Read 0800722329 for Free Online

find happier memories to dwell on.
    The day the printing press arrived at Lapwai! Oh how grand a day it was! We had hoped for so long for a way to bring the Word to the Nez Perce people who had welcomed us with such delight. They gave us a skin home to live in while they cut logs and built our house. Fish and elk and deer meat appeared at our door that saw us through that first winter. I saw then God’s grace in my not having a child to keep. Compared to Fort Vancouver, the “New York of the West” as I called it, our log hut in Lapwai was primitive at best. But it was home and our Indian neighbors warm and inviting, unlike what we heard from the Whitmans, settled among the Cayuse. Unlike what we’d been told to expect before we traveled west. I held no fear of the Indians then. None. I could observe the different ways The People did things, like the baby boards that kept a child secure as well as entertained while a mother cooked over an open fire. Older children ran free of the constraints of clothing, small loincloths for the boys; short skirts of leather for the girls. The People willingly gave me the names of items I touched, and I was ever grateful that the Lord blessed me with the gift of taking in languages with ease. With the printing press, I could give the language back.
    Mr. S insisted that we plant a garden quickly that next spring, and the Indians worked beside us digging earth as well, though we had no plow, just hoes. He begged the Mission Board for money to buy plows, but such expenditures were not approved, just one of the many frustrations with us being so far—in a foreign field—on our own. While we worked, I learned words in Sahaptin more quickly, I found, than they could grasp our English. Shikam is what they called their handsome horses, many a light color with black spots sprinkled like bits of nutmeg across their rumps. Ravens or Koko flew above us as we worked. Each thing I saw was new, and when I pointed, Matilda or Timothy or Joseph would give me the Nimíipuu or Nez Perce name. I once asked what The People’s name meant and Joseph was thoughtful. “English give it the name for pierced nose. Those who did this are not of The People. We say Nez Perce means ‘We walked out of the woods through the forest.’ Before we had fine horses. But the English . . . maybe Clark used that nose name.” He put his palms up in surrender. “We are the Nimíipuu, The People.”
    “We English spread from one thing to many,” I said.
    Timothy answered: “It is as you say.”
    I would remember that conversation later, after Waiilatpu and the Board’s decision forcing us to leave. But the language-learning! It was as though I was back in Hebrew and Greek classes sitting on hard wooden benches beside my husband at Western Seminary in Cincinnati—but here I sit on a Hudson’s Bay blanket with blue sky and fluffy Ipalikt (clouds) over us rather than the rafters of the college. I knew I would need to know their Nez Perce word, their Sahaptin language, if I was to share with them the stories of our Savior’s love. And that was why I had come all that way, to bring that good news to lighten the dark days of The People. The Nez Perce had come east to plead for teachers to bring them the Book of Heaven. I was prepared to meet that call in the everyday routines as God allowed.
    Mr. S would soon ride off to place orders with the Mission Board and also spend what little cash we had at Fort Vancouver. Or he’d have meetings with the missionaries who came after us, taking their calls among the Spokane and other tribes. He left me alone during those travels, but I found the time a respite from his constant activity and direction. He so wanted our Mission to succeed, as did I. The women learned weaving and carding quickly, and the summer the printing press came, we plain wove 23 yards of flannel.
    The Hall family came with the press. Dear Sarah Hall endured a difficult pregnancy and could not walk. She’d made