New Harvest Fields

In September of 1930, Faith Stewart reached Havana, Cuba, with less than five dollars in her hand. She was in a strange land, and again she could not speak the language. There was no missionary board backing her, no promise of more to come; her only asset an unlimited faith in God. In that boundless faith lay her only riches and hopes of success. Feeling in the very depths of her heart that God had again called her to go forth, she boldly attacked the job at hand.

A native Jamaican woman, who was a friend of a Christian woman in America, consented to having Faith Stewart as a guest for a brief period. This American woman had written, asking her to meet the new missionary and see her in safety to her home. But the letter was slow in delivery, and Faith Stewart arrived first, with no one present to meet her. All she had was a slip of paper in her hand with the name and address of the Jamaican woman. She did not hesitate, but took a cab and went out to the place of the native woman’s humble home.

There she waited on the Lord for the next move, praying through Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for money to rent an apartment. On Thursday morning the mail came, and with it her answer. For twenty-three dollars a month, she was able to rent a small apartment with a large living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen. Her bed was a wire-spring folding cot with iron legs, but no mattress, a half worn blanket loaned by the friend, and a traveler’s pillow. This apartment was in Buena Vista, Habana.

Little by little, friends, hearing of the brave venture after the sad loss of the other field, would send in a small offering from time to time. Sometimes it would be one dollar, sometimes as much as five; and she, living on the very least possible, used most of these offerings for rent, and for lumber to make plain board-seat benches for the living room, which was used for a mission room. She owned little of this world’s goods at this time. The simple cot bed, a tiny stove for cooking her meals, a tin cup for water or coffee, or perhaps in which to boil a potato or an egg for her dinner or breakfast. In those days every penny was saved and used toward the precious needs of the little mission that must be started at once. Surely never a missionary started with less. Later there were friends and visiting ministers who exhorted her to take better care of her own health, and to use more of the little that came in for food and necessary things of life. This rigorous living undermined her health in time. She, however, says little or nothing about the sacrifices of those days. She writes, “In September of nineteen hundred and thirty, we began our mission work in Cuba with cottage meetings.”

Let me pause here to say that, after all the sacrifice and loving preparation, after the faithful labor of walking the streets day after day, after inviting all, that whosoever would might come, only a very few came out to the services. It was a very small group at the morning worship. She was deeply disappointed, and spent the entire afternoon in prayer before the Lord, pleading for souls. In the evening, God worked in a marvelous way, moving on the hearts of men and women and causing a goodly number to come out, and her heart was made to rejoice. Again we pick up the lines in her own words:

The first few months of labor in the new field were spent among a group of West Indian people who had moved to Cuba from other islands. These West Indian people all speak English, and this made it possible to work among them while yet unable to work among the Cuban people. At this time, I did not have an understanding of the Spanish language. Through these early labors, a good English work was brought out, and thank the Lord, many of these first converts are still standing true to the Lord and to the standard of truth taught in His holy Word. This being a Spanish nation, the English work is small, but at this date we have four groups of English people.

Before her coming, there lived on the island of Cuba a devoted Christian man, who had come there from Jamaica with his wife and family. This man, Thomas French, was burdened for the salvation of the souls in Cuba, his adopted land, and he and his family began to pray earnestly and continually for God to send a missionary to gather in the souls in that particular field. And God, who is ever merciful, heard both their cries and the heart-cry of Faith Stewart for a country in which to pour out her life for Him. Both petitions, going up to the Throne from two different races in two different lands, were answered when she stepped off the boat and set foot in Havana harbor, Cuba.

With slower steps and feebler strength, this (now aged) man and wife still labor, and manage to keep on the firing line of the battle front in Guantánamo, Oriente, Cuba.

Faith Stewart continues:

In our Sunday Schools, we have at this time around one thousand and five hundred children who are weekly taught the precious Word of God. [This was in the year of 1947.] Although the Roman Catholics have put on a terrible campaign against Christianity in the past year, and have used every force possible to destroy true missionary work and to stop its progress, we still have been able to more than hold our own. For this we do praise God.

There were problems that came in those days, even as now, and of these she writes:

We fight against these strong and mighty powers in the Island, each of these doing their best to make it impossible for us to continue. The three greatest opposing powers in Cuba are Spiritualism, Catholicism, and Communism. In some places where we have a group of Christians, it is impossible to rent any place for worship, and in other places we do rent, but the workers are so constantly molested that it is impossible for them to do their work properly.

We have one outstanding case of this in Camagüey, and are having to take steps at once to get a humble dwelling place and place of worship so the work can go on there unhindered.

This report was sent to the United States in 1947, a good many years after the venture had started—but perhaps we are pressing forward too fast, and it would be best to take a backward glance at some of the earlier days.

By dint of unceasing labor, studying the language day by day, living a life of earnest prayer, and putting all time, all effort and finance that fell in her hand into the great project, by the end of eight months, she was able to raise up two missions in the heart of Havana. One of these was in Almendares.* These were the English-speaking people from other islands and were mostly of the colored race. Also at this time, there were two missions raised up of Spanish-speaking people, and all was moving along very nicely with native help.

Sister Stewart told me that, while still in the United States, in the last pastorate where she had labored, and where God had so blessed and prospered the work, there was a woman of the colored race who also labored in a mission with her own people in the same city. The two were personally acquainted. It happened that one day about this time, she arrived in Havana, saying that she had come to visit and see the work.

She showed a definite interest in the English-speaking work all the time, professing a great friendship for their missionary. After making an extended visit, she came one day, saying, “My dear Sister Stewart, I feel that I should stay on and assist you. I would be very glad to stay on for some time. You are working too hard, and I would be glad to take over one of these congregations while here in Cuba. This will lighten your load and also give you more time for language study and extension work.”

One of the outstanding characteristics of Faith Stewart, down through the years, has been her readiness to trust another Christian, and only after repeated tragic failures through the insincerity of the many she has trusted to fulfill their part, has she been compelled to be more wary of professed Christians. It has proven many times over to mean loss and suffering to her own labors.

In this case, the offer was seemingly sincere, and the reasoning good and sensible, and the load truly heavy for one person, so she asked, “Which mission would you prefer to labor in?”

The other woman promptly named the group of people in the very heart of Havana, and one that seemed to be the most promising. She immediately began her labors and the two labored on for awhile.

One day this worker came to her asking, “Why do you not register this mission?”

“Because in this country, it is necessary to have at least seventeen members of good standing in any group before it can be officially registered and own property.”

“But there are seventeen and more who attend now.”

“There are seventeen adherents, but there are not seventeen Christians sufficiently established in the faith who are clear enough out of Spiritualism, so we must wait for that.”

The assistant worker returned to her work; but shortly after that, when Faith Stewart called at the mission, she found the worker and the lay members sitting in session in the courtyard of the mission. A quiet fell over them as she entered. They were evidently planning something for the first time in which she could have no part.

Shortly after that, she learned that their leader had gone to the proper place and registered the group, naming herself as the superintendent. Thus, after sacrifice and labor and burden, this part of her field of action was practically taken from her by one who pretended to be a friend. But as we sow, we reap. This work today, after many years, is not a strong work and has not prospered so well. But Miss Stewart has pushed on and out, fearless and faithful and determined to win her adopted land for God, and God has been with her.

It was in those early years of the history of the work that the revolution broke out in Cuba during the administration of Machado, the president of the Republic. Throughout history and in many lands, there come conditions which bring unrest and tension. Then some deed of injustice, some outstanding incident of history, will serve as a match struck before dry shrubbery, and a great fire blazes before it can be controlled.

In Miguel Fonseca’s Historia de Cuba, we read of the trouble in 1871 on the Island and of the incidents that he says are dark spots in her history.

The revolution that broke out at this time in the 1900’s lasted for five years. There was fighting in the streets, and once when Faith was in town, she found it necessary to run for her life as bullets began to hum from the windows of the business buildings. Another time, men stood on the front veranda of her own home and shot into the street at their enemies. At still another time, the dead bodies of men were piled up in the streets so that the city buses could not pass. At the time, she was the only woman who had been brave enough to board the bus, and the experience was one to be remembered.

During that period of time, there was a strike, which is one of the steps taken by the revolutionists to force the person to come to terms. All stores were closed. The poor who had no money to buy and lay in food found themselves helpless to buy one ounce of provision. The milkmen dare not deliver even one pint of milk to babies that they might live. Two milkmen in pity sold one quart of sweet milk to a poor mother for her sick baby, and were imprisoned for six months after the strike was over.

At the time, Faith Stewart took a few dollars and bought what she could find and fed all she could just enough to hold them over the period. But no one can know the suffering such a strike brings on nor the toll of lives it takes among the innocent. After the strike, one of the members of the mission testified one evening that he felt so near Heaven that night. His testimony was so sincere it touched every heart. Before Sunday came again, he had gone on home to glory—starvation had claimed its victim, for relief had come too late for help in his case. Those years, the very first five, were hard years, but God saw them through, and through it all there were precious souls gleaned from the ripened harvest fields of Cuba.