CHAPTER 2

BEGAN THE LIFE OF A MINISTER--FIRST MISSIONARY TOUR.

The summer of 1873, I attended our camp meeting, which was held at Medford. One evening after preaching service, Brethren Robert Schram and Henry Youngs took me, one by each arm, and said, "Brother Hill, come with us." They led me to the preacher's stand, and Elder Canright said: Brother Hill, if we give you a license to improve your gift, will you use it?" It was a momentous question. Upon my answer hinged the course of my future life. Although I loved teaching dearly, and was loth to give it up, yet I believed the coming of the Lord was at the door, and the world was to be warned to flee from the wrath to come. Time, too, I believed to be short, the harvest great, and the laborers few. I had firm faith in the promise of God to be with the laborers even unto the end of the world, and that whosoever would forsake houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for His name's sake, should receive an hundredfold and inherit everlasting life. Matt. 19: 29.

With such views and feelings, I could only say, "By the assisting grace of God, I will;" and although I have had poverty, privation, even to the want of sufficient clothing to protect me from winter's chilling blasts, and have met with opposition and contumely on every side, and am now prematurely old, if I could be placed right there again as I was on that eventful evening, knowing all as I do now, I would raise my hand to heaven and say, "By Thy grace I will."

I went home from camp meeting, and prepared to go forth as a herald of the cross. I had my new house to plaster, and very much to do. On the 7th of October, 1873, with Brother Ferdinand Morse, I started for Elm Creek, Marin County. We found that in consequence of the grasshopper raid the men had gone or were going East to work, to get something to live on during the winter, and it was impossible for the women to attend evening meetings without their husbands, so the idea of laboring in that vicinity had to be abandoned. At this juncture Brother Morse was taken with a sore throat, and returned home, and I was left, with valise in hand, on the broad prairie, with no experience whatever in preaching. I got a ride with a farmer to Vernon Center,