An Experience | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 22, 1900

An Experience.

As I have never contributed anything for the Woman's Page, I would like to tell my experience, trusting it may encourage some isolated sister. I was the only Adventist in our small city, and made it a part of my work to visit the jail and workhouse, supplying the inmates with reading matter, and keeping the rack filled in the depot. I had distributed thousands of pages of literature in this way, but I had seen no fruit of my work, and like many others I desired to know if some one had been benefited, or had become interested in the truth, through the papers I had distributed; but I could learn of no one who had. Finally, when the prisoners' number of the Life Boat came out last year, I decided to supply the prisoners in the workhouse and jail with them. About four months afterward I was joyfully surprised to learn that one boy had been so impressed with it that when his time expired, through the kindness of friends he was going to one of our Seventh-day Adventist schools.

I had also been carrying on a missionary correspondence, and you can imagine my joy when the lady I had been writing to fully accepted the truth, and was baptized at one of our camp-meetings. She is still firm in the truth, although she is separated from all of like faith.

But still I was not satisfied. I wanted to see some fruit of my work at home. I had been holding Bible readings with a family, had talked to others, and although I tried to be faithful, I was almost discouraged. I could not see any good I was doing or had done. I seemed to forget that it was ours to sow beside all waters and leave the results with the Lord. About this time some canvassers came here to work, and soon afterward one of them told me he had gone into one woman's house to canvass her for a book, and when he showed her the image, of Daniel 2, she exclaimed, “Oh, Mrs. B—— told me all about that, and I believe the coming of the Lord is near.”

The result was that she and her daughter subscribed for eleven or thirteen of our books, and I think she has bought two or three more since then. When this canvasser went to see her a short time ago, she told him that she believed the truth, and was going to keep the coming Saturday as her first Sabbath. She said she knew it would conflict with her husband's work and hers, but she was going to do all the work she could on Friday, and keep the Sabbath the best she could.

I can only say, Praise the Lord. After this my motto shall be, “We walk by faith, and not by sight.” To sisters who are trying to interest others in the truth, or do missionary work in the little time they can spare from household duties, I would say, Do not get discouraged. The all-seeing eye of the Father notices every act done for him, no matter how humble and small it seems to us; and he has promised that we shall reap if we faint not.