On to Jamestown

In May of 1964, we headed for Jamestown.  Churches of Christ did not have a congregation meeting in that city when we moved there.  We knew of two families who were driving to Bradford, Pennsylvania on Sundays.  It was about a 120 mile round trip for them.  A couple who lived in that area wrote to us and invited us to stay with them until we could find living quarters.  Our plans were to stay there two or three days and then find a house.  They had not told us they lived in mobile home.  Actually, they had added a couple of rooms on the side, so it was bigger than the one we live in now.  Within a couple of days we realized we had a sizeable task on our hands in finding living quarters.  We went from wanting a house to a downstairs apartment to anything that was livable.

Within a few days, our friend, Jerry Cox, drove a truck over from Schenectady to deliver our goods.  Trouble was we had no place to put them.  We had to put our stuff in storage. Jerry was a young man from California, who was working for GE in Schenectady.  We began a lifelong friendship with him which I was driving over to Schenectady to preach on Sundays during that time we were in Albany.  Last year, Jerry and his wife, Lois came to see us.  They live in Wisconsin, and we spent an incredibly enjoyable weekend renewing our acquaintance with Jerry and getting to know Lois.

We spent several days searching for housing and struck out on every lead.  Ann became greatly discouraged.  We had launched out on faith, but our faith was being severely challenged.  One night Elliott said to her, “Mama, I want to go home.”  She said, “Elliott, we don’t have a home,” and started crying.  We all knelt by the couch and asked God to help us find a home.  The next day I had absolutely no success in following leads from the paper.  In desperation, I just started driving up and down streets.  Eventually I came to 129 Fulton Street where I saw a sign that read, “Apartment for Rent.”   It was an upstairs apartment, but I went in and looked at it.  It was a huge two bedroom apartment.   I hurried home, and picked up Ann and Elliott.  We looked it over and quickly rented the apartment.

We had already spent several days in our house hunting and we were expected to find housing for the other two families when they arrived from Texas in June.   To our amazement we found housing for them somewhat easily.