Upon Missionary ‘Stahl’s arrival
this noble descendant of the Incas
had already begun, to the best of
his ability, the gigantic task of edu--
cating the sad remnants of his race
by opening near his home, in a
little place called La Plateria (the
silversmith’s shop), a small school,
the first attempt to educate the Inca
Indian. This school was destined to
be the forerunner of the present
chain of two hundred such schools
and two training schools that
Seventh-day Adventists are conduct-
ing for this unfortunate race.
This enlightened chief invited
Brother and Sister Stahl to start
their missionary work among his
people, even providing them a tem-
porary place to live.
Ferdinand Stahl became doctor,
minister, judge, protector and leader
of these people. Once as I was
traveling across Lake Titicaca I fell
into conversation with a prominent
citizen of the highlands of Peru who
asked me how long I had been in
Peru. When I told him that I had
been there scarcely two years, he
said to me, “Then you have not
been able to observe the transforma-
iton I have seen. From a condition
of debauchery and filth and ignor-
ance your missionaries have lifted
the Indian to a condition that is in
striking contrast with his former
condition. You should send one
hundred more missionaries to do
this work.”
A visit to an Indian community
will give some idea of this trans-
formation. In a wide plain stretch-
ing from the international highway
to the shore of the lake, a distance
of several miles, are literally thous-
ands of adobe huts. Sprinkled among
them, perhaps one in twenty, are
white-washed huts. First, let us
enter one of the regular huts. The
pigs are running in and out. There
is not a vestige of furniture of any
kind, and the family are seated on
the floor in the midst of the squalor
and smoke. They do not rise to
greet you. The children are with
their parents when they should be in
school.
Now let us enter another hut, a
clean whitewashed building. Even
in the approach to the house one is
able to notice cleanliness and order.
Inside the house, seatéd at a table,
the owner of the house is reading —
yes, reading — and, of all things,
"the Bible! He rises to greet you,
“AUGUST, 19535
offers you a chair, You inquire
where his children are, and he tells
vou that they” are in school. Upon
further inquiry you find that he is a
Seventh-day Adventist, and that
once, not too many years before, he
too had lived in an unpainted hut,
in the midst of filth, and his children
had been in the same condition as
those we had just seen in the other
hut. Multiply this by ten thousand,
and you will see that Adventist mis-
sions pay great dividends in souls
transformed.
An illustration of the way Mis-
sionary Stahl conducted his work
BE
Elder F. A. Stahl treating sick Indians on a
tributary of the Amazon
during the twenty-six years he
served God in this area will help us
understand why he stood out as a
missionary.
At midnight he is awakened by
his faithful station boy, who tells
“him that his services are needed in
a nearby town. The identity of this
town the messenger refuses to re-
veal. Weary as he is after a hard
day’s work, Missionary Stahl rises,
saddles his enormous mule, Samson,
and in the company of the guide
and station boy sets out.
The sun is coming up over the
lofty Bolivian peaks of the Andean
range as they come into a sleepy
little Indian town. When Missionary
Stahl sees that they are going in the
direction of the Catholic church,
situated on the main square, he asks
pointedly where his guide is leading
him. This man confesses that he is
taking him to the parish house to
attend the priest, who is desperately
ill, and at the same time begs him
not to turn back! It so happens that
this priest is one of our most im-
placable foes, and has done every-
thing in his power to harass and
hinder the progress of our work.
Upon examining the sick priest,
Missionary Stahl sees that he is suf-
fering from an acute attack of ap-
pendicitis, and that surgery is the
only remedy. Thé sufferer pleads
that Brother Stahl do something for
him, but the latter says that only a
medical doctor can give him relief.
Thereupon Brother Stahl has the
priest's assistant help him dress and
mount his horse. The others join
him, and they begin a daylong trip
to the railroad terminal at Puno.
As they ride along, the priest is sus-
tained in the saddle by the strong
grasp of Missionary Stahl. The
people along the entire journey
watch fascinated, and also on an-’
other: “Has Missionary Stahl become
a Catholic, or has the father, per-
chance, embraced the Protestant
faith ?”
Missionary Stahl not only takes
the sick priest to the terminus of the
railroad, but accompanies him a
night's journey to Arequipa, at a
lower altitude, places him in a good
hospital, and then remains until he
is out of danger.
When the priest returned to his
parish, we had no more trouble from
him, and our work spread rapidly
and is prospering there today.
After spending ten years in the
Lake Titicaca region, during which
time five thousand or more Indians
were transformed by the saving
grace of Christ, Missionary Stahl
and his brave and capable wife at-
tacked the larger problem of carry-
ing the gospel to the untamed sav-
ages of the Amazon basin. The story
of this work is entirely different but
equally as thrilling as the one con-
cerning the Aymaras and Quechuas.
Because Missionary Stahl lived
among these Indians, Seventh-day
Adventist missionaries today can
travel with comparative safety the
entire length of the tributaries of
the Amazon in Peru, while other
people do so at the risk of their
lives.
Ferdinand Stahl rests from his la-
bors. ‘His life constitutes a monu-
ment and at the same time a chal-
lenge. Will we sit idly by, and let
the work begun by this intrepid here
of the cross disintegrate? God for-
bid! May someone now reading this
appeal resolve in his heart that he
will respond to the call to service,
and volunteer to serve God as Fer-
dinand Stahl did out on the great
frontiers of civilization. — Review &
Herald. oo
7