Pemba, Rhodesia, South Africa
By W. H. Anderson
It has been some time since I reported our work, and as I know the brethren and sisters are much interested in things here I shall try to make amends for this neglect. I have been very busy since I last wrote. I made a two weeks' trip among the out-stations, and had a good time with the boys in those schools. I found them all of good courage, and was able to settle some small matters for them that had seemed great to them; but when we had a chance to get together and see the thing from the Lord's side of it, they yielded and all seemed satisfactory, and I left them all happy and going on with the work as well as they could. One thing that seemed rather strange to me occurred at the Bwenga station,—the one Brother R. C. Porter and I were near when we turned back from the lion. The people had met with a number of misfortunes at the kraals, near there, and on consulting the witch-doctor as to the reason, they were told that it was because they had not attended the meetings and placed their children in the mission school, and that more would come to them if they did not attend to this matter at once. They said they thought he was right, but as the boys were all away on the Kafui with the cattle they would have to wait until the boys came home, and then they would see to it that they all attended the school. The attendance at the Sabbath services has increased very materially. I have repaired all the plows and cultivators and harrows on the out-stations, and have the workers well supplied with food, so they have nothing to do but get at their farm work as soon as the rains start. I am quite pleased with the prospects for the future, and I feel sure that when we get Brother J. R. Campbell back and have him again devoting his time to this work, we shall see greatly advanced strides in it. I have been reading again this past week the instruction that was given in regard to the Avondale school, and it seems to me that we are carrying it out as nearly here as the different conditions will admit. If I know that God is back of a plan, I never hesitate to carry it out, although the heavens should fall; for then I know we are in the right, and God will take care of the results. It is only when we depart from his plans that we are in trouble. I have been going over the record of the tithes and offerings for the last two years and comparing them with the previous two years, and I find that we have made gains in every department. The tithe has increased, also the Sabbath-school offerings, weekly offerings, annual offerings, and second tithe. We are glad for this and hope to do better in the future. Brother Campbell has now prepared over two hundred hymns in the native language, and as soon as they have been thoroughly revised they will be ready to submit to the conference committee for its action as to whether they are to be published or not. By the end of the year we expect to have sufficient second tithe to meet all the expense, if the committee decides on publishing them. I think a great deal of that second tithe as a fund for native literature. We have paid every expense for what we have published here, and have a nice little fund for the next time; then it is a perpetual fund, and no one as yet seems to have suffered from paying it. It makes it so much easier to get the books published when we can have the money on hand to meet all the expense and have the work translated and revised, and ask only the sanction of the committee instead of having to ask them for the funds to meet the expense.