Ellen G. White: The Lonely Years: 1876-1891 (vol. 3)

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The Trip Home to California

The conference session closed on Thursday, November 20. W. C. White, reelected to the five-member General Conference Committee, had matters to attend to before starting west. This delayed the departure for Oakland of the chartered passenger cars until Monday, December 4. This gave Ellen White a couple more weeks in Battle Creek. She was invited to give the Thanksgiving address in the Tabernacle on Thursday, November 27. 3BIO 270.2

Friday she went to Chicago, taking weekend services there. On Monday, December 8, she joined the group in the two westbound chartered cars as they passed through the city. She reached her Healdsburg home in mid-December and was joyfully received by her family of helpers (Letter 62, 1884). 3BIO 270.3

Looking back over the year, Ellen White and her literary assistants could count fifty E. G. White articles published in the forty-eight issues of the Signs for 1884, and fifty-two in the fifty-one issues of the Review and Herald. And of course, the 549-page volume 4 of The Spirit of Prophecy, entitled The Great Controversy. 3BIO 270.4

Her work for the coming year was outlined in the letter she wrote to her brother-in-law John White, in Kansas: 3BIO 270.5

The decision of the conference is passed, that WCW, accompanied by his wife, shall accompany his mother to Europe.... I could not prevent this decision, but I told the conference I could not consent to go unless the writings that are now unfinished could be completed this winter.—Letter 61, 1884. 3BIO 270.6