SigMT

"ose who have had the happy experience of starting a mission will easily imagine our situation," the sisters' official chronicler penned in a report at the time. "We had a need of everything, and we had nothing." e women accepted the challenge head-on, chopping ice off of barrels to obtain drinking water for patients and going door-to-door to beg local residents for supplies to get them on their feet. e church and community rallied around them and donated to their cause, enabling the sisters to make 49 house calls, serve 170 meals, and tend to 39 infirmary patients during their first year. Just two years later, the number of infirmary patients they served jumped to 428. Meanwhile, Reverend William Wesley Van Orsdel, who was known as "Brother Van," established a local commiee with the intent of petitioning the Methodist Deaconesses to build a Protestant hospital in Great Falls. Similar to the Catholic sisters, the Methodist Deaconesses were a group of women who focused their aention on establishing services for the sick and impoverished. In 1898, the Mother House in Chicago had sent a group of Deaconesses to Great Falls to operate the original Deaconess hospital, which was situated in the 1100 block of 6th Avenue North on a piece of land donated by James J. Hill's Great Northern Railway Company. SiG MT 33 Photo: Sara Young The Columbus Hospital's second location opened its doors in 1894. A spacious patients' wing, circa 1895. John Goodnow has served as CEO of Benefis Health System since 2002.

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