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Updated: June 2, 2025
The Board, seemingly, were not sure of the wisdom of the arrangement, and their decision was a qualified refusal. The work which Mr. Morrison was doing at Duke Town, they said, was important, and they could not sanction his transference to Okoyong until full provision was made for carrying it on effectively and to the satisfaction of the Calabar Committee.
Praise the Lord for sending you back to us!" When Mary came back to Okoyong, things were much different from what they had been the first time she came. Now there was a fine mission house. Churches and schoolhouses had been built in many of the villages. The people were slowly but surely turning away from their heathen customs.
No one had ever been able to influence them. They defied British administration. For fifteen years she strove there, and won a power over the ferocious Okoyong savages such as no one has ever wielded. "I'm a wee, wee wifie," she said, "no very bookit, but I grip on well none the less."
Okoyong was unmoved by these matters, "Ma" Slessor's authority was supreme, but while the Government believed that all would be well, they thought it better that she should also come to Calabar until the trouble was over. Very much against her will she complied. They sent up a special convoy for her, and treated her with all consideration.
Sir Claude took her point of view, and recognising her unique position and influence, empowered her to do all that was necessary, and to organise and supervise a native court. He then left her very much to herself, with the result that the inevitable changes were felt least of all in Okoyong, where they were made through a woman whom the chiefs and people implicitly trusted.
"Okoyong now looks to you more than to me for proof of the power of the Gospel." In the quiet of the evening in the Mission House, she seemed to dwell in the past. Long she spoke of what the conditions had been fifteen years before, and of the changes that had come since.
She was thinking of the greatness of God's love that could win even the oppressed people of dark Okoyong. She could not let the assembly break up without saying a few words. Now that they had the beginnings of a congregation they must, she said, build a church large enough for all who cared to come. And she pled with those who had been received to remain true to the faith.
"How can this poor tabernacle do it, even with six lads to push and pull and carry the cart through the streams? But I have opened the way, and that is something." In Ikpe itself the currents of heathenism ran deep and strong, and she found progress as difficult as in Okoyong. But she solved all the problems in the same fearless way as she had done there.
The Board took time to consider the proposal, and meanwhile Mary received the congratulations of her friends. Her replies indicate that there was no uncertainty in her own mind on the subject: I lay it all in God's hands, and will take from Him whatever He sees best for His work in Okoyong. My life was laid on His altar for that people long ago, and I would not take one jot or tittle of it back.
In his heart he and his friends were incredulous that the chiefs of Okoyong would listen to a woman. A third time the patient Mary went to him, and succeeded in bringing him and his son back with her, the women remaining behind until a new house could be built. The home-coming was fall of pathos. House, farm, clothing, seed-corn, yams, goats, fowls, all had vanished.
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