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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 19, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 29.

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Australia

By Edith M. Graham

Sydney, New South Wales.—On the whole, our work is advancing encouragingly. We are much pleased to see how our people are taking up the burden of the island mission work. They have fully accepted it, and mean to stand by it. I think we shall not at any time call for any increase of the appropriation from the General Conference, and we hope to lessen it by degrees, until we can support this part of the work. We have started the mission in Singapore, and supported it entirely from this field, and we mean to continue to do so. In a few weeks we shall send a laborer to the Philippines, and he will be supported from here. We have already a canvasser there, whose fare we paid, but who is self-supporting. Another canvasser leaves to-day for Singapore. We pay his fare, and he will support himself when there. Now we are searching for some one to go to Fiji for a time, and work with the school there, with a view to going to New Guinea later, taking some of the Fiji students with him. We feel impressed to push forward the work in these islands as fast as we possibly can.
We are getting out literature for the Malays now. A tract on the second coming of Christ is on the press. “Christ Our Saviour” is being translated, and will be pushed forward as rapidly as possible, so that our workers may have it to canvass with. We have also started a monthly news-letter, which is prepared in English, and then translated into the languages of our island missions, and sent to the native churches and isolated Sabbath-keepers. It consists of instruction on general lines, selections from the spirit of prophecy, and items of news from this field and the other islands. The natives have so little reading-matter, and so little to connect them with the work as a whole, that we think this will help to keep up their interest in the truth and the work.
We have other literature in course of preparation. An edition of “Christ Our Saviour,” in Maori, has just been finished, and is ready for distribution in New Zealand. A condensed edition of “Daniel and the Revelation,” in Rarotongan, is on the press, and we are preparing to get out some tracts about eight pages in length, in Rarotongan, Fijian, Tongan, etc., for extensive distribution. We are believers in literature—I suppose partly because we sell so many books here.
We have just learned from Brother G. F. Jones that the first Sabbath-keeping family is established in Java. They accepted the truth in Singapore, and have moved to Java. Another family who have accepted the truth in Singapore intend to go to the Malay Peninsula soon, and we shall then have our first Sabbath-keeping family there. And so the little lights are being set up in new places. Edith M. Graham.