Everywhere the people said to them, "We
want to learn book." They meant they wanted someone to teach them to read
the Bible.
At last they arrived at Akpap. Here there was the letter from the Mission
Board. Mary's hands shook as she opened the long-awaited letter. Would it
give her permission to go to cannibal land or would it tell her to come
home and take her furlough in the usual way?
You may make the jungle trip that you plan, but you will have to pay your
own expenses during this time. We do not have any money for that work.
Mary was happy. Mary took the little money she had and bought supplies at
Duke Town. Then she got her canoe ready. She took a crew of black rowers to
row the canoe and a group of the black children she had adopted.
"It seems strange to be starting with a family on a gypsy life in a canoe,"
wrote Mary, "but God will take care of us. Whether I shall find His place
for me upriver or whether I shall come back to my own people again, I do
not know. He knows and that is enough."
At last Mary and her group of travelers came to Itu, which was deep in
cannibal land. Mary had started the work here and then left native workers
to carry on. Now there were three hundred people in the church. Mary found
that the mission house at Itu was not finished. Mary herself mixed the
cement for the floor while Janie did the whitewashing.
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