Seventy-five years ago (Part 2)

When I started writing this, I wanted the emphasis to be on Calvary Baptist Church, which is celebrating 75 years of existence this year.  Someone told me that because of the virus, the celebration will probably be postponed until next year.  

I mentioned in my last post about the Sunday School teachers.  The granddaughter of Mrs. Thompson commented on the blog mentioning the stories being illustrated with flannel graph.  Do you remember those?  Some became quite elaborate with the background and overlays.  It surely made the stories live for us.  Two other teachers that I remember were Mrs. Fannie Foster and Mrs. Lyons.  Both taught us so faithfully and guided us.  

The first pastor that I remember well was D. E. Luttrell.  He was quite evangelistic in his preaching and very interested in missions.  His son, Don and his wife, Ruth, went to Vieques, Puerto Rico and began a radio station, WIVV, (West Indies Voice of Vieques,) which is still operating today.  If I am correct, that was probably the beginning of the missions program at Calvary.

In the mid-50's, the church outgrew the sanctuary, and a new sanctuary was built. (That building is now the gym.)  It was during these years that each winter Calvary had a three-month Bible conference.  Each week there was a different speaker who came and faithfully taught the Word of God.  One I remember, in particular, was J. Sidlow Baxter...a wonderful teacher from England.  We all enjoyed his British accent.  One favorite pastor who came for a week each year was Andy Telford from Berachah Baptist Church in Philadelphia.  Yet another Bible teacher was Lehman Strauss, who at one time taught at Philadelphia Bible Institute.  When I think of these times, the memories are so special.  We at Calvary were so blessed to have such wonderful Bible teaching.  The music was great too!

In 1959 we got a new pastor at Calvary.  Dick and Joy Hubbard came from Ohio to become the pastor.  They had two children when they came and added to more to their family while they were in Bradenton.  They arrived in January, and he didn't begin preaching for three months because of the Bible conference.  This was the beginning of our being spoiled with pastors who were such good teachers of the Word.  That was the year I graduated from high school, so I went off to college and missed a lot of his teaching.  I moved to Cincinnati to teach after graduation, and in January 1964, my phone rang one morning, and it was Pastor Hubbard calling me to tell me that my daddy had died during the night.  He told me later that doing a funeral for a parent was hard because he still had both his parents and had not experienced that loss.

After being in Bradenton for six years, the Hubbards took a church in Cincinnati, so I enjoyed being with them and getting to know them again.

During the early years of the church, as I mentioned before, we were introduced to missions.  Being young, I don't recall a lot of the missionaries from the early 50's.  I do remember Dick and Jane Reed, who were missionaries with ELWA in Liberia.  I learned later on that Jane was the sister of Shirley Morley who began attending Calvary at a later time.  Another lady I remember was Carol Turner, who was a nurse working in Africa with AIM.

During days at Camp Gilead, I became acquainted with Art and Evy Yohner, who were workers with Children's Bible Mission, now known as Children's Bible Ministries.  Art and Evy felt God's leading them to Surinam to work among Indians in the jungle.  Before going to Surinam, they served as interim pastor at Calvary and everyone fell in love with them.  Roy and Margaret Lytle also became missionaries with West Indies Mission and also served in Surinam.

Edwin Wyman became pastor after Pastor Hubbard, and Cliff Hicks was the assistant.  After Pastor Wyman left, Cliff became pastor.  During that time, several couples from the church were planning to go to the field.  Mike and Nancy Elwood, Mike and Marna Reece, Sam and Bonnie Thomas all went to the field.  I went to Haiti for a term to teach missionary kids.  During that time, or before, George and Ellen King had left to go to Japan.

(To be continued)  As I write this, I'm trying to be accurate.  I'm not sure that all of the chronology is correct.

Seventy-five years ago

Seventy-five years ago - 1945 -a long time ago.  A lot of events being remembered this year.  World War II came to an end.  Auschwitz was liberated.   Celebrations have taken place in remembrance.  

I was a little girl back then, living in the little town of Lacoochee.  Lacoochee was a company town.   The Cummer Lumber Mill was there.  Cypress was milled there.  That is where my daddy worked.  The mill had housing for the employees.  There was a hotel where my mother worked.  If I recall correctly, she was the manager.  

I was born in September 1941, just before the US entered the war in December.  All the men went to Camp Blanding to volunteer.  My daddy was among them, but he was 4-F, so he was not accepted into the service.  He returned to Lacoochee, and during the course of the war, German war prisoners were brought to the States to camps.  There was one in Dade City, and each morning, the men were transported by bus to Lacoochee to work in the mill.  My daddy worked with, or supervised them, if I am correct

I was watching a movie the other night about families in France hiding Jewish children in their homes and getting them into Spain for safety.  At the end of the movie, when the war ended, people were dancing in the streets and cheering.  I remember that in Lacoochee.  When news came that the war had ended, people were honking car horns, laughing and crying, and hugging each other.

The other thing that I remember (I was not quite four yet.) was hearing my parents say, "When the war is over, we're leaving Lacoochee."  I don't know if they had the foresight to know that the lumber mill would not last forever or what, or if they were looking forward to a better life somewhere else.  Sure enough, in August, after the war was over, they moved from Lacoochee to Bradenton.

My parents bought a little house in Bradenton that was out of town, just inside the city limits.  On the block was our house, the house across the street, and one house down the street.  To the west, there was nothing until you came to old Palma Sola and Palma Sola Park.  Someone said to me one day, "Beverly, you lived way out of town."  It isn't that way any more.

One other thing of note happened in 1945.  Calvary Baptist Church was started.  It was the church that was closest to our house, and that is where Mother and Daddy took me to Sunday School.  I often look back and think how God leads and guides.  I remember well my Sunday School teachers.  Mrs. Thompson, the wife of the gentleman who was instrumental in starting the church was my first Sunday School teacher.  One of the pastors we had encouraged us to memorize Scripture.  Five of us enrolled in Bible Memory Association.  For twelve weeks we had passages to learn, and if we successfully learned those, we earned a free week at camp.  We learned 250 verses during those twelve weeks.  The only problem was the camp was in Alabama, which in the early 50's was a long distance.  

Our pastor knew of a camp in Polk City, Florida which had a similar program.  Their requirement was 300 verses for a free week.  He worked with them, and they permitted us to learn an additional 50 verses and go to camp there.  We did, and that became an activity each summer.  After the first year, there was a series a lessons to do to earn camp the next summer.  By the time I was in junior high, I went to camp to work in the kitchen.  Later on I worked as a junior counselor, and then as a senior counselor.  

(To be continued)

Jambo

"Jambo" --"Hello"  the only word I learned in Swahili.

On January 23, I boarded an airplane for Nairobi, Kenya.  This trip was sponsored by Africa Inland Mission.  AIM is celebrating 125 years of existence this year, so the trip was especially meaningful.
After a day in Nairobi, we were on our way to our first lodge and safari.  I have posted lots of photos of animals on Facebook.  While the animals were not the main reason I went on this trip, they surely added much excitement.  It was so neat to see rhinos, elephants, giraffes, baboons, Cape buffalo, and all kinds of gazelles and impala on the plain.

After our days on safari, we traveled to Kijabe to visit Rift Valley Academy, a boarding school for missionary kids.  We attended chapel while there and were served chai by some of the staff.  Later we went to the Kijabe Hospital.  Because our scheduled was crowded, we did not have the opportunity to tour the hospital in its entirety, but one of the doctors spent about a half hour with us, sharing with us the work that they do.

From there we stopped at the AIM Children's Feeding Center.  

There we visited with the children who had gathered for lunch.
At the end of our visits, we boarded a single engine aircraft, operated by AIMAIR.  We traveled back to Nairobi and toured the work of the airline.  The pilots travel to remote areas to deliver supplies and passengers and are an integral part of AIM.  Our hosts on the trip were Jim and Bev Streitt.  They are long-time missionaries with AIM and were wonderful in their role as our hosts while they took care of business.

Before leaving to come back to the States, we visited AIM's Eastern Region office for a time of prayer and coffee before going to the Giraffe Centre.

This trip surely was a trip of a lifetime, and I'm so thankful I was able to go.