“It seems rather strange that it was just twelve months on Saturday since Mr. Phillips and I came to San Salvador. We could scarcely have hoped that in one year we should enjoy the privilege we had yesterday.
“As we intended to organise a Church, we called together these five, who were to be its first members, a little earlier than our usual time for the Communion Service, that we might explain matters to them. Mr. Phillips told them the nature and some of the principal laws of the Church of Christ, after which we each gave them the right hand of Christian fellowship. As it was my turn to preside at the Communion, I said a few words on the nature of the ordinance before we proceeded to the observance of it. It was indeed a season of hallowed joy.”
As yet there were no women converts. But from the first Mrs. Lewis realised that she was specially called to be the teacher and evangelist of the women and girls of San Salvador. Her efforts secured quick and encouraging response. Some three months after her arrival the Rev. H. Ross Phillips reports: “Here, at San Salvador, Mrs. Lewis has already gathered a fine class of girls, and a women’s class also. Great interest is being shown by the women in the new work, and evidently it is much appreciated.” It may be useful to the reader if at this point I reproduce one or two paragraphs written shortly after Mrs. Lewis’s death. They anticipate the story, but present an outline picture, details of which this and following chapters will supply:—
“The chapel, which also served as school, was a bamboo structure capable of seating some 250 persons. It was well attended on Sundays, men sitting in front and women behind; the women often chattering and inattentive, accounting it ‘a men’s palaver.’ One day, soon after her arrival, a woman came to Mrs. Lewis, saying that she imperfectly understood the teaching in the chapel, and begged that she might come and be taught privately. She was, of course, encouraged. The next week two or three others came with her, and so began Mrs. Lewis’s women’s meeting, which, with its developments, has ever since been one of the most important parts of the work at San Salvador. It was all to the good that the first inquirers were women of some distinction—indeed, wives of the King. Their example encouraged others. Very wisely Mrs. Lewis determined that these meetings should be as informal as possible. The teaching was conducted in conversational fashion. Questions were welcomed and comments solicited. The meetings were held by Mrs. Lewis in her dining-room, the women sitting on the floor, and when the dining-room could not hold them they overflowed into the verandah. Sometimes there were as many as fifty present. But again, wisely, Mrs. Lewis preferred, for her special work, the small class to the large congregation. She could get closer to ten women than to a hundred, and so her inquirers and converts were divided up into many classes, held on different days. As the work developed, and the surrounding districts were reached, the women of each district had their day, and by these means our friend became the teacher, the friend, the confidante of hundreds of African women, who understood something of the love of God as it came to them through her heart.
“While she was acquiring the language her work was done through an interpreter; an intelligent, good lad, who followed her about with absolute devotion and was always at her service. The first converts were men. But a few months after Mrs. Lewis’s arrival at San Salvador two of the King’s wives were baptized, and now for long years there have been more women members than men in the Church at San Salvador. In addition to her women’s classes, Mrs. Lewis conducted, with great success, a large school of girls held in the chapel.
“I am indebted to Mr. Lewis for a time-table of his wife’s day’s work at San Salvador. She rose at 7, breakfasted at 7.30, concerned herself with domestic matters until 9, when the morning service of prayer was held. At 9.30 she dispensed medicines to sick folk, and then came classes for women, which lasted till one o’clock, the dinner hour, followed by an hour’s rest and tea. From 3 to 5 the school occupied her. Once or twice in the week there was a woman’s prayer-meeting from 5 to 6, and the evening hours were filled with domestic duties, writing, and study. A big day’s work for Africa.”
By a happy coincidence, on the morning of the day which I had set apart for the composition of this chapter, the post brought me a letter from Mrs. Graham of San Salvador. I quote certain apposite sentences. Mrs. Graham had been asking some of the elder women to give account of their earliest remembrances of Mrs. Lewis. “They say that when she came they had got used to white people, and were not afraid of her, but none of the women had come out from heathenism. Her teaching was so convincing, and she so unwearying in her efforts to get hold of them, that they never once doubted the truth of her message, even when threatened with death by the King. Some of these women are still among our most consistent members, and to this day we are reaping the fruit of the thorough training in elementary theology which they received from her. She loved teaching, was devoted to the women and girls, and we learnt from her wise plans of work.”
Upon arrival at San Salvador, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis took up their residence in the grass-house, which was available—a good enough house of its kind, but leaving much to be desired both as to comfort and accommodation. Mr. Lewis, like his friend George Grenfell, was a practical man, who had been taught to work in iron, and knew, half by instinct, how to work in wood and stone. Immediately he set himself to build a more solid, spacious home for his wife, and on November 5, 1887, this important addition to the Mission properties in San Salvador was completed, and Mrs. Lewis proudly took possession of a house which afforded better facilities for the ordered housekeeping and evangelical hospitality to which, by nature and by grace, she was inclined.
Mr. Lewis’s “right-hand man” in this building business was his “boy” Kivitidi. And here some particulars concerning Kivitidi, who will often appear in the story, may be compendiously set down. He had been one of John Hartland’s boys. From his much-loved and lamented master he had received the seeds of truth and book-learning, and good measure of instruction in manual work. From the first he became much attached to Mr. Lewis, and when he was informed that Mrs. Lewis had formerly been engaged to John Hartland, he said he “knew all about her,” and thereafter was her devoted servant too. His regard was reciprocated, and his master and mistress were his truest friends.