On the day that marked the end of his first year in Montana, Brother Van received from the Conference an appointment as Junior Preacher to the Rev. F. A. Riggin. The appointment read: “To Beaver Head and Jefferson District.” Virginia City in the southwest corner of the state was the center of this circuit. Beaver Head, Madison River, and Salmon City, one hundred and fifty miles away, were its three points. Montana had been set off from Idaho and erected into a separate territory in May, 1864. Brother Van’s circuit, therefore, extended across the Rocky Mountains into Idaho as far as Salmon City. The region provided variety in its characteristics. There were lonely trails to travel over for the pony and Brother Van, and for his co-worker, Mr. Riggin. There were only eighteen members of the church in all that large region. The junior and senior preachers so arranged their work that one man took care of the regular appointments while the other did the evangelistic work. By this plan a continuous series of evangelistic meetings was held for seven months. At the end of their first year in the district, seven new societies had been organized, and one hundred and fifty new members received into the church. Among the long rides which the Gospel Team took was one to the town of Butte. In describing the occasion Brother Van remarked dryly: “We had all but ten of the whole town in our congregation on that first night.” This would be a remarkable statement if it were made to-day; but at that time the population of Butte was exactly fifty people. The city is now the most important railway center in the state. It has been called the “greatest mining camp in the world.” Brother Van’s visit was at the very beginning of the history of what is now a city of great interest to America. When the snow cleared away the Gospel Team penetrated to the National Park, and one day on coming into the Upper Yellowstone Valley, Brother Van found a large congregation waiting. One man said: “If a herd of wild buffalo had run through the streets of St. Louis it could not have caused more comment than that a preacher had come to the Yellowstone.” The National Park was then but a year old, and the grandeur of the “Wonderland of America” was beginning to be appreciated. It was in the famous place of geysers, deep canyons, and waterfalls, where nature had combined many influences to produce the beauty of the surrounding scene, that Brother Van conducted the first Protestant religious service held in the new park. The missionary continued to go about steadily from section to section and at the close of his five years of work in Montana as missionary to everywhere, he received the appointment of local deacon. It was just about the date of this recognition, that the trouble brewing between the Indians and the white men developed into the Indian wars.