Norway by Oscar Einarsen

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Nov 17, 1904

Norway

By Oscar Einarsen

BERGEN.—It is now almost a year since I left my home in Denver, and the dear brethren of the Colorado Conference. My experiences' during that time have been many, but our kind Heavenly Father has been taking care of me, and I thank him for his many and tender mercies. I have been doing various kinds of missionary work, such as selling our literature, holding Bible readings, and have been an active member of our missionary society, of which I have been chairman for some time. The Lord has blessed my efforts, and two dear souls have accepted the gospel invitation, have followed their Lord in baptism, and are now among those who keep the commandments of God.

My hope and confidence and faith in God and his Word are strong. “The Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.” Ps. 100:5.

There have been some interesting experiences in connection with the work here in Bergen, which is my birthplace. Elder Clausen came to this city about ten years ago. He worked hard for two years, and as a result of his labors a church of twenty-seven members was organized. Then they had no conference worker for three years, and during this time the membership dropped to ten, mostly on account of emigration to America. After much prayer, the conference sent Elder Hansen to labor here. He gave the gospel message for about two years, and now our church-membership is more than fifty, although for about three years they have been without a conference worker. The work has been expensive, considering the financial condition of the brethren. The hall in which the meetings were held during the labors of Elders Clausen and Hansen cost considerable, but the brethren have done nobly in donating of their means to help the message of God onward during the past ten years. Now, however, their means are exhausted, and at the present time it is a hard struggle to raise the money to pay the rent of a small hall where the brethren can meet once a week on the Sabbath day. There are left about ten of the members who accepted the message ten years ago, and they have passed through severe trials during this time; but thanks be to God, they have stood loyally by the truth of the third angel's message.

The dear brother who has especially carried the burden of the work owns a little milk ranch about two hours' walk from the city. During the past ten years he has faithfully walked to the city to look after the interests of the work in connection with the meetings. He has come in all kinds of weather,—rain, snow, or sunshine; nothing could keep him away from the meetings, and while Elders Clausen and Hansen were laboring here, they had four or five meetings a week. He and his wife and four children were all faithful. Now their two oldest children, a son and a daughter, have gone, in harmony with their parents' wishes, to the Skodsborg Sanitarium, in Denmark, to secure a training that they may become missionaries, and the faithful father and mother are overworked. I spent a week with them a short time ago, and my heart was touched as I witnessed their daily devotion to God. They have sacrificed their strength and their means to help the gospel message onward. It seems to me that my trials are as nothing compared with theirs.

The faithfulness of this brother is illustrated to some extent in one of his experiences. He had for a long time saved some money in order to erect a little house or shelter, where the animals might go when bad weather came and found them on the hills away from home. He gathered the stones himself from the mountainside close by, and erected the walls by nicely fitting one stone upon another, without using any cement. When the time came to buy the necessary materials for putting the roof on, the missionary calls for money were so urgent that he gave this money to the Lord's work. Several years later the Lord had blessed him so that he again had the money to buy material for the roof, but once more the money was used to answer the missionary calls for the Lord's work, and to this day there is no roof on the shelter for the animals. But our brother and his family are thankful that our good Heavenly Father is their shelter in all kinds of weather.

We need some Norwegian literature to put in a nice tin rack which we have been permitted to place in the railway station here. It has five sections, and holds about two thousand pages of literature when it is full. We would be glad if the brethren in America would send us some clean copies of our Norwegian periodicals. They can in this way help us to sow the seeds of truth among the eighty thousand inhabitants of this city. We are buying our literature from our publishing house in Christiania, but we have not sufficient money to get all we need in our missionary work, and we shall always keep out of debt. Hence our call to you.

Our missionary society is also endeavoring to get a library of our good books, that we might lend them to the brethren who are too poor to buy books. Since the “Testimonies for the Church” are not yet translated into the Norwegian language, and since some of the brethren here can read English, and so are able to translate some of the good things that are in the Testimonies, we would appreciate a donation of the Testimonies to our missionary society in Bergen. Remember the work here before the throne of grace.

OSCAR EINARSEN.