Visit to Battakland, Sumatra
By JOHN S. YATES
It has been my privilege to again visit Battakland. This time four men were baptized, the first Battak believers to be baptized in Sumatra. During this trip I distributed some two hundred papers, and took two orders for periodicals and nine orders for Bibles. The work in that part of our field is singularly interesting. The government has not yet given us permission to establish a mission, hence we have no regular mission workers there. However, there are two young men, Brother Siregar (Battak) and Brother Shin (Chinese), who are teaching private schools. Both learned of the truth in Padang, and are now members of the Padang church. These brethren are spreading the message, and are entirely self-supporting. Opposers threaten them, and have succeeded in having Brother Siregar called a number of times before the government officials to answer for his faith. I talked to them about being persecuted, and they both said, “We do not fear what man can do to us.” Brother Siregar had a list of twenty candidates for baptism. While perhaps the majority of these were keeping the Sabbath and had given up some of their bad habits, on examination only four seemed ready to unite with us. We promised the others that they might also be baptized when they are fully ready for this ordinance. In one year the Battakland tithe has amounted to one hundred and seventy-five guilders, or over seventy dollars. This sounds good when we remember that the average wage is only about that much a year. One month Brother Siregar reported spending a little over six dollars on home missionary work. The journey on the whole was a trying one, as I had to cover a distance of over seven hundred miles, by train, automobile, sado, horseback, and on foot. All the country here is full of wild animals, and parts are infested with robbers. Though one travels alone in this country, he is not likely to get lonesome, for, besides the lofty mountains, with their smoking volcanoes to fascinate, and the dense jungles, with troops of monkeys to entertain, there are tea, coffee, and rubber plantations, spice groves, dashing mountain streams, waterfalls, lily ponds, curious birds and nests, together with a hundred other attractions.