New Missionaries in Roanoke

When the Johnson’s got off the train, they went to 111 East Salem Avenue. The building was dark and dirty. The floor was littered with trash and cock roaches scurried along the walls. In a corner of the darkened room they found a fellow under some rags “sleeping off a drunk.”

Gus and Lois were very disappointed. Gus did not want to stay in such a place with his young bride. Lois said they needed to pray about what to do, so the two of them knelt down next to their steamer trunks and asked God for guidance.

When they finished praying, Gus said he was ready to return to Chicago, but Lois said they had to stay. She later confided that she said this not because God had told her to stay, but because her pride would not allow her to return to Chicago as a missionary failure.

They scrubbed and mopped and cleaned up the room and made a bed out of a pallet of quilts. Gus had to nail the door shut because there was no lock on the door. Just as they were about to go to sleep, a police officer broke down the front door.

“Are you the new Madam?” he asked Lois as she sat up from her makeshift bed on the floor.

“No, I’m the new missionary!” she responded.

“Oh, is that what you call yourselves nowadays…” he said with no little skepticism.

Lois and Gus explained who they were and what they had come to Roanoke to do. The officer must have believed them because later that same week, he brought a family to the Mission who needed help.