Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Living in a Church Parsonage.

One of my daughter's wrote; "This is absolutely fascinating for me to read about your life as a child and a young girl, wife, mother. However, don't stop there. Tell us about later times, too - living in Griffin, Ellijay, Rome..."

In reply to the above, let me start with our February move to Trinity Methodist Church in Rome in 1962. We were in our fourth year in Ellijay (in the early 60's when Methodist pastors often moved after four years) a church in our North Georgia Methodist Conference.

Rev. Rudisell, our District Superintendent called Charles and told him the Church Cabinet were having to make a mid-year change of pastor's which would include him. Of course when one pastor is moved, it means a series of moves is made so "every church has a pastor and every pastor has a church."

In those days, every Methodist church supplied a furnished house for their pastor. Trinity's parsonage was a lovely new brick home, beautifully furnished. Soon after we arrived with our boxes and bags at the Trinty parsonage late in the adternoon, the parsonage committee came over with food and served us dinner. They were most gracious and respectful. They told me they would bring in another bed the nest day so that each of our daughters would have a comfortable room.

When they were showing me around, one of the women told me, "Our pastor's wife is sick. We had to come over and pack for her, even her underwear."

We were then and are now blessed with seven children. Our youngest, David was not quite four years old. Beth was seven. Deborah was 9, Carol was 12 and Terrell was 14. Joan was in college and Janice had graduated from college and was newly married.

As you can imagine, this is a larger than average family so some who had not meet us, considered us "careless" since they knew we were not Catholic. Apparently the wife of the pastor of Trinity at the time took this approach. Her reaction to our appointment was "they are sending "all these children to tear up this new parsonage,"

But I was surprised a few days later to come home from talking our children to school to find this lady standing on a stool taking down a wall clock she had left behind.

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