Report of Work and Wanderings by Stephen N. Haskell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 25, 1907

Report of Work and Wanderings

By Stephen N. Haskell

The past sixteen months my wife and I have been laboring in California. We conducted a Bible training-school in San Bernardino for five months, during which time we also held a series of tent-meetings. In August we went to Oakland and held daily Bible studies in connection with the tent-meeting following the camp-meeting. Although these Bible classes were held at eight o’clock each morning, and some of the interested ones lived at a distance from the camp, yet the brethren and sisters attended regularly, and many began distributing literature in the city.

About the middle of October we closed our Bible school in Oakland, and opened one in the Laguna Street church in San Francisco. The brethren and sisters took hold in earnest, and the Lord witnessed to the work by giving them a desire to labor for souls.

After the conference held at San Jose, we again returned to Oakland and conducted a Bible school in a house owned by the Oakland church, holding three Bible classes daily. We never had a more interesting class; it was composed of the working element of the Oakland church. While working in Oakland and San Francisco, we spent a few Sabbaths and Sundays with some of the churches in the neighboring towns.

From August to March, while laboring in Oakland and San Francisco, the Lord helped us to distribute considerable literature through the work of the brethren and sisters attending our Bible classes. Twenty-two hundred copies of “Seer of Patmos,” two hundred and fifty of “Story of Daniel,” eleven thousand of the special Bible Training-School, and about three hundred small books were sold by those attending our Bible classes, and by the churches we visited. We felt very thankful for so large a distribution of literature in these large cities, and trust the faithful ones who helped to scatter it broadcast will see fruit from this labor in the kingdom.

Our Bible school in Oakland closed the twelfth of March, and we started for the East the next day. On our way through southern California, we spent three days at the San Fernando Academy. It was our first visit to this school, and we were much pleased with the missionary spirit manifested by both teachers and students. There was an air of simplicity about the school and its management that corresponds with the message we have to give to the world. So much formality and worldliness has crept into many of our churches connected with our institutions that it seems like old times to meet with a congregation once more that kneels with the minister when he bows in prayer at the desk.

There is a fine class of young people at San Fernando, and the faculty are striving to train them to be workers in the cause of God. I should judge there are about sixty who expect to go forth as canvassers the coming summer.

The day before we arrived was “field day,” and a large number of the students had gone out into the neighboring country and cities to canvass for books, having been in training several weeks. They were divided into four companies, working for four different books, and were a happy company of young people the next morning. During chapel exercises, Professor Lucas and Brother Horsman called for reports, and all the forenoon was spent in an old-fashioned missionary meeting, relating how the Lord had gone out before them and prospered them in their work. With many, it was the first attempt at canvassing. The value of the combined orders for the four books was over two hundred dollars for the day’s work. The faculty are hoping that a large corps of canvassers will go out from this school the coming summer.

There was one interesting feature brought out by the success of the work on “field day.” The division that sold more books than the three others put together was the class that had not been trained so much upon the theory of canvassing as upon the Scripture truths dwelt upon in the book they were selling. They had had Bible studies every day for more than two months in that portion of the Bible which was treated on in the book. When they went out, their minds were filled with the truths of the Bible, and their hearts with an earnest desire that others should know what God had said. This gave a power to their canvassing work that no amount of drill in theory of canvassing alone could give. We are convinced that if all our canvassers were educated in this manner, a far larger harvest of souls would follow their work.

We are in the loud cry of the message, and for years we have looked forward to this time as being the time when publications containing the truth would fall like the leaves of autumn, and our publishing houses would have their time all occupied, running night and day, in publishing the truth. This time will surely come. Our publishing houses will be taxed to their utmost in furnishing publications on present truth. But it never will be until our people, rank and file, rise up to scatter these publications, and place them in the hands of others. Thousands of people will be engaged in visiting from house to house, both in the city and in the country, as Bible workers, canvassers, and colporteurs, when ministers are not allowed to preach as they now are; and among the people of God on earth, as among the angels of heaven, there will be a hurrying to and fro to scatter the rays of light in every dark corner of the earth.

From San Fernando we came to Loma Linda, “Hill Beautiful,” and remained over the Sabbath. The sanitarium seemed in a prosperous condition; they have just completed their new bathrooms, which add greatly to the efficiency of the institution. From the sanitarium and school, workers are going out into the adjoining cities, giving health lectures, and conducting cooking schools in the homes of the people. They are well received, and find many open doors, and the workers have been invited to speak on health in the public schools.

We have certainly reached the time when all we have to do in any direction is to put forth the effort, in harmony with God’s plan, and God and holy angels come to our help.

S. N. HASKELL.