After the Earthquake by W. G. KNEELAND

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 31, 1908

After the Earthquake

By W. G. KNEELAND

A New-Year Appeal

[The Mission Board calls special attention to the following appeal from the president of the Jamaica Conference. Such appeals for local needs are rarely made; for if all local enterprises in the mission fields were listed, the calls would be confusing, and the most important thing of all, the general fund for aggressive work, would suffer. But the great Kingston earthquake was no ordinary calamity. Our Jamaica brethren have struggled manfully to meet the situation that followed, but must have help. Many lost their own homes. All have worked and sacrificed to see their church building raised up as a witness to the truth in Kingston. Will not many join them in a New-year's gift, and make up the six hundred dollars called for from the States? Send gifts to your conference office, marked Kingston Earthquake fund, or to I. H. Evans, Takoma Park,

Washington, D. C. Some one with a hundred-dollar gift may be waiting for just such a call. If the fund should overflow, it will help other Jamaica churches, where over thirty houses of worship are awaiting completion. In that island the believers—men, women, and children—gather and carry materials and toil for years, getting up the little white chapels in mountains and valleys. The help from this side will be appreciated. Read the appeal, and respond as you may be led.—W. A. SPICER, Secretary Mission Board.]

We read that if “one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.” 1 Cor. 12:26.

Your brethren in Jamaica take this opportunity to call your attention to conditions here. You will remember the earthquake that visited Kingston, Jan. 14, 1907, when our first union conference meeting was in session. Our church in Kingston was destroyed, and several in other places were damaged. A more suitable location in Kingston was secured, and we began at once to build. Our people, in spite of their poverty, and their heavy losses in the earthquake, a hurricane, and two severe droughts that caused great suffering throughout the island, sacrificed nobly to assist the work. The citizens of Kingston and many friends in the States responded liberally during 1907. Elder D. E. Wellman gave up a well-earned and much-needed furlough in America that he might repair the faulty construction and complete the building.

The general poverty of our people, together with the fact that about thirty other church buildings were in process of erection or undergoing repairs from the effects of the hurricane and earthquake, has prevented our meeting the obligation on the Kingston building as we should. Last spring we presented the situation to the General Conference Council, and they advised us to complete the building, and authorized a call for help to the amount of six hundred dollars in addition to what we had already received.

Our total indebtedness at the present time is about twelve hundred fifty dollars. The most of our obligations have been due nearly a year, and our creditors are urging a settlement. All our efforts are directed to reducing the debt as fast as possible. Our church-school has been discontinued, owing to our straitened circumstances. Unless the promised help can be given us, it will take about three years more to pay off the debt at the rate we are now able to raise money. It will also involve the holding back of other unfinished buildings, and the development of our church-schools for our four hundred children in the conference, to say nothing of hindering the efforts to reach unworked territory.

For these reasons we are appealing to all our people, who have their houses of worship, to give a thank-offering to God, who has spared them from the trying experiences we have had in the hurricane, earthquake, and drought of the past few years. Thanking you for the liberality of the past, and for what we still hope to receive to enable us to do our part promptly in heralding the message of truth to all the islands of the sea, I remain;

W. G. KNEELAND, Pres. Jamaica Conference.