God's Law of Returns

Courtesy versaday.com

When I first read that verse in Ecclesiastes 11:1, I was puzzled. Since I don't even like gravy on bread, that word picture of soggy bread didn't appeal to me.

Then I came across this translation in the New Living Translation: "Send your grain across the seas, and in time, profits will flow back to you." In other words, "Give generously, for your gifts will return to you later."

Now, that makes sense. Here's how it worked out in the lives of two people whose names you will recognize:

The son of a gardener on an estate in Scotland dreamed of becoming a medical doctor. Neither he nor his dad could figure out how such a huge financial undertaking could be met.

Weekend visitors arrived at the castle. One of them, a boy, went swimming in the pool. He developed cramps and was about to drown when the gardener's son leaped into the water and saved him. The father of the swimmer was so overjoyed at the rescue that he offered to reward the rescuer.

"What can I do to help the lad?" he asked the rescuer's father.

The gardener related their dream that the son become a physician. "If you could help him to go to school, that would mean more to my son than anything else in the world."

Upon hearing the request, the swimmer's father said, "That's it! We will see him through his education." And through this generosity, Alexander Fleming became a doctor of medicine.

Years later, the boy who nearly drowned, Winston Churchill, became Prime Minister of England. While on a trip to Egypt, he was stricken with virulent pneumonia. Aides thought he was going to die.

A new drug, however, had just been discovered by Dr. Alexander Fleming--penicillin. Dr. Fleming heard of Mr. Churchill's illness. He flew to Egypt to administer the new medication. The results were miraculous, and Churchill recovered completely.

c AnnaLee Conti 2002

In 1948, my grandparents, Charles and Florence Personeus, pioneer missionaries to Alaska, were asked to build a church in Pelican. The town donated land, but it needed to be cleared. Windfalls twelve trees deep covered the site, and my grandparents had no tools. An old logger they had befriends thirty years earlier supplied them with hand tools for the mammoth task.*


When we planted a new church in Gloversville, New York, in the late seventies, we spent much time over a two-year period ministering to a young couple that was separated when we met. God saved their marriage (see God Saved Our Marriage), and they became faithful workers in the church--until a job-transfer moved them out of state. We knew God was building lives, not just churches, but their move was a great loss to our new church.

That summer, our Fellowship's biennial General Council was being held in St. Louis, Missouri, in August. We really felt the need of going to receive personal encouragement and fellowship, but as pioneer pastors, we had no funds available for such a trip.

Then a letter arrived from the couple that had recently moved away, thanking us for all we had done to help them reestablish their marriage. They enclosed a check and a note telling us to use the money for something special for ourselves. It was the exact amount we needed to go to General Council.

We have learned that we can never outgive God. It may not come back in kind, but God has promised, "Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom," (Luke 6:38, NKJV).

I'd love to hear about a time when God has proven that promise in your life.

*Excerpt from my book, Frontiers of Faith.

Never Give Up!

Anyone who has planted a church from zero knows how difficult it is to start a church. Gloversville was no exception. We knew beyond a doubt that God had called us to that particular city in 1977.

When we first arrived in Gloversville, we learned of a large charismatic church in the area. We almost wondered why God had sent us there to start another church. After our first two years, though, that church imploded when unbiblical practices that damaged many people came to light. A few of those families joined our church at that time, but most began attending another church. A few years later, it too closed its doors leaving many stranded with no place to go to church. Many gave up on church altogether.

After three years of meeting in the YMCA, the historical Kingsboro church became available to us. The Sunday we moved into our new location, three of our families decided to leave. That was quite a blow. We struggled for more than a year to rebuild the congregation.

A grandmother named Sara began attending services about that time. We will never forget the Sunday morning she became a member.

After nearly five years, only 14 people were present that hot summer day--the smallest attendance since the earliest days in the history of our young church. As church planters, we were very discouraged.

But Sara stood at the front trembling with anticipation as she joined our church.

Her excitement was infectious. The Holy Spirit moved on my husband, and he prophesied that the church would grow.

And it did!

The next Sunday, 50 people were present; the following Sunday, 75; the next week, 90. Soon, we became a self-supporting, self-governing church with the General Council of the Assemblies of God.

A few weeks prior to Sara joining the church, Bob had been asked to share his testimony at a Full Gospel Businessmen's dinner. Many of the displaced church people were present--some we'd only heard about; others we already knew. They all greeted Bob and me cordially.

We'd heard about Arch and Marion, who had belonged to the two churches that had folded, but we had not met them until that night. Marion had a warm, bubbly personality and mothered everyone. Arch was quiet but blunt. "I'll never set foot in church again," he told Bob.

A week or so later, out of the blue, Bob, who had a God-given sense of timing, told me, "It's time! I'm going to visit Arch and Marion."

They had a wonderful visit, Bob told me, but no promises were made. They were among the first new people to spontaneously show up that Sunday, along with others from the twice-dispersed congregation. Marion became a true "mother in Zion," an early Pentecostal term for a motherly leader in the church. Arch became a board member.

Personal Evangelism class in church fellowship hall in 1984

The funny thing was that everyone who came that Sunday thought everyone else was already a member of our church, so they felt right at home. Apparently, the word spread. The next week more came. Soon, new converts came and became regulars. The attendance never dropped below 150-200 the rest of our time in Gloversville.

We realized that what Gloversville needed was a stable church people could trust. It takes a long time to prove to people that you are stable and trustworthy.

When you construct a building, the work on the foundation below ground takes the longest. Without a firm foundation, the structure would soon collapse. There can be no shortcuts. And so it is in building a strong congregation. Those five years, while often discouraging to us, were necessary! Knowing we were there because God had called us to that city and with His help, we didn't give up.

Christ had been building His Church, just as he promised (Matthew 16:18). And He was building us as pastors too.

God doesn't call His children to do the easy things. Abraham had to leave everything familiar for a land God would show him. Moses faced an impossible challenge in his own strength when God asked him to lead the Children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and form them into a strong nation. Think of the difficult task David faced. And Elijah, Daniel, Nehemiah, the disciples, just to name a few.

When you know God has called you to do something, never give up. It's been said that the darkest hour is just before dawn.

What is God asking you to do for Him? Go in God's strength and never give up!

The Parsonage God Prepared

A big storm was brewing. We could hear thunder rolling. We needed to pick up our son from school, so we quickly toured the house and told the owner we would be in touch. They thought we weren't really interested. But we arranged to go back to see it again. We knew God had reserved that house just for us.

Our second year in Gloversville, we desperately needed a parsonage. We were very cramped in our two-bedroom apartment, which also had to serve as Bob's study, my writing office, and church office, so we began to look for a house to buy for the church. Many houses were for sale, but the mortgage interest rates were well over ten percent, and a minimum down payment of 33-40 percent was required.

As we made this need known to our prayer partners, money began to come in from unexpected sources. A letter came from a former classmate from the University of Alaska, whom we had not been in contact with since our graduation 12 years earlier. Now the vice-president of Alaska Airlines, he had come to know the Lord and was attending an Assemblies of God church in Seattle, Washington. He had read about our new church planting in The Pentecostal Evangel. Surprised to read that Bob was an Assemblies of God pastor, he sent us a large donation. My grandparents also gave us a large money gift toward the down payment.

After looking at many houses for a year or more, one afternoon our realtor showed us a house on Third Avenue that had recently come on the market. The owner had spent the previous two years totally remodeling the old Victorian house. It was just what we were looking for and more--a living room and a parlor with pocket doors, new appliances in the eat-in kitchen, a separate dining room, a bath and a half, a beautiful antique wood staircase with a stained glass window at the lower landing, four bedrooms upstairs which offered plenty of room for offices, a full basement, a full attic, and everything newly insulated. It even had a stairway from the kitchen to the back upstairs bedroom--the maid's quarters? The color scheme wasn't my favorite, but I thought I could work with it. A large carriage house out back served as a three-car garage.

With the help of the New York District officials, we were able to negotiate to purchase the house at very low monthly mortgage payments.

Sometimes when we think God is slow in meeting our needs, He is busy preparing just what we need. We had looked at many houses, but all of them would have required renovations or other work. Neither of us are gifted in carpentry or other skills needed to remodel, so God took care of it for us. The only thing we had to do was put up paneling in one bedroom to create an office for Bob.

Healed! Part 2

Emily Spencer was scheduled for surgery to remove the part of her colon that was leaking into her abdomen.
With peace in her heart, she entered the operating room the next morning. The doctors were looking at her X-rays, and she could see where the colon showed the barium leaking into her abdomen. She prepared herself to awaken to find she'd had a colostomy.

Her husband was prepared for a lengthy wait, so he was surprised to see the surgeon come into the waiting room so soon. "Mr. Spencer," he said, "another Surgeon was there ahead of me. I could see where the colon had been diseased, but it is completely healed. All I did was remove a cluster of adhesions and make a few minor repairs elsewhere, but her colon is healthy."

Emily wasn't out of surgery but a short time, though, when she began having an allergic reaction to the anesthesia. At one point, she lost all blood pressure and other vital signs. If she had been having the lengthier surgery as planned, she probably would have died.

Her husband called us. Immediately, I activated the ladies prayer chain. By 5 o'clock, Emily's condition had stabilized, although she was kept in intensive care for observation for a couple of days.

From then on, her recovery was rapid. In 4 weeks, she was back in church. She said, "I know the Lord spared my life because He has something more for me to do for Him."

This ministry of our local congregation to one of our members greatly strengthened the bonds of love and fellowship within our church. Since Emily was so well known in the community, and she boldly witnessed to everyone about her healing, our new church was also elevated in its standing in the eyes of the community.

Praise God that even in hard trials He is working and wants to use them to build His Church and our faith!

Healed!

In mid-October 1979, Emily Spencer, whose story I told in the previous three blogs, began having severe abdominal pain. The doctor put her in the hospital for tests. She had had diverticulosis for over 6 years and had had 6 inches of her colon removed 5 years previously.

The tests revealed a flare up of the condition and an abscess in one of the diverticula. The doctor put her on antibiotics to see if that would cure the abscess, but he warned that surgery would probably be necessary.

My husband was out of town when Emily went into the hospital, but I took two men from our church into her hospital room to anoint her with oil according to James  5:14-16. That was on Thursday. By Sunday, Emily felt so good she wanted to go home.

On Monday, when the doctor examined her, he was amazed. . He had said it was unlikely that the antibiotic treatment would be successful, but the abscess had already cleared up so quickly he called it miraculous.

The doctor told her that she still needed surgery since the X-rays showed that her bowel was leaking into her abdomen. He was afraid that peritonitis would set in, and that could be fatal. This diagnosis was confirmed by three doctors.

The doctor planned to remove the diseased portion of her colon. Due to the previous surgery, a temporary colostomy would probably be necessary.

Emily was released from the hospital and told to build up her strength for the surgery scheduled in 2 weeks. It had to be postponed for 2 more weeks due to some difficult circumstances at home.

All during this time, the people of Glove Cities Assembly of God continually prayed for Emily's healing. At first, she still had pain and couldn't seem to regain her strength. Then one Tuesday at Ladies Bible Study, everyone remarked on how much better she looked. That's when Emily realized that she was feeling better and had gained back the weight she had lost.

But the doctor still felt she needed surgery. The day before the surgery, Pastor Conti anointed her with oil and prayed for God's will to be done in the entire situation.

What would the doctors find? To be continued...

Daughter Missing! Part 3

After consulting a psychic to try to find answers to their daughter's disappearance, the awful words of the psychic repeated over and over in Emily Spencer's mind. She couldn't sleep, and each waking hour was torture. After a year, she could take it no longer.

Emily determined to end it all by taking her own life. She planned exactly how she would do it, but she couldn't carry out her plans. Something wouldn't let her. "I know now it was the Lord," she told me.

One day she met a friend she hadn't seen in a long time. The friend seemed different somehow. In the course of the conversation, the friend asked, "Emily, how are you?"

Emily told her the truth, and her friend began to tell her about her new relationship with Jesus Christ. "And He can help you too, Emily," she concluded. Before they parted, her friend gave her a devotional book to read.

As Emily read that book, she turned her life and her problems over to Jesus. "My friend was right," she said. "Jesus took away the nightmares, the horror, the words of the psychic that repeated themselves over and over in my mind. Jesus saved my soul and gave me a sound mind. I could once again function as a wife and mother without tranquilizers."

Eight months later, Jim came to know the Lord too because of the change he saw in Emily's life. In time, Emily's brother and his wife received Jesus too. They all became faithful members and workers in the new church we pastored, Glove Cities Assembly of God. Because of the deep waters she has been through, Emily was able to minister to many people who were going through tragedies.

Emily told us that one day she was reading in Psalm 116: "I was brought low, and he helped me." She felt like those words were written just for her, and it brought her great comfort. "I can honestly say if it took this anguish to bring me to the Lord, it has been worth it all."

"Not knowing what happened, not knowing whether Pam is dead or alive, is the hardest part," Emily said. The Spencers believed she was probably dead, but they continued to pray for her. Emily even prayed that if foul play caused Pam's disappearance, the person or persons involved would come to know the Lord and confess the crime.


"When I feel overwhelmed by it all, I've learned to lean harder on Jesus. He has brought me this far. I know He will see me through, come what may."

The last time I saw Emily, she had just turned 80. She told me that every year on Pam's birthday, she wrote a poem to her and had accumulated quite a collection. Both Jim and Emily Spencer are with the Lord now. They never did learn what happened to Pam, but they entrusted their lives to the One who knows all things. And He carried them through.

God Saved Our Marriage Part 2

Betty had thought she was doing the Lord's will when she left Dave. Then Dave gave his life to the Lord, and the new church in Gloversville that he had begun attending was praying that they would reconcile. Her brother, who had led her to the Lord, was encouraging her to come back to Dave.

In Florida, Betty had been going to a women's Bible study, so she shared her thoughts and her brother's letter with them. To her surprise, they backed up what he had written. But, Betty was still not sure she could forgive Dave.

Two months after Betty had left Dave, her pastor's sermon one Sunday morning seemed to be directed to her. At that same time back in Gloversville, Dave told Pastor Conti, "Betty is going to call today. The Lord told me a week ago I'm going to be leaving for Florida today to bring Betty and Cheryl home." Dave was so sure of it that he went home and packed and was all ready to leave at a moment's notice.

That afternoon, Betty attended a Joy Fellowship meeting. The guest speaker that day spoke on resentment, rejection, and forgiveness. Betty said, "That message had my name all over it. As soon as I got home, I went right to prayer."

Later, Betty called Dave but couldn't bring herself to assure him they could get back together. Dave, however, decided to drive to Florida anyway and was on the road by 6 p.m. He drove straight through, stopping only for gas. When Betty came home at 1:30 a.m., Dave was there. They talked for hours about what the Lord had done for them. They shared from the Bible all the things the Lord had been teaching them. In all that time, they didn't talk about the past--only the future.

The following Sunday morning, just a week before Christmas, Dave, Betty, and Cheryl walked into church together at the Glove Cities Assembly of God in the YMCA in Gloversville, New York.

Betty said, "That Christmas was the best we had ever had because we knew the Christ of Christmas personally."

Dave and Betty became some of the most faithful members of the new church. Pastor Conti counseled with them to help them understand what had caused their problems and how to overcome them in the future.

"And God gave us a son to remind us of what He has done in our lives and in our marriage," Betty said.

Dave served as church treasurer and Betty taught Sunday school until God moved them to a new job out of state. We were heartbroken to see them go, but we still hear from them at Christmas, and they are happy serving the Lord.

God Saved Our Marriage

Here is the testimony of one of the first couples we ministered to in Gloversville, New York, as told to me by Betty Bartlett.

"I had been married 10 years and didn't see how I could stand another day married to Dave. His constant criticism of me had destroyed my self-confidence, and I was so hurt I dreaded being around him.

"During the summer of 1977, my brother Jay, who had been born again and Spirit-filled through TV ministry, led me to the Lord in his home, and I spoke in tongues. There was no church in the area, however, where I could go for teaching about the Holy Spirit. When I told Dave I had spoken in tongues, he was displeased and ordered me to stay away from my brother.

"Late that summer, Jay invited me to go with him to a new Assemblies of God church that had just opened up in Gloversville. But I was afraid to mention it to Dave, so I never did go to church.

"Because I had no teaching, I began to feel that the only way I could serve the Lord was to leave my husband. That fall, I decided to take our daughter, Cheryl, leave Dave, and go to Florida to make a new home for myself. I made plans with the utmost secrecy and left one morning after Dave went to work.

"In New Smyrna Beach, Florida, I lived with my parents and got a job. I began attending the Assemblies of God church there. I had my sister give Dave a general delivery address, and he wrote to me every day.

"Gradually, his letters changed. He told me he had bought a Bible and had been reading it, even though he couldn't understand it. Then he told how he had committed his life to the Lord while reading a Christian book.

"He wrote, 'A quote from Luke 10:27, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart..., seemed to jump out at me as I read the introduction to the book. But I couldn't understand all the thous and thys. As I read it over and over, I began to want the Lord in my life very badly. Finally, in desperation, I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and said, I will love the Lord my God with all my heart. Suddenly, it clicked. A beautiful feeling of joy flowed over me.'

"Subsequent letters told me he had begun attending the new Glove Cities Assemby of God church in Gloversville. He said they were praying we'd get back together.

"My brother wrote me encouraging reconciliation. That shook me up. Until then, I had thought I was doing God's will by leaving Dave."

What did Betty decide to do? To be continued.

From Tragedy to Rejoicing

When we were moving into our apartment in Gloversville in April 1977, the news was full of a sad story of a 12-year-old boy who was missing on the nearby Great Sacandaga Lake. He had taken a boat out on the lake, and a strong wind had blown up suddenly. After twelve days, his body was found.

At one of the first sectional ministers' fellowship meetings we attended, we met a sweet Italian-American grandmother, who told us that the boy who had drowned on the lake was her grandson. She asked my husband to visit the boy's father, her eldest son. He had purchased a Revolutionary War era house that overlooked the point on the lake where his son had drowned and had arranged to bury his son in the old North Hampton Cemetery on that point. He was restoring the house.

Bob called him, and they set a date to meet. Over the next few months, as Bob met with him, the sorrowing father gave his life to the Lord. The following Easter Sunday, Bob had the privilege of baptizing him in water at his mother's church in Mechanicville since we did not yet have a building or a baptistry. We drove through a blizzard to get there, but he was determined to be baptized that night.

The man and his brother owned a paving and roofing company they had taken over when their father retired. In time, the  man completed his restoration of the large house and fixed up the smaller guest house on the property. As our church grew, the man began attending regularly. He offered to host Sunday afternoon picnics on his beach in the summertime. These frequently ended with water baptisms in the lake. (In fact, Bob had the privilege of baptizing his own mother in the Great Sacandaga Lake.)

The man's brother and parents often spent the weekends in the guest house, so they were included in our picnics. His father did not go to church and blamed God for the death of his grandson, but he enjoyed the get-togethers and often added homemade pasta dishes to the potluck picnic meals.

In time, the man, who had been divorced when we met him, fell in love with a young lady in our church, and they married. When the couple's first son was born, they named him after the son who had died, but reversed the order of the first and middle names.

Following the example of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated to the Lord, the couple asked Bob to dedicate their new son. His parents came to that Sunday morning service. Bob pointed out that this child was not a replacement for the son who had died, who was with the Lord, but that he was a new, unique person. That got the man's father's attention as he realized that his grandson, though gone from this earth, still existed in eternity.

At the last picnic we held at the man's place on the Great Sacandaga Lake just before we left Gloversville, Bob baptized several people. Then, the man's father stepped forward to be baptized too. God had turned a tragedy into rejoicing!

God's Mysterious Ways

When we began holding Sunday services in Gloversville in 1977, Bob tried to get our church listed on the weekly church page of the Leader-Herald. Because we didn't own our own building, the editor refused. Instead, we had to pay for an ad each week.

But God often works in mysterious ways.

Shortly thereafter, we received a phone call from Mickey Clementi, who had learned of our new church through a television ministry. A semi-invalid, she couldn't come to church, so Bob and I visited her often and took her Communion.

We had not met her husband, a local businessman and owner of the Gloversville Holiday Inn. One Saturday, as he was reading the Leader-Herald, he asked his wife, "Why isn't Reverend Conti on the church page?"

"They refused to put him on because he doesn't have his own church building," she said.

"That's not right! I'm one of the businessmen who support that page. If they don't put Reverend Conti on it, I'll take my support away and pay for his ad."

And he called up the editor and threatened to do just that. The next Sunday and from then on, the Glove Cities Assembly of God was listed on the church page of the Leader-Herald.

During our first year of holding services in the banquet room of the YMCA, located on the second floor of the building, we were required to keep the entrance door to the building locked on Sundays. Once the service started, our son, Bobby, six years old when we first began holding services, dressed in his little suit and tie, stood just inside the door as our doorman. Even though he took his job seriously, it was not an ideal situation. We often prayed about it. Once again, God worked behind the scenes.

One Sunday morning after everyone had gone home, I was in the kitchen cleaning the Communion trays, when I heard a thud that sounded like a body falling on the floor just above my head. I went into the main room where Bob and Bobby were rearranging the chairs and told Bob. He decided to investigate.

He climbed the stairs to the rooms rented out to several men who made the YMCA their home and discovered that one older fellow, Charlie, had fallen in the shower. He hadn't been feeling well. When he started to hemorrhage, he had become so weak that he fell. Bob called the ambulance, but Charlie absolutely refused to go.

Bob called the Chief of Police, but he said they couldn't force him to go. So Bob began calling everyone he could think of who might be able to influence Charlie to go to the hospital. Bob stayed with him until finally, after a couple of hours, one old friend of Charlie's convinced him that he needed to go.

When the Director of the YMCA heard what had happened, he thanked Bob over and over for saving Charlie's life. The director's father had been killed in World War II, and Charlie had played a big part in the director's life as he was growing up.

Soon after that incident, Bob was asked to serve on the YMCA board, and the church was able to keep the doors unlocked during our services.

Bob going out of his way to care for another human being did more to literally open doors in that community than all the advertisements in the world.

Call to Gloversville, Part 2

The dead of winter was not the time to move to New York, we were advised, so we waited until spring. On April 15, 1977, Bob and I both resigned from our jobs at Assemblies of God Headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, and headed to Gloversville, New York, to locate housing. After renting a two-bedroom apartment in its twin city of Johnstown, we left six-year-old Bobby with Grandma and Grandpa Conti in Newburgh and returned to Springfield to pack.

On our last Sunday at Central Assembly, our prayer partners in Mother Flower's Sunday school class laid hands on us, prayed over us, and sent us on our way to the work to which God had so clearly called us. Then, the evening before we headed back to New York in a rented 22-foot Ryder truck full of household goods, our Volkswagen Super Beetle in tow, Brother Gayle F. Lewis, former Home Missions Director, a good friend of my family from our days as missionaries in Alaska, drove by to say goodbye. That dear retired minister in his seventies climbed into that Ryder truck and touched every piece of furniture he could reach, asking God to protect not only us but everything on that truck.

On May 4, 1977, we pulled up to the Maple Knoll Apartments in Johnstown. The Everharts had enlisted several men from their church in Schenectady to help us unload and carry everything up the stairs to our apartment. Leaving boxes piled wall-to-wall, we turned in the truck and drove our Super Beetle four hours to Rochester, New York, for a missions convention held in a church just across the street from the location of the former Rochester Bible Training School, where my grandparents, Charles and Florence Personeus, had attended Bible school. It was exactly 60 years before that as newlyweds they had left there to go to Alaska by faith as pioneer missionaries in 1917. (See my book, Frontiers of Faith, for that story.) God had brought me from Alaska to New York to pioneer a church.

A week later, we attended our first District Council in New York, held in Schenectady, where we were recognized as the new-church-planting missionaries to Gloversville, New York. The Glove Cities, as the twin cities of Gloversville and Johnstown were known due to their extensive glove and leather industries, with a combined population of 30,000, formed the hub of Fulton County, gateway to the Adirondacks.

The two cities, with their many towering church steeples, Victorian-style houses, and tree-lined streets looked like the ideal place to raise a family, but we soon learned that this county of more than 70,000 had one of the highest rates of alcoholism, divorce, and incest in the entire state. Cities leaders asked us, "Why do you want to start another church here? We already have many churches that are nearly empty." Many other denominational churches' overseers in Albany referred to Fulton County as "black valley" because of the oppressive atmosphere that seemed to hover over the area. We saw a place that God had not forgotten.

As soon as we were settled, we began running an ad in the newspaper announcing the opening of the new church. Through the ad, we learned of several ladies who had come to know the Lord through TV ministries and were anxious to have a full-gospel church in the area. Right away, I started a ladies' home prayer meeting.

Sunday evening, July 20, 1977, we held our first service of the Glove Cities Assembly of God with eight in attendance. Grandma and Grandpa Personeus, at the age of 90, visited us for a month that summer and were a blessing to our fledgling congregation.

In September, we added a full schedule of Sunday services, meeting in the Gloversville YMCA banquet room on the second floor of that building. To make the room presentable, Bob often had to go in after midnight to set up for church after a YMCA event. He rearranged chairs and tables countless times; picked up dozens of green beans, kernels of corn, etc., from the carpet; brushed numerous crumbs off chairs; and even scrubbed sticky spills off the piano. One Sunday morning, he had to clean up vomit off the stairs where one of the residents had gotten sick the night before.

"That's what memories are made of," he said. And that is often what new church planting requires.

Call to Gloversville, Part 1

When Bob completed requirements for his Master of Divinity degree in December 1976, we were finally ready and eager to begin full-time ministry. The New York District of the Assemblies of God's "Missions Advance New York" (M.A.N.Y.) program, accepted us as new church planters. In January 1977, we made a reconnaissance trip to New York to determine where we would open a new church.

The Assistant Superintendent of the New York District, Rev. Leon Miles, who headed M.A.N.Y., had told us to take a map of New York State, compare it with a list of churches in the district at that time, and ask the Lord to direct our attention to the location He wanted us to go to start a new church. Both of us felt drawn to the  twin cities of Gloversville-Johnstown, "Gateway to the Adirondacks," in Fulton County, about 45 miles northwest of Albany, the state capital. There was no Assemblies of God church in the entire county. Neither of us had even heard of Gloversville prior to seeing it on the map.

The Wednesday evening before we left, even though we wouldn't be in church that Sunday, I went to the weekly choir practice at Central Assembly, as was my custom. Our large choir always took prayer requests and had a time of prayer at the beginning of each practice. That night, I asked them to pray for our safety and God's direction as we traveled to New York to decide where we would open a new church.

After choir practice, Irene Holsinger approached me. "Where in New York do you plan to go?"

She was a retired lady who was an active supporter of Evangel College (now Evangel University), whose son, Calvin Holsinger, was a professor there. We had known her for two years. She and her husband were members of our Sunday school class of retired ministers and missionaries. It was no secret to the class that we planned to go to New York to start a church soon, but this was the first time she'd spoken to either of us about our plans.

Previously, the district had asked us to look at Saugerties, just an hour's drive north of Newburgh, where Bob's folks lived. "I'm not sure," I said, "but probably somewhere in the Mid Hudson River Valley."

She looked me in the eye. "You ought to go to Gloversville. My daughter lives there. Her husband is the superintendent of schools, and they need an Assemblies of God church."

I felt like someone had turned on a light bulb. It sounded like a Macedonian call (Acts 16:9). That was the first time anyone had ever mentioned Gloversville to either of us. Was God using her to confirm that He was leading us in that direction? She gave us the Everharts' contact information, and the next day we called them. They invited us to stop by for lunch on our way from Newburgh to the district office in Syracuse.

January 1977 went into history for its severity with blowing snow and subzero temperatures. Buffalo received 20 feet of snow that month. And we drove from Springfield, Missouri to Newburgh, New York, in the worst of it. When we got bad gas in Ohio and broke down on the freeway, we huddled in our Volkswagen Super Beetle as snow whipped and whirled around us, rapidly dissipating the heat.

Every time a semi approached, Bob would open the window and hold out a simple red paper sign with "Send Help!" in white letters. After half an hour, we were chilled to the bone, and our feet were numb. We were thankful for the prayers of our church choir. Finally, a help truck drew alongside. Six-year-old Bobby and I climbed into the warm cab of the truck while the driver and Bob worked on the car.

After a brief visit with Bob's folks in Newburgh, we headed to Syracuse. On our way, we met with Barbara and Glen Everhart, who quickly became fast friends. When they had first arrived in Gloversville, they told us, they had put a notice in the newspaper to see if there was any interest in starting a church and had received no response. They were heavily involved in a church in Schenectady. They didn't encourage us to come, but they offered to assist us in every other way should we decide to come.

At our interview with the district officials, when they asked, "Where do you feel God is leading you to go?"
Bob answered, "To Gloversville."

Immediately, the Presbyters burst out in praises to God. "I just drove by there recently and prayed that God would send someone to Gloversville to start a church," several said.

Little did we know at the time that we were being thrust into the challenge of our lives! Knowing definitely that God had called us to that specific community gave us the confidence when the hard times came that we were in His will.