South American Union Mission Report for 1903 and 1904
By J. W. Westphal
The South American Union Mission embraces all of South America except Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Guianas. Its area is 6,237,122 square miles. The area of Brazil alone is nearly equal to that of the United States including Alaska, while the area of the whole field is more than double that of the United States.
Population
There is no very reliable information regarding the population of many of the South American republics. However, the latest estimates are far in excess of our statistical report. The population of Brazil is considered to be 22,000,000. The total population of the whole field is not far from 40,000,000, about one half of the population of the United States. The largest city of the southern hemisphere is in our territory, Buenos Ayres, with a population of about one million. There are numerous other cities ranging from 20,000 to 700,000 inhabitants.
Membership
The field is divided into three divisions; namely, the Brazil Conference, embracing Brazil; the River Plate Conference, embracing Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay; and the West Coast Mission field, embracing Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Scattered over this territory are forty-one churches, with a membership of 1,438; nine companies, with 130 members; and 130 isolated Sabbath-keepers. Thus the total number of Sabbath-keepers is 1,698. The increase for the two years is seven churches and 293 members. The increase in Sabbath-keepers is 354. The year 1904 was the more fruitful, adding four churches, 125 members, and 209 Sabbath-keepers. The gain is distributed among the several fields as follows: Brazil, one church, 152 members, 190 Sabbath-keepers; the River Plate Conference, five churches, 90 members, 90 Sabbath-keepers; the West Coast Mission field, one church, 67 members, 53 Sabbath-keepers. The total membership in Brazil is 783, and the total number of Sabbath-keepers, 932; in the River Plate Conference, 520 members and 550 Sabbath-keepers; the membership of the West Coast field is 135, and there are 224 Sabbath-keepers.
Funds
The tithe for 1902 was $5,100.52, for 1903 $6,316.91, and for 1904 $7,846.66, a gain for 1903 of $1,215.49, and for 1904 of $1,746.14. The tithe for the two years is $13,946.18, an annual average of $4.89 per capita. The Sabbath-school offerings amounted to $1,762, and other donations to $2,057.98. Thus the grand total flowing into the several regular treasuries from our field is $17,766.12.
Of the tithe the Brazil Conference received $5,893.42, the River Plate Conference $6,512.17, and the West Coast Mission field $1,757.28. In Brazil the Sabbath-school offerings were $874.10, in the River Plate Conference $670.10, in the West Coast field $217.70. Other regular offerings amounted to $546.58 in Brazil, $1,056.18 in the River Plate Conference, and $452.67 in the West Coast field. The gain in tithe in 1903 over the previous year was $317.31, and in 1904 over 1903 it was $117.76 in Brazil; in the River Plate Conference there was a gain of $834.57 in 1903, and $983.03 in 1904; while on the West Coast the gain was $63.61 in 1903, and $410.06 in 1904. In the offerings of every class there was an increase of $295.60 in 1903, and a falling off of $122.52 in 1904, in Brazil; in the River Plate Conference a falling off of $104.87 in 1903, and a gain of $255.62 in 1904; in the West Coast field the falling off was $35.43 in 1903, and the gain in 1904 was $341.43. The annual tithe per capita was $3.87 in Brazil, $6.69 in the River Plate Conference, and $4.95 in the West Coast field. The donations for local enterprises not counted in the foregoing, have materially increased in Brazil and the River Plate Conference.
Book Sales
The total value of book sales for the two years is $4,702.02. This does not include the sales in the River Plate Conference for 1904, a report of which I was not able to obtain. The financial condition of the River Plate and Brazil Tract Society has materially improved during the last two years.
Training-Schools
Three mission schools with four teachers have been in operation. The enrolment in two of these was forty-six last year. Four of the students from these schools now hold ministerial licenses, and have begun laboring with success. About twenty others are or have been engaged as canvassers, church-school teachers, or in general missionary work. With the exception of the school at Taquara, Brazil, our schools are free from debt. This one has resources with which, if available now, it could nearly, if not entirely, meet its obligations. No interest is being paid on the debt. The River Plate school is still increasing its accommodations, but the plan of the building and the policy of the conference is such that it need not and will not go any farther than its funds will permit. However, there are many things really needed that it must do without. Plans are being laid for a school on the West Coast, forty acres of land has been11donated, and some means have been gathered, but necessarily some time must elapse before our hopes are realized.
Periodicals
Three monthly missionary papers, La Verdad Presente, Senales de los Tiempos, and Arauto da Verdade, are being published, one in each of the two Spanish-speaking fields, and the other in the Portuguese language in Brazil, with an aggregate issue of seven thousand copies monthly. Of these only the Senales de los Tiempos of the West Coast has paid its way, not counting the editorial work. We have two small church papers published monthly by the South American Union Mission,—one German, Der Adventisten Rundschau, and one Spanish, the Revista Adventista. These are a union of the two small German and two Spanish papers published by the several fields up to last June.
AN INDIAN CHIEF, BRAZIL
Printing Plants
For some years the West Coast has had a second-hand lever press, purchased by the brethren there, upon which its printing has been done. It has been the belief of our brethren in the other fields that our printing work could be more satisfactorily, and perhaps more cheaply, done if they each possessed a small printing outfit. A small amount had already been donated for this purpose when Brother John Lipke, with the consent of the General Conference Committee, presented the matter before our brethren in several places in the United States, with the result that a small second-hand cylinder press was donated by the Emmanuel Missionary College, and about two thousand dollars was paid or pledged toward making the outfit complete and securing a printer. The outfit had just arrived when I passed through Rio de Janeiro on my way to this conference.
At the close of 1904 the River Plate Conference had on hand $450 for a similar outfit for that field. Since then enough has been donated to bring the amount above $1,000, with which a hand and power machine and other necessaries have been purchased. This outfit will, for the present, be connected with our training-school. No doubt both it and the one in Brazil are now in operation.
Publishing Funds
We have but little literature in the Portuguese and Spanish languages, editions of published books are exhausted, and there is no book or pamphlet treating on the prophetic phase of present truth, and our assortment of tracts is very limited. This has led to the consideration of what we should do to meet this want that we might more effectually give the message to the millions of these languages in our field. The result is that publishing funds have been started, one for our Spanish South American field, and the other for the Portuguese field in Brazil. I can not give the standing of these funds to-day, but fully five hundred dollars has been gathered for the Portuguese fund, but much less for the Spanish. It is our plan to publish tracts and pamphlets at first, and only as rapidly as they are made use of, that means may not be unnecessarily tied up. The South American Union Mission Committee has voted to request our brethren of the General Conference to give to each of these funds five thousand dollars. In view of the large publishing interests already in existence in the United States, and which are still being increased, and the utter lack in our own field, we feel that this is no unreasonable request.
Medical Work
Our medical work has not taken definite form as yet. Dr. Habenicht has had many difficulties in securing recognition. His time has been divided between ministerial work, with which he has connected his medical knowledge, and private practise. Up to the present we consider the first as profitable to the advancement of the work as any institutional work could have been. We hope that he will soon receive the necessary papers from the government. Dr. Gregory has been engaged in private practise in Brazil.
Progress of the Message
The ordained ministers of our field at the close of 1904 were thirteen, divided as follows: Brazil, four; River Plate Conference, five; and the West Coast, three. One of those in the River Plate Conference has had charge of the office for the last two years. Since the first of this year one has left the field, while another has charge of the office, and one has left the West Coast field. There were seven holding ministerial license. These have been added to since. Of other licensed laborers there were eight, and of canvassers fifteen.
Work has been done in only a small portion of southern Brazil. A territory nearly as large as the United States has not yet been touched. True, in places it is but sparsely settled, and in others there are only wandering bands of Indians; but do they not belong to the “every nation, kindred, tongue, and people” that must hear the message? In the number of its negro population released from slavery only a little more than a decade ago, it presents an aspect not unlike the Southern field in the United States, or the vast African field. The fact that they are Catholics makes the problem of reaching them not an easy one to solve. The captain of a German steamer said to me: “Our steamships skirt the whole Atlantic coast of Brazil. We sail to the head of navigation on the Amazon and its tributaries. We are now projecting a line up the Parana and Paraguay Rivers, and,” he added jokingly, “then our arms will have encircled her, and we shall be ready to take her in.” There is wisdom in the suggestion for us. Should not this message quickly follow the lines of trade and civilization, and thus encircle this vast field, that under the closing work of the loud cry, we may close in from every side, and speedily complete our work.
For two years Paraguay has been destitute of a laborer. Only recently has a licentiate again entered that republic to make it his permanent field of labor. There has been no permanent laborer in Uruguay. In only five of the fourteen provinces of Argentina has our work a foothold. We are planning to enter others as quickly as possible. We have never attempted to do anything for the many thousand Indians in Argentina and Paraguay.
The West Coast is a needy field. We have but two ordained ministers there now, and as one of these is the editor of our paper, and the other the superintendent of the field, they both need to remain within reach of the office. Two brethren who are entering the ministry need to remain within reach of those older in experience, that they may have their help and advice. Thus these brethren are necessarily confined to Chile in their work. Our first attempt to labor among the Indians in our field is now being undertaken in the southern part of Chile. Peru and Ecuador each have one colporteur, while in the former we have about twenty Sabbath-keepers. If past experiences are to be repeated, believers are sure to arise in their wake. It will be economy to have an ordained minister in each of these republics to unite his efforts with those of the colporteur, looking after these souls and developing interests, instead of having one man travel thousands of miles at great expense to do a work for which he does not have time. For Bolivia nothing has been or is being done. Foreigners with foreign capital have entered, and are busily searching for her mineral treasures, but there is no one seeking for the richer treasures of precious, blood-bought souls.
It has been said that territory does not count in the preaching of the gospel:12it is men that we are after. We are often made painfully aware of the fact that territory does count in our field. With Brazil, larger than the United States, and each of the other fields as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, with Texas and the States bordering on the Mississippi on the west thrown in, we find them immense fields to plan for. With the West Coast field, four thousand miles in length, and the other fields of equal proportions, and these distances spanned only imperfectly with slow, tedious, and expensive means of travel, slow and irregular boats, expensive railway service, or, what is frequently more economical in every way, by mule, it is a strain upon the time and strength, and sometimes upon the health, of the laborers, and a drain upon our treasury only to look after the work already established. The larger portion of Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador can be reached only by the last-named mode of travel, while the same method must be liberally used in other republics.
South America is the one field that has not been visited by an experienced General Conference representative; yet it is, perhaps, not the most recently opened field. The difficulties we have to contend with in carrying forward our work are, I believe, second to but few. We therefore request that during the coming year, at the time most suitable to the conditions in the several South American fields, an experienced representative may come to remain sufficiently long to get acquainted with our condition and needs, and to assist us by counsel in our plans.
Conclusion
In behalf of our brethren throughout the South American field I would express thanks to the General Conference Committee and to our brethren generally who have, frequently at great sacrifice, given of their means for the support of the work, for the laborers and means that have been sent to us from time to time. We know that you have had many urgent appeals with a shortage in men and funds, and great consequent perplexity. This has often made us more modest in our requests than we otherwise might have been, and more so than our work seemed to demand. In the name of the many millions in our field who have not yet heard the good news of earth’s soon-coming King, we still pray that your favors may be continued to us.
