p. 16 | The Michigan Home for Girls

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 30, 1908

The Michigan Home for Girls

By W. H. McKee; M. D. McKee

This home was established five years ago, on a capital of faith and prayer. It was organized under the Michigan State law of 1893 for associations “not for pecuniary profit.” The home now owns a forty-acre farm in the country, with a twenty-one-room house, ice-house, corn-crib, and barn, and a ten-room cottage in the city. These are just half paid for. Besides these, it occupies a forty-acre farm across the road from the original home farm, on which there is a good house and barn. This place is held for the use of the home by a friend, and will eventually be owned by it. An exceptionally fertile hay-farm of eighty acres is also worked on shares for the benefit of the home. This is the result of five years’ effort, in answer to prayer, starting on a donation of twenty-five cents. None of the workers receives a salary, thus giving the girls a practical example of the life of faith, and convincing them that such a work must have a basis of love. By this many souls are won to love Jesus and his precious truth.

Many girls come to the home who have never known good homes or parents, and who are “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world;” these are taken into the home life, and taught the way of salvation. The blessings of a Christian education, with the complete third angel’s message, are brought within the reach of all who seek the shelter of the home; and a mother’s care and counsel are freely given, and deeply appreciated by the majority who are received.

Heart-broken parents are comforted and encouraged, families re-united, and innocent infants provided for. The rich are interviewed in behalf of the work, and many thus hear for the first time the warning message for these last days. All classes come into touch with the work, and God has graciously blessed in every way. Plans are now being laid for the institution to become self-supporting; these will be hastened as rapidly as may be, in view of the approach of the time when we shall be given the alternative of confederating or losing popular assistance.

Much favorable comment on the work itself is heard; yet at the same time some bitterness is manifested because of our religious faith. We have been advised by some, moved in their own feelings by pure friendliness, to renounce our belief in the Sabbath, that we may gain worldly favor and money. While, like Paul, “we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed,”

yet we rejoice in this blessed privilege,—“as poor, yet making many rich: as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”

We purpose erecting an industrial building in which fruit-canning will be carried on, and scientific cooking, with chemical analysis and food experimentation, for the better education of those who prepare food in the homes of the people, that our light on healthful living may be brought to those who need to know of its value. The sewing department, with gardening and housework, is a training-school for inefficient and young girls, who need preparation for usefulness in life.

The Home discipline is such as to cultivate refinement and Christian courtesy. Industrial, educational, social, and spiritual influences combine to build character, which is the chief object of the home’s existence.

Many marked evidences of God’s special leading are witnessed, and our hearts are full of praise for such a blessed ministry to the unfortunate and friendless.

After five years of intense activity, in which there have been but four days’ rest, we have at last found a place where we can accept the invitation of Jesus to come apart, and rest a while. We shall spend two or three months with our daughter in southern California.

W. H. McKEE, M. D. McKEE.