A Special Mission Enterprise by William Ambrose Spicer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 14, 1903

A Special Mission Enterprise

By William Ambrose Spicer

THE Mission Board desires to call special attention to the call which Brother D. U. Hale makes in his report from the Gold Coast, West Africa, in this number (page 17). It will be seen that he has found in the interior a location affording the most favorable conditions for health, and the chiefs of the district freely offer the land. Now Brother Hale appeals to us to help him with the funds for putting up a house for mission headquarters and school.

There is need for prompt action. In a later letter, our brother reports further favorable circumstances at Mansu, and urges that no time be lost in getting established. It will be remembered that we opened work on the Gold Coast about eight years ago. Brother Hale himself and other workers were driven back by the climate of the Coast, which has given the whole region the name of being the “white man’s grave.” One of our missionaries, Brother Riggs, was buried there. If there had then been a headquarters on higher land in the interior, to which the workers could have resorted in the bad season, the results might have been very different.

Believers and interested ones were left behind; and all through the years since, they have been appealing to us to send them teachers of the truth. Now Brethren Hale and Hyatt and their families are again in the field. The truth must be pushed back into the interior and along the coast, to warn vast regions with millions of souls for whom God has given us a message. Nearly every member of the party has had already to struggle with the fever. They are manfully fighting the missionary battle against great odds; but, warned by his past experience and the whole history of missionary effort on the Gold Coast, Brother Hale has hastened to search out a location where our missionaries can live, and where they can gather in promising persons to be trained for service. So we shall secure hardy native helpers who can go as heralds through all the country round about.

Now the Mission Board is pressed to the utmost to keep the ordinary supplies going to our comrades at the front. In order to respond to this special call, special help is needed. It will require one thousand dollars to provide the simplest possible mission station in the interior, and several hundred dollars more ought really to be supplied. But one thousand dollars should be sent on as quickly as possible. The Board invites those who may feel it a privilege to help in this special object, in addition to the regular offerings for missions, to send in gifts for building this station, which is to preserve the lives of our missionaries and the children. They go in our stead. Let us stand by them. Gifts will be acknowledged in the REVIEW as they come in. They should be sent through the conference office, or direct to Mission Board Treasurer, 267 West Main St., Battle Creek, Mich. A friend in the Mission Board office starts the list in this issue by a gift of twenty dollars. Who will follow quickly?

W. A. SPICER, Secretary.

For African Gold Coast Mission Station

A friend........................$20 00