DEPARTMENT OF MEXICO REV. E. M. SEIN, SECRETARY. COMMITTEE 1911-1914 Dr. George W. Bailey, Chairman. Dr. Alexander Henry. W. M. McCoy. Fritz Salmon... C. Scott Williams.. Rev. William M. Anderson... .Philadelphia, Pa. Mountainair, New Mexico .New Orleans, La. ..Dallas, Texas .Mexico City, Mexico .Los Angeles, Cal. REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT. READ BY REV. E. M. SEIN, SECRETARY The Sunday-school work in Mexico is the most hopeful part of the mission work in said country. Men and women are annually converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ and are added to the churches; but the real increase and permanent value of the work lies in the fact that out of a total membership of 21,467 enrolled in the Sunday-schools, threefifths are found between the ages of seven and fifteen years and are within our very walls and therefore can be brought to Christ in the course of a short time. As an evangelizing agency the Sunday-school today is well equipped to carry out our Master's great commission in every mission field if we are only faithful in using opportunity and every practical help in conducting this great institution. In Mexico there is great need of Sunday-school evangelism to make pastors and people understand the resources of the evangelistic fruitfulness possessed by the Sunday-school, and this has been from the beginning part of the program of our work. We still find in some places that people are averse to the Sunday-school, preferring the preaching service, while in others there is considerable lack of appreciation of the importance of early training and conversion of the young. To these difficulties must be added the lack of competent workers filled with Sunday-school enthusiasm to develop all the practical features of an up-to-date and soul-winning Sunday-school. We find a help along this line in the periodical district conventions which are now held in different parts of the country and which necessarily tend to show us the weak points in the work and at the same time suggest the needed remedy. Twelve of these district conventions have been held annually under the auspices of our Sunday-school Association and the Secretary has attended most of them giving all possible help to the success of the same. In some sections the interest has been really surprising as evidenced by the convention held in a country community, not very long ago, where fourteen Sunday-schools were represented by seventy-eight delegates, some having had to walk several miles to honor their appointment. The convention idea is slowly but firmly gaining ground and we think the day is not far distant when many others can be organized. The fact that some of the Sunday-schools, if not a large proportion of them, are so far apart, is a difficulty of no small consideration when the bringing together of officers and workers for convention or conference is planned. The best National Convention ever held in Mexico was that of last year, the year of the Mexican Centennial, held in Mexico City in September. Every State in the Republic was represented, and delegates registered from Sonora in the Northwest to Yucatan in the Southeast. The beautiful Sunday-school banners displayed on the walls of the Convention church, some exquisitely embroidered, bore clear testimony to the fact that interest was at high mark and that the outlook for the future is full of promise, for which we thank the Lord very sincerely. The Convention was greatly favored by a distinguished delegation of thirty-eight visiting brethren from the United States and Canada, who came with Mr. Marion Lawrance, General Secretary of the International Sunday-school Association, with the specific purpose of attending our sessions and helping with their presence and words of counsel. Never before had such great honor been paid to the Sunday-school work of Mexico, and all our people appreciated it very much. The wise and cheerful words of Mr. Lawrance, as well as his Sunday-school addresses, made a deep impression upon our workers. As somebody expressed it, "Mr. Lawrance's visit to Mexico was like the coming of soft rain on a field of young corn. Besides this important feature of that Convention, there was the granting of diplomas to teacher-training graduates and the adoption of the Graded Lessons. The departmental work has not been developed so far, but efforts have been put forth to arouse interest in Teacher Training, Home and Cradle Roll and also Temperance and Missions. Until we have more competent workers to depend upon we shall find ourselves handicapped in carrying out the standards of International work. However, the work is moving on and every year we rejoice to see added interest in the Sunday-school as there has never been before. The Presbyterians, the Baptists and the Methodists are publishing very good quarterlies and other helps for their Sunday-schools and in the course of the year several good and practical articles appear in the Protestant papers calling attention to some important phase of the Sunday-school work. Within the last two years three booklets-translations from the English-have been published, two by the Methodists and one by the Presbyterians, which are finding their way into many workers' hands, and it is to be expected that a better understanding of the methods and possibilities of the Sunday-school shall be the result of the circulation of said booklets. Others of the same kind are in preparation. Helps of this sort in the Spanish language are much needed in our field, and it would be a good investment to increase their numbers as they will be used also in other Spanish speaking countries. The ideal of a yearly report and contribution from every Sunday-school has not been reached; but when we consider the difficulties under which we labor we are thankful that something is being done along this line. About one-third of the existing Sunday-schools are coöperating in this interdenominational work which we want to carry forward with all our enthusiasm and power till we have reached every place throughout the country and helped every Sunday-school regardless of denominational connection. During the last three years the amount of $2,048.94 (Mex. Cy.) was contributed from the field for the expenses of the work. A summary of the field work by the Secretary is as follows: Number of places visited, 112; number of addresses, 183; number of sermons, 81; number of talks to children, 39; number of Sunday-school classes conducted, 57; number of miles traveled, including trip to Cuba, 33,143; days spent on the field, 427; amount spent in travel, $1,682.35 (Mex. Cy.). The office work has increased in importance as the correspondence with every point on the field has increased. Hundreds of letters and leaflets are mailed every year trying to help all the workers and all the Sunday-schools and this all for the glory of our Master and the advancement of His Kingdom among the Mexican people. It is cause for gratitude to God that the ascending joyous note of progress heard throughout the General Secretary's report is prolonged by the work in "the islands of the sea" and repeated from the mainland shores of the southern continent. The peoples there rejoice in the work which you have done among them as an earnest of the better yet to be. This is your newest field, having been entered by the International Sunday-school Association in 1906 and making now its second triennial report. "Let your eyes be upon the field.'' Since we met three years ago this has been so extended as to take in Bocas del Toro and British Honduras in Central America, and has included the Danish West Indies found in that group known as The Virgin Islands. Some one has called this "The circuit of the Caribbean Sea." On referring to the map, this will be seen as a very appropriate name. The divisions-islands or countries-now visited by your secretary are twenty-three in number. These are mission fields under the direction of missionary boards. Some of these operations date back to days before the emancipation of the slave. In other parts the work of an open Bible has been but for one decade. Many of the older church methods have been chiefly for the adult and there has been needed a steady, kind persistence to introduce modern methods which emphasize the importance of nurture rather than conquest. It is often desired that in missionary meetings one who has returned from the field shall tell of thrilling incidents, rapid progress, a "nation born in a day." I have nothing spectacular to report. There has been faithful labor, with hundreds of little incidents pointing the road of progress, discerned by a close observer and furnishing proof that "labor is not in vain in the Lord." In the smaller islands, both of the Leeward and Windward groups many conditions make it impossible to organize as completely as we do here in the North. The people, whose social position might indicate better education, are seldom interested in Sundayschool work even of their own church. This makes it difficult to develop intelligent workers to meet the needs of these densely populated islands. These islands are separated by wide areas of sea. Trade and travel do not furnish reliable transit as frequently as trains on the mainland. A great majority of the Sunday-school people are poor and cannot afford the time and money needed to make a united convention of such inspiration as those held by State or Province in the North. One of the most needy of these islands seemed especially discouraging, through several years, but on the last visit the forbidding aspects vanished and the work done for it was one of glad triumph. Once more the fact was emphasized that on this field we must think more about the faithful seed sowing than of the visible harvest. Complex and wide-reaching as this field now is, it ought soon to be further enlarged. Correspondence and personal interview have shown me that as soon as possible similar benefits should be held out to the missonaries and their work in the republics of Guatemala and Nicaragua in Central America, and also to those laboring in Dutch Guiana in South America. If you believe that the Lord led you into these lands, then surely you will recognize His voice saying "There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed." In a unique sense this is your missionary field, and it is "white unto harvest." You may reasonably expect that it will so grow as to need more laborers than that with which you commenced it. Already it is a large and scattered area, but this cannot make you deaf to the call "lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes' when God graciously shows the broader need. In each of these twenty-three divisions of the field an organization as good as the circumstances permit |