Seventh-day Adventist work begins in the Philippines by the coming of a colporteur who sells religious books in Manila among the Americans. By the next year, a missionary couple arrives with the purpose of raising an American congregation in Manila, which in turn is expected to reach the Filipinos. After two years of working however, there are no American converts who remained in the Philippines. The missionaries change strategy and begin to reach out to Filipinos instead.
Pastor and Mrs. L. V. Finster arrived, learned Tagalog, and prepared tracts for Filipinos in their own dialect rather than a foreign language.
Finster started to hold meetings with High School students, Bibiano Panis and Leon Roda. After 9 months of Bible study, the first twelve Filipino converts to Adventism were baptized while six were accepted into church membership through profession of faith.