overcome and we continued to enjoy the blessings of full-time pioneering.

In October, 1949, my sister and I were sent to the town of St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, an isolated territory thirty-five miles outside of Montreal. A friend drove us out to look for accommodations. Everywhere we inquired the people would say: “I will have to phone my priest to see if it is permissible to rent to non-Catholics.” After trying several places we finally found a woman who agreed to rent us her front room with the intention, as she later admitted, of converting us to the Catholic faith.

At that time we were petitioning the people for a written Bill of Rights for Canada. The first week the majority signed, agreeing freedom of religion was everyone’s right. Sunday’s sermon brought a change of scene. The parish priest announced that no one was to sign, that we were “Communists,” that we were ‘the foolish virgins of the parable,’ etc. Our landlady was warned to put us out after two weeks. One morning she told us to leave the house within two hours or our belongings would be put on the street. She cried as she informed us, adding that this was not her own idea. Taking our clothes to the train-station lockers, we began another search for lodgings, but to no avail. We were obliged to return to Montreal and for the next three days our time was spent hiking back and forth between these two cities looking for another home. We found it on the city’s outskirts, with a very openminded family that even after having been insulted in the local papers refused to put us out.

After a time we were arrested, charged with selling Bibles. Upon our trial we won. This stopped the mobbing that had become a daily routine and also gave us police protection. Later we were joined by two other missionaries and in due time we had the joy of establishing a new congregation. Several persons took a firm stand for the truth, being obliged to leave town to look elsewhere for work. To us, though, it became real home, and the territory being almost entirely French we were able to progress in the language. On many occasions people took us to talk to the local priests at their presbytery, not believing that we had the ‘good Bible.’ These discussions strengthened us as we realized how little these seminary and theologically trained men knew of the Scriptures. One even objected: “How do you expect me to discuss the Bible? I am a priest, not a Bible student.” Another, a Dominican “Father,” swore at us during a discussion in a closed retreat building when we showed him in his own Bible that his proof of “a trinity” taken from 1 John 5:7 was an interpolation. The young man who had driven us there was disillusioned, having at first promised us that though he did not know the answers to our questions surely the “Fathers” would.

September (1951) began another adventure in our missionary life. We were assigned with a classmate to Trois Rivieres, Quebec, eighty-three miles north of Montreal, along with five other newly graduated missionaries of Gilead’s seventeenth class. At the beginning they were strangers to us, but, we being able to find only two rooms to accommodate the eight of us, it was not long before we became acquainted. Our first day of service began by a visit to the local chief of police. This was to inform him of our arrival and intentions, so as to spare his men the need to make unnecessary investigation of false charges, which expectedly would be phoned in, that we were “Communists.” After we explained the method of our work, he wished us much success. Eight missionaries working every day soon brought the comment that an army had invaded the town. At first the priests tried several means to stop our working there, even following us from door to door to warn the public. A call to the police one day, to arrest us, was foiled when the police, on seeing who it was, drove right past. When we obtained larger quarters our home became a Kingdom Hall.

Many upon whom we called commented on the fact of eight girls living together in peace. That alone proved to them that we had a peaceful organization and that God’s spirit prevailed. Living in very close quarters, every one of us learned much and found that our particular individual way of doing certain things was not always the right way; so each in turn gave in to do better. We found that when there was organization there was peace. Living together for over two years united us as a real family, and when the time came to leave we realized what a strong bond had been established.

Now something new awaited us: an established congregation. Faithful pioneers had worked very hard to build up this group under very trying circumstances. Like Moses, we felt quite incapable of taking over, but knowing that our strength lay in Jehovah, we prayerfully took up our responsibilities. Soon we found the publishers responding and co-operating to further the Kingdom interests, and our mountain melted away to a molehill. A year later we were still increasing and very much enjoying our association with these “other sheep” who are in so great need, though gradually growing to maturity.

My sister, who had accompanied me for over ten years, now has left for another assignment along with another member of the family, my brother-in-law; but in her place my younger sister (a pioneer of three years), along with her husband (a full-time servant of five years), came into Quebec Province. In being thus privileged to be used by Jehovah I have been very happy. Pursuing my purpose in life as a missionary has proved it.

Now I am pursuing my purpose in life in a different capacity. After spending some time at the Toronto Bethel home, I married and became a member of the Brooklyn Bethel home, where I now live and serve as Mrs. C. A. Steele.

Gets Truth from Egg Wrappers

● The 1956 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses shows that today there are forty witnesses of Jehovah in South-West Africa. However, back in 1945 there was but one lone witness. Recently this lone 1945 witness was visited and he told how he came to be one of Jehovah’s witnesses. Back in 1929 while working in a mine he kept getting eggs from a nearby farmer. These eggs were individually wrapped in paper, pages from a certain book. The printed matter on these pages struck a spark of interest and he kept on reading them, wondering where the book came from. Then one day the last page of the book was reached and on it he found the name and address of the Watch Tower Society. He wrote to the Society in Germany, obtained literature and soon thereafter took his stand for the truth. Today, at the age of seventy, he continues, a faithful witness for Jehovah.

Irrelevant

● At the Texas Evangelistic Conference, attended by some 3,000 Baptists, preacher Roy O. McClain of Atlanta’s First Baptist Church said that about 25 percent of what he does and of what most other preachers do is “about as much related to the kingdom of God as Mother Goose.”—The Atlanta Journal, January 10, 1956.