“I am going on a short trip through the cannibal country,” said Mary.  “I am inviting you to be my guests on this trip.  I want you to see what God is doing among the cannibals.  Won’t you come with me?”

“We’ll be glad to go with you,” said Mr. Wilkie.

Mary and her friends first visited Itu, where they met Colonel Montanaro, who had first taken Mary to Itu.  Then they went to Akani Obio.  Here Chief Onoyom had a big party for them.

“Ma, when are you going to come and stay a long time with us?” he asked.  “I want you to bring the Gospel to me and to my people.”

“I hope it will be soon,” said Mary.  “I am praying every day that the Mission Board will let me work in your country.”

Mary and her friends now went to Amasu to see the Gospel work that was being done there.  Then they visited the villages around Arochuku where the Long Juju was.  Then they started back to Akpap.  They visited many very small villages on the way back.  Everywhere the people said to them, “We want to learn book.”  They meant they wanted someone to teach them to read the Bible.

At last they arrived at Akpap.  Here there was the letter from the Mission Board.  Mary’s hands shook as she opened the long-awaited letter.  Would it give her permission to go to cannibal land or would it tell her to come home and take her furlough in the usual way?

You may make the jungle trip that you plan, but you will have to pay your own expenses during this time.  We do not have any money for that work.

Mary was happy.  Mary took the little money she had and bought supplies at Duke Town.  Then she got her canoe ready.  She took a crew of black rowers to row the canoe and a group of the black children she had adopted.

“It seems strange to be starting with a family on a gypsy life in a canoe,” wrote Mary, “but God will take care of us.  Whether I shall find His place for me upriver or whether I shall come back to my own people again, I do not know.  He knows and that is enough.”

At last Mary and her group of travelers came to Itu, which was deep in cannibal land.  Mary had started the work here and then left native workers to carry on.  Now there were three hundred people in the church.  Mary found that the mission house at Itu was not finished.  Mary herself mixed the cement for the floor while Janie did the whitewashing.  Someone asked Mary how she learned to make cement.

“I just stir it like oatmeal, then turn it out smooth with a stick and all the time I keep praying, `Lord, here’s the cement.  If it is to Your glory, set it,’ and it has never gone wrong.”

Every day Mary made calls and helped to solve the problems of the people of Itu.  In the evenings she would hold prayer in the yards of many of the people.  Always Mary told the people of the Saviour who died for them.

The news that Mary the white Ma was in cannibal land soon spread far and wide.  The tom-toms calling through the jungle told the different tribes where Mary was.  From Ibibio southward, the natives sent messages to Mary.