CHAPTER XXII
A MIGHTY WORK AT ST. LOUIS, MO.
The Lord was calling us to St. Louis, Missouri, April, 1890, but we wanted to stay in California through the summer, and we had quite a struggle to know what to do. We placed our goods on the cars and were going to Los Angeles, California. That night I received a letter calling me to St. Louis. We sold our household goods and started next morning for St. Louis. No person knew we were coming until our meeting was announced. Surely God leads me in a mysterious way. I cannot have any choice, or say I will go here or there, but I must know the voice of God, and where He leads I will follow. Two years prior to this time the way had been opened in St. Louis. Many of the best citizens invited us to go and hold meetings. They would have taken much of the burden off us, but our dear Lord does not permit us to lean on or trust to the arm of flesh, for the battle is not ours, but the Lord’s.
We held meetings in a hall for two months. The first night there were eighteen present. God was there in power. Two were converted. The crowds grew larger every day, and souls were converted at every meeting. A number of remarkable cases of divine healing were wrought by the Lord. We felt we could not afford to board; that we must save our money to pay the expenses of the meeting. We rented rooms in the third story of a private house and did our own cooking. This was very hard on us, but it was the best we could do.
We were invited one Sabbath afternoon to hold a meeting in the Union Market. We felt the Lord was leading in this, and accepted, the invitation. We had a large, attentive congregation. The street-cars were passing by loaded, to see the new bridge that had just been built across the Mississippi river.
One old man, a Catholic, heard me preaching. He got off the cars, came to the meeting and listened attentively; at the close of the service he was saved. He said he wanted the kind of religion we had. He had a hard battle to fight with his family, who were all Catholics; but he stood firm, and said he was determined
to make heaven his home. God set his seal on this meeting.
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