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The Somabula Mission

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 23, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 51.

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The Somabula Mission

By W. C. Walston

W. C. WALSTON
We are glad to report that the message is prospering here, and that we are of good courage. Fifteen new students have been enrolled lately, and our school is full. The students are doing nicely. We have been building new huts for all the boys in a new place, farther away from the mission house, and we have them finished just in time for the new arrivals. The old plan was to have all the buildings in close proximity, but the present plan greatly lessens the liability to loss by fire. It was also very noisy to have so many living close to the mission house. We shall enjoy the new arrangement much better.
It was our intention to build two new brick mission cottages this season, but as we shall not have the time, we shall fix up the old house for this year.
We are expecting to have a baptismal service soon. There are a number of candidates. It gives us pleasure to see souls gathered in, and getting ready for the Lord’s coming. I realize more and more that this is the great object for which we should strive.
Our crops are all harvested, and we shall have about one hundred more bags of mealies than last year. We are finding a ready market for our produce, at a mine only six miles from the mission.
Our out-schools are doing well. Mrs. Walston and I visited one a few weeks since, about fifty miles from here. We went with the big covered wagon and the oxen, taking our camping outfit along, and were away eight days. We had a very profitable time. The school is nearly as large as our mission school. On the Sabbath there were seventy-five out to meeting, and our lantern lectures Sabbath and Sunday nights were well attended.
I took along my instruments, and did the usual amount of extracting teeth, all along the road. The natives would come out, and we would stop the wagon, and the roadside became a dental office. There does not seem to be so much sickness in this section as in some localities, but sometimes I have treatments to give at the mission, as well as when I am traveling. There were several calls for other out-schools near the place we visited, and the people want a white teacher. There were seven who wished to be baptized. On the whole, we were much encouraged with the results of the out-school.
As we see the needs of this field, and the limited number of missionaries to carry the message, our minds go to the home land, and we think of the many Sabbath-keepers who might come to this country and help us,—men who have means, so that they could come on their own resources and start the work on a small scale. It would soon be self-supporting. I sometimes wish I could spend a year in the States, and go among our people, and tell them of the needs of this field, and see if some could not be aroused to come into these far-off places and render service for God. I feel sure that if we had sufficient land here in this mission which we could cultivate, we should soon be entirely self-supporting. We have only about one hundred acres. There being so much forest, we have to cultivate in small plots. We are nearly self-supporting now.
The work will soon be finished. I feel that God is soon to do much for the natives in Africa. They are rapidly coming into our schools of late, as you will see by the reports from other missions, and I hope we shall see these students returning to their own people, taking the message to them. This part of Rhodesia is a great mining district, and the natives come here to work in the mines, and after a little while hear of our school, and come to us, desiring to learn. Some of them live long distances away, perhaps hundreds of miles, and no doubt in this way the message will be carried to distant parts.
Gwelo, Rhodesia.