58 
SHERBRO MISSION. 
and fair education. He was a member of Mich- 
igan Conference. After his appointment as 
missionary to Africa he was ordained by Bishop 
Edwards at the annual session of Michigan 
Conference, held in September, 1871, and about 
the last of October, of the same year, Mr. Flick- 
inger accompanied the two to New York, and saw 
them sail for Africa. After a tedious and rather 
dangerous voyage, owing to stormy weather, they 
arrived safely in Freetown about the middle of 
December. Soon they were taken down the coast 
to Shaingay, and immediately proceeded to the 
work they had gone to perform. 
The labors of our missionaries for the next two 
years were abundantly blessed, as is fully brought 
out in other portions of this volume, so that the 
General Conference which met in May, 1873, had 
abundant reason to thank God that they had four 
years ago ordered the Board ^^to keep the door 
wide open’’ for missionary labor in Africa. They 
heard with unmixed satisfaction, not of decaying 
buildings and dying hopes in Africa, and at home 
an empty treasury, no missionaries, and little dis- 
position on the part of the Church to furnish 
either men or means to carry on the only foreign 
mission under the care of the Board, but instead 
of new buildings, and, what was of far more con- 
sequence, of living stones gathered for the spirit- 
