p. 20 | Cuba by G. A. Sandborn

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 21, 1912

Cuba

By G. A. Sandborn

ALTHOUGH Cuba is one of the newest canvassing fields, we who are here believe it one of the best, if not the best. The latter part of January I arrived at Havana, and after spending six days in quarantine, met Brother Robinson at Matanzas, where he had sold over six hundred dollars’ worth of books in six weeks. This being the sugar season, when money is circulating freely in the small towns of the interior, we decided to work among them until about the first of May.

For a month we have been in these towns, spending from one to six days in each, and although the work is a little hard, for many times we work by day and travel by night, yet the Lord has abundantly blessed. We have been able to take orders for more than one hundred dollars’ worth of books every week, besides delivering.

The joy of the work comes when a person is found hungering for light. At one place Brother Robinson and I were canvassing together when we met a well-known doctor who ordered a book. In the course of our conversation, we learned that he had been studying different Protestant religions, but finding something lacking in each, he was studying Spiritualism; that, too, had failed to satisfy him. He was looking for something, he knew not what. We gave him a copy of our Spanish paper, Las Señales de los Tiempos. When Brother Robinson returned, the doctor gave his subscription for the paper, and seeing “Patriarcas y Profetas” advertised in the health book we had sold him, wanted that too.

We believe that influential men will join our ranks in time to help swell the loud cry. As the farmer spends months sowing, tending, and watering a crop to obtain a harvest which is gathered in a few days, so with our work. While we may not see so many direct results just now, we have faith that the harvest-time will soon come, when we shall reap what we have sown.

Just now we are in Santa Clara, a town of sixteen thousand inhabitants, which will keep us busy for a month. The Lord has richly blessed in our two days’ work here, as we have the names of the governor of the state, the mayor, the heads of the departments of finance and public works, the cura (priest), president of the national bank, and four judges, besides several leading merchants, doctors, and lawyers. Books can be sold in Cuba, and can be delivered.

Our aim for this year is to sell ten thousand dollars’ worth of literature, and we have adopted as our motto the words of William Carey, India’s great missionary, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

As I am writing this, a letter comes saying that two young men are on their way to join us, and seven more expect to start at the close of school in May. With these and perhaps another worker from the States, we are looking forward to a successful campaign during the summer.

Cuba is a field of great opportunity, and it is open for this book work now. By the help of God and the prayers of his people, the work must and will go. The people are renouncing Rome. Now is the time to win souls for the New Jerusalem.

The passing of the sugar season will not affect the work in the port towns, and I doubt if it will make much difference in the interior towns. It is not conditions outside, but inside that affect the colporteur and his work.

This work in Latin fields has given me a new vision. When I see Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, and the great Amazon territory, which must be covered before we can clasp hands with the workers south of the equator, my heart longs to see the work advanced more rapidly. The tread of Bible colporteurs has already been heard three thousands miles up the Amazon, and we must be there, too. Cuba is on the outskirts now, but my prayer and aim is that this field may not fail nor hinder, but push on and ultimately be a help to some of these fields farther on.

We need your most earnest prayers for Cuba. There are difficulties, but the difficulties make us strong, and the victories give us courage.

G. A. SANDBORN.