Ministers Are Waiting by William C. White

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 30, 1909

Ministers Are Waiting

By William C. White

Waiting

LAST year there were more than a thousand boys and girls in our forty mission schools for Negro children. They love the schools; and through the influence of the instruction received from God-fearing teachers, marvelous changes are wrought in their lives. Urgent calls for more schools come from neglected localities, and we have fondly hoped that work might begin this month in eight or ten more places.

Some of the old schools have begun their work for the season; but in some places the work is waiting for means. The children are eagerly waiting for the schools to open, and the teachers are anxiously waiting for the necessary money to take them to the schools, and to pay for the first week's food.

The Southern Missionary Society, which has been our agency for the management of these schools, is ready to do its part as heretofore, but it is waiting for the usual inflow of funds, that it may send the teachers to the schools with the promise of the usual support.

Ministers Are Waiting

During the last two years about twenty colored evangelists have been employed by our conferences in the Southern States. Some of these are now waiting for funds with which to proceed with their work.

The Sick Are Waiting

There are hundreds of families in Nashville and neighboring towns, where poverty and sickness abide. The sick ones need the care and patient instruction of a missionary nurse. The Rock City Sanitarium aims to be a center from which trained nurses and faithful assistants shall go forth to minister to the sick and needy. There are consecrated young people ready to engage in this work, and Dr. Blake will gladly lead and direct their labors. But they must have food, shelter, and clothing. And this good work is waiting for some large-hearted individuals or churches to supply five or six salaries of twenty-five dollars a month.

The Rock City Sanitarium was purchased, fitted up, and opened for work last year. Those in charge are struggling hard to do good work, and broad fields of labor are opening before them. But we must not forget that the institution is only half paid for, only half furnished, and only half manned.

Where is the farmer who would load a cord of wood onto a two-horse wagon having only two wheels, while the other two wheels were in the wagon shop waiting to be paid for, then hitch on one horse, and haul his wood to the market and sell it? Such a man could say to the Rock City Sanitarium, “We have given you a start, now work your way out.”

The Work at Huntsville Is Waiting

Our contribution to the work among the Negro people of the United States in October, 1908, was nearly ten thousand dollars. The proportion assigned to the Huntsville school was nearly twenty-eight hundred dollars. This was used in paying the salaries of teachers.

The necessity of providing more room for students, better farm facilities, and of building a small sanitarium, where the sick can be cared for and the students trained to be missionary nurses, was presented at a few of the camp-meetings, and about seven thousand dollars was subscribed. Most of this has been paid, and as a result the school has been enabled to complete the boys' dormitory, to put its farm work on a better footing, and to build its sanitarium. And just as the building was ready for the plumbers to put in the heating plant and bathroom fixtures, all work had to stop for lack of means.

We rejoice that some of our churches and some of our young people's societies have promised to furnish rooms in this much-needed sanitarium, but from only a few have the funds been received. Therefore the patients are waiting, the rooms are waiting, and the students are waiting for the education to be gained in the faithful care of the sick.

At the camp-meetings this summer first attention had to be given to the raising of funds for the support of the foreign missions, and the Negro work has received but little attention. We hope that the October offerings will bring immediate and abundant relief.

To church officers, I will suggest that the needs of the Negro work just now are especially large and urgent. Therefore let us endeavor to swell the amount by securing a few large supplementary gifts from those who can afford to give freely. If we could double the amount given last year, it would be none too much to cover the necessities of the work, and set in operation precious and valuable agencies that are waiting.

We can not consent to have a dozen of our mission schools closed. We can not bear to see faithful evangelists held from the field. We must not wait another year for the opening of the Huntsville Sanitarium. We do not want the Rock City Sanitarium to establish its reputation as a place half furnished and half supported. That is not the way Seventh-day Adventists manage their missionary enterprises.

Let us follow the contribution of October 2 with large gifts till each one of these waiting enterprises becomes a working enterprise. W. C. WHITE.