Caracas, Venezuela by S. A. OBERG

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 2, 1915

Caracas, Venezuela

By S. A. OBERG

S. A. OBERG

SINCE our last report, we have moved. The Lord heard our prayers, and gave us just what we needed, with reduced rent. We had been paying thirty-six dollars a month, while here the rent is only twenty-eight.

The agent from whom we secured the house is the same one from whom we rented the other one. When we visited him with regard to renting our present place, he said there would be no objection to Protestants, and he sent a clerk to the owner, to ask if he would have any objection to renting the house to Protestants. However, knowing the difference that exists between simply renting to Protestants, and renting a house for holding Protestant services or carrying on a propaganda, I thought I would better see the owner myself. I found that he had no objection to any renter who would pay the rent. The same agent told us a year ago that there would be no objection to our holding services in the house, but evidently he did not know that the brother of the owner of that house was a priest, and that as long as we continued propaganda on the premises the owner could not be pardoned, nor his family receive divine attention. I quote the following from a tract recently put out here:—

“What sin do Catholics who favor Protestantism, commit?”

“The Catholics who take part in the services of Protestants, or through curiosity listen to their discourses, or rent to them houses for their services, or in any other way favor them in their propaganda, commit the gravest sin, and incur excommunication.”

You can see by this what it means to these blinded souls to be cursed by having their house turned into a house of worship. I cannot feel to condemn the

poor people, but the priests will surely come to a day of reckoning.

It is really necessary that we should have a mission property here if aggressive work is to be done, not only because of the rent (now the mission and I must bear it alone, since Brother Greenidge goes into the book work out of the city), but because there will never be any peace for us as long as the property in which we live and carry on our work is not our own.

The church begins to realize that we are here to stay, and is instituting a campaign against us. Brother Charles, one of our canvassers, on returning from the interior, told me that one man whom he canvassed told him that he had been warned not to take that book because it was Protestant, and was a propaganda. However, Brother Charles insisted on his looking it over carefully, to see if it was tainted with Protestantism, and not finding any diseases that were Protestant,—it was a health book,—the man took it.

There are two small lots which can be secured at a very reasonable figure that I feel we ought to have, and I am praying that the Lord will open the way for us to secure them.