OUR WORK AND WORKERS by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 15, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 11.

OUR WORK AND WORKERS.

By Editor

SINCE the last General Conference, two years ago, sixteen of our ministers have died.

THE Seventh-day Adventist Church has one foreign missionary to every 220 members.

A REPORT of Sister Ella N. Adams notes the addition of four members to the church at Telluride, Colo.

SAYS Brother W. A. Alway, who has been laboring about two years in Utah: "I have found the SIGNS OF THE TIMES a most excellent medium in reaching the people of this State."

ON a recent visit of Brethren C. L. Taggart and J. T. Sweatt to the church at Benton, Ill., five persons presented themselves for membership.

THE first term of the new industrial school in Wood County, Wis., will be opened about the middle of April. As the buildings are not all completed, or the grounds all prepared, this summer term will give excellent opportunity for young men to work their way.

A REPORT from the recent General Conference at South Lancaster, Mass., says: "There were about 150 delegates present—all the State conferences in this country being represented, also the British field, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Africa, South America, West Indies, and Australia."

IN a recent Review Brother C. P. Bollman reports that "the church at Sandhill, Ky., was organized January 19, with only seven members, all of whom had received letters from a church at Bowling Green; but on the next Sabbath six additional members were added." At Bowling Green there are two churches—one of white and the other of colored members.

FROM Finland comes the good news, reported by Brother John Hoffman in the Minnesota Worker, that our laborers there have secured a boat for use among the hundreds of little islands of the south coast. The report says: "The Lord helped us to get a large boat all up for 1,000 marks, or $200. Every one says it is a good sea-boat, and that the riggings and anchors alone are well worth what we paid for the whole."

THE growth of the work of Seventh-day Adventists shows development through certain lines of work, prominent among which are the following: The publishing work, which began in 1849; the health and temperance and sanitarium work, organized in 1866; the tract and missionary work, and the educational work, which arose together in 1874; the Sabbath-school Association was formed in 1877; the religious liberty work was organized as a special department in 1889, and the medical missionary work in 1893.

A LETTER in the Workers' Bulletin from Brother Isaiah Moore, formerly of Iowa, but now of the Morning Star crew on the Yazoo River, tells this story: "The poor and neglected are numbered by thousands. Could you go with me to the homes of the colored people, and see their condition in general, your hearts would ache for them. The situation is awful at present. This last year it was so wet that they had only about one-third of a crop, and a great deal of that rotted in the field before it was gathered. But, worst of all, cotton, which, as you know, is about all they raise here, is low in price on account of the poor quality of the crop. This will yet cause much suffering on the part of the renters. The rent must be paid, and the storekeepers will not sell on time. The people, having little or no money left from their last year's crop, will have to go with little to eat, and so poorly clad that they are ashamed to be seen. Under these great difficulties God is blessing the work and workers beyond all that could be expected. Our chapel where we hold school is filled nearly to overflowing. Through the help received from Iowa and other Northern States, the hungry are being fed and the naked clothed."

A REPORT in the Bivouac from Brother S. Wareham, who went to Trinidad Island from Montana as a self-supporting missionary, gives a sad account of the poverty of the people: "While we need workers in all lines of the message, we especially need help to teach this people how to till the soil, and to make a living for themselves. All our brethren here are poor, so it seems almost impossible for them of themselves to get a start in any independent occupation. There are, I am told, about 120 Sabbath-keepers in the island. We have no church building in Port-of-Spain, and it costs the Foreign Mission Board about twelve dollars a month for rent on our meeting-place, and the church is able to pay only a small part of this; so you see what could be saved if we had enough to put up a small building, say three hundred dollars. The only church building our people have on the island is at Couva, a village about thirty miles from Port-of-Spain, the brethren there being in very little better circumstances. There is a little thatched chapel up in the hills at Indian Walk, that cost about forty-five dollars. The work must be opened up in other places in the island in answer to the urgent calls, but the brethren are now helping to their utmost."

"WILL A MAN ROB GOD?" is an important pamphlet on the tithing system. It treats every phase of this great question, and deserves special attention in these days, when the Lord's means of supporting His cause is almost lost sight of. Price, 10c each. Pacific Press Pub. Co., Oakland, Cal.