GEORGIA.
Ogeechee—Changes for the Better—Saving Souls and Saving Money.
REV. JOHN R. MCLEAN, PASTOR.
We have a good Sunday-school. It is not so large as it might be; but the children, and all who attend, are getting thoughts of the Bible that they can get nowhere else around here. And it is making a great change with the old people, as well as with the children. The other schools hold the children by giving them cake and candy; I hold them by giving them Bible truth. I find that it has more power over them for good than all the cake and candy that can be given them. The children act better on the Sabbath than they did when I first came here. I can see a great change.
The church is doing, I think, quite well. It takes a steady, but slow, patient and faithful work, to lead a people out who are so far in the dark as these have been. I can see a manifest desire on the part of the members to do better than they have been doing, and even better than the members of other churches.
Last Sabbath was our Communion-day, and I never was in a more lovely meeting in my life. We had no one to join (for the first time, I think, since I have been here), though there were three or four who had been received some time before, but were not able to be out on that day so as to join. Some of the churches that only had preaching once in the month, have it now every Sabbath, since they see that we have it every Sabbath.
I know of no place in the South where the colored people get so much money for labor as they do here. But they don’t save any money at all; they get it, and it is gone, and they cannot see what they got for it. I am trying to induce our members to save their money, and buy for themselves homes; but it is hard to get them to do this, like almost everything else that is right and for their own good.
I know the Lord has blessed me greatly in my work, for which I am thankful. Pray for us at this place.