Our Workers in China by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jun 10, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 24.

Our Workers in China.

By Editor

MRS. ROBERTS, who recently went to China from the Pacific Press, writes us under date of April 10, 1908, from Shanghai, as follows:

"We are quite comfortably settled in our new home. Brother Anderson and Brother Hankins were here to meet us; in fact had been here for a couple of weeks and had been looking for a suitable house for us. Brother Winslow and his wife arrived just a week before we did. We have now leased a three-story house for one year, and we can all live in it, altho we will be rather crowded. Brother Winslow and his family have the top floor of three rooms, and a small kitchen; and Dr. and Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Miller's aunt, and ourselves [Mr. and Mrs. Roberts] have the two lower floors. We each have a room on the second floor, and will have our dining-room and kitchen on the first floor, or basement, as they call it here, for it is a cement floor that is laid on the ground. There are two large rooms and a tiny kitchen on the first floor. Dr. Miller will fit up one room for his dispensary, and we will use the other together as a dining-room, but will have separate tables. The kitchen is always the darkest place in the house here, and after one puts in a stove and a small table and a sink, there is very little empty space left in which to work.

Printing-Office.

"A very good place has been found in which to start our printing-plant until we have a building of our own. It is a native house and is owned by a Chinese Christian who built it for a printing-office, but as he has not succeeded as well with his business as he had hoped to, he is only too glad to rent it to Christian people. He talked with us about our views, and as to what we believed before renting us the building.' This place is fitted up already for our machinery, and it is not far from where we live. Before finding this place we made it a subject of earnest prayer. When we found it we knew that the Lord had guided. Part of the machinery has reached us, and the rest will be here soon.

Our Workers.

"Sister Westrup and her little boy were down here taking a rest when we arrived. Dr. Selmon and his native evangelist came down to meet Professor and Mrs. Cottrell and Miss Schilberg who were in our party, and who go to the mission at Chang-sha. We greatly enjoyed hearing the workers from the interior tell of their work and its progress. The Lord is in such a marked manner bringing souls into the truth who will make efficient workers among their own people. Brother Pilquist and his family will return on the 'Minnesota' for a rest in America as they are greatly broken in health. They have been thru some severe trials and hard sickness the last year.

Drs. A. C. and Mrs. A. Selmon at the Siang Cheng Mission in Honan.

Japan.

"We stopped about ten days in Japan and had a pleasant visit with the workers there. Brother Field came down from Tokyo to Yokohama to meet us, and we spent a couple of days at his home. It is in a quiet part of the city, near the Imperial University. Brother Field is doing considerable work among the students. The sanitarium at Kobe is doing very well, and the workers there spared no pains to make it pleasant for us during our three days' stay. We visited with Brother and Sister Benson the old capital of Japan, where we spent a day in sight-seeing. Some of the largest temples in Japan are there. Here also we got our first glimpse of heathen life and worship, and we truly felt that we had never before known the awfulness of heathenism. We enjoyed meeting some of the Japanese Christians. Altho we could not talk with them, yet the expression on their faces is so different from that of their heathen brethren that one can see what a change the love of God makes in them.

"Our friends may be wondering why we did not go to Sin Yang Cheo, as we had expected to do for a short time. But when we reached Yokohama, Dr. Miller received word from Brother Anderson that the mission at that place had been sold, as it had been decided that it would be preferable to put the publishing work and the headquarters of the China mission field in Shanghai.

"Rents are very high here, and it is difficult to get a building suited to the needs of the work, and we are all looking forward to the time when there will be sufficient means to buy land on which to build a house for the printing work. Our address will be, United States Post-Office, Shanghai. We can send mail at United States rates, thru the American Post-Office, and I have been told that mail from America can be sent at the same rate."

We are thankful, indeed, for this good letter from Sister Roberts; we pray that the special blessing of God may rest upon our few workers in that great field.