p. 328 | VISIT TO INDIANA by James White

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, May 20, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 21

VISIT TO INDIANA.

By James White

As appointed in REVIEW, we visited the churches at Ligonier and Wolf Lake, Ind., the 15th and 16th of the present month. In company with Bro. Smith we took the pleasant journey by carriage, the 13th and 14th, sixty-five miles. The weather was pleasant, the roads excellent and the scenery through the rural districts of Southern Michigan and Northern Indiana was delightful. The change from the confinement and cares of office life was better enjoyed than can be expressed.

We were happy to meet Eld. Lane at Ligonier. Indiana is a good field of labor, and Eld. Lane has labored faithfully and energetically. His fellow-laborers have also worked with success. Elders Covert, Sharp, Bartlett, Reese, and others are men of ability and a good degree of consecration to the work. With the blessing of God attending their efforts, in the good State of Indiana they may gather many precious souls for the kingdom of God. While in Ligonier we enjoyed the good home of Bro. and Sr. Rogers, formerly of Michigan.

The brethren and sisters in Indiana received us with expressions of Christian kindness and gratitude for our visit, and the practical lessons we labored to enforce in our discourses received a hearty response. The houses of worship both at Ligonier and Wolf Lake are a credit to those who have cheerfully given of their means to build them. While in this encouraging field of labor, we felt that it would be a great pleasure to be free from those perplexing cares which have been wearing us for the last quarter of a century, to give ourself to prayer, reflection, and the word of God. We are ready to admit that there is hard labor in every branch of our important work; but if there is one branch of the work that is harder than another, it is that which confines men to the perpetual toils, cares, and perplexities at our publishing houses. And we would here suggest that those who are out in the field enjoying the changes of speaking, visiting, and studying, do not know what they are talking about when dwelling upon the hardships of their lot in contrast with the supposed ease of office life.

Monday morning we drove to La Grange, a distance of twenty miles, before nine. Here we took the train, and reached home in a few hours, leaving others whose business was not as urgent as ours to drive in the team.

God bless the brethren in Indiana. We see no reasons why that Conference may not be as strong as the Michigan Conference, and even stronger, if the ministers of that Conference stand where the Lord can work for them. J. W.