Willamette Mission

“You may never see your friends or family again. You must build your own house. You must grow your own food and make your own clothes. You are sick most of the time. And somehow, you must explain “salvation” to people who don’t speak your language. You are an Oregon missionary.” “Life at the Willamette Mission was always difficult, but during the first two years it was little more than a struggle for survival. The first arrivals- five men who came to preach and teach – instead spent nearly all their waking hours acting as farmers, cooks, carpenters, seamstresses, housekeep and nurses. They took in as many as 30 Indian children. Every child needed food that had to be grown, clothing that had to be patched together, and a bed that had to be built.” Thanksgiving dinner 1837: “Stewed peas, fried bread and pea coffee” “Illness and death were constant companions. Tuberculosis was rampant. New missionaries contracted malaria almost as soon as they arrived, leaving them weak or bedridden for days at a time. A child, laughing and playing one week, might suddenly die the next. When Jason lee left Oregon after ten years of tremendous effort, he left behind the graves of two wives and an infant son. Lee himself was mortally ill, and died less than a year after his return east. He was 41.” “Additional help, including woman, started arriving from the East in 1837. In it’s final years the mission included farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths a cabinetmaker and more teachers, as well as wives and children. By then, the original building was surrounded by fields, barns workshops, houses and nearly everything needed for a self-sustaining community.” “Jason lee had selected a poor site. Clouds of mosquitoes, a lack of water power, and the eroding riverbank made it clear that the mission must move. (Mission Lake at the time, was a channel) of the Willamette River) After they were abandoned in 1841, the buildings quickly rotted away. Only the fields remain.” “In 1844 the Methodist dream was abandoned. The Willamette Mission – then in Salem – was closed, replaced by Churches and circuit riders to serve the white settlers. Ten years later, the few remaining Indians, improvished and dejected, were forced onto the Grand Ronde Reservation.” “Even though their mission failed, the missionaries laid the foundation for the Oregon we know today. Their reports and letters encouraged large numbers of Americans to move west. They pushed for an American – style government- the first government in the Northwest – and held prominent political positions. Their “Oregon Institute” became Willamette University, and their Chemeketa community became Salem, Oregon’s capital” Source: Williamte Mission Site I encourage you to go and look around the Mission site which is now a beautiful park. We owe a debt of gratitude to the men and woman who braved the wild frontier all for the sake of the Gospel that it may be as it is now “the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes” Romans 1: 16

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