought always to be subordinated to spiritual culture. Children were not born to be the playthings of time and the idols of fond parents. They were born for eternity. If parents did not properly educate their children they were training tools for Satan and marshaling forces against the God and Giver of their own life. Children themselves ought to co-operate with the parents; indeed, it had often happened that children had pointed their own parents to the kingdom of God.”

A CORRESPONDENT, not of our people, writes from Los Angeles: “I visited the Advent Mission here last night, and it was crowded, and the preaching was very fine. They are not too fast in warning the people against the danger that is so near and ready to swallow up our nation. It is surely a time for fasting and prayer and mourning.” And all this is true.