Chapter 8—Founding a Home for the Fatherless

Way back in the old Chicago days we carried on an extensive rescue work for girls. The Lord had wonderfully blessed this effort, but we found that we were leaving the fish too near the water; so even before we moved our sanitarium work out to Hinsdale we had rented a little cottage out in West Hinsdale as a Rescue Home. But it was not properly equipped. We could not persuade the owners to make the necessary sanitary improvements. It was also nearly two miles away from our sanitarium work.FF 87.1

We began to appeal to charitable people to help us do something better. Little by little money came in in various ways until we had a thousand dollars in our treasury. But one day when I was down to the Rescue Home I found three girls and two or three babies besides Mrs. Swanson, the matron, all occupying one little bedroom. The need of something better impressed me so strongly that I came back and told our people, “We will build a Rescue Home—the best in the State of Illinois, and we will do it now.” We paid our thousand dollars for a piece of land near the sanitarium. That took all the money we had.FF 87.2

Then we let the contract for a four-story building containing thirty rooms and agreed to meet the bills every thirty days. Something told me we would get the money. You remember we had this extensive enlargement of the sanitarium on our hands at the same time, but we went to work. Our sanitarium family lifted to the breaking point. We raised nine hundred dollars in one evening from our own family, and then God put it in the hearts of other people to help us.FF 88.1

Happening to go up to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, I was invited to give a talk on Sabbath afternoon, where I told something of what we were trying to do. Some of the patients helped generously, and so did some of the doctors and others. The next day after the meeting I felt impressed to go up the street and visit the mother of one of the lady physicians. When I rapped on the door, she came and said, “I know what you came for—to get twenty-five dollars from me.” I said, “Yes, but how did you happen to know?” “Well,” she said, “I attended your meeting yesterday afternoon and I promised the Lord that if he sent you to my house I would give you twenty-five dollars.” That was the only private residence I visited.FF 88.2

A very poor woman gave me twenty-five dollars. The next person who saw her name said, “Doctor, you ought to go and return that money. That woman can't afford to give twenty-five dollars to the Rescue Home.” So I went and saw this woman again, and she said, “You don't need to let anybody worry you about that, Dr. Paulson, that wasn't my money at all. Someone let me have that to give to some worthy cause, and I never found anything that just appealed to me till I heard you tell about the Rescue Home project.” To make a long story short I brought back one thousand and twenty-five dollars with me.FF 89.1

Then a sick woman wrote me from St. Louis to come over and see her. I replied that I was too busy, she would have to come to me. She wrote back that she was too sick to come, but if I would come over she would give me a hundred dollars for the Rescue Home. I went; could do nothing for her medically, but had a word of prayer at her bedside and she wrote me a check for two hundred dollars. A very worldly contractor who drank heavily gave me four hundred dollars. He said he believed in that kind of religion.FF 89.2

It was remarkable how in various ways God raised up people to help. Dr. Frank Gunsaulus, the great pulpit orator of Chicago, came out and gave a magnificent lecture in the auditorium of the Hinsdale Club house at a mass meeting, entirely in the interest of the Rescue Home. The invitation to this meeting was signed by the president of the Village Board, president of the Woman’s Club, president of the Civic League, and each of the pastors in town. We raised one thousand eight hundred dollars that night, eight men giving one hundred dollars a piece, among them such men as John C. Fetzer, Mr. Butler of the Butler Paper Company, ex-Congressman Childs, and Mr. Beidler and others. All told, forty different people gave each one hundred dollars for the Rescue Home building. Widows and orphans sent in their little mites, and finally different people each undertook the expense of furnishing a room. There were more people who wanted to furnish rooms than we had rooms to furnish, and the building was dedicated free from debt.FF 90.1

It is not a home for degenerate girls and their babies, but rather for those who have been more sinned against than have been sinners. Some of them came from homes that would astonish you, as far as good opportunities are concerned—but something was missing: the mother had not had time to help her daughter, but she had plenty of time later to have her heart broken over her girl. We have taken the girls in and helped them over this dark hour in their experience, found work for them as domestics, found good homes for their babies when they could not keep them themselves, and if for any reason they lost their jobs they would come back until we found them work again. Of every one hundred girls that go through the Home we know that eighty-seven or ninety are making good.FF 91.1

We have not merely been kind to these girls; we have brought the gospel of Christ to them. Eight girls were baptized in the Home last year (1913) and many others had deep spiritual awakenings.FF 92.1

This Home has absolutely no income except the little that some of the girls can pay, yet it never gets behind but a trifle, and rarely has much of anything ahead. When they run short somebody prays and God puts it in the heart of someone to answer those prayers. Just the other day the superintendent bought a sewing machine for the Home. The Company sold it for half price and promised to wait until the money could be raised. Our people prayed, and a few days later a stranger stopping at the sanitarium who had heard about the sewing machine wanted to have an opportunity to pay for it.FF 92.2

Several years ago when we were maintaining a Branch of the Home on the South side in Chicago the matron needed coal. She told me she ought to have a whole car load as that was the cheapest way to buy it, but that would cost one hundred dollars. I told her to pray. She said, “Pray for coal?” I said, “Yes, why not? Don't you suppose the Lord knows the coal bin is empty?” She and her workers prayed, and I prayed. A few days later I received a letter from an old lady down in Illinois written in a tremulous hand—just three lines. I had never heard from her before, nor since. She said, “I felt impressed you needed a hundred dollars for your work in Chicago, so I am enclosing it herewith.” When I took that letter and the hundred dollars in to the workers in Chicago, tears came in their eyes. They knew their prayer had been specially answered.FF 92.3

The trouble with some folks is, their prayers are so general that if they were answered they would never know it, and if they were not answered they would never miss it. The Lord doesn't always answer our prayers directly. He sometimes has a special purpose in the delay. At other times He gives us something else that is better for us; but God hears every sincere prayer offered in the name of Christ.FF 93.1