Suva is the leading international seaport J of the romantic South Pacific. Many visitors bent on securing duty-free bargains swarm through its streets every week. Its population numbers around 100,000, including Fijians and Indians in approximately equal numbers, Europeans, Chinese, and an assortment of island races. East and West are strangely blended in this lush, tropical "city in the sun." Modern department stores and supermarkets quickly give way to dark, jumbled Indian "junk" shops. Majestic church steeples contrast strangely with the Eastern cupolas of Mohammedan mosques.
How thrilled the thirteen final-year min-- isterial students of the Fulton Missionary College and I were to receive the invitation to run an evangelistic series in this fascinating city! The main purpose of this campaign was to fire the potential graduates with a love for evangelism so that they in turn would become skillful fishers of men. Realizing the value of this practical education, the college board granted us four weeks out of classes in order to conduct the program. I did the preaching, but the students did the rest.
Advertising
Our opening topic was "Lost Cities of the Dead," an all-picture program of visits to the archeological remains of Petra, Tyre, Ur, and Egypt. Invitations were posted, handbills were distributed, newspaper ads inserted, posters placed in shop windows, but our most effective advertising was without doubt a sandwich board. Each day one of the team wore the sandwich board down the main street, accompanied by another student distributing handbills. The results of this advertising medium were, to say the least, dramatic. It was fascinating to see people walking down the street, waiting on bus stands, sitting in buses, reading our handbill. Comparatively few were thrown into the gutters or trash bins. And then, the night before the mission opening, thanks to the sandwich board, we actually won our first soul!
An ex-Fulton student, the wayward son of one of our pastors, staggered past the sandwich board half-drunk, but as he did so, God's Spirit spoke to him in a remarkable way, and later that night Johnny gave his heart to God after six years of wasted living. This year we are proud to have Johnny in the ministerial class with us, a constant testimony to the value of our sandwich board.
Three Sessions on First Day
Our faith prompted us to book the Suva Town Hall for three sessions on the opening day. Were we being too ambitious? We surely were not, for more than two thousand people crowded into the meetings that day, with hundreds turned away. Church deacons sought out their members and told them to go home. People even sat on the floor, in the aisles, right up to the edge of the platform, or stood, wedged in tightly, at the rear of the hall. As one session finished, the people actually stampeded to get into the next. The ushers were overwhelmed! The caretaker said that the Suva Town Hall had never seen such crowds.
Nuns Attend
Mild panic broke out among the ushers as they saw six nuns entering the hall. One of these wrote me a note of appreciation after the meeting, pinning to it a donation of ten shillings. The next night the nuns were the first at the hall, eagerly awaiting their copy of the lecture from the night before. And they returned for the first five meetings. One of them seemed especially interested and stated that she had never heard anything so wonderful. We are still in good contact with her, and she has asked me to keep in touch with her. I believe she will stand for truth before too long.
Five Nights and Two Sessions!
The crowds kept coming. Although we were running five nights a week, we had to hold two sessions each night. Some very fine people were attending, including a European man and his wife who owned the dairy farm next door to Fulton College. Every night they traveled the windy, rough thirty miles to Suva to attend the meetings. Later we baptized these good folk. Another man, practically a millionaire, also began attending church and has since been very generous in his support of the Lord's work. One of our team had the names of thirty-six men from the police barracks who were in regular attendance. Now the police commissioner has granted Sabbath privileges to anyone on his force requesting them. One Indian girl, forbidden to attend the meetings, climbed out of her bedroom window to get there. Another man, a foreman in the public works department, was actually preaching my sermons the next day at lunchtime to his men. When he came to Daniel 2, he sketched out the image on a sheet of masonite. God's Spirit was moving wonderfully!
When we presented the Sabbath under the title "Adam's Mother's Birthday," with a large birthday cake adorned with twinkling candles on stage (everyone received a slice as he left the hall), we were thrilled to have 108 sign cards indicating their desire to keep the Sabbath. The following Sunday after the presentation of the subject of "Baptism," an altar call was made for people to come and join a baptismal class. Seventy-four came forward that night.
The questions pouring into the question box would thrill the heart of any evangelist. For example, "I am a Catholic girl and have been coming to your meetings every night, and I have found out the truth. Sir, tell me if it is a sin if I join your church, because I have been baptized in the Catholic Church." "I am a Methodist, but after hearing your lecture last night I know that at last I have found the truth."
Prisoners Awaiting Baptism
We praise God that including the souls we baptized here at Fulton who were, no doubt, influenced by the mission, we baptized eighty-three people into Christ's body, and there are still more to come. For instance, a jail warden whom we baptized with his wife, during the time he was attending the Town Hall meetings felt impressed to quit smoking (even though I had not mentioned it at that time). Two prison inmates were in the habit of getting their "smokes" from him, but when their favors met an abrupt termination they wanted to know why. The result is that these two prisoners (one of them has been in jail seven times) are awaiting baptism today and others were interested, all through the witness of one who had found the Lord.
We praise God for this evangelistic experience and for the tremendous affect it has had upon these students, most of whom are already out and running their own evangelistic campaigns. One said, "We will burn up the Pacific for God." Another predicted "when we get to that will be the shaking time for_________ " There has never been a countermand to the Lord's injunction "Go ye into all the world and preach." If we Adventist preachers neglect our orders, who is there to obey them?
