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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jan 11, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 2.

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Hayti

By W. JAY TANNER

GRANDE RIVIERE, a town of perhaps twenty thousand inhabitants, is situated among the mountains of Hayti, about eighteen miles south of Cape Haitien. This town is celebrated among Haitiens as the birthplace of Dessalines, the founder of Haitien independence, and it is also famous as a place where numerous successful revolutions have been inaugurated. I have been told that because of these facts the Haitien people look with more or less favor upon any movement that, in its beginning, is associated with the place. At any rate it was here that in August, 1905, eighteen members of the local Baptist church, including their native pastor, began to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. This was the result of the efforts of the young teacher of whom I spoke in my last report.
On the third of November, in company with an interpreter and some others, I started out to pay this little company a few days' visit. We traveled by rail, and were received and entertained with the greatest of hospitality by an ex-commandant of the Haitien navy, who has embraced the message. I was first taken, however, to the headquarters of the general in command of this military district. This visit, which was paid as a matter of respect, he returned the following Sunday, with his staff in full uniform, an honor that, as an Adventist minister, I never expected to receive, even in this “land of generals.” This officer, however, is a warm friend of our cause, and argues in favor of the truth wherever he goes.
The meetings with the little company here were well attended, both by members and by others. We felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in these meetings to a degree that I have seldom realized either in America or in Jamaica. Those who compose this company are mostly men, who, when compared with their fellow citizens, can be rated among the more intelligent members of the community. One has been a judge and also a representative, another a commissioned naval officer, and one is a school-teacher. The others are mostly cultivators of the soil. Altogether the outlook at Grande Riviere, as at Cape Haitien, is favorable for the advancement of the message in this republic.
W. JAY TANNER.