Building a Church

[25:30] Pretty soon they wanted somebody to go to the mission at Collinsville—the Lithonians. And Theron and I went down there. And you know, it was just such a great thing. They had a good preacher.

And it was—you know—they didn't feel comfortable in a big church. But they surely did like the Lord.

So the highway got our building at Collinsville. And the church decided we'd bring them to Lithonia.

I took two—I was bringing two loads—and Theron was bringing one. Because they said, you know, it was fine if we brought them in. They had a place to go.

Pretty soon there was not anybody much going. A couple ladies were going—maybe they didn't go every Sunday.

[26:30] Then they stopped. And they asked me to teach seven year olds the next year. And I accepted.

Two ladies came to me and said, "If we find a place for you to have Sunday school, will you come back and teach us?"

And from then until years and years and years, we hunted a place. It would either be too small and you couldn't bring the children, or there wouldn't be any parking place, or you just couldn't find a place.

So finally—and I know the Lord wanted us to have a place, a church, for them. Because he would have let me alone and I wouldn't have just thought about it all the time and stopping here and there and asking "where can we have Sunday school here?"

So one day I went by the nursery on Conyers Street and I said, "Could we have this—rent this on Sunday to have Sunday school?" And they did. And so we had it there a year.

And the next door of the building came for sale. And we bought that and had Sunday school there. And then the next door came for sale. The church bought that for us. And it was the ranking house and it was big enough for Sunday school. And we had a trailer in the back that the association owned us.

And the next—the house next door was the Shaw house. And it became available. So it's that one on the right—I mean on the left with the steeple. And that building back there is the educational building.

And some people came from Center Alabama or somewhere in Alabama and put the foundation up. We'd eat in the soup kitchen and cooked their lunch everyday. But they framed it up and our men finished it.

And we had a couple that just was giving their life—every inch—secretary and treasurer or whatever. And they named the building for me. And it wasn't supposed to be—it should have been her. And I don't know why they did. But you know, I'm not bragging about it because I had nothing to do with it.

[35:00] And I remember when we had the soup kitchen at Lithonia at our church. We made the best soup we could make—for the Lord. You know, it was good soup. I just cooked this pressure cooker thing full—I mean a lot in it—and take it out there. And I was making it for the Lord.

But I was going up and down the streets and getting anybody that could get in my car. And we had somebody doing a program while the people in the back were cooking, heating up the soup and cooking whatever they were going to do.

And we had a clothes closet that got down in the floor. When you go to let somebody see the clothes—and I just took it to the back porch and put wires all up across here. And then when somebody would bring some good stuff, I knew who needed it. And I'd call them and say, "Come and see if you need any of this."

And Mr. Brown went to a—I forgot the name of the store that had bread—and he'd just bring boxes of bread to our back porch. And I'd call people in different communities and say, "Come and get a box of bread for your community."

And then we had a food bank. And we'd go to the food bank sometimes—not all the time because other people went. You could buy food, you know, really twelve cents a month I think. We were doing a lot of things.