Appendix
Personal Experiences of Ellen G. White as a Welfare Worker
[
While all through her life Mrs. White was mindful of the needs of
those about her, there were times when these needs pressed especially
hard. No attempt is made in the following pages to give an exhaustive
account, but rather to present some typical experiences concerning
which she happened to make a record in her diary or in her letters.
These excerpts present the wide field of her welfare ministry, with
larger emphasis on two periods in her life experience, one rather early
and the other later in her life
.
In the “jottings” from the diary of 1859 we see Mrs. White as a
thirty-one-year-old mother of three lively boys, carrying the house-
hold burdens, writing, traveling, and preaching, and at the same time
assisting those around her who were suffering or in need. Through
the nineties we observe her in Australia during a period of severe and
prolonged depression, with heart-breaking needs on every side. With
these the reader will also find a number of statements which help to
trace the thread of her welfare activities through her entire life
.
The reader will observe that the E. G. White diary entries are
recorded in terse diary style, sometimes in short phrases and often
in the present tense. Surely it will be also recognized that the purely
biographical account as Ellen White recorded her day-by-day activities
does not constitute instruction for the church and therefore is not to be
considered as authoritative testimony. This is true also of biographical
references drawn from the E. G. White letters. Nevertheless, the
example of Ellen White does add emphasis to her precept
.
The burden of heart carried by Mrs. White, her sense of her respon-
sibility to those in suffering and need about her, and her eagerness to
help, though seemingly ever hampered by limited resources, should en-
courage every Seventh-day Adventist to greater and more enthusiastic
participation in Welfare Ministry.—Compilers.
]
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