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Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of I fe. Matt. 28:19, Message.
As in so many other places in the world, colporteurs early spread the Seventh-day Adventist message in India. William Lenker and A. T. Stroup landed in Madras in 1893 to sell books among the English-speaking inhabitants of India's major cities.
But as was also the case in so many places, Lenker and Stroup were not the first Adventists in the country. While in London on the way to India Lenker learned to his joy that Adventist believers already lived there. As he put it, "my heart was made to rejoice to learn that the truth has gone before to India, and has begun with encouraging omens."
How the Adventist message got there is not known. But presumably it did so through tracts sent from America, Europe, or Australia. Those silent messengers did more than all other things combined to spread the Adventist teachings "to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people" (Rev. 14:6).
By 1894 at least five colporteurs worked in India, three of them from Australia. The books sold well, and before long people requested their translation in Tamil and other local languages.
The first regular Seventh-day Adventist employee was Georgia Bunus (later Georgia Burgess), a young Bible instructor from California who arrived in India in January 1895 as the sole official representative of the church in that complex land.
The General Conference had planned that D. A. Robinson would lead the mission, but he was delayed in England. That didn't hinder the intrepid Miss Burrus, who proceeded alone even though only her passage had been paid. While learning Bengali, she worked on the side to survive. But soon someone from Africa promised her financial aid. Georgia would spend 40 years in her adopted country spreading the Advent message.
Other missionaries reached India in late 1895, and in 1898 William A. Spicer (who would become General Conference president in 1922) arrived to begin the publication of the Oriental Watchman.
One thing strikes the student of the spread of Adventist missions. That is, they were international from the beginning. Even though the movement throughout the nineteenth century was largely North American, we find people, literature, and funds coming from everywhere and going to everywhere. That is still the dynamic in Adventist mission.
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