Broadus I

Back in the early days of my earliest career, we lived in a little town called Broadus that sits along US highway 212 in the south east corner of Montana about 110 miles from Belle Fourche, South Dakota. There I was starting a church for the Assemblies of God. Ya, believe it or not, I used to be a preacher. In this case a "DPP" which I will explain later. My pay was $50 per week, which was to cover all living expenses. This came from the district office. I also received offerings from our new church attendees, which at first we had none. Every now and then a check was sent to us from someone, somewhere, who knew we were there and somehow knew we were close to starving. God knew we were there and that was enough. 

We rented a house at the southeast end of the city (Pop. 800) along UD Highway 212. This is when we first discovered semi trucks existed. At night the trucks coming down the hill above our house from the east would go through a whole array of gears downshifting to slow down for the city. Going east, the trucks going up the hill would go through their gears getting out of town. Many Semis travel US 212. Many sleepless nights. 

The house had been added onto several times. It had a huge front room (church). It had a nice sized kitchen (fellowship hall) with a breakfast nook where I set up my office. It had a back entrance which led off to a large master bedroom, a bathroom, and two more bedrooms (Sunday School rooms). The house had a crawl space (which I will talk about later). And it was a ranch style house. The house was heated with two wall heaters, one between the big front room and the kitchen, and the other in the back entrance (which didn't work). We paid $75 per month rent for all of this.

The landlord, Mr. Rogers, (no, not the Mr. Rogers) (no, not Roy either) wanted to paint the trim of his white house orange, so he gave me a gallon of orange paint, a paint brush, and loaned me a ladder. I worked off a month's rent. When I realized I wasn't going to have enough paint, I thinned it out with water. The miracle of latex. Everybody in town thought the house looked pretty good. Another lady in town asked me to paint her house. The neighbor across hwy 212 decided to paint her front door orange. She also started sending her kids to sunday school. Two of them, a boy and a girl. They were our first attendees and brought our first offering, 25 cents each. We had 67% growth that day. So we taught Sunday school to two kids for about three weeks.

Did God really know where we were?

More later.