The Island Fields by O. A. OLSEN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 26, 1908

The Island Fields

By O. A. OLSEN

1. The Eastern Polynesian mission, including the Society, Cook, Marquesas, Tuamotu, Gambier, and Austral Island groups, with Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, and others. It was in Pitcairn Island that our island work began, in 1886, when practically the entire island, famed as the home of the descendants of the mutineers of the ship “Bounty,” accepted the doctrines taught by Adventists.

FIJIAN CHRISTIANS
2. The Central Polynesian mission, including the — FIJIAN CHRISTIANS 2. The Central Polynesian mission, including the

island groups of Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. 3. The Malaysian mission, taking in the East Indies, Straits Settlements, and the Philippines. While our Australasian home field embraces five million souls, our mission fields contain more than fifty millions.

Thus the Australasian Union Conference is decidedly a mission field.

There are five mission schools, located as follows: Singapore, Fiji, Tonga, Rarotonga, and Raiatea (Society Islands). A church-school is also taught on Pitcairn Island. All these are doing good work. In Fiji a number of the natives have already entered the work, and still others are in training.

The work has opened up favorably in Java. In Singapore, in the Straits Settlements, we meet with much encouragement. A favorable location has been secured for our training-school and press.

Our colporteurs have had remarkable success in selling publications through the East Indies, not only in the English, but in the Baba Malay and Dutch Malay.

The work in Fiji has made progress during the year, and the number of believers has been largely increased.

Promising young people are attending our Buresala School, which has already furnished strong laborers for the island work. Plans are now laid to open work in New Guinea. Brother and Sister S. W. Carr, of the Fiji School, with two or three native workers, will soon enter this island field.

The work in Samoa has been taken up anew, and on Norfolk Island the union conference has lately purchased a property for a mission station.

Last year we began the publication of monthly papers in the Tahitian tongue, of the Society Island group, the Rarotongan tongue of the Tongan group, and in the Maori language of New Zealand.

While the message is speeding on, we feel everywhere the great need of more workers. There is a deplorable shortage in every department. O. A. OLSEN.