p. 11 | G. W. PETTIT by G. W. Pettit

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Jun 13, 1912

G. W. PETTIT

By G. W. Pettit

How India Is Related to the $300,000 Fund

G. W. PETTIT

THE writer has been in India only a short time, yet it has been his privilege to travel more than thirteen hundred miles, to meet a number of our workers, and to see some of our mission stations where aggressive evangelistic work is being carried on. Some of these places have been greatly benefited by a small amount from the $300,000 Fund, and others ought to be, but patiently wait their turn when funds are in the treasury.

Our people are loyal, and our missionaries in India all appreciate that fact, and willingly endure many hardships in order to save funds for other needy fields. The work in India has been wonderfully strengthened by the money received from the $300,000 Fund and by other liberal offerings. Schools, a printing plant, and mission bungalows (where no place could be found fit for our workers to carry on their work) have been built. In many places only native huts are obtainable, and these are built of mud, without even a floor, with thatched roofs of straw, and without light or ventilation. Often these huts are in plague districts, where filth in its worst form abounds.

Last week the writer visited one of

our stations where two young women are working hard to teach the natives the truth, and are compelled to live in not only insanitary quarters, but in the midst of a native district infected with disease. There they work without complaint, and risk not only health but life for the sake of this message. These two Seventh-day Adventist girls are the only foreigners in the large native district or within a radius of over twenty-five miles. They drink water from a well in which it is not uncommon for some poor native to put an end to his miseries. The mission superintendent longs to better the situation in many of these places, and would gladly do it were it in his power; but better quarters are not obtainable, and funds are lacking to secure the place to put up necessary buildings.

I am certain our people at home will rally to the call, and will help complete the $300,000 Fund by paying pledges, etc., before the fund is finally closed on July 1. No object more worthy has ever been before our people. Already it has placed our work on vantage-ground in many places in India, and has been the means of strengthening our institutional work, and of saving the lives of men and women who have nobly placed themselves on the altar of sacrifice. It has brought courage to those in charge of the work, as well as to the other workers in the field who are more favorably situated on account of climate and the possibility of securing comfortable places in which to live.

The writer, having been called to India to labor for the English-speaking people in the great centers of population, can find quite comfortable European houses in which to live. But not so with his coworkers in the native villages. Then, too, those working in European districts can secure vegetables, tropical fruits, and sometimes fresh fruits of the home land, such as strawberries, pears, etc.; but those in the native villages can seldom secure these.

Let us remember by our prayers and means these dear workers, almost nerve-wrecked, in these trying climates, and come to the rescue in the last grand effort to complete the $300,000 Fund, which with God's blessing will be a mighty factor in bringing many a jewel into the kingdom from India's millions now carrying the heavy load of darkened heathenism, superstition, disease, and famine. "Lift, brother, lift!"