p. 17 | The Convention of Self-Supporting Workers

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 7, 1909

The Convention of Self-Supporting Workers

By Josephine Gotzian

THIS meeting was held on the Nashville Agricultural and Normal Institute farm. It opened October 15, and for several days previous, visitors had been coming. They kept coming until the rooms in the Rural Sanitarium were all full, and cots filled both bath-rooms, the dining-room, and most every available spot in both school and sanitarium. Some of these guests were able to stay the entire ten days of the meeting. Others came for only a part of the convention, and then pressed on to their individual work.

I moved among the visitors, and sought to find out as much as possible concerning them and their work. There were a number who came across the continent from the Pacific Coast. One sister from California returned to her home to arrange her business affairs so that she can devote her time to self-supporting work in the South. Two families who came from California to attend the school and the convention have since purchased property, and are now opening a farm school.

Wisconsin had several representatives. One sister in particular expressed her interest in self-supporting work by donating a cottage for the nurses at the sanitarium on the school farm. Since the convention, two other Wisconsin visitors have, so I understand, purchased a tract of land in the South for a school to educate self-supporting workers.

Nebraska sent several representatives. One of them returned to his home State to dispose of property in order to join the band of self-supporting workers in the South. An entire family from the same State will probably be in the South by the time this is read.

Among representatives from the East was a sister who became so interested in the needs of the South that she has visited different portions with a view to helping locate another farm mission school.

As might be expected, all the self-supporting workers now in the South, who could possibly spare the time and means, attended the meeting. And of these there was a goodly company. A pioneer among these was Elder D. T. Shireman, the white-haired veteran in this movement. His courageous words did good to all hearts. He has spent over twenty years in this field, and he knows its most pressing needs, and his message sounds clear and strong in behalf of self-supporting efforts.

There were representatives of medical and sanitarium work, canvassers, the Misses Lackey and McDonald, representing the paper work, and delegates from more than ten industrial schools in various parts of the South.

The words of instruction along missionary lines, as given by some of our leading brethren, were listened to with deep interest. One conference president seemed to voice the sentiment of many others when he said that he longed to see the time when individuals, moved by the Spirit of God, would take the lead in starting missionary enterprises. This, he reasoned, would greatly relieve the conferences, which are already in many cases overburdened and unable to undertake enterprises calling for a greater expenditure of means.

The effect of the convention was to strengthen the feeling that in the closing work of the message all God's people must have some part. We must have some part. Many can not depend upon conference support. Upon many the Spirit will yet rest, and they will answer his call, depending upon God and the work of their hands for support, while they herald the coming of the Saviour.

It is time for many to bestir themselves. The field is wide. It seems to me that the South is but a camping station and training-ground for wider fields beyond.

JOSEPHINE GOTZIAN.