p. 12 | In a Typical Day by Editor

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

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

In a Typical Day.

By Editor

LAST week we gave a little sketch of Brother J. D. Baker's work among the Kavirondos of Africa. We meant then to say that he was formerly one of our own boys, and his father is still engaged in work at the Pacific Press. He has given his life for the heathen, as the article from him indicated last week. This little note is from a letter which he writes to his father, giving the idea of a day's work in assisting the natives around them:

"Our typical day's work usually begins immediately after breakfast, and for an hour or an hour and a half, one and sometimes both [himself and wife] are kept busy. One man with a suppurating ulcer about the size of my hand comes to us; another, with a sore foot, the odor of which you can discern when he is coming; a boy with an ulcer on the ankle; and a baby which had its foot badly burned. Following these came two men and a woman with colds; and then a boy who came bringing four cents for medicine for his brother who is sick; and this afternoon two other men with coughs. One of them had a cough sometime ago. We treated him and he was perfectly well, but he comes pleading for 'yet.' Knowing

he is well, I mixed a quart of saline solution. He was very soon sick enough, and did not want more medicine. We only wish we were better qualified to help them. These awful ulcers, together with fevers, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and other troubles, tax our abilities to the utmost. To see these poor people come with sore eyes, some of them blind with cataracts, makes us wish we were able to give them their sight. Some of them, after cleansing out the sores and giving them treatment, when we tell them that we can do no more, are so disappointed."

Another interesting item in the letter is the mention that he makes of the garden that he is trying to grow there, teaching the natives also how to raise vegetables. He speaks of his corn, melons, squashes, and beans which are growing nicely, but of his tomatoes he tells us that he had planted them four times. The first lot the natives tramped out; the next the white ants ate; "the first of the week we put out another that were up nearly two inches, unfortunately the grasshoppers have taken most of these." And he hopes to get some from the fourth crop. Surely we ought to pray for those who are out in the great needy, dark fields. May God give him fruit, not simply in his garden-patch, but in the greater field which he is cultivating, the souls of the Kavirondos.