SOUTHERN ASIA.—Secretary A. E. Rawson reports eighty-eight evangelistic campaigns held in the Southern Asia Division in 1948.
NORTHERN EUROPE.—Secretary Axel Varmer passes on this 'cheering word: "Here in Europe usually every minister, including the conference president, is holding at least one effort every year. I believe that this year most of our departmental secretaries and our conference presidents will take part in direct evangelistic work. In September I leave for Iceland, to attend a conference and conventions as well as conduct a spearhead effort in Reykjavik for four or five weeks. I am looking forward to it with great expectation and hope. I have been invited to conduct one or two more spearhead efforts during the coming winter months, and hope my time will permit me to produce fifty radio sermons in Copenhagen to be used for the Danish broadcasting from Luxembourg, so you see I have plenty of work for the coming months."
CENTRAL EUROPE.—Secretary A. Minck writes : "The prospects for soul winning are promising in all our fields. This is confirmed by the success in the first six months in 1948. In this time we baptized 1,66o souls in the East German Union, 88o in the West German Union, and 813 in the South German Union, making a total of 3,353. A short time ago a minister of the South German Union, who is working in a larger town, reported: 'A special lecture I announced concerning "The Future of Europe in Apocalyptic View" was attended by nearly two thousand persons. I received over two hundred names and addresses, which will be visited during the next weeks with the help of a number of co-workers. Thus our gospel -workers and church members are eagerly at work to proclaim the message of the soon-corning Saviour to suffering mankind. Although our times are full of strain and unrest, we are of good courage.'"
SOUTH AFRICA.—Secretary A. W. Staples, in his Sunday night meetings in a theater in one of the suburbs of Cape Town, has had an attendance ranging from five hundred to nine hundred. On the first night eight hundred people attended. Nearly five hundred people are receiving literature, and are being visited by the evangelistic workers. The people have known from the beginning that Pastor Staples was a Seventh-day Adventist.
On the west reef, near Johannesburg, four evangelistic efforts are being conducted simultaneously. The president of the conference, Pastor J. van de Merwe is conducting one, and his hall has been packed nearly every night. Pastor J. Raubenheimer has also had a large attendance at his meetings.
Two of the Bantu efforts have been outstandingly successful. One was conducted by Pastor E. A. Buckley in Roodepoort, near Johannesburg. His attendance has been from three hundred to five hundred. Pastor I. E. Schultz reports an attendance of four hundred on the first night of his meetings in the Errnelo locations. It was a rainy night. The next night he had five hundred present, and he writes that he will have to run two sessions each night for some time. As to the Voice of Prophecy in Africa, between September 6 and in, new enrollments totaled 544, of which 319 were Bantu. During this same period 2,394 lessons were corrected. Twenty-five Voice of Prophecy students requested baptism in those few days. Six persons were also reported as having been baptized.
EVANGELISTIC WAVE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE. —"I am glad to be able to tell you that evangelistic campaigns are carried on in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, North Africa, as well as in the Indian Ocean Union. I do not have any definite reports of these meetings so far, but I do know that there is much interest shown everywhere, and our evangelists are full of courage and are determined to do great things for God. We hope to make this year's campaigns the best ever.
"In Marseilles, the headquarters of the South France Conference, lectures are being held in a cinema on the main street. In Paris we have large audiences, as well as in Lisbon and other cities in Portugal. In Vienna lectures are being held in five different places. We thank the Lord for the attending success. Recently we started a series of efforts in several of the main cities in Switzerland."—A. MEYER. [M. A. Secretary-1
SOUTH AMERICA.—Secretary Walter Schubert sends this good report: "In the South American Division 158 efforts were held in 1948. Most of them were small. The reports I collected from the five unions indicate that the baptisms for this present year will be about a thousand more than last year, which was a banner year. During 1947, 3,844 were baptized and in 1946. 3,069; and we will have around 4,800 or 5,000 baptisms this year if the calculations are correct.
"Constantly I receive letters from different evangelists and presidents, telling me of the joy and great blessings they are receiving through the results of their new vision in evangelism. Several workers have written me that they have never in their lives had so many baptisms as this year. The other day I received a letter from a worker in our Sao Paulo Conference informing me that he had baptized eighty-nine souls. 'Never in my twenty years of service in the work have I had such great success,' he said."
Concerning his own effort in Arequipa, the Rome of Peru, Pastor Schubert says : "Our effort was held in our church. This was done because if it had been held in a hall, the Catholics would have brought such pressure to bear on the owner of the hall that we would have had to leave two or three nights after our opening. Therefore, we removed partitions from our own church in Arequipa, and brought the seating capacity up to 286. Every night during the entire time I was conducting the effort, people were standing, and the attendance was between 300 and 350.
"The Lord blessed our efforts despite the terrible persecution of the Catholics. I was in Arequipa two and a half months, and the effort is still going on under the direction of a fine evangelist. Two days before I left we baptized twenty-five. Our goal was one hundred, and I know that before the end of the year this goal will be reached. After my third lecture on the Sabbath question, 230 people signed the card to keep the holy Sabbath.
"After the effort had been going on for two weeks, the Catholic Church became very active against us and remained so until I left Arequipa. Every night a Catholic Jesuit priest,
dressed in his long robe, stood in front of the church door, with young men of Catholic Action, distributing literature of a defamatory nature. They told the people not to enter, because we were Protestants, heretics, companions of Luther, devils, and so forth. Altogether they printed sixteen leaflets against us.
"I had four youns,b men and two sisters who helped part time in Bible work."
