Getting the Church Started in Jamestown

We also needed to find a place for the new church to meet. There was a little shopping center on the West Side of town that had a building which was about  20 feet wide and 80 feet long.  I began to see the possibilities or our being able to meet there.  By the time Jim and Charles arrived, I was able to begin negotiations for renting that property.   The property was adequate for our purposes, and the shopping center solved the parking problem.  When they arrived Charles and Jim agreed that this was the place, and so we rented it.  We did some remodeling so we could have offices and classrooms.  We even had a kitchen.

One or our problems was trying to find a way to baptize.  I think it was Jim, who negotiated with a tinsmith about building us a metal tank that we could use for baptizing.  But there was the problem of how to assure that we would have hot water in the winter time.  I heard that farm stores carried water heaters to warm stock troughs, and I thought that would be just the ticket.  I soon found out however, that those heaters only breach the ice.  I asked the man at the farm store, if he knew of anyway to maintain room temperature with that kind of heater.   I’ll never forget his response he said, “Sir, what kind of animals are you watering?”   We finally settled for running a hose from the cold water tap to the tanks.  We would then add buckets of hot water, and it proved to be a fairly viable solution to the problem. 

In July we started meeting in the converted pool hall.  Fourteen people indicated they wanted to be members of the new church.   That included seven of us from the missionary families.  Within a few weeks we grew to 28, but growth was much slower after that.

We did something of an advertising blitz.  We had raised money for a “working fund.”  All of this money was used to advertise and promote the new church.   Charles brought an offset press with him from Texas.  We bought time on the radio.  We published large ads in the newspaper, and we printed a teaching magazine.  A lot of people came to look us over, and within a few months, we were actually bringing people to Christ.  It was an exciting time, and we faced challenges that had never confronted us before, but that was part of what made Jamestown special.