Messenger of the Lord

Strenuous Schedules

Her taxing schedules were arduous even for strong men. We have already noted her exhausting travel arrangements under terrible weather conditions. In those early years, Ellen and James White would stay up past midnight, reading proof sheets and folding papers, then face each new day’s unending duties. ²⁷ MOL 84.7

For an example of her church duties that lapped over Ellen White like shingles on a roof, we can point to June 23, 1854. Now seven months pregnant, she and James returned to their Rochester home from a busy seven-week journey through Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The trip included many speaking appointments, counseling with evangelists regarding better methods, traveling nights by train, and a train wreck that involved a premonition to change cars (their first car was “much broken”). MOL 84.8

But they returned in time for a four-day conference in their home, representatives coming from western New York, Pennsylvania, and Canada. Ellen White sighed, “We returned ... much worn, desiring rest.... Without rest we were obliged to engage in the meeting.” ²⁸ MOL 85.1

Throughout her vigorous schedule of speaking, traveling, and writing continually, Ellen White supervised a busy home schedule. As we noted earlier (p. 75) she generally had more boarders than her immediate family. A diary entry for January 28, 1868, written at their Greenville, Michigan, home, is typical: “Brother [J. O.] Corliss (a young convert) helped me to prepare breakfast. Everything we touched was frozen. All things in our cellar were frozen. We prepared frozen turnips and potatoes. After prayer, Brother Corliss went into the woods near Thomas Wilson’s to get wood. James, accompanied by Brother [J. N.] Andrews, went to Orleans, expecting to return to dinner. MOL 85.2

“I baked eight pans of gems, swept rooms, washed dishes, helped Willie [age 13] put snow in boiler, which requires many tubsful. We have no well water or cistern. Arranged my clothes press [closet]. Felt weary; rested a few minutes. Got dinner for Willie and me. Just as we got through, my husband and Brother Andrews drove up. Had had no dinner. I started cooking again. Soon got them something to eat. Nearly all day has thus been spent—not a line written. I feel sad about this. Am exceedingly weary. My head is tired.” ²⁹ MOL 85.3

While their new Battle Creek home was being constructed in late 1868, the Whites were meeting appointments in the eastern states. James shared with readers of the Review and Herald the relief he felt after returning home on December 30, 1868: “We found a convenient and pleasant house built at Battle Creek for us, and partly furnished with goods moved from our [Greenville] home in Montcalm County. This place seems like home. Here we find rest in several senses of the word. We had become tired of meetings, tired of traveling, tired of speaking, tired of visiting, and tired of the business cares incident to an absence from home, living, as it were, in our trunks nearly one-third of the year. Here we find quiet for the present.” Later in the article he noted that sixty letters awaited them, all to be opened and answered! ³⁰ MOL 85.4