p. 14 | Northwestern Training Centers

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jul 14, 1904

Northwestern Training Centers

By William Ambrose Spicer

W. A. SPICER

The new Northwest is a hearty, vigorous country, and it produces a strong, rugged class of young people, full of physical and mental vigor. The Northwestern spirit charges these youth with an electric ambition to be doing something. I am glad we have several training centers in this region to help our own young people to secure an equipment for service in the cause of the message.

I spent several very pleasant and profitable days at the Walla Walla College, which held its closing exercises early in May. By all the signs I could read there has been a strong uplifting influence in the school to turn the hearts of students toward God and his glorious work for our time. Among the older students I found an encouraging desire to get ready for active service in the cause. This is the test in our school work, surely. Only as the faculties are composed of those whose hearts are burning with zeal for the advancement and finishing of this work can we expect to find the same spirit pervading the school. I believe that any students at Walla Walla who passed through the year without receiving an inspiration in this direction must have resisted the general spirit in the school; for I found an earnest faculty, and was cheered by association with a good company of earnest-minded students.

The graduates numbered thirteen—five gentlemen and eight ladies. The courses of study represented by the class of 1904 are the ministerial, commercial, scientific, nurses’, stenographic, and normal.

Two students of Walla Walla, I believe, Brother William Steele and his wife, are now on their way to South America, and others who have been attending this year will erelong no doubt be serving in mission fields. Prof. J. L. Kay, now president of the college, was in attendance at the Western Washington and Oregon camp-meetings in the interests of the school, and I was glad to observe that his strong presentation of the cause of education and of the interests of the college met with hearty response from the people. There are many in the Northwest, of more mature years and experience than may usually be represented in the school, who I hope will take advantage of the courses of study planned for the next year.

In Portland, Ore., I enjoyed very much meeting with the sanitarium family, numbering about thirty workers. Here is another training center which has already given earnest missionaries to the far East. I am sure we shall find many others going out from Portland as missionaries to the fields abroad. These little sanitariums are essentially missionary training-schools, and as they multiply in the cities of our own land, they must produce a veritable army of evangelistic nurses. That is what the fields are calling for, and I found many a heart responsive to the call. Tacoma and Seattle, Wash., each have a small medical center, and I caught just a glimpse of the good work being done in them. The Northwest is in line with the call from the world-wide field. May the Lord bless this vigorous region, and make it a blessing.