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Called By God
The Iowa Conference president, visiting the Oklahoma camp meeting in 1905, urged
the Sypes to return to their home state of Iowa. The next year, in view of Mrs. Sype’s
health, the family decided to accept the invitation to work in Iowa. They left Enid the
first day of May 1906.
Setting foot on Iowa soil again was an emotional event for Logan and Minnie Sype.
They and all three of their children had been born in that state.
Visiting her family, Minnie Sype found a young minister conducting an effort in
Afton. The conference president asked her to assist him until camp meeting in June.
Here Minnie Sype had first heard the Adventist beliefs. It was a rich experience now to
be teaching others in Afton. At the same time, she could visit her family. Minnie was
thankful beyond words to see two of her sisters baptized as fruitage from those meetings
and from her years of praying and witnessing.
At the forty-third annual session of the Iowa Conference, held in June 1906, the
committee on credentials and licenses recommended seven people to be credentialed as
ordained min-isters; 19 were awarded ministerial licenses, including Mrs. Minnie Sype.
(”Conference Proceedings,” Iowa Workers’ Bulletin, June 19, 1906: 195.)
After camp meeting the Sypes started work in the southeastern part of Iowa at
Fairfield. There was an existing church, but members had moved away, and church
attendance was not large. Mrs. Sype divided the town into districts. She and the
members went from house to house distributing tracts, and on the third visit they asked
for the privilege of conducting Bible studies. Minnie preached and organized the work.
The work in Fairfield was in several ways a hard struggle. The splendid new tent—
for which Minnie Sype had personally raised the money—was tested when a cyclone
struck Fairfield on August 15, 1906. The Sypes awakened about midnight to find themselves in the midst of the most severe storm they had ever experienced in all their tent
work. It seemed that tents and people might all be dashed to pieces. However, while
trees were being uprooted, houses unroofed, and barns torn down, God kept his
precious evangelistic team safe; and the tents suffered no damage except that the very old
family tent was slightly torn. People of the town were surprised the next day to see the
evangelistic tents standing sturdily after the storm.
Local ministers worked with all their ingenuity against this Adventist intrusion into
their territory. One day Mrs. Sype went to visit an interested person in the home and
found a minister there trying to keep his flock from disintegrating.
In Fairfield Mrs. Sype had more support than usual, with Anna Camp as the Bible
worker and the Caviness family to help with speaking, visitation, and music. Mrs. Sype
prepared short doctrinal articles that were accepted by the local paper.
Because people in neighboring Libertyville showed interest in Mrs. Sype’s preaching,
she began working there as well as in Fairfield. During one invitation that she made in
Libertyville, the Holy Spirit seemed very near, and eight people came forward for prayer,
six of whom had never lived as Christians previously.

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