Our Mission School in Friedensau, Germany
By Otto Lüpke
OUR school is the daughter of the German Union Conference. The progress of the work in the field is therefore the foundation of the progress of the school work. As the reports of the different fields for the last year have now come in, we can say that the year 1906 has been the most prosperous in the history of the conference, there being a net increase of fourteen hundred members. The financial increase has been equal to the increase in membership. Such growth insures progress in the school work as well. In November, 1906, we were able to separate the Russian department from the other departments of the school. There is every reason to believe that the work in Russia will make great progress as soon as the present disturbances are over. We then hope to receive native Russian students, which we have not been able to get as yet, most of our Russian students coming from the German colonies in Russia, and from the Estonians and Lettonians. Our German department graduated at the beginning of this year eleven Bible workers. The class which will be graduated in July of this year consists of fifteen Bible workers and seventeen nurses. The total enrolment is at present one hundred and twenty-five. We have developed our school on the system of a two-years’ course, students being accepted for enrolment and graduated twice a year, so that there are always four classes running. This plan furnishes from thirty to forty workers a year for our evangelistic and medical missionary work. We know that we are living in an important time. For this reason it is our prayer that the Lord will help us to appreciate the needs of the situation and to consecrate our faculties to meet these needs. Our lives have never been so precious as at this time, for now we are a part of God’s work. All the opportunities that we receive to improve our knowledge and understanding of the thoughts of the Creator and the plan of salvation are golden opportunities, if we speak of them when we sit in our houses or walk by the way, or when we lie down, or when we rise up. Deut. 11: 19, 20. They are golden opportunities because they bring us as well as others not only temporal, but everlasting salvation. Therefore we must improve the time to the utmost in this important age, while we are small, so very small in power and in number, and we are given only “moments” in which we must execute great thoughts and plans; and we can and will do it, for the word of prophecy says to us, “How happy will be the day when we see the fulfilment of our hopes, and can recognize what a blessed work our school has done in the completion of the work of the message!” Otto Lüpke.