Have you ever wanted to say thank you for something wonderful that someone did? Did you make them a card? Pick some flowers? Walk their dog?
What about making ice cream … every single day?
That’s what a man named John Salchow did for Mary Baker Eddy, as a helper in her home.
Each morning at 11 a.m., John would take some cream from Mrs. Eddy’s cows—along with some sugar and probably some fruit and other ingredients. He would pour them all into a container with a paddle called a dasher inside and a hand crank on top. Then he’d pack the outside of the container with ice and rock salt, and the crank-crank-cranking would begin! The more John turned the handle, the smoother—and colder—the mixture inside got. He’d crank even more, and suddenly, there would be ice cream! He would send it along to Mrs. Eddy with a lot of love (and then he would get to lick the paddle).
John didn’t just make ice cream for Mrs. Eddy—far from it! On her New Hampshire farm, he hoed the gardens and milked the cows. He mowed the lawns and tended the horses. He fixed the plumbing and made sure that the furnace heated the house to just the right temperature. He got up at 4 o’clock in the morning, when it was still dark, to get everything finished! One time, after Mrs. Eddy moved to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, John even saved the day with a very different kind of crank. Mrs. Eddy’s elevator was broken, but she wanted to come downstairs for a carriage ride. John found another man and went to the basement. Together, the two of them turned a big crank, and little by little, they lowered the very heavy elevator to the first floor.
What would make someone want to do all this? For John, it was great gratitude and love. He grew up on a farm in Kansas with four sisters and a brother. His family never went to church, but John felt sure there must be a God. He often asked people about their religion, hoping he could learn the best way to live his life.
Then one day, he met a man named Joseph Mann, who had a wonderful story to tell. Joseph had been very badly hurt in an accident, and doctors didn’t expect him to recover. But he had been completely healed through prayer in Christian Science!
John wanted to know more about Christian Science, the religion Mary Baker Eddy had founded, and understand how Joseph was healed. He learned that Mrs. Eddy had written a book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, that explained how healing happened. So he took on extra jobs mowing grass and cutting corn for a neighbor, who paid him enough to cover the cost of the book and the postage to mail it.
When the book came, John was out in the fields, but he dropped everything and ran into the house to read it. After a few pages, he was healed of a stomach problem that had troubled him for a long time. John kept reading and learning more about God. Eventually, it changed him so much that he felt he had begun “a new life.” Christian Science was the religion he was looking for!
A few years later, John dropped everything again. This time, he was working on his family’s farm when a letter came from Mrs. Eddy’s home in Concord, New Hampshire, asking him to come and work there. The letter arrived at 10 a.m., and by lunch time, he was already on a train heading east!
Why didn’t John hesitate? Why did he go to her and stay nearly 10 years? He said there were two reasons: He wanted to learn more about Christian Science, and he hoped to do whatever he could to support Mrs. Eddy’s “mighty projects”—all the work she did to pray, and write, and teach, and lead her church.
At first, John wondered how something as small as weeding the garden could really help. But then he decided to “give her every bit of my right thinking, every ounce of my strength, all the kindness and devotion … of which I was capable….”
Mrs. Eddy soon learned that John was unselfish and obedient and that she could trust him completely. She even asked him to hold her horses every day before and after her carriage ride. Mrs. Eddy saw how much he prayed and how many things he quietly did for her every day. “I find you live so near to God that you see to do the things I need before I ask you to do them,” she once wrote him in a note.
That’s how John Salchow earned the name “faithful John” from Mrs. Eddy. He was just always there ready to help. He said he did everything with “a heart full of love for Mary Baker Eddy” and “gratitude for all the blessings which Christian Science has brought to me.” It showed!
This article was originally published in the Fall/Winter 2024 Longyear Review. Alice Hummer is Longyear’s director of communications.
