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Farmer’s Wife Becomes Evangelist
A Swedish Methodist minister studied the Bible prophecies with the Sypes at Fairfield
and ordered a prophetic chart. How much Adventism he preached to his congregation,
the Sypes could only guess.
Minnie Sype felt a sense of urgency. She did not know how much time would be
allowed for human beings to decide for or against the truth. Therefore when converts
began to keep the Sabbath and then went on to join the church in spite of the trying
circumstances experienced in the town of Fairfield, the results seemed especially sweet.
Five people joined the Fairfield church by profession of faith and two by letter on
Sabbath, August 31, with three more awaiting baptism. After working early and late,
through storm and opposition, Minnie Sype considered that Sabbath a day of celebration. She and the rest of the team could say that though Fairfield presented a grueling
struggle, through faith in God they had triumphed.
While she was pastor-evangelist that year in Fairfield, Mrs. Sype led the membership
in sacrificing and working until they had paid off their church debt. This relieved financial pressure and allowed the church to move forward.
During the winter of 1906-1907, Mrs. Sype held meetings at Darbyville. When the
meetings ended in April, 12 people—mostly adults—united with the church. Several
male converts gave up habitual card playing, whiskey drinking, and tobacco smoking;
this evangelist was thorough in preparing people for baptism.
Minnie Sype became increasingly involved in the overall work of the conference. In
“Our Camp Meeting Symposium,” which appeared in the Iowa Worker’s Bulletin prior
to camp meeting and the conference session of 1907, Mrs. Sype was the only woman to
write, along with several male ministers.
One of the conference session meetings dealt with the importance of daily study of
the Sabbath school lessons. The printed report told how Anna Sype had learned to
study her Sabbath school lesson while doing the laundry, sewing, and caring for her children. By studying this way throughout the week she prepared to teach a class on
Sabbath. Only recently she had heard from a former member of her class; this woman,
with no Adventists in her family, was keeping the Sabbath because of what she had
learned in the Sabbath school class. (“Conference Proceedings, Eleventh Meeting,” Iowa
Workers’ Bulletin, June 18, 1907, 193 ff.)
Mrs. Sype was a valued member of the conference ministerial team whose credentialing continued to be that of a licensed minister; and in Iowa, as in Oklahoma, the
conference employed more licensed ministers than ordained.
Evangelist Sype moved on to other locations. At Winthrop for a short time she had
the help of an ordained minister, Elder E. G. Olson; he spoke of himself as assisting
Mrs. Sype.
When she went to visit her sons at Stuart Academy, Mrs. Sype was sometimes
invited to conduct spiritual meetings for the students. One day the principal asked her
to speak in chapel on the topic of pure, clean living. She didn’t feel that she knew what
to say to that challenging high-school-age audience. However, she prayed earnestly to

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