Guadeloupe, West Indies by PHILIP GIDDINGS; LOISE P. GIDDINGS

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 15, 1915

Guadeloupe, West Indies

By PHILIP GIDDINGS; LOISE P. GIDDINGS

We opened our meeting room last March, holding services thrice a week, and using the rest of the time in scattering copies of the French Signs of the Times, and looking for openings to hold Bible readings. After two or three studies the people seem to feel they have had enough. We are still searching for, and praying to be directed to, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

A young sister is now ready for baptism. An elderly woman joined us in the week of prayer meetings, and has since expressed her desire to go through to the kingdom with us. A schoolteacher has been in sympathy with our tenets for some time. Being ill, he had to go to the government hospital, which is staffed with Catholic sisters. While he was there, the bishop visited the institution, stopped at his bed, and presented him with a medal representing Christ, or some saint. He thanked the bishop, but told him he had no need for the medal as he had his Bible. Then he put some questions to this dignitary: “Who were the photographers that took the pictures of Christ, Mary, and others? How may we be certain that respects are paid to genuine copies of the original? How is it we read in the Bible of Mary as a poor woman, and yet in representation see her dressed in costly array, with her infant?” He said the bishop was gentlemanly and courteous, simply remarking, “You have Protestant ideas,” and bade him good-by.

Some time afterwards a priest visited him who did not manifest such a spirit. The governor had to come in, and define, as far as that institution was concerned, the domains of body and soul. The governor told the priest, “This man is here for the good of his body; force nothing on his soul.”

On my second visit to this brother, he was better and had left the hospital. I asked one of the sisters as to his whereabouts, and she told me I would find him on Rue l'Enfer (hell street), very suggestive in the connection. I found the brother cool and happy, and we passed some pleasant moments together. Since then he wrote that emissaries of the church were trying to make it very hard for him. “The moment you dare to

think otherwise than a Romanist,” he said, “you are put on the Index.” His letter of recent date is full of courage and determination. He says: “I read my Bible constantly. I observe the Sabbath carefully. Your religion is mine. What I now await is the baptism in the manner John administered it to Jesus in the Jordan.” Besides his own language, he understands English, Spanish, and Italian.

Until we came here we were never in a field where the people seemed so indifferent, and where we felt so much the need of divine help. But we are of good courage. The realization of Col. 4:3 is our constant prayer, and we ask all those who read these lines to join us in the same request.

PHILIP GIDDINGS. LOISE P. GIDDINGS.