Children as Missionaries by A Teacher

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 4, 1907

Children as Missionaries

By A Teacher

As our aim is, “The gospel to the World in This Generation,” the problem which must confront every Seventh-day Adventist teacher—the primary teacher as well as the intermediate and college teacher—is, In what way can I help the most in sending this gospel?

We are not all called to go to foreign lands to labor, and who would train the growing generation if we were?

I believe the teacher who, with the help of God, trains the child’s mind in such a way that he will have no other aim in life than to be a missionary is in the truest sense of the word a missionary herself.

Believing that the best way to accomplish this end was to set the child to work doing something, a short time after school opened this fall, we began making plans for a missionary society.

Having so many classes and the children being behind in their studies, it was a problem when to have it. I finally decided that one half hour each Wednesday morning could be spared by omitting the opening exercises and drawing lesson.

The first thing we did was to appoint a committee of three to nominate officers, which were to be as follows: president, vice-president, secretary, and assistant secretary. This committee was also to suggest a name for our society.

After the officers had been elected, and a name had been agreed upon, we set about planning for work. I was not to be elected to any office, but was to be their counselor in all things.

The first thing we decided to do was to have the children take care of their papers and bring them each week to the missionary meeting, where one or two were appointed to wrap them, address them, and hand them to the secretary, who would mail them. At each meeting a penny collection is taken to pay the postage.

Soon we had a surplus on hand. We used this to buy copies of the Life Boat and of Liberty. We sent for about thirty of each the first time, and found no trouble in selling them.

In the meantime the children gathered up outgrown clothes, which were to be sent away. The surplus obtained by selling the papers was to go to pay the freight on these clothes.

At our meetings we plan our work, and tell our experiences. Sometimes we study the different fields, and sometimes we prepare programs, for which occasions special songs and missionary recitations are learned. A TEACHER.