The Portland Meeting

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 7, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 10.

The Portland Meeting.

The Pacific Union Conference meeting which was held in Portland, Oregon, February 15-25 was in many respects a most excellent meeting, and fruitful in results. The attendance of the delegates was quite large, representing the whole Pacific Coast and the various mission fields connected with the conference, with the exception of the Hawaiian Islands. Among the important actions taken was the division of the Conference into two, on the Oregon and California line, north of that line taking the name of The North Pacific Union Conference, consisting of the following local Conferences: Western Oregon, Western Washington, Upper Columbia and British Columbia, including the Alaskan mission field. The president of that will probably be W. B. White; the election had not taken place when the writer left. The southern part of the Conference retains the old name and history of the Pacific Union Conference, consisting of the conferences of California and Nevada, Southern California, Arizona, and Utah; the last two of which are important mission fields. The officers in this conference are as follows: President, H. W. Cottrell; secretary, J. J. Ireland; treasurer, E. A. Chapman; auditor, J. J. Ireland; executive committee, H. W. Cottrell, J. J. Ireland, the four Presidents of the Conference within the field, at present W. T. Knox, G. W. Reaser, A. Whitehead, F. I. Richardson, and the following representatives of the Religious Liberty, Sanitarium, Educational, and Publishing work respectively: J. O. Corliss, J. R. Leadsworth, M.D., W. E. Howell, and M. C. Wilcox, making the executive committee ten. The headquarters were moved to Mountain View, where the paper will be published.

The spiritual meetings of the Conference were good, and the one note which rang out in social meetings as well as preaching services was consecration to God and a larger grasp of spiritual power. As to weather, Portland lived up to its well-known reputation, it rained day and night all the time, sometimes very hard, and yet the Portlanders tell us that that is the good weather of the winter, the people are always well and healthy while it rains. Portland is a great growing city, and an important center of the northwest; in fact the northwest is rapidly settling up and there are good openings, I am told, all through there for those who wish to obtain land for homes. The city water supply of Portland is most admirable. It has been expensive to obtain it from Mt. Hood, which is, if we remember, about fifty miles away, but it is certainly worth while. It is pure, soft snow water, cool, refreshing, and abundant. We shall have more to say about the meeting in future numbers, or at least about the results.