How Some Smaller Mission Fields Are Helping
By William A. Spicer
SOME interesting correspondence has come in from two of the small island fields, showing how the little companies of believers in these isolated missions are joining us in lifting at the burden laid upon us who know the message for this time. St. Andrews Island shows very small on the map, away out in the Caribbean Sea to the northwest of Colombia, to which it belongs. The believers are very few, but they love this message. Sister J. B. Stuyvesant gives the following financial report:— Our offerings in St. Andrews for the year have been,—
Sabbath-school . . . . . . . . . . . . $101.45
Tithe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378.50
Washington Fund . . . . . . . . . . . 125.00
Oakwood School . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.00
First-day offerings . . . . . . . . . 135.50
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $750.45 Besides this, over seventy dollars has been raised; with this we have purchased a tent in which to hold meetings in other parts of the island. We buy our own Sabbath-school supplies, so we have been able to give all to the advancement of the message in some other places. Brother — has provided a school-house and place for our meetings, helped every cause presented, and has built and deeded to the Mission Board a comfortable five-room cottage for a home for the mission worker or teacher who may have charge of the work here. Best of all, he has eleven children whom he is anxious to train for useful places in the message. Such reports must ever be an encouragement to those who have given of their means in order to plant the standard of truth in the foreign fields. It shows that wherever this message goes, it gathers out earnest hearts who partake of the same spirit of sacrifice in its behalf. Another similarly encouraging report comes from Elder J. A. Morrow, of the Bermuda Islands. He writes:— I thought you might be interested in the following list of items which show the money raised in this field for 1905:—
Tithe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 439.64
Sabbath-school offerings ($85 of which was given to missions) . . . . . . . . . . . 97.99
Weekly offerings . . . . . . . . . . . 30.94
Annual offering . . . . . . . . . . . 18.94
Profits on book sales . . . . . . . . 70.64
Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.58
Washington work . . . . . . . . . . . 75.94
Church building . . . . . . . . . . . 345.60
Hall rent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75.00
Literature for free distribution . . . 6.00
Southern work . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.00
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1,188.27 Of course the larger mission fields are all straining every nerve to help the work in every way, but it is of special interest to see these little isolated mission stations, such as St. Andrews and Bermuda, very beehives of activity in behalf of the third angel's message. Truly the believers being raised up in the lands abroad are people having a mind to work. We in the older and stronger fields may well be encouraged to work more earnestly than ever to sow the seed that will bring forth similar fruitage in all the unentered parts of the great harvest-field. W. A. S.