MEETINGS IN THE EASTERN DISTRICT, MICH.
By Joseph Bates
SABBATH and first-day, June 15 and 16, I held five interesting meetings with the church and people of Oakland, Oak., Co., also one meeting in Rochester. Many of them are striving to live out their faith in the good cause of the Lord. The 19th, Bro. H. Fenner brought me on my way some sixteen miles to Romeo where I took the stage for Memphis. Here on Sabbath and first-day, June 22 and 23, I held six meetings and one funeral service with the church and people. The dress and health reform is progressing and both churches are moving more understandingly in this matter than ever they have done. Our good friends in Memphis brought me half the way, and other good friends brought me the other half of thirty-eight miles, to Lapeer, where on the Sabbath and first-day I held seven meetings and attended to all the ordinances of God’s house. Three were added to the church. Sister Day came fifteen miles to hear advent preaching for the first time. She has been studying books from the Publishing Association, and the Review; believed and was baptized, put on Christ and returned on her way home rejoicing, walking in newness of life. Washing “one another’s feet” and partaking of the emblems of the broken body and spilt blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, singing and solemn testimonies from many brethren and sisters present, was a blessed privilege we enjoyed together after the holy Sabbath of the Lord. We felt new courage and were strengthened to press our way onward in the glorious message of the third angel, now ripening off the harvest of the earth. At the close of our first meeting the news from Battle Creek of sister Loughborough’s sudden death, and the deep affliction of the lonely and bereaved husband and children, made our hearts to feel sad. Our prayer is, O Lord, sanctify this afflictive dispensation of thy providence to our much-esteemed Bro. Loughborough and his deeply-afflicted friends, that it may work together for his and their good. Whatever amount of dividend growing out of stock I hold in the Health Reform Institute at Battle Creek is coming to me, I wish the directors to apply to the charitable fund until otherwise directed.