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Adventism On The Move10: South America
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Nov. 14 - Adventism On The Move10: South America

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And...God ... opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Acts 14:27, RSV.

Yesterday we noted that the Sabbath School Association devoted offerings from the last half of 1890 to initiate the denomination's South American Mission.

Here we need to stop for a moment. Most of us have participated in the Sabbath school mission offerings, but few of us recognize how they got started. The first Sabbath school gifts to missions took place in 1885, as the Adventist Church began in Australia. But mission offerings did not stir much enthusiasm until the Pitcairn project in 1889 and 1890. After that project the Sabbath school would never be the same. The firm supporter of Adventist missions around the world, its second large giving project would be for the South American Mission in 1890. From that point the Sabbath school has never stopped financially encouraging missions to every part of the world.

That brings us back to the beginnings of Adventism in South America. Early in 1890, before the church could send any denominationally supported missionaries, George Riffel led four German-Russian farm families from Kansas as self-supporting missionaries to Argentina. A new convert to Adventism, Riffel had written of his new faith to German-Russian colonists in that country. One wrote back that he would observe the Sabbath if he had someone to keep it with him. That was enough to lead Riffel into a lifechanging move.

Late in 1891 the Seventh-day Adventist Church sent its first "official" missionaries to South America. None of them spoke Spanish or Portuguese, so those three colporteurs made their way selling German and English books to a population that read another language.

The calls from the Dupertuis family, the reports of the colporteurs, and requests from the Riffels stimulated the General Conference in 1894 to dispatch F. H. Westphal to oversee the Adventist mission in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil. Westphal would spend more than 20 years working in those countries and Chile.

Small ideas lead to big results. And humble laypeople sharing literature with others did much to spread Adventism around the world. These are things that we can all participate in.

 

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Let your heart break for the longing it has for God, for the living God. The life of Christ has shown what humanity can do by being partaker of the divine nature. All that Christ received from God we too may have. Then ask and receive. With the persevering faith of Jacob, with the unyielding persistence of Elijah, claim for yourself all that God has promised(COL 149).
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