Our School in Rarotonga
By A. H. Piper
As we have just closed the year's work, it seems proper to look back over the months that have gone, and call to mind the manifest working of God. Early in February, 1902, Sister Evelyn Gooding, of Australia, came to the island to conduct the school that we contemplated beginning. After a week or two of prayer and counsel, we decided to erect two suitable native houses for dormitories, and in the meantime to begin a day-school at Arorangi. Sister Gooding began with one student, then two, and so on until she had fifteen pupils on the school register. This school was held in the morning, and as most of our brethren lived in Titikaveka, another village, we decided to conduct an afternoon school for the benefit of their children, Sister Gooding driving there four days in the week. Owing to a good deal of trouble in securing roofing material for the dormitories, it was not until the beginning of July that we were ready to convert the two day-schools into a boarding-school. In doing so, we lost some of the students of the Titikaveka school, but those who did come were greatly benefited by being under our personal supervision. The Arorangi youth still continued to attend as day-students. Our class room was the largest room in the mission house, but it soon proved far too small to accommodate the growing number of students. Seeing this, we decided to erect a schoolhouse with accommodations for forty or fifty students. The walls of this house are built as natives often build,—the lower part stone and the rest sticks bound side by side to the frame. This insures thorough ventilation, which is so much needed in a schoolroom. The roof is of iron, and the floor is concrete, which is clean and cool, and in every way suitable for this climate. It was a happy day when we were able to move into it after being so cramped in the mission home. School is held five days in the week; it begins at 7 A. M. and continues until 12:45 P. M., with the exception of an intermission of an hour and a quarter. For three hours during the afternoon, all the students are engaged with manual labor. They raise part of their food, the remainder being supplied by their parents and friends. With the aid of the15caretaker, they have built a good native house. Several of them came to school with sores all over their bodies, but by regular habits of eating and the use of simple remedies, their skins have become clean and clear. During the last two months, an epidemic of measles and dysentery has caused all other schools on the island to be closed. We have not had one case among the students living here. This is all the more remarkable when we remember that all the families represented in the school have been afflicted with one or the other of the diseases, and in some cases with both of them, and yet have frequently come to the school with food supplies for their children. To the kind watch-care of our Heavenly Father alone can we attribute this immunity. To him be the praise. When our readers realize that the grandparents of the children of Rarotonga were heathen, they will better understand the material that we have to deal with in our school work. But we have had evidence that God is in the movement, as gradually the students became disciplined to a good degree. And this is not all: several have given their hearts to God, and the two leading students, youths just entering manhood, desired to follow their Lord in baptism. This they had the privilege of doing to-day. It was a blessed service. As we gathered on the shore of a beautiful lagoon, which divides the land from the ocean beyond, every heart seemed animated with the presence of God's Spirit. At the conclusion of the ordinance, as we arose from seeking God's blessing upon what had been done, there was hardly a dry eye in the assembly. Brethren and strangers alike were moved by the Holy Spirit. The father of one of those baptized, himself a Sabbathkeeper, but who has not gone forward in baptism, went to the edge of the bush which fringes the beach, and there wept like a child. Another, a Maori woman not of our faith, said to me with tears streaming down over her cheeks: "O missionary, my heart is sad because of my sin, yet very happy for what I have seen with my eyes to-day." Others were affected in a similar manner. As we went from one to the other, we had the privilege of pointing them to "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." We believe that others in the school and also some outside will ask for baptism before long. May the blessed work go on, and may we have the prayers of the brethren in the home land that it may be so.