Accordingly, on March 20, 1856, the two were shipped off to the Island of St. Mary’s, which they reached after a voyage of three days, and from there they got over to the mainland, and started up country for home, where, after having been away nearly two years, they arrived on April 7, much to the surprise and joy of their wives, children, and companions. On July 31, 1861, Rànavàlona I died, and persecution was at an end. All were then free to worship God as they pleased. In 1863 a building was erected in Fìhàonana, but it was soon found to be far too small for the numbers who came together. After a time small churches were formed, and buildings erected in most of the other large villages. Razàka founded some forty of these small churches in the Fìhàonana district in Vònizòngo. He was often away from home for weeks, and even months, teaching, preaching, and founding churches. All this was a pure labour of love on his part; for he obtained no recognition of his work in any way, except that the people looked up to him as their father in the faith, and the God-appointed apostle and ‘father and mother’ of the district. The late Dr. Mullens met with Razàka when in Madagascar in 1873, and, in his _Twelve Months in Madagascar_, he says: ‘Of Razàka, the pastor of the church at Fìhàonana, Mr. M. spoke much. It was a great pleasure to Mr. Pillans and myself to see this good man: to talk with him of the hard days of trial; and to hear from his own lips the story of the sufferings he had endured. He told us of the meetings which the fugitive Christians held for worship and mutual help. They used to come long distances to such meetings; tracts were lent from one to the other, as a tract could often be carried and hidden away, when a Bible or a Testament could not. Parts of the New Testament were lent about, even to single leaves; and leaves of the hymn-book and the _Pilgrim’s Progress_. He said they used often to long for a rainy night, in order that they might be able to sing. He showed us the underground passage, beneath the floor of his huts (from the one rice-pit to another, and from that out to the hollow ditch), by which, when the soldiers came to search, the inmates and visitors could escape. He accompanied us to a pile of immense boulders (in the circle formed by them the persecuted Christians met for worship on the Sabbath mornings, during lulls in the persecution), and showed us the “Cave” beneath the big boulder, into which they used to creep to have a prayer-meeting, and in the dark corner of which the Bible was hid for so long. He brought vividly before us the sufferings and persecutions which his heroic brethren and himself had endured; and in him we realized something of the power of that faith by which all had been sustained. Few finer bodies of Christians have been won for Christ by modern missions than those faithful men and women in Vònizòngo.’