More about Our Hillside Membership

  When we moved our membership to the Hillside Church of Christ we first moved into a small condo but after a couple of months we moved next door into a very nice apartment in Fairspire  Court. Deb had been getting ready to fly to the USA in order to attend Harding University in Searcy Arkansas. Her interest was aroused by Bro. Shewmaker who was an alumnus, and highly regarded the institution.  The time came for her to leave we all drove out to the Bulawayo Airport. When the call came for the passengers to board we watched her leave the terminal to get on the plane. We were all standing on the verandah upstairs watching them. She did not turn around once — I think she was trying not to cry, just as we were. We waited there until the plane took off with our beloved daughter going away with very little chance of seeing her again for several years — actually it was about 11 years!! But more about that a little later.

 We had a very real black gentleman working for us, cooking our meals and keeping our home clean. This was because I was spending so much time teaching. He was a youngish married man and was really more suited, mentally, to be holding a white man's job, but, sadly the colour bar was still in place at this time. His name was Elias. We tried to convert him but he was a very staunch member in the Dutch Reformed Church. I asked our black preacher to speak to him, but he was unsuccessful also. Anyway Elias loved  our children, and they loved him. While our kids were small I made all their clothes and I had an old Jones Treadle Machine. When I bought myself an electric machine I asked Elias if he would like my old and he was beside himself with joy, so I started giving him pieces of material and he proudly showed me the dresses he made for his little girl. You would have thought he had had sewing lessons, but, no, he worked it out for himself. One day Norman Flynn, a friend who worked for a clothing factory, gave me a fair-sized piece of suiting fabric which I gave to Elias. A few days later he came to work and said, "Madam, do you remember this material you gave me?" He had taken a pair of his worn-out pants apart and used the pieces as a pattern and made himself a perfect pair of trousers, even with the fly made correctly, and he was proudly wearing them to work. I was astonished. More later.