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Opening Doors

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Aug 29, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 35.

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Opening Doors

By Guy Dail

THE difficulties here are so many, the prejudice is so great, and the demands made of the worker are so heavy that no young man who fully appreciates the situation will lightly enter the employ of a European mission. As the field is still new and our work in many places unknown, our laborers in general have to plan on being moved frequently from place to place, and they actually come to realize that they have no abiding city here.
A brother who has been working in Transcaucasia is to be transferred to Tashkent, Turkestan, Central Asia. Here we have vast fields, with one or two workers aside from the superintendent. Siberia is also a land of the future, a rich country in many ways, although it is subject to great extremes of heat and cold, and frequently parts of it suffer severely from famine. A number of our brethren have needed our assistance on account of famine, and great thankfulness was expressed by the committee for the help America and Europe have just been rendering the sufferers from the failure of their crops.
As to the openings for workers, we have these everywhere. It is almost heart-breaking to see the manner in which the conference presidents even in the German unions, where we are better off for laborers than anywhere else in the European field, plead and plead for just one more good man to assist them. I suppose, however, that in this respect the whole world is about the same; all fields would like to have more men, if they could get those of the right stamp, men who are real soul-winners for the Master.
There was a time when we were so cramped for means that had more laborers offered themselves for mission fields, we should have had to tell them that there was not sufficient means in the treasury for their support; but that time is past. We have now, through the abundant blessing of God, more means than we have men, comparatively speaking. Among our most destitute fields may be mentioned Egypt, Turkey, Persia, the Latin Union in general, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Russia, and Siberia. These include about all we have in Europe.We could also use more good men in the African missions operated under our direction, in Italian, German, and British East Africa. Then one of these days we shall open up Montenegro, and in time more will be done in Greece.
In many of the fields that we are operating, native helpers will have to compose the majority of the workers; but we shall always find it greatly to our advantage to use a number of foreign workers, the association of laborers of different nationalities being a help to the work. This is one of the blessings that the message brings: it unites all into one people, and yet it gives to every nation enough liberty to work out the destinies peculiar to itself, and to every man it gives freedom for the exercise of his own abilities and peculiar characteristics. To allow our brethren the same liberty we wish accorded to ourselves, and yet to keep all in the unity of the faith, is one of the fine arts of Christianity that we must learn.
How thankful I am for the unity there is in the third angel's message, and for the oneness there is in Christ!
GUY DAIL.