Ruth Slater

How thankful I am for an old-fashioned mother who feared God and knew how to pray. My people were pioneers, and I was born in Atwood, Kansas, in a sod house. When I was nine years old we moved to a farm near St. Helens, Oregon. During my early years, we would ride in the lumber wagon to old-time revival meetings. Mother would take my sister, Nellie, and me down to the front row in those meetings. As I heard her sing the old hymns, I realized that she had God in her heart, and I knew He was real. Yet, I was a stubborn girl, and as I rode home in the wagon, my feet not yet able to touch the floorboard, I determined that I was not going to serve the Lord. I thought the world held so much for me, and I did not want to take the way of the Cross. However, God had other plans for me.

Mother was saved and sanctified, so during the summer of 1909, the Wesleyan Methodist church sent her as a delegate to their convention in Portland, Oregon. While there, a friend said to her, “Let’s go out to the Apostolic Faith camp meeting that is taking place nearby.” As they walked onto the campground, the Lord said to her, “This is the old way. Walk ye in it.” Mother said, “I will, Lord!” She eagerly sought and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Two years later, I attended my first Apostolic Faith camp meeting. I remember sitting on wooden benches and listening to the music being played on a little old street organ. It was wonderful to me, because in the spring of that year I had knelt at a kitchen chair in our farmhouse in St. Helens and had given my heart to the Lord. I was just nineteen years of age at the time, and I told God that if He would come into my heart and make a change, I would give Him my life. Oh, what a change He did make! He took the pride and stubbornness out of me and filled my heart with such peace and happiness. Later God sanctified me and filled me with the Holy Ghost.

He took the pride and stubbornness out of me and filled my heart with such peace and happiness.

Before God saved me, I could not get along with my father. I guess we were too much alike. After I was saved, my father said, “It must have been Ruth’s fault, because since she got saved we don’t have any more trouble.” I praise God that the day came when my dear old father also prayed and gave his heart to the Lord.

After I was saved, I longed to do something for God. Whenever the church papers, The Apostolic Faith, were printed, Sister Florence Crawford would let me help fold them. We would sit on old-fashioned high stools in a little six-by-five cubbyhole in the Front and Burnside church building to work. The papers we folded were handed out and also mailed around the world. I never thought a time would come when I would be one who handed out those papers, but I was blessed to give them away by the hundreds and thousands to people with hungry hearts throughout the world.

One day I was in an accident and a car ran over my feet. The doctor said I would always be crippled, but I prayed and asked God to heal me. Though He did not heal me right away, I continued to trust Him. The foreman where I worked in San Francisco, California, began calling me “Cripp,” because I limped. Then one day, Jesus came down and instantly healed me while I was working! I stopped my work, because I felt I must tell someone. The first person I met was the foreman. I said, “Jesus has healed me!” He said, “Well, we shall see.” Later, I heard him tell another man, “I can’t call Ruth ‘Cripp’ anymore, because Jesus has healed her.”

Through these many years, the Lord has been my Savior and my Healer. He is always near when I need Him most. He hears my faintest cry, and He has never failed.

When Ruth Slater was saved in the spring of 1911, she gave her life fully to serving her Savior. A vivacious and energetic woman, she was zealous in spreading God’s Word to people wherever she lived or traveled. When she lived in Hawaii, she walked all over the islands handing out thousands of pieces of Gospel literature on a one-to-one basis. She was a very giving person who did much for others, asking no payment but that they do the same good for someone else. She passed away in the early summer of 1980.