Na Davui ni Lotu (The Trumpet of the Church)

By Milton Hook

Milton Hook, Ed.D. (Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, the United States). Hook retired in 1997 as a minister in the Greater Sydney Conference, Australia. An Australian by birth Hook has served the Church as a teacher at the elementary, academy and college levels, a missionary in Papua New Guinea, and as a local church pastor. In retirement he is a conjoint senior lecturer at Avondale College of Higher Education. He has authored Flames Over Battle Creek, Avondale: Experiment on the Dora, Desmond Ford: Reformist Theologian, Gospel Revivalist, the Seventh-day Adventist Heritage Series, and many magazine articles. He is married to Noeleen and has two sons and three grandchildren.

First Published: January 29, 2020

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Na Davui ni Lotu was a church paper printed for members in the Fiji Mission from 1928 to 1935.

The Fiji Mission was in a strong position in 1928. Thirteen expatriate missionaries, 5 of them ordained ministers, led a group of 37 Fijian ministers. Two Fijians were also serving in the New Guinea Mission.¹ It was understandable, therefore, that the mission should have the luxury of two periodicals for evangelism. Harry Martin, an indefatigable worker, pioneered a new magazine to complement the well-established periodical Rarama. Martin’s new production was first published in 1928 as an eight-page monthly to sell for threepence each. He titled it Na Davui ni Lotu, meaning the conch shell, or trumpet, of the church. A fellow missionary, Roy Lane, assisted Martin with the editing. The copy was mailed to the Avondale Press at Cooranbong, New South Wales, where the periodical was printed and dispatched to Fiji.²

Martin’s mobility became increasingly restricted due to rheumatoid arthritis, forcing him back to Australia for treatment in 1930.³ In the same year, generous donations from America made it possible for Lane to set up a print shop at Suva headquarters.⁴ From that point onward, it was much more convenient to print his own periodicals. Lane himself served as editor and retained the same size and format for the magazine.⁵ Its annual subscription remained at one shilling, half the subscription price for Rarama. Nevertheless, it ceased to be published in 1935.⁶ Lane, as superintendent of the Fiji Mission at the time, was content to reduce the workload at the Fijian Mission Press in order to accommodate the printing of Fijian Sabbath School lessons and literature for other Pacific Island groups.

No copies of Na Davui ni Lotu have survived for archival holdings.

Sources

“Pastor and Mrs. H.R. Martin. . . .” Australasian Record, April 7, 1930.

Rudge, E. B. “The Fiji Mission.” Australasian Record, September 29, 1930.

Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, years 1928–1935.

Notes

“Fiji Mission,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1928), 236.↩
“Foreign Periodicals,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1928), 308.↩
“Pastor and Mrs. H. R. Martin . . . ,” Australasian Record, April 7, 1930, 8.↩
E. B. Rudge, “The Fiji Mission,” Australasian Record, September 29, 1930, 23.↩
“Foreign Periodicals,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1931), 339.↩
“Foreign Periodicals,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1935), 277.↩