N. Z. T by N. Z. T.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Aug 17, 1911

N. Z. T

By N. Z. T.

NOTE.—The readings for this Fourth Sabbath Service touch a comparatively new phase of work, at least new for Seventh-day Adventists, as we have done very little to bring a knowledge of the truth to the foreigners in this country, except what has been done for the Germans and the Scandinavians. Other denominations are becoming fully awakened to the responsibilities which these foreigners bring to them, and to the opportunities not only of bringing those who are here to a knowledge of the gospel, but also of carrying the gospel to the foreign fields through those who return from this country to the fatherland.

The Woman’s Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church has under commission thirty-seven missionaries and teachers, instructing 1,231 pupils in day-schools, with 1,550 enrolled in eighteen Sunday-schools, working among Germans, Scandinavians, Hungarians, Greeks, Italians, Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Bohemians, Slovaks, and Croatians. This Woman’s Board also issues literature bearing upon the needs of the immigrant people. A missionary on Ellis Island at the board of entry at New York, who speaks several languages, extends a welcoming hand to many in the name of Christ.

The Baptists also have prosperous missions in different cities for the Bohemians, Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, Russians, Letts, and the Lithuanians. In Chicago they have four Bohemian Sunday-schools, with an enrolment of nearly six hundred pupils.

An Italian who was converted from Catholicism in a Baptist mission in Hartford, Conn., returned to his native town in Italy, and there he and one or two others who had been converted in the same mission, began to teach the gospel to their countrymen. Their meetings soon outgrew the small private room in which the services were held, and they rented a larger room, where they soon had a congregation of over four hundred people. The priests held special masses and services to hinder the work, but the meetings continued, with ever-increasing interest.

We believe, with Elder Olsen, that there are great possibilities both for the home field and for the regions beyond in this home foreign missionary work.