While living there, at the solicitation of his neighbors, he held a debate with a Universalist preacher, to the satisfaction of his friends and the discomfiture of his opponent.

Many parts of the Plains were covered with water, and were musical with frogs in the spring, but in hot weather they dried up, leaving here and there a stagnant pond.  I have heard father tell how one of his neighbors tried to break a field by beginning on the outside, and plowing farther in as the land dried up.  But the snakes and frogs grew thicker and thicker, as he neared the center.  At length the grass seemed almost alive with snakes, and his big ox-team became wild with fright, and ran away, and he could not get them back there again.

Of course, such a country was unhealthful, and father’s family was much troubled with sickness.  His parents both died; my mother was nearly worn out with the ague; and he not only suffered from poor general health, but from a sore throat, and had to quit preaching.  He moved to Sullivan, but without any permanent benefit to his health.  He did not at that time attribute his sore throat entirely to the climate, but thought it a chronic derangement that would utterly unfit him for a preacher.  Many years afterward he wrote of that disappointment as follows:  “For five years I saw myself sitting idly by the wayside, hopeless and discouraged.  I felt somewhat like a traveler, parched with thirst, on a wide and weary desert, who sees the mirage of green trees and springs of cool water that has mocked his vision, slowly fade away out of his sight.  So seemed to perish my castles in the air.  At that time making proclamation of the ancient gospel was too vigorous a work, and too full of hardship and exposure to be undertaken by any except those possessing stalwart good health.  If I had been predestinated to the life I have actually lived, and if it were necessary that I should be chastened to bear with patience all its disabilities, then, I suppose, this discipline I actually got might be considered good and useful.  If I have been able to bear provocation with patience, and to labor cheerfully without wages, and at every personal sacrifice, this lesson was learned when I saw all my hope dashed in pieces.”

In the spring of 1850 father sold his property and decided to go to Iowa.  Shortly before the time of starting, my little sister and baby brother took the scarlet fever and, ere long, they were both laid in the old graveyard.  Heart-broken as my parents were, they did not give up the long, lonely journey.  Father bought a farm in Iowa, and built a log house on it, intending to become a farmer.  He and mother united with the nearest church, at Long Grove, sixteen miles distant.  Father did not tell them at first that he had been a preacher, but they questioned him and learned the facts.  As his health improved he occasionally preached for them.

Eld.  N. A. McConnell gives the following account of his preaching in Iowa: