By Jamie Buckingham
(From the book DAUGHTER OF DESTINY, pp 38 – )
After the final service, the night before they were scheduled to leave — Myrtle to return to her husband, and Helen and Kathryn still undecided — a Nazarene pastor approached them outside the Women’s Club.
“Don’t leave.” he said to Myrtle. “I realize things have been pretty hard, but we need you here.”
Myrtle shook her head. “We can’t afford to stay. We have run out of money.” “Well let the girls stay then.” he offered. “I pastor a small mission church near here. They can come in and , at least, play the piano and sing.”
Myrtle shook her head. “We can’t afford to stay. We have run out of money.” “Well, let the girls stay then,” he offered. “I pastor a small mission church near here. They can come in and, at least, play the piano and sing.”
Myrtle looked over at Helen and Kathryn, who had been following the conversation. They both nodded their heads. “All right,” Myrtle said with a note of resignation. Kathryn wants to preach anyway. Why not give her a chance and see what she can do.”
“Fine,” the little pastor beamed. “They can start tomorrow night.”
And that’s how it all started. It was Kathryn’s first sermon on her own, in a dirty little mission church that used to be a pool hall in a run-down section of Boise. A few old chairs had been pulled in, and the piano, which belonged to the boy next door, had been wheeled through the back door, occupying a place near the rickety pulpit in the corner of the room.
As a last request, Kathryn asked Myrtle to lend her ten dollars. “i want a new yellow dress for my first sermon.”
“Kathryn,” Myrtle said, shaking her head and sounding for all the world like mama, “you can’t buy the kind of dress you want for ten dollars. It will take twice that much. Besides, I don’t have it. I’m not sure we have even ten dollars in the Parrot Tent Revival bank account in Sioux City.”
“Do you still have some of the signed checks that Everett made out” Kathryn asked.
Myrtle nodded.
“Then give me one of those. Make it out or ten dollars. I will not cash it until I’m sure you have enough money to cover the check.”
“But you still can’t buy the kind of dress you want for ten dollars,” Myrtle argued. “You are never satisfied with cheap clothes. You always want the best.”
“I have it all planned,” Kathryn said. “I may not get it in time for the first service, but I’ll have it before I leave town. I’ll buy the material for ten dollars. Then I’ll take it to a dressmaker and have her make it for me. I know just how I want it made. Then after I get my first offering from the mission, I’ll pay the dressmaker. How does that sound?”
Myrtle shook her head. “I would never do a thing like that. Never!”
But she wrote out the check and left it with Kathryn. Before the week was out, Kathryn had her dress—a yellow pulpit dress with fluffy sleeves and a hem that came just to the top of her ankles. Not only that, but she convinced the merchant where she purchased the material to let her pay him out of her first offering, and talked the dressmaker into sewing the dress for nothing — a “ministry unto the Lord.” She held onto the check for three months and finally cashed it in Sioux City, Iowa, when she made a brief visit to see Myrtle and assure her that she could make it on her own.
And make it she did. One bleak day, Kathryn and Helen arrived in Pocatello, Idaho. The only hall available for her services was an old opera house, so long fallen into disuse that there some question whether it would stand up after a cleaning; its dirt seemed to be its strongest reinforcement. But it took more than a little dirt to cool the combined fervor of Kathryn and Helen, who were billing themselves as “God’s Girls.”
“Even then,” Kathryn told me, “I knew what God could do if only the Gospel—in its simplicity—was preached.”
Before the two young women left town, after six weeks of holding nightly services, which often lasted past midnight, the main floor and both balconies were filled.
Their welcome in Twin Falls, Idaho was as warm as the weather was cold on the January day they arrived. On the second night, just as Kathryn was leaving the building, following the preaching service, she slipped on the ice and fractured her leg. Helen took her to see a doctor who had his offices near the civic hall where the services were being held. He put her leg in a heavy cast and told her to stay off it for at least two weeks. The doctor, though, didn’t know anything about the fierce determination of this young woman who was beginning to sense her direction in life. No broken leg was going to keep her from doing what God had called her to do. She never missed a single service, preaching for the rest of the month-every night-leaning on crutches with her leg encased in the heavy cast.
A trained nurse, a veteran of World War I who attended the service, wrote a letter to the editor of the Twin Falls paper saying: “I have seen courage and determination on the battlefields of France. I saw the same courage and determination last night in a lady who stood on the platform preaching salvation.”