West Caribbean Conference by H. C. Goodrich

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 9, 1914

West Caribbean Conference

By H. C. Goodrich

The eighth annual session of the West Caribbean Conference was held May 22-27 with the church at Bocas del Toro, where ample provision had been made for entertaining the delegates and visitors who were in attendance.

The names of thirty-two delegates were read, sixteen of whom were present at the first meeting. Elder A. J. Haysmer, president of the union conference, and Elder W. G. Kneeland, who is expected to labor in this conference, were invited to sit with us in the conference as delegates at large.

Two churches, which had been organized since our last annual meeting, were received into the conference.

Reports from the different churches showing an encouraging growth in nearly every place, were given by their several delegates. Especially was this true of the Bocas, Pearl Lagoon, and Port Limon churches. And in all the reports there was good evidence of the Lord’s blessing which has attended the personal efforts of individuals in the different places.

The need of making Panama City a center for our Spanish work on the Pacific coast was considered at some length, and the need of a suitable building for mission and church work was clearly set forth by Elder Haysmer in a meeting devoted to that purpose. The sum of $436.75 gold was pledged by the delegates and visitors. It was indeed good to see the whole conference standing together as one man to help push the work in the city of Panama and on the west coast.

But the battle cry of the conference from the very first, as expressed in resolution No. 2, which was spoken to by nearly all the delegates, was to make the rest of 1914 a soul-winning campaign, in which the aim of every one shall be, One soul for Jesus in the year 1914.

To the end, the work of the conference was marked with brotherly unity. All the different questions were freely discussed, and most of the resolutions were passed unanimously.

In the personnel of the conference officers several changes were made. Elder W. G. Kneeland was elected president, in place of the writer, who has accepted an invitation to labor on the Isle of Pines. Elder D. E. Wellman was invited to take up work in the West Caribbean Conference, and F. H. Raley, secretary and treasurer of the union, will remove his office from Riversdale to Cristobal, and will also become secretary and treasurer of the West Caribbean Conference. Brother Charles Degering will be the secretary and treasurer of the Jamaica Conference.

We all appreciated very much the help given us in all our meetings by Elders Haysner and Kneeland, and in spite of the heavy rains that continued nearly all the time, there was a good attendance on the part of the citizens of the place.

A vote of thanks was heartily given to the churches of Bocas and its vicinity for their kind and generous hospitality; and then, with our hearts full of gratitude to a kind and merciful Heavenly Father for the feast of good things we had enjoyed, we all prepared to leave for our homes, to put in practice all the plans here laid for the advancement of the great work intrusted to our hands.

H. C. GOODRICH.