A Christian wedding--Grateful offerings--Christianity a great boon to the women--Reunion--Various meetings--Lady missionaries conduct services--Auction sale of the gifts--Changed lives--Mikula instructs a stranger in the way of salvation--Rules for candidates and for Church fellowship.
A few days after Mikula’s return he was married to the young woman for whom he had built the brick house. In honour of the occasion the church was prettily decorated with flowers, long streamers of vine-like branches and palm-fronds. A bower was made by arching some palm-fronds, and beneath this were placed two chairs, tied together, symbolical of the future state of those who were to sit upon them.
The town was all agog with the excitement of the event, every seat and standing place was occupied, and the doors and windows were crowded with black but smiling faces.
This was the first time that a deacon-teacher had been married in their town, and as the bride-groom was much honoured by Christians and heathen alike for his happy, kindly, obliging disposition and straightforward, consistent life among them, they had come in large numbers to his wedding.
The bride was arrayed in a clean muslin dress of a bright but pretty pattern--the gift of her white lady teacher as a recognition of her helpful work among the girls during her stay upon the station. The bridegroom was dressed in a nice blue loin cloth and white jacket, the latter being the work of one of his neighbours who was expert with the needle.
A fellow deacon had come from a neighbouring town to perform the ceremony. A marriage hymn was sung and was followed by two teachers asking for God’s blessing on those about to be married; then the deacon read a translation of the marriage service, during which the bride and bridegroom took each other’s hand and solemnly pledged themselves to one another until death. Another hymn and prayer, and the benediction concluded the simple but impressive service.
No sooner did the newly wedded pair emerge from the church than they were greeted with cheers, shouts and a salvo of guns. Their progress home took the form of a triumphal procession, all the folk vying with each other in their expressions of pleasure, their exclamations of goodwill, and the guns banged with such tremendous reports of jubilation that it was a wonder they did not burst their sides.
Mikula invited his friends to a great feast of pig and cassava-flour puddings, washed down with copious draughts of water, tea and coffee. There was no wine, no drunkenness, and no debauchery; but a happy merry-making that left no bad “after palavers,” and no unpleasant headaches.
About three or four months after the marriage the native Christians in Mikula’s town and district were very busy in preparing their harvest thanksgiving offerings. Many of the women had hoed extra patches of peanuts and cassava gardens, the crops from which, when matured, they sold on the markets, and the proceeds were given to Mikula for the coming festival. Mats, baskets and saucepans were made and sold for the same purpose. The men also put by a certain portion of their “trade,” and devoted the result to the same object. Others laid aside pieces of cloth, hats, umbrellas and various other articles to take with them as their gifts.
Mikula carefully noted all the moneys he received, and everybody concerned was looking forward with eager interest to the arrival of the letter that would inform them of the date of the coming religious fête.