BROTHER ALBERT F. PRIEGER, director of the Haitien Mission, Cape Haitien, Haiti, writes that since January 1 he has baptized ninety-nine persons, and about twenty more candidates are waiting. He says: “I can not speak the language, and have to work through an interpreter; but with the assistance of my wife, we manage to instruct the natives fully in the message. We can say that we have never seen better Seventh-day Adventists than these black people after they accept this truth. It would do your soul good to attend a service in one of our Haitien churches. . . . No display whatever of any kind of jewelry or showy apparel is manifest among the women. They are a shining light wherever they go, and this is the reason why so many accept the truth. . . .”
This husband and wife, within the shadow of the telegraph pole, are worshiping at one of the tree shrines. The person will tell you that he is not worshiping the tree, but the spirit that created it. This spirit is supposed to be resting under the stone pile built around the tree. In villages where girls do not find suitors, the fathers, rather than have them marry beneath their caste, will have them solemnly married to one of these tree gods. The ceremony is a great affair in the village, and the young girl is bound to the tree, and left there to the mercy of the prowling wild beasts, or possibly to be taken away by some man who is beneath her caste.
DR. A. C. SELMON PERFORMING A BAPTISM IN THE WHANGPOO RIVER, NEAR SHANGHAI
“This year is really the first that an attempt has been made to circulate our literature; and although it is a very bad year financially all through the republic, our colporteurs have stood through it in a remarkable manner. This has demonstrated to us over and over again that the Lord is able to do a mighty work through the humblest of instruments. We now have ten colporteurs in the field,—six men and four women, most of them being young people who are earning their way to attend our schools in the States. Our first student leaves for our school at Huntsville, Alabama, next month, and we hope to send six more next year.
“This country is very little known outside of itself. We see white people very seldom, but the work takes up our time to such an extent that we do not get lonesome or homesick. The Lord is very near to us in our isolation, and His angels seem to take a special care of us and the work here.”
