EXPERIENCE by Annie Knight

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 22, 1901

EXPERIENCE

By Annie Knight

(Concluded)

Early one morning in December, 1898, I bade good-by to my many friends at the sanitarium, and started out for my field of labor in southern Mississippi, where I arrived in the midst of the Christmas festival. I felt that I had not come any too soon; for instead of improving, the state of affairs had grown worse during my absence.

I immediately began work. A friend moved a tenant out of an old log cabin, and let me use it in my school. This building was better than none, although full of cracks, and with a poor stick-and-dirt chimney, which would catch fire every time we built sufficient fire to feel the warmth. We managed to get along until summer, when we were glad to have all the air we could get. But I did not forget how we suffered through the winter, and all summer I sought the Lord for help to build a comfortable house, which could be used all the time to glorify Him; and—bless His name, His love never fails—before the summer was over, I had the assurance that I should have even this need supplied.

Through the kindness of a dear friend the needs of my work were presented to the Lord’s people in different places in the North, and I solicited aid here; and by, or near the end of, November, 1899, I had finished, except painting, a small frame schoolhouse, well lighted and heated, on a forty-acre lot all my own, to be an industrial school for God and humanity. The Lord put it into the hearts of some to send beautiful, though not expensive, pictures for the walls; and then I took my little flock into our new house, and oh, how delightful it was! With real meaning we could sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” The children appreciate these blessings, and are doing well in all their studies. The school to-day is better than ever before; and although times are hard, all are full of courage, and are taking hold of the work with a zeal that surprises me, although I am praying for it all the time.

As a result of the work done, I have seen many unclean habits put away; faces that were covered with dirt and tobacco juice, washed clean; heads that were seldom combed, well brushed; eyes that never sparkled save with mischief, filled with a new luster; and a new song put into many mouths. Many have been and are being fed with the bread of life both in word and song.

This is only a beginning of what needs to be done. The way is not so easy now as it was years ago, but I praise the Lord for the Woman’s Gospel Work. O sisters, let us not be weary in this work. All this is only a drop of the showers of blessings the Lord is ever willing and anxious to bestow upon us. I am sure my part never would have begun had not another woman done the part that God gave her to do. Courage, my sisters, courage! The goal will soon be reached.

Of course the way is rough, and every day I meet with trials and difficulties; but, “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Be not weary: we shall reap if we faint not.

Many of you, I know, are praying for me and my work. I thank you for it, and ask you to continue to remember me at the throne of grace, that I may lift the Saviour up before this people in such a way that they may be led to accept Him, and share with us in the new earth.

ANNIE KNIGHT.