The Glen Bogue Story: Founder of the United Pentecostal Church of Australia

By Gary Biddell

This is the wonderful true story of how it all began, the founding of the United Pentecostal Church of Australia.

As we read this book we see the Great Planner in action; we come to a deeper understanding of the love and care God has for our 'sunburnt country' and its people.

Our founders Glen and Iris Bogue had hearts full of sacrifice and love for Australia and its people. How great is our God!

Beverley Holden
(1st Australian National Superintendent's wife, author and minister)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Feb 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228848448

Gary Biddell

Dad's desire was to see his book published. However, he only finished his compilation shortly before his death in 2000. His efforts and dedication to research and history are clearly shown in this book along with the legacy he has left behind.– Adam Biddell.About Glen Bogue.On his last trip to Australia, Reverend Glen Bogue said to the assembly, "We don't want any credit, we just did the will of God to see the work of God accomplished."A great work had been accomplished during the Bogues' missionary term, and to hear Brother Bogue make this simple statement impacted greatly on my future ministry.– John W Downs UPCA Superintendent". . . a riveting story." – JW Downs

Book preview

The Glen Bogue Story

He Served His Generation Well

Pastor Evangelist Apostle

Pioneer and Missionary to Australia

Founder of the United Pentecostal Church of Australia

Gary Biddell

The Glen Bogue Story

Copyright © 2021 by UNITED PENTECOSTAL CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA LTD

Editors:

Chief Editor: John W. Downs

Main Editor: Carla Meijer

Clive Jacobsen Louise Guerin

Sue Sarantos Paul Turkington

ROBERT CAMPBELL (cover)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-4843-1 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-4844-8 (eBook)

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prelude

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Wonderful Early Days

Chapter 2 - Training for the Ministry

Chapter 3 - Make Full Proof of Your Ministry

Chapter 4 - Paralysed with a Vision

Chapter 5 - Bound for Australia

Chapter 6 - The First Missionary Years

Chapter 7 - Reaching Out to Country NSW

Chapter 8 - The United Pentecostal Church Is Here To Stay

Chapter 9 - An Island of Hope in a Sea of Hate

Chapter 10 - Let the Lord Do the Work

Chapter 11 - A Spirit of Weeping and Praise

Chapter 12 - Bring Me Back to Indiana and Bury Me Here

Chapter 13 - Too Heavy For Me to Carry Alone

Chapter 14 - I Will Send Three Men… Then You Will Know

Chapter 15 - The Man in the Vision

Chapter 16 - You Are a Little Hypocrite Bogue

Chapter 17 - Life is Not a Merry-Go-Round Chase

Chapter 18 - This Powerful Love for the Truth

Epilogue 1

Epilogue 2

From the Editor

Acknowledgements

THANK YOU FOR CONTRIBUTING TO THE STORY

David and Ruth Bogue

St William Bogue

Glen Jr (Micky) Bogue

James Bogue

Martha Schultz (Glen’s sister)

Melvin and Betty Brooks

Tracy Noel

Robert McFarland

James. H. Simison

Gerald A. Mangun

Tom F. Tenney

Austin. J. Brooks

Joe B. Brooks

Gilbert Grinder

Robert Stroup

Edgar Walker

John and Madeline Brian

Roscoe Seay

Lucille Bibbs McKnight

B.R. Oney

Nathaniel Urshan

Edwin Judd Fred Kinze

Charles Duffy

Bruce H. Hanson

Virginia Rigdon

Geoff and Bev Holden

Les and Ellen Hannan

Robert and Bev Hargreaves

Albert Banton

Joseph Bingham

Terry and Jackie Walker

George and Ruby Owen

David and Joyce Hayden

Clive Jacobsen

June and Mark Rudolph

Stanley Russell

Lee Roy and Becky Sherry

Richard and Margaret Carver

Paul Turkington

Norman Walls

Oscar Vouga

Arthur T. Morgan

Wynn Stairs

Ike Terry

Fred Foster

David Gray

Sid Corby

Prelude

by John W Downs

General Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church of Australia.

During my earliest years in the UPCA it was not uncommon to hear mention of the names of Brother and Sister Bogue. There seemed to be so many stories about the years they spent as the first UPCI missionaries to Australia. When I first learned of the manuscript of this book it thrilled me to know that someone had taken the time to record the stories I had heard, and to have the opportunity to read a complete history of the many wonderful events which surrounded the Bogues’ call and work in Australia.

I had my first opportunity to meet Brother and Sister Bogue when they attended our National Conference in Canberra over the 1982 New Year. It had been 12 years since they finished their missionary service and returned to the USA. Back in 1982 travel was not as easy as it is today, however, folk gathered from all over the nation to welcome this inspiring couple. Nobody would be disappointed.

I remember the service when Brother Geoff Holden introduced them. He first invited Sister Bogue to greet the congregation. As she approached the microphone it was obviously an anticipated moment for the congregation, and a very emotional experience for her. After adjusting the microphone, Sister Bogue stood silent as if not knowing what to say, and then said, Excuse me, I just want to take a look at you for a minute. I have missed you all so much. I am just so happy and thrilled to be with you. Just to know that things are progressing so well. Sister Bogue went ahead to say that when the church in Gary, Indiana agreed to their visit to Australia, they said, Just go and enjoy yourself and see your own people. This to me summed up just how much they loved the church in Australia.

Following Sister Bogue, Brother Holden asked the congregation to stand and welcomed Brother Bogue to the pulpit. There was a standing ovation from the congregation and after a few words he said, We don’t want any credit, we just did the will of God to see the work of God accomplished.

A great work had been accomplished during the Bogues’ missionary term, and to hear Brother Bogue make this simple statement, impacted greatly on my future ministry. I pray that as you enjoy this down-to-earth account of those early years, you will realize much can be done if we always give Jesus the credit and the glory for the work He has accomplished. Let this missionary spirit live in our heart.

Introduction

I arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana, two hours early and minus one suitcase. Knowing that the party I was to meet wouldn’t be there, I decided to have breakfast at the airport and wait. It was Tuesday, December 26th, 1989. While ordering breakfast, the waitress asked me where I was from. I told her I was an Australian. She replied with a smile, Welcome to the Hoosier State, sir. She proceeded to pour me a coffee and I thanked her, not knowing what she meant. I took out my notebook and began to write questions I needed to ask. One of them was: what is a Hoosier? I only knew Hoosier as a restaurant where I had eaten at in Stockton, California.

It was now 11:30 am, the time that my normal flight would arrive. I went to the carousel, picked up my missing suitcase and waited for my party to turn up. A fine well-dressed man introduced himself as Tracy Noel. He took my bags and we headed for the car park. It was then that it hit me. It was seventeen degrees Fahrenheit. A pleasant winter’s day in Indiana. My, it was cold, my mind began to do a quick calculation. That’s minus ten Celsius back home in our winter. I thought, I have just left beautiful Perth, Western Australia, where the summer weather is eighty degrees Fahrenheit and I’ve walked into this weather. What a shock to the old body.

Tracy Noel put my bags into the boot (trunk) and then cleared the snow from the windscreen of his car. We got into the car and headed south on interstate 37 for Bloomington. The snow was piling up on the side of the road and the glare from it was blinding. Between the snow and the mud that was being tossed around, driving was difficult.

Tracy had to stop the car a couple of times to wipe the snow and mud off the windscreen. On one occasion, he poked his head in the window and said with a smile, Welcome to Hoosier Country, Brother Biddell. Hoosier, this was the second time I had heard it. I asked Tracy, What does it mean? Is it a town or an animal? The way he’d heard it was that some years before a man by the name of Hoosier, who lived in Indiana, went to work in the coal mines of Kentucky. Hoosier was a likeable character and worked hard amongst the Kentuckians. From that point on, all the miners who came over from Indiana were known as Hoosiers, that is, hard workers and anyone who is born, raised and bred in Indiana is known as a Hoosier. But that is only one of many stories about Hoosiers. We had just driven through Martinsville, Indiana and Tracy Noel stopped again. Getting back into the car he said, He was a *Hoosier. As he made that comment, my mind went back to the year of 1963 in Australia.

I had walked through the doors of the church on Burwood Road in Sydney. I sat in the back row, which seemed to be reserved just for me. As I looked up onto the platform a lady was singing, Acres of Diamonds, Mountains of Gold, Rivers of Silver, Jewels Untold. After she had finished, a stocky, well-dressed, distinguished-looking man entered the pulpit. He had a slight limp and wore a black suit and dark framed glasses. He turned around, took her by the hand and ushered her to his seat. Then, turning again, he walked back to the pulpit and began to speak these words, Someone mentioned to me the other day, that these days it’s quite impossible to believe in any book whose authority is unknown, he was speaking about the Bible. I went on to say to this man, was the compiler of the multiplication tables known? The man had replied, No, he wasn’t. I asked him, Then don’t you believe in the multiplication tables, sir? Of course I believe in them because they work out right, the man replied. Then I told him this, And so does the Bible."

I liked the preacher, he had my full attention. He went on to say, It is not how many Bibles are sold or how many people read them that counts, it’s how many actually believe in what they are reading and how they surrender themselves to God’s truth. Anything short of this can have no real value for anyone. He reached for his Bible and the first message I heard him preach was taken from Acts Chapter 10. He entitled the message, He was devout but not saved.

As the car slowed down and came off the highway, my mind returned to the present. Here we are, Tracy Noel said as we drove up the hill and into the driveway. You were saying you’ve been here before. Yes, it had been fifteen years and it hadn’t changed all that much. The house was to the right of the church and a trailer was parked opposite. Snow covered the ground, while the trees in the background were totally bare. You could tell that winter had truly settled in, just as it had fifteen years before. We were finally at the United Pentecostal Assembly in Bloomington, Indiana and my mission to write the story of this man’s life was reaching its conclusion.

Entering from the rear, we walked down the narrow hallway and I poked my head into the chapel. I noticed that the flowers from the funeral still looked fresh and vibrant. It had only been a few days earlier. Tracy Noel had unlocked the office and went to turn on the heat. He said, You can go into the office if you wish, have a look around. As I went in and sat down, I noticed it was still neat with everything in its rightful place. The office was very simple. It had a desk, a bookcase with a commentary, concordance, dictionary, the latest Word Aflame Sunday School manual and a handful of general books. Next to a coat rack, hanging on the wall, was a certificate. My eyes fixed on it. I got out of my chair and walked over to take a closer look. It was his Ordination Certificate, signed by Howard Goss, the Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church in 1945 along with W.T. Witherspoon and Stanley W. Chambers’ signatures.

By this time, Tracy Noel returned to the office and went straight to the desk. As he sat down, he said to me, I’m sorry you had to hear the sad news of his passing the way you did. He was buried here in Bloomington last Wednesday. The Urshans came down from St Louis. They knew him very well, Brother Urshan preached the message, and she sang a beautiful song called ‘I Caught a Vision of Heaven’. Edwin Judd represented the Foreign Missions department. All his old friends were here. James Simison helped me officiate the service.

As Tracy started to thumb through the Bible on the desk, he noticed some old sermons that were tucked in the back of it. Look here! he said. Here are some messages from the sixties he must have preached in Belmore, Australia, dated March 20th, 1965, titled ‘The finality of Christ’. Here is another, July 11, 1965, ‘Foundations Stand Sure’, June 8, 1969, ‘When the King comes back to reign’. As we looked at these messages, Tracy Noel said, I found one here with KA on it, with the date going back to May 13, 1967. What does KA mean?

It has to be Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, just outside of Sydney. They held a tent crusade there and from the look of these notes it was back in 1967, I replied. Tracy closed the Bible and we left the office. He said to me, All this certainly brings back memories. The beauty of memories is that they still see beauty when the beauty has faded.

Returning to the car, we started reminiscing about this man who had played such an important role in people’s lives across two widely differing continents. As we drove from the church carpark, we shared precious memories about the same man: he had evangelised throughout Indiana, pastored one of the largest churches in Gary and obeyed the call of God to a ‘far off strange land’. He had then served on the foreign field as a pioneer missionary to the subcontinent of Australia, fought gallantly to plant the truth of Jesus’ name message there, finally leaving a trail of goodness behind him.

This is his story, and as Tracy Noel put it "he certainly was a real ¹*Hoosier".

Chapter 1

Wonderful Early Days

1913 was the year President Woodrow Wilson opened the Panama Canal 4000 miles away by pressing a button on his White House desk; it was the year when celebrities like Danny Kaye, Jesse Owen, Burt Lancaster, Lindsay Hassett, Alan Ladd and Vivien Leigh were born and the same year that Jim Thorpe, once dubbed ‘the greatest athlete in the world’, was stripped of his Olympic gold medals. It was also the year that the 37th and 38th presidents of the United States of America Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were born. In 1913 another child was born, unrecorded by history books or sporting annals or the movie world but recorded in heaven as one who obeyed the voice of the Master by taking the gospel to the far regions of the earth. His name, Glen Marion Bogue.

The Bogue family had arrived in America around the same time as George Fox and his followers in the late 1600s. They were Scottish Quakers who settled in Northern Carolina, farming the land until around 1860. Buchanan was president when Southern Carolina passed an ordinance in 1859 to withdraw from the Union. As other States were also considering it, the unrest caused concern within the Quaker community. Many of them heard about good farming land west of the Mississippi and thought it best to leave Northern Carolina as the conflict between the North and South was coming to a head. Francis (Frank) Marion Bogue decided to join his group of ‘friends’. Packing their belongings into a wagon, they headed west.

As they were travelling through Kentucky, they were attacked by a bunch of Shawnees who took Frank’s son. He followed them into the wilderness until they camped. That night he watched as they drank themselves stupid with whiskey and fell asleep. He went into the camp and rescued his son.

Arriving back at the wagon train safely, Frank heard that some of the Quakers had become a little concerned about travelling west into Kansas and Nebraska after their incident with the Shawnee. They knew of a Quaker community in Lafayette on the Wabash river in Indiana, about two hundred miles away. They all felt safer heading north into Hoosier country. White settlements had been established there in 1731 by French traders who ceded to the British. By 1783, Indiana had passed into American control, becoming a state of the Union in 1816. Upon advice, Frank continued east from Lafayette and purchased land located in Tipton county. Being a farmer, he grew corn, potatoes and pinto beans and finally settled and raised his family. By 1861 Lincoln became president and Kansas was admitted into the Union. The Bogues had left Northern Carolina before the south fired the first shots on Fort Sumter which started the Civil War. As farmers, they were exempt from fighting in the war since they supplied produce to the government and the army.

By the 1870s, Alexander Bell had invented the telephone and General Custer had been defeated at the Little Big Horn by the Sioux. One of Frank’s sons, Nicholas, married Emma Hamilton. Emma’s family were strict Plymouth Brethren folk. Nicholas, a Plymouth Brethren minister, was a tall, distinguished man with a thick bushy moustache, which was typical of the 1800s. He was highly respected as one of the leading men in the community. Their son Jasper, who preferred to be called Earl, was born in 1897 and was raised on the farm. At the age of 15, he married 16-year-old Ethel Hewitt. Her brother Alva was the Brethren minister in Sharpsville, Indiana. The family rallied around, built them a little cottage and gave them part of the land to work in Windfall, Indiana.

In the summer of 1913 Ethel was ready to have their first child. On Tuesday, the 17th June, as the mothers and midwives gathered around to support her, she gave birth to a son and called him Glen Marion. So, it seemed young Glen was destined to be a farmer or a minister.

For those that have a mind for history, 1913 was the year of the worldwide camp meeting in which over one hundred preachers gathered at Arroyo Secco, Los Angeles. It was at this camp that the truth of the oneness of God was first openly expounded, and Robert McAlister preached a fiery message on water baptism.

Glen wasn’t the only child born to Earl and Ethel. They were to be blessed with six more sons and six daughters in the years to come. They surely felt that they had honoured the scriptures by being fruitful and replenishing the State of Indiana. Ethel once said, I came from a large family of farmers. We worked from daylight to dark in those early days. It was hard work with so much to do. We had no electricity and had to cook on an open wooden fuel stove. We washed our clothes in a large drum in the yard, with a wood fire underneath it to boil the water. We wouldn’t get to eat supper until about 8:30 at night. We didn’t have television to watch as they weren’t invented when Glen was born. We had kerosene lanterns which gave us light, and we were real modern back then as we had a kerosene refrigerator. After supper, we would just sit around and relax, as we only had each other. Our nearest neighbours were within walking distance about a mile away. We didn’t have a car, only a horse and an old buggy. Being good old Brethren, we were not even allowed a radio, even if we did have electricity, Alva saw to that.

By August 1914, the world was at war. For the next four years, the farmers benefited from the war as they had to grow extra crops to send overseas for the war effort. In 1915, when Glen was two, the wire services had notified the world of the death of the famous hymn writer, Fanny Crosby. By July, the Bogues had their second child, another son whom they called Melvin Henry.

Farming was very hard work for Earl and Ethel. They were both 20 years old, and with two small boys to care for, their life was very difficult. But farming was all they knew, and they had to survive. One year, they suffered greatly and lost several crops because of a severe drought. In March of 1918, the government introduced daylight saving for the first time. This only confused many farmers, including Earl and Ethel. The idea only lasted two years, due to the violent protests by the farmers across the country.

In 1918 tragedy struck the Bogue family. Glen had turned 5 when his aunt Nollie was killed by the deadly influenza pandemic which swept across the United States. She had been in her early twenties. In that same year Ethel had a daughter and they named her Martha. The family was starting to grow and in 1920, Alvin was born. Glen was seven years old when tragedy hit a little closer to home. Ethel gave birth to another son, James Hershel, but a few days after his birth, he died at Darrough Chapel.

Earl decided to take his family out of Windfall, and away from farming. He wanted to move them into the city. He had several cities to choose from, like Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and even Seymour. He decided to move to Kokomo, which was not only one of the largest cities in Indiana but also provided a choice of 13 schools for the growing family. It would be easy to find employment, Earl thought, after all it was known as a steel manufacturing city. Kokomo was only twenty-three miles north of Windfall. Relatives were scattered around the area, with Ethel’s folks living in Sharpsville and the rest of the family, in Elwood and Windfall.

All in all, Earl decided this would be a good move for his family. They moved when Glen was 10 years old. His sister Martha recalls that Glen was a very ambitious boy. He would always want to do something, like odd chores ‘to help bring home the bacon’. He had a little bike; he would carry groceries for neighbours from the store and they would give him a little something for it. Work was much harder to get than Earl had imagined, and he was not able to gain employment at the Continental Steel Corporation like he had planned. It looked as though young Glen was more successful with his little grocery deliveries than his dad was in finding work. Finally, Earl got a job at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. This position was to last for about 7 years until he retired with a pension. His eyes had been burnt by the heat of the furnaces, with ninety per cent damage rendering him legally blind. While living in Kokomo, Ethel had another three daughters Betty, Wilma and Naomi.

Glen started his first real paying job in 1926, when he was 13. He would ride his bike down to Sharpsville and work on his uncle Alva’s farm on the weekends. He would load the potatoes into a cart, then take them to the market. He received a dollar for the day’s work. Glen’s uncle Alva was the local Brethren minister. They were given the title ‘Dunkers’ due to their practice of dunking their baptismal candidates three times face down in the water: first in the name of the Father, then in the name of the Son, and finally in the name of the Holy Ghost. At this stage, Glen was starting to show some interest in the word of God. He enjoyed being around his uncle. This was one of the main reasons that he wanted to spend the weekends in Sharpsville. On several occasions, he watched his uncle perform services. Glen said, I know in those early days with my uncle, the Lord was dealing with me. Even though they were Brethren, God was still working in my life through them, they were good people. I believe in my heart that the Lord had sown the seed.

Glen and the rest of the children liked to go down to the farm and play around the farmyard. Glen recalled an event that happened when he was young. He said, "We were all playing this game called ‘Follow the Leader’ and being the eldest, I was the leader. I led the children all over the barnyard, over rocks, through fences and around trees. Sometimes we would even climb over the chicken coup. One day when I was climbing over the roof, I stopped and looked into the distance.

When I saw the sun setting on the horizon, the Lord spoke to me and said, "Son, some day you will go to a distant land and preach the word. You will lead people to Jesus, just as you are leading your family now. I have a great ministry for you."

So, Glen said, he stopped the game and ran crying to his mother. He told her exactly word for word, what had happened to him in the vision. They agreed to keep it their little secret as this was a special moment for him, an experience he would never forget. The other children wouldn’t understand and would only make fun of him. From that moment, the beginning of his call, he knew that the Lord would use him greatly in His work.

With this experience in mind Glen said, We seemed to play an awful lot of church. Glen being the oldest was always the preacher. He said, I can recall the times when l would practise my preaching on the others. They would sit on little boxes and l would turn a box on its side for a pulpit. Sometimes the piano was an old crate or a log, the dish pan was a drum. I remember telling them that our uncle said that if God wanted us to smoke, he would have installed chimneys on our heads. I told my little congregation that God would not do that. He would just turn our noses upside down for the smoke to blow out.

One of the best things about Brethren church was the baptism. Glen said, One day my brother Melvin wanted to be baptised. So, I took him to the river and pushed him forward once and prayed to the Father, then lifted him up. Then, I pushed him forward a second time, and prayed to Jesus, and lifted him again out of the water. Finally, I prayed to the Holy Ghost. By the third time, I got so excited, that while praying I forgot about Melvin face down in the water. After a minute or two, Melvin shot up out of the water fighting mad and said, ‘I’II never be a candidate for your baptisms ever again, you nearly drowned me.’

I loved to use my uncle’s sayings when I had my little church meetings on the farm. Uncle Alva would say, ‘There are a lot of different kinds of nuts in the Lord’s fruitcake. The Lord is looking for spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.’ He would even make comments like ‘Church is a lot like a tennis match. Those who don’t serve well end up losing.’ My uncle was a wise old man, quick witted. I believe I got a lot of my wit from my uncle Alva. Glen’s uncle would always tell him, Glen you must always quote the ABC of Christianity, which was ‘Always be Careful’.

"Those early days were precious to me," Glen said. My mother was a great lady and an inspiration to me. She would say things like, ‘Glen you can’t stop a runaway world by keeping it still’. Or she would say, ‘Are you a flashlight or a searchlight for God?’ She was always behind me even if I wasn’t living life as I should. There were many times when my cousin Tommy and I would have trouble getting home because we were so drunk. We were literally holding one another up. We would stagger back to my place in Kokomo and vomit all over mother’s kitchen floor. We would find our way home, somehow, and fall into bed fully clothed. Mother with her arthritis, would get up in the middle of the night and clean up our mess from the kitchen floor. She would come to my room and change our clothes and put us back into a clean bed. After she did all that, she would go back to her room and get down on her knees and pray for us. The next day we would get up to the smell of pancakes, bacon and eggs. My mother would not say a word to either of us. She would continue with what she was doing as if nothing had happened. That would just aggravate me. I wish she would have just given me a whipping and been done with it, but she didn’t. My mother just knew what to say at the right time. I remember asking her one day, ‘Mum, you never seem to get angry.’ Her reply was, ‘Son, mums who fly into a rage, seem to always make a bad landing.’

Glen went on to recall how much he appreciated those early days around his family, saying, good parents do not always produce good children, but devoted, dedicated, hardworking mothers and fathers can weigh the balance in favour of decency and the building of moral character. Every word and deed of a parent is a fibre woven into the character of a child. This ultimately determines how, that child fits into the fabric of society.

Earl was 31 years old when he retired from the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company in 1928. He suggested to the management that they give his job to Glen. The company agreed and employed the 14-year-old. Glen said, It was my first full time position. It was hard work as I was working alongside men for 48 hours a week for just a few cents an hour. I was glad that I had a full-time job all the same. In the factory they would all be singing the hit tune of the year ‘Old Man River’ while they worked. It was the year of the Amsterdam Olympics, the year that 27-year-old Hirohito was crowned emperor of Japan and Walt Disney introduced his first Mickey Mouse cartoon to the world called Steamboat Willy. I remember 1928 really well. After working at the glass factory, Glen still pedalled his bike in the afternoons delivering newspapers. On Saturdays he delivered groceries. Martha said, Glen was always on the go, he was never at home, always doing something. He only lived for the now, he worked for today and tomorrow was another challenge.

Glen had only been on the job a few weeks when the family received the news that grandma Emma, Earl’s mother had died. The family travelled down to Elwood for the funeral, which was conducted by Alva Hewitt, Glen’s uncle. Glen said, I was just a kid but old enough to know what was happening. I had never been to a funeral before. I just stood back and watched. Everybody that I knew was there, all my uncles, aunts and cousins, all the Hamilton family, Ryans, Rogers, Grahams and Hewitts. As we stood at the graveside and they lowered grandma’s coffin into the grave, I couldn’t help but realise how precious a life was and how much we would miss her presence. My uncle said a few words that I will never forget. He said, ‘To live without divine guidance is like building a ship without a compass. There are many codes for living, but there is only one code for life’. He made me think about the beauty of life. I remembered how young my mum and dad were and how strong and healthy my grandparents were as they worked on the farm. But as the years go by, while we are young, we fail to notice how everyone around us is getting older. We don’t recognise it until we stand at a loved one’s grave.

Glen watched as his father struggled with his disability whilst his mother was crippled with arthritis. At 15 years old, with hard times and seven hungry little mouths, Glen felt the need to be the bread winner for his ever-growing family, knowing that his father’s meagre pension wasn’t enough for them.

One day he picked up the newspaper, the headlines read, "Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St Louis from New York City to Paris, France." Everyone was talking about how wonderful it was. Lindbergh was a great hero to all the young men, but Glen was different. He remembered the seed that was planted in his mind, back on the farm in Windfall. "One day I’II travel and see the world just like the Lord had shown me," Glen said. But when and where, was the question going through his mind.

Chapter 2

Training for the Ministry

On October 29th 1929, the New York Stock Exchange suffered record losses. These losses ushered in a worldwide depression. The prosperity of the roaring twenties was finished, and money was in short supply. By the thirties, many people across the nation were out of work. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers elegantly danced the depression blues away in a string of musicals. The Big Bands were taking over America with ‘the swing.’ This was an easy flowing style from jazz and it swept across the country like wildfire. Names like Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey were the rage along with George Gershwin and his ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’. ‘You’re the Tops’ and ‘Begin the Beguine’ were the music of the hour.

One of the most prominent preachers and teachers of this time was G.T. Haywood, who pastored a fine church in Indianapolis and was the former Secretary of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. He suddenly died on 12th April 1931 at the age of fifty-one. The whole of the Pentecostal movement was saddened by the loss of one of its greatest leaders. He will always be remembered through the beautiful hymns he wrote, ‘I See a Crimson Stream of Blood’ and ‘Thank God for The Blood’.

Meanwhile, Ethel had given birth to her ninth child, Paul Edward. As the Andrew sisters were making their mark on the national scene so was an eight-year-old girl and her brother in Kokomo. June and Harold Purvis broke the news to their family that a Pentecostal Revival was coming to Kokomo. It was October 1931 and Dorothy L. McCarty had arrived back in Kokomo on furlough from India, after attending the General Conference of the Apostolic Church of