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Verse:They also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.” —Acts 1:11, NASB
Many faithful Adventist missionaries have sacrificed their lives in carrying the everlasting gospel to the remotest places of the world.
The June 17, 1909, issue of the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald announced that the General Conference voted Ferdinand A. Stahl of Ohio as a missionary to Bolivia.34 A few days later, he and his wife, with their two children, left for the mission field. They dedicated themselves to amazing medical-missionary and teaching work among the Indians of Lake Titicaca and other regions of Bolivia and Peru.
In his book In the Land of the Incas, Stahl tells of his experience with the local people in a place called Umucho. After Stahl told them that Jesus was coming soon to reclaim His faithful people, the natives responded very positively.
At the end of the service, the chief asked Stahl when he could come back to teach them more. Stahl was reluctant to commit, but the chief insisted.
So, Stahl promised, “If I do not return, someone else will.” The chief asked, “But how am I to know that someone else will teach us the same things?” Stahl picked up a small stone, broke it in two, and gave one half of it to the chief.
He added that whoever should come to teach them would bring the other half of the stone. Three years later, Stahl returned to the Umucho district and went to see the chief, who was away for a few weeks. But his wife came and asked, “Oh, why did you stay away so long?”38 The tribespeople had been very eager to learn more about the Adventist message. Shortly after arriving, Stahl declared, Bolivia surely is a good field for labor, because it is a very needy one. It has been my privilege to make a country trip, and I have observed the same conditions everywhere —gross darkness, people living for they know not what... But these difficulties are an inspiration to us.
The greater the difficulties, the more help we can claim from God. The greater the hardships, the more closely we cling to Christ, who knows all about them, having suffered all things for us.39 A self-sacrificing spirit should inspire our efforts too.