Mr. Lewis hoped, with the aid of Kivitidi, to commence building at Etoto in the course of a few weeks, but a series of misadventures and adversities postponed the work until the new year, and even then the evangelist had to make the start without the missionary’s personal oversight and direction.
In September the marriage of Mr. Phillips to Miss Phillips was the occasion of glad excitement in San Salvador. It was intended that the marriage should take place at Underhill, but legal difficulties arose, as the parties were to reside in Portuguese territory. The interest of the event was increased by the presence of Mr. Holman Bentley, who was paying a short visit. Mrs. Lewis records: “September 18th, Tuesday.—Up early, went to the Resident’s first, where the civil marriage was performed between Mr. and Miss Phillips, then came back and went to the chapel, which Tom and Mr. Bentley had decorated beautifully. Tom performed the ceremony, Mr. Bentley giving the bride away. The Resident, with Messrs. Pereiro and Dumas, came home to breakfast, and afterward we had our photos taken. Mr. Bentley left.”
A few weeks later occurs another entry which the reader will be expecting. “October 31st, Wednesday. Had breakfast in our bedroom early. Wedding of Kivitidi and Tomba in chapel at 11 a.m.; then ‘feed’ at our house, and festivities all day. Mr. and Mrs. Phillips stayed to tea, and spent the evening. All went off well.”
It was a grievous disappointment to all concerned that Mrs. Phillips, who commenced her missionary work with glad eagerness and no little aptitude, soon suffered serious illness, and in the earlier part of January she and her husband were compelled to leave for England.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Lewis has advanced so far in her mastery of the language that she finds herself making some modest literary ventures, of which she gives an amusing account in a letter dated December 29, 1888. It is not wonderful, perhaps, that her appreciation of the language was not as enthusiastic as that of the man whose stupendous labours were reducing it to literary form. Mrs. Lewis writes to Miss Hartland: “I do not wonder that you are amused by the look of the Congo hymns. It is a very ugly language, I think, in sound and appearance. But Holman Bentley thinks it lovely. It is as the red rag to the bull if one disparages this language to him. When he was here, I was wicked enough to remark that I thought it very unmusical, whereupon he replied, in severe tones: ‘It has all the elements of a beautiful language.’ The poetical mania has taken us all just now. The big boys are hard at work translating hymns. The trouble is to understand the English first, and then to get the right number of syllables. Some of their verses are not bad, others are most amusing, and require a great deal of puckering to get them in. I have just finished ‘There is a Happy Land,’ and our old hymn which we used to sing at Mr. Tucker’s Bible-class, ‘Children, will you go?’ Mr. Phillips and Tom are both at it. We shall have quite a San Salvador Supplement soon. But though the number of the hymns will be considerable, I will not say much for the quality. Yet they please the people, and will serve until a native poet arises.”
In the same letter she tells of how the commencement of the projected station at Etoto has once more been delayed by an outbreak of smallpox. The people of the town, in their distress, much to the regret of the missionaries, and without their knowledge, sent for a witch doctor. He came. But the fear of the white man’s influence was strong upon him, and, with admirable shrewdness, he affirmed that the witch was one of the people who had died of the pestilence, and having given this judgment, departed with discreet alacrity. Other troubles caused further delay, but at the end of January Kivitidi and Matoko started for Etoto to begin to build.
As the steady strain of the work and the inevitable trials of the climate were telling upon Mrs. Lewis, it was thought desirable in the early part of the year that, somewhat later, she should return and make a short stay in England. At the end of March she writes cheerily of the abandonment of this scheme, and of the possible substitution of a short visit to Madeira. She reports that Padre Barosa has written promising great reinforcements for the Catholic Mission at San Salvador, which she surmises will prove “mythical,” as in other instances. The work at Etoto is making good progress. She also casually mentions that a leopard has located himself “just outside our fence,” is raiding the live-stock of the Mission, but, to her great regret, is too clever to be seen.
On April 20, 1889, Mrs. Lewis wrote a circular letter to be read in certain Sunday schools with which the mission maintained correspondence. It is too informing and suggestive to be omitted, and too long to be reproduced in full. So I give it in slightly condensed form.
“I suppose many of you have read in the Missionary Herald of the little branch station which we have established at a town called Etoto, two days’ journey from San Salvador. Mr. Lewis visited Etoto about a month ago, and found the work going on well under the care of Kivitidi, our native evangelist. The services on Sunday and daily evening prayers are well attended, and thirty boys come regularly to school. As yet no girls have been induced to come. But as soon as the dry season arrives, I hope to pay them a visit with my husband, and then I have no doubt we shall get some girls to attend school. Mr. Moolinaar has just been spending a month there, and has visited some towns of the district. The school-house, with rooms for native teacher and missionary, is nearly finished. Please think of this new station and pray that many of the people may be brought to know and love our Lord Jesus Christ....