THE KIMBERLEY CHURCH HOUSE

With the passing of time, our small living room because too small for the young church to be comfortable in it, so we were delighted to learn that the Afrikaans Baptist congregation had built a new building and were looking for someone to buy their old building. Brothers Stanley and Rees investigated this and agreed on the price so we came to have a much larger place of worship. While it had only three rooms, the sanctuary and two dressing rooms, large enough for small classes to use, it was also blessed by having a baptistery. We all set to and with a lot of work; cleaned and repainted the interior. The pews had been left behind so seating was no problem at all. The piano was moved from our home to there to provide accompaniment for the worship services. By this time I had bought a Commer Van so we we began operating a "church bus" as another of our jobs in addition to my filling the pulpit and teaching a Sunday School Class. However, it was not long until pressures from The apartheid policy of the government began to be a problem when bringing the students from all over South Africa to Kimberley to be trained for ministry. Since brother Stanley was the principal of the school, he dealt with these problems and decided to follow government advice and to move the school to a predominately black area near Port Shepstone, on the coast. He privately purchased a portion of a sugar cane plantation at Umzumbe. One boundary of his property was divided from similar land only by a single lane cane road from a large area in a black Zulu homeland. Brother Nick Qwemesha, bought a small portion on the other side of that road. The two of them went to work and built a home for the Qwemesha's and a dormitory for the men on the Zulu side of the road, with a church/classroom building on the other side. Later other buildings were added. A building for the visiting nurse to use as a clinic, a women's rondavel residence, a utility building, and the last was a kitchen and dining room. Nick ministerd to the congregation of that church and continued to teach and interpret for the school. It was a good plan, except that the students were not happy in that they were expected to help with the garden to grow their food and help maintain the road as part of their tuition expenses. They regarded this to be beneath their dignity, even while they were students. Unfortunately the road to the school was only a cane track for the heavy trucks to collect the sugar cane to take it to the mill for processing. They made it almost impassable in ordinary vehicles. The last mile or two, was also used by the other residents, and was simply "a dirt track". Large stones, deep ruts, and a high center ridge with weeds and grass made it almost mandatory to use a pick up truck. At least one visitor driving a small car knocked a hole in his fuel tank on that road. After that he refused to drive over it at all. That was after he drove over it in daylight and saw just how far down the steep slope of the mountain fell away!

We did not move to the coast as someone was still needed in the huge Northern Cape area which had many black churches, so we stayed on as the only mission family still in Kimberley at that time. That was the last of Bob's teaching regularly in the minister's training school. He ministered to one of the churches in Kimberley, visited the black churches of the Northern Cape to preach and teach when possible, particularly on Saturdays, and coped with the growing enrollment in the Correspondence Bible Lessons with a monthly news letter to them. Those were being mailed to thousands scattered all over Africa's many English speaking former British colonies.