Families Respond Entering Backward Communities

And it was about this time that families were stirred to enter the great Southland, then a backward and very much neglected part of the United States.SPCSSW 12.6

Ellen White, in Ministry of Healing, in 1905, wrote encouragingly:

“Christian farmers can do real missionary work in helping the poor to find homes on the land and in teaching them how to use the implements of agriculture, how to cultivate various crops, how to plant and care for orchards....

“Let proper methods be taught to all who are willing to learn. If any do not wish you to speak to them of advanced ideas, let the lessons be given silently. Keep up the culture of your own land. Drop a word to your neighbors when you can, and let the harvest be eloquent in favor of right methods. Demonstrate what can be done with the land when properly worked.”—The Ministry of Healing, 193.

And again from volume 6, of the Testimonies for the Church 6:176, we read:SPCSSW 13.1

“Missionaries will be much more influential among the people if they are able to teach the inexperienced how to labor according to the best methods and to produce the best results. They will thus be able to demonstrate that missionaries can become industrial educators, and this kind of instruction will be appreciated especially where means are limited. A much smaller fund will be required to sustain such missionaries, because, combined with their studies, they have put to the very best use their physical powers in practical labor, and wherever they may go all they have gained in this line will give them vantage ground.”

The establishment of institutions and industries was called for:SPCSSW 13.2

“Attention should be given to the establishment of various industries so that poor families can find employment. Carpenters, blacksmiths, and indeed everyone who understands some line of useful labor, should feel a responsibility to teach and help the ignorant and the unemployed.”—The Ministry of Healing, 194.

We were also called upon to develop sanitariums.SPCSSW 13.3

“Today the truth is to be proclaimed as Christ proclaimed it when he was on this earth. Our people who are collected together in large centers should be out in the field working for souls. They should go to places where the truth has not yet been heard, and pray and plan and work and gain an experience by practical work. Is not Christ in our world today as verily as He was then? Cannot He heal the sick as well now as then? Let small sanitariums and treatment rooms be established, and let people be given an education in the simple methods of treating disease. Those who take up this work will increase in capability; for unseen heavenly agencies will be present to help them.”—E. G. White, Letter 43, 1905 (Released)SPCSSW 13.4

And thus is called into various lines of service every Seventh-day Adventist, to give of his talents and his time as he can devote them to the conduct of a work leading men and women to the kingdom.SPCSSW 14.1

But I point out again, we have no separate line of instructions to self-supporting workers. The work is one. The methods are the same. The objectives are one. Whether the work is carried on under the guidance of a conference organization, or whether a work of an auxiliary and supplemental character is carried on by noble men and women who at their own expense move forward to do what they understand to be their part in proclaiming the gospel message—it is all one work.SPCSSW 14.2

I bring this presentation to a close with the following statement from the pen of Ellen White, which appeared in the Pacific Union Recorder, March 24, 1904:SPCSSW 14.3