A Letter From Iceland by Guy Dail

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 2, 1903

A Letter From Iceland

By Guy Dail

GUY DAIL

The extracts herewith given are from a letter not intended for publication, a friendly letter, in which the writer speaks of his work unreservedly and freely. Yet it is well known that sometimes these personal and heart-to-heart interviews between friend and friend reveal a truer picture of the real situation than would be possible in an article intended for the public. It might seem very improper for a man to write for a religious journal as freely as he could speak to a friend; but it occurred to me that a real picture of the Icelandic field might be of much encouragement to some of our brethren who are working in what they imagine to be hard fields, although, really, the difficulties with which they are surrounded are not so great as they might encounter in some other parts of the vineyard. To quote:—

“Again I will thank you, my dear brother, for your kind letter. I frequently feel quite alone, and have sometimes been tempted to get discouraged. Iceland is a very hard field, indeed, and I often think: ‘How is it possible for the brethren to be satisfied with the results they see here? Shall I give up the work, or not? Before I came to this place, I was a successful minister in Norway. The last winter that I labored in Hamar, a new field, I had the joy of raising up a church of about twenty members; and I have been laboring here for five years, and do not see nearly so encouraging results.’ Such thoughts as these often come to me. But my only hope is that the Lord knows and sees all, and I trust that he will lead the brethren to take such steps in regard to my work as may be in perfect harmony with his will. Pray for me, dear brother, that I may not miss the mark. O, what a blessing it is to rest in the hands of the Lord, when the heart is disturbed by the troubles of life! But often it is a hard thing to become so resigned to his will that we can thus peacefully and trustingly rest in him.

“Here in Seydisfjord the prospects are dark both as regards religious and temporal matters. The poor people have no way of earning a living. Some years ago this was a good fishing station, and then a number of people moved here to work; but for the last five years nothing has been made in this work, to speak of, and scarcely any other kind of employment is to be had, therefore many a husband and father has to be contented with a working season of from two to four months a year. One can see that this would mean all but starvation—but this is the real situation in which many find themselves. For that reason hundreds of Icelanders, maybe nearly two thousand, a large proportion of whom are from Seydisfjord and the eastern part of the island, are planning to leave for America this spring. Of course most of them do not have the money for their passage; but their friends in America, and the government of Canada and Manitoba (it is to these lands that the Icelanders generally go) help them. This is not very promising for the small country of Iceland, and for our work here, as it is probable that some of our friends may go, too.

“In religious things the Icelanders are very indifferent. Only a few of them believe that the Bible, as a whole, is the Word of God. Scarcely any one here believes that there will be any suffering in the lake of fire. Naturally, much of our energy must be expended in showing them that the Word of God is the foundation of genuine religion. This is up-hill work in dealing with those who have lost their faith in the Scriptures. I write this that you may know a little of what we must contend with here.

“Of course we find precious souls among the people, those who are hungering for the light and blessing of God. I hope the Lord may give us more of this class the coming year. I have been much rejoiced by the coming of Brother Anderson, from Sweden. He is a faithful brother. God be thanked that he came.

“The paper I publish is getting along nicely. We now print fifteen hundred copies, and I hope they may be all sold this year.”

Every worker may have times when the work seems to go slowly, and his success is not what he thinks it should be. In the hour of trial, we may be encouraged by the thought that others, too, are surrounded with difficulties as we are, and thus the example of one may be blessed of God to the good of another.

There is also another good purpose to be served by “speaking often one to another” about the experiences which God gives us. When we thus learn of the hard circumstances in which a missionary is placed, we are called upon to lay his case the more earnestly before God in prayer, and then our own hearts are refreshed and built up; for every unselfish prayer strongly reacts upon him who offers it, watering his own soul, and making it more productive and fruitful in the Master’s service.

Yet one more thought: There is very apt to be in the mind of the inexperienced an altogether wrong idea of what foreign mission work is. Just as a distant view of a city or of a valley may lend enchantment to the landscape, so with the young, imaginative, and enthusiastic disciple of our Lord may be too strongly influenced by an ill-defined, general, semi-heroic notion of working for people of another language in another clime and in another country. As a people we are called to be missionaries; but the truth can not be too often reiterated that every one may learn to be a missionary just where he is, in the daily duties that come to him. God may not ask you in the judgment whether you labored in this or that field; but he will ask: Were your motives pure? and did you serve me with all your heart in whatever I gave you to do? The absolute and unconditional surrender of all is what we must come to; and the sooner we reach that position before our tender Father above, the more fully he will be able to use us in his service, and the more souls will he pluck from the burning through our ministry. Earnest work, hard work, work under discouraging circumstances, is sure to be the lot of him who would go forward in the rugged road marked out for his followers, by the Lamb of God, who came to take away the sin of the world. But the genuine joy of carrying out his bidding more than repays one for the troubles which may surround him in his attempts to be a herald of truth and righteousness, through the power of the everlasting gospel.