France by H. H. DEXTER

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 15, 1908

France

By H. H. DEXTER

At the Council of the General Conference Committee held at Gland in May, 1907, it was recommended that the French mission field be organized into a conference. In the fall of the same year the conference was regularly organized, and officers were chosen. The organization went into effect in January, 1908.

The fifth annual camp-meeting of our field, the first meeting of the French Conference, was held August 24-29, at the town of Gallargues, in the department of the Gard, in southern France. Our small village of twenty-five tents was pitched in the midst of beautiful vineyards and oliveyards laden with their rich fruit.

Seven weeks before the camp-meeting began, Elder T. Nussbaum pitched the large tent at Gallargues, and gave lectures on present truth four evenings each week to large and interested audiences. This interest was intensified by the work of the camp-meeting, which closed the effort. The meetings will be continued during the winter in a hall.

From year to year our camp-meetings are growing in interest and attendance. Five years ago, when the regular annual camp-meetings began, our people did not quite see the utility of spending so much time and means to attend the annual assembly, but those who came communicated to those at home some of the good things they heard, so that now our dear French brethren and sisters manifest a genuine interest in the annual meeting. In our little conference of two hundred fifty members, about one hundred were in attendance this year.

Elder L. P. Tieche, president of the Latin Union Conference, and Elder Jean Vuilleumier, editor of the Signes des Temps and principal of our union school at Gland, were with us during the entire time of the meeting, and rendered valuable help by their earnest practical preaching, and good counsel to the workers. Brother Jules Robert, of Geneva, secretary and treasurer of the union, was also with us.

Sabbath, August 29, was an especially profitable day. After an earnest discourse and appeal by Brother Tieche, nearly the entire congregation arose and stood around the rostrum, thus signifying their purpose to seek a deeper experience in the things of God. Sabbath afternoon Brother J. P. Badant was ordained to the sacred work of the ministry. After this service the entire congregation repaired to a near-by river to witness the baptism of five candidates.

Elder Walter Bond and family, who were on their way from Gland to Barcelona, stopped off three days to visit our meeting. Brother Bond gave us an interesting talk on the progress of the work in Spain.

Our present corps of workers consists of four ordained ministers, three licentiates, and five Bible workers—only twelve workers to announce the message to forty million souls. This is certainly a gigantic undertaking, but the Lord of the harvest is well able to qualify us who are in the field to do more efficient work, and to raise up other laborers to send forth unto this great harvest-field. The laborers are distributed as follows: Elder Paul Badant labors in Paris, taking the place of Elder Ulysses Augsbourger, whose faithful labors during the past four years brought about forty souls into the truth. The Latin Union committee having called upon France to release one of its best laborers for Algeria, we reluctantly gave up Brother Augsbourger, who sails for his new field some time in October. Elder Nussbaum, assisted by two young Bible workers, is to continue to develop the interest at Gallargues and neighboring villages. Elder J. B. Badant and a lady worker are to associate with the writer in beginning the work in the city of Lyons, a great metropolis of five hundred thousand inhabitants, in east central France. Brother Jules Rey, with a lady worker, is to continue the work at St. Etienne, an industrial city of one hundred fifty thousand souls. Brother Cesar Guenin, assisted by a Bible worker, is to begin a series of meetings at Besancon. One worker is stationed in the Protestant villages in the mountains of central France, where a good interest is developing. We solicit the prayers of the readers of the REVIEW in behalf of the work and workers in this great needy field. Our greatest need is not money nor large institutions, but rather a vital union with God, so that souls who are deaf—deaf because dead in trespasses and sins—may hear the voice of the Son of God speaking through his messengers, and that many may live. May the Lord help us in France to sense our great need of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our work in behalf of souls. Our message will then be presented not as a dry, lifeless theory, but as a living, saving truth, and then, instead of presenting three or four half-converted souls as the fruit of a year's work, each worker will bring to the feet of Jesus a score or more of transformed men and women. Our workers go to their fields this fall full of courage and faith. We are all most determined to seek God earnestly to teach us the secret of successful soul-saving work.

It was recommended at this meeting that several departments of northern France, including Paris, with its church of fifty members, be cut off from the French Conference, and be recognized as a separate mission field. This recommendation is to go into effect January, 1909.

H. H. DEXTER.