Ellen G. White in Europe 1885-1887

Fruitful Work in Ulceby

After spending most of Monday, August 24, in writing, Ellen White took the train ten miles to Ulceby, to visit there the little church raised up by A. A. John. Her labors were fruitful. One woman who had been convinced of the truth, but who was still undecided there, determined to obey all the commandments of God. EGWE 42.4

Before the meeting Mrs. White visited a short time with a baker, Edward Armstrong, and his family of nine children.^* Armstrong told her how his wife had been a Sabbathkeeper for some time, but he had hesitated, fearing that to accept the Sabbath would cut off his livelihood. He supplied an English lord's family in Ulceby with bread, and this helped him secure most of his business in the town. Finally, he decided he would keep the Sabbath come what may. He announced his decision to the lord's mother, promising to bring her bread late on Friday and early on Sunday, but she refused, paid him up, and discharged him, declaring they must have fresh bread each day and that she would order it from Grimsby. A week later though she called him back to ask him if he had given up his foolish ideas. Satisfied that he had not, she told him she would take his bread anyway, because the bread they got from Grimsby was always sour. EGWE 42.5

This experience drove home to Ellen White the serious difficulty many people in Britain faced when they accepted the Sabbath, and it aroused her sincere sympathy. EGWE 43.1

“It is very difficult for poor people to keep the Sabbath,” she wrote to her friend Dr. Gibbs. “It is not luxuries that they lose for they have not these; but it is the bare bread that sustains life that they lose. Many believe but have no kind of a show of getting the simplest food to sustain life.” “But,” she wrote, “God's eye is upon His conscientious, faithful children in England and He will make a way for them to keep all His commandments.”—Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists, 163. EGWE 43.2

After spending the night with the Short family in Ulceby, and an “English style” breakfast of “porridge, bread and sauce, and cake,” she took the nine o'clock train back to Grimsby. EGWE 43.3