As I look back on my life, I marvel at the way God led our family in to the gospel. In 1911 we were living out in a little desert town in Arizona. We had moved there to take up a homestead and drill for artesian water. But things were not going as we had planned, but instead, my health broke down. The Dr. said I could never have health without surgery. There was no hospital in our town. I would have to go away from home, and me just a young inexperienced young woman. We did not know what to do, so my mother, being a real Christian, began to pray. She had been receiving papers from a place in Los Angeles that told how God was healing the sick through prayer.
We (or she) had been receiving some papers from a Dr. Yokum in L. A. about Pisgah Home - a place where sick folks could come and get prayed for. I cast them aside, but she saved them. After dad and I were married, we left Safford and went out to Bowie with my folks to take up a homestead and drill for artesian water. (We hoped to get it. It has never been found but they are drilling deep wells and pumping and turning the desert into cotton fields.) My health broke while there. God's way of leading us to the Gospel. Mama prayed to find out if I should go to California to seek for healing. A light shown across her bed and a voice said, "If she goes to L. A. she will be healed." That was enough for us. God had spoken.
We wrote to Dr. Yokum to see about me going there. The answer came back that a city ordinance had been passed forbidding them having people come to the home there - but said I could get a room and attend their meetings and be prayed for. Our hearts sank - what should we do? Just a young inexperienced girl of 18 years to go to a big city alone. How could we do it? But the Lord had a way prepared in His own way.
That week we got a letter from John Nix saying he was down at the Pike in Long Beach and saw Rob. Fitzmaurice running the Hippodrome (merry-go-round). Not a year before this time Carrie had told us not to write her again until we heard from her because they were going out on the R. R. again. He had been a section foreman (repair and maintenance of the tracks). I wrote to her old address and told her how I wanted to come out there and be prayed for. And could I come to her home? She wrote back - yes.
In the time since I had heard from her last, she had met the Apostolic Faith and received Sanctification and the Baptism. See how God had things planned? I came - when I saw her I knew something had happened to her. She looked so different. She met me up in L. A. and we took the interurban to Long Beach. When we got there we lay across the bed (in my room) and she told me about Sanctification and the Baptism. I believed it. I was ready to seek for it. That was Tuesday the 11th of Sept. 1911. on Tuesday the 19th I was sitting at her kitchen table writing to Dad and telling him all the things I was seeing and hearing. She had taken me to a little mission in L. B. (where she got saved, I think) and to people's homes where we could get down and pray, and also on Sunday we went up to L. A. to the A. F. mission there. They had prayed for healing - the pain was gone and I was feeling fine. As I was writing to Dad, Carrie brought a tract - a poem by Francis Havergal, "Why will you do without Him," and she laid it down in front of me. When I read the verse that says, "You need not do without Him," it put faith in my heart and I received the blessing right there. That was the beginning of my Christian life. Oh yes, we have never seen Dr. Yokum's place or heard from him again. God so unerringly leads.
Later the mission was taken over by "false prophets" in L. A. in 1913, but God led our footsteps away from there. We had cottage meetings at our house until we could get loose to come to Portland - Aug. of 1913. there have been several chances to go off with "false" teachers from here also, but somehow God must have loved us, as He has kept us in the Way since the first day He led us so surely to His people.
My parents came to L. A. in 1912 and soon followed us to Portland. Then Maude and her 3 little children - then Eula and Will and their four. Conley was born after they came to Portland. After the First World War Bruce came also and got saved. There have been about 18 souls Saved of our families, besides our grandchildren.
I forgot to say Dad dates his "birthday" from Mar. 12, 1912. He got so wonderfully Saved at the altar in the Mission in L. A.