Dios es Amor It seems your publication isn't ready to go worldw | Page 29

Farmer’s Wife Becomes Evangelist
Minnie conceived a ministry even while Anna was ill for several months due to
complications following measles. She invited camp women into her home to sew quilts;
as the women quilted, she read to them, planting seeds of truth.
She found herself in situations that caused her to take a stand for temperance, a virtue
not commonly championed in the camp. Although she experienced ridicule at first, after
a while other mothers, watching Minnie’s example, gave up their heavy drinking and
took an interest in caring for their families.
With her husband’s splendid musical contribution, Minnie conducted both a Sabbath
school and a Sunday school. The Sypes also invited the mining families into their home
one night a week for singing. Logan led the group in songs full of Advent hope.
Afterward people could be heard around the grounds humming or singing snatches of
this uplifting music.
The mine work proved detrimental to Mr. Sype’s health. At the end of a year, as his
father urged him to return to Iowa, Logan and his family decided to make the move.
There was genuine sorrow among the camp people when the Sypes departed, leaving a
little Sabbath school and a few people keeping the Sabbath. As Minnie corresponded
with them later, she prayed that she would meet some people from that Wyoming
mining camp in God’s eternal kingdom.
Not long after their return to Iowa, the Sypes received glowing accounts from a family
who had moved to Oklahoma. Following the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, settlement
continued in pulsations through the turn of the century. Mr. Sype thought it would be
wise to move to the Oklahoma Territory to homestead on land that was available. Mrs.
Sype struggled with thoughts of leaving her beloved Iowa farm. However, as the couple
prayed they saw indications of God’s leading, such as the rapid sale of their Iowa land.
Minnie agreed to move.
Her husband traveled ahead to build a cottage on their 160 acres. When Minnie
arrived with the children, she found that Logan, knowing her dedication to study, had
included a reading room especially for her! By settling several miles from any other
Seventh-day Adventists, the Sypes made sure they would have opportunity to share
truth with those who did not know it.
During the summer of 1901 the crops that Logan and the neighboring settlers had
planted were prospering. Then in July a miserable, hot wind began to blow. This
continued until crops shriveled and corn cooked on the stalk. Livestock, unable to graze,
were fed from scanty stores until supplies ran out; after that, farm animals died in
alarming numbers. During the devastating winter that followed, hundreds of homesteaders abandoned their claims. So great was the trauma that some who lived through
it banded together as Drought Survivors of 1901 and met annually for at least forty
years. (Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration, Oklahoma: A Guide to the
Sooner State [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941], 241.)
Most of the people around them suffered even more than the Sypes, who kept their
courage up by leaning on the Lord and quoting Scripture promises to each other. As she

29