A telephone call came to Sr. Svenson from two ministers at Stavanger requesting the two American evangelists to come to them. We accepted the call and Sr. Svenson's daughter and Bro. Fjield went with us. How the ministers came to locate us at Sr. Svenson's I never knew, as neither of us had ever been at Stavanger. The names of the two ministers calling us were Johnson and Jornsen of the Christian church. We called first at Brother Johnson's where we were warmly welcomed. They told us that they had heard of us and had been earnestly praying for the Lord to send us to them and that they were glad we were there: "You are here in answer to prayer," they said, and then opening a door into another room informed us that there was our bedroom. They showed the dining room, saying, as they did so, "Anytime that you are hungry, come here and eat." To all this kind welcoming my response was, "This really seems to me to be like too much of an open door in face of the fact that you do not know us nor do we know you, perhaps we had better go in and have prayer together and some consultation about the matter. After we had had prayer they related the following:
"We belong to the Christian Church; formerly there were two hundred members of us or more, but two years ago a 'Tongues speaker,' an ex-Baptist minister, came to this city and as he seemed to be earnest and sincere we were sorry he was not getting a single opportunity to speak, so decided to give him the privilege to speak once in our chapel, and that was once too often! At the meeting, I [Bro. Johnson] was sitting on the platform with him, and Brother Jornsen, who weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, was standing in the aisle holding on to the back of a chair on which a man was sitting, as the chapel was packed. After the preacher had spoken ten or fifteen mintues seven women were lying on the floor in a trance.
"We took a stand against the spirit that was working and, talk about power! The chapel wall on one side cracked (the evidence of which was still to be seen)." Brother Jornsen said, "I took a stand against it with all my soul but nevertheless my feet went from under me and I was thrown to the floor and my jaws were just jabbering." "This continued eight days and nights until we finally got the victory over it and the preacher took over two hundred of the congregation with him, leaving us but nine persons, we two ministers make the total number eleven. And if you go with us to the service tonight there will be thirteen of us and we will have services, Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and" they added, "you must preach only until nine o'clock, the services start at eight fifteen. Don't let any women testify nor any pentecostals!
"Now," I said, "I will give you our proposition, we will go with you tonight and tomorrow you can advertize in the two city daily papers that two American evangelists are here to hold services every night including Saturday and three services on Sunday, all next week until Friday and then we will see how things go." "That will not do," they said, "No one will come out Saturday night nor Monday or Tuesday nights." "Well," I said, "you can let us have the key and if no one comes Brother Johnson and I can go inside and have prayer. Upon this condition we can stay, and if not, we will take our grips and go."
To which they replied, "You can't go, for the Lord has shown us that you are to hold a meeting for us." The next night there were about two hundred in the congregation and some ten minutes before nine o'clock eight persons started to get ready to leave; I was still speaking, so paused and said, "Just a minute, please: We have just come from Denmark where we preached as long as the Lord would lead, until nine or ten o'clock. Now if you have to go home you are welcome to go, but if it's simply your custom to leave a meeting at a certain time whether or not the service is over, we are going to pray the Lord to break up such a custom." Six of the persons sat down again and two left. Saturday night the chapel was full and Sunday night quite a number were saved. The meeting continued almost four weeks and souls were getting saved right along.
One day we had a baptizing service between two boat houses in the North sea and after I had baptized all the candidates, a fisherman, who owned one of the boat houses, came out and asked me whether I would not baptize him. On my inquiry as to his being saved, he told me this: "I was saved three years ago but have never before met folks with whom I believed the Lord was working, but today as I witnessed this service I was convinced that the Holy Ghost was with you folks." I baptized him and never saw him again. After that we were not allowed to baptize from the shore but had to take the folks out in a boat and baptize them from a rock in the North sea.
Following that incident we were invited to a sea Captain's home, to be there at 9:30, the next morning. The house was the most finely finished house I had even been in. When we arrived in the morning we found it was full of people of the upper class, the men with their silk hats and the women equally distinctive in their dress. Some of the company were saved and some fifteen more were saved that morning.
The lady of the house and her six sisters had a brother who was an old sea captain and was sick. We were told he was an infidel and would have nothing to do with preachers, that if any happened to come into his house he ordered them out. His seven sisters were praying earnestly for him and they felt that we could be a help to him. Their plan was to set a day when they would all go and visit him and if the weather was fine we were to come by and they would be on the porch talking to him. We were to pass along on the other side of the street and when they saw us they were to call "Good morning" and invite us over and introduce us to their brother, he was not to know that we were preachers. The plan was successful and after talking awhile Captain Parsons invited us into the house.
On coming into the room we noticed that the walls were hung with pictures of ships, thirty-eight steamers. He said he had been seaman on each one of them and captain on several. So he took us for a trip around the world.
Finally he came to the last one, a very large ship, but it looked, like a rusty, broken-to-pieces tin can, its masts, smokestacks and bridges had evidently been blown or swept off. We were awed by the sight and said, "This looks bad." "Yes," he said, "that was the trying hour of my life, it was in a typhoon off the coast of Sidney, Australia. This is how it looked when we were towed in." Then I looked at my watch and found we had been talking for two hours and feeling that it was time for us to leave I said to him, "We are two ministers and generally when we make a call, before leaving we sing, read some Scripture and have prayer. Would you grant us that privilege here?" He said, "I see no reason why you should not do so."