San Francisco and Oakland by John Norton Loughborough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 9, 1878

San Francisco and Oakland.

By John Norton Loughborough

Our tent-meetings in San Francisco still continue with increasing interest. We are now upon the Sabbath question, and shall probably have our first Sabbath meeting next Sabbath. We are forming some interesting acquaintances with the people, and expect some will decide to go with us.

We are not trying with this meeting to reach all San Francisco, but taking our tent as a center, we make a specialty of canvassing thoroughly the square mile around the tent. In this square mile there are five thousand houses. These we have supplied, with either posters or copies of our tent paper (of which we have had two numbers already), four times.

Our missionary workers are canvassing this square mile, street by street, and house by house, ascertaining who are interested, and obtaining three month subscribers for the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, of these subscribers about a score have already been obtained since the meetings commenced.

We place occasional notices in the city papers, so that the people at large are not ignorant of what we are doing, and we are frequently favored with hearers from other parts of the city. San Francisco is such a peculiarly situated city that it is something like a cluster of villages, and we decide that a more thorough work can be done here by removing the tent from point to point in different parts of the city.

The time may come to hold a central meeting with a mammoth pavilion, but we do not think it is now. So we use the 60-ft. tent, from point to point.

We meet alternately with the church in Oakland on the Sabbath, and Sunday evening, which serves to help the interested ones there, and those who have newly embraced the truth. Last Sabbath was a good day to this church. Five more were baptized. There are now over one hundred Sabbath-keepers in Oakland. There is perfect unity and harmony in this important church at the center of our work on this coast. The Vigilant Missionary society in Oakland is doing a noble work. God bless the workers. J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.