CHAPTER 9

Children’s Camps

Sadie and I went down to some of the fish camps that the Natives set up near the rivers during the summer to catch fish for their families and dogs. This was a busy time for the villagers as they worked hard during the long summer days to provide subsistence for the winter. We got the idea that we could have meetings for the children during the day, and then gospel meetings at night for the adults. This worked out fine. From this the Lord exercised our hearts to have a camp for the children from all the villages. For $15, I purchased an acre of land with an old cabin on it in Lower Tonsina. We repaired the cabin, and we cleared the land of rubbish with help from some of the children from Chitina.

As I was digging a latrine, my shovel hit permafrost with such force that I fell over the hole. This accident resulted in a severe back strain that put me out of commission once again. (I had hurt my back in 1953 in Cape Town working for the oil company. It gave me lots of pain and trouble. It was also hurt in Belfast when we were on our way to Alaska.)

I was put in traction for two weeks. Two one-gallon cans filled with gravel were attached to my medical corset with ropes and thrown over the elevated foot of the bed. This all cost me valuable time.

When I felt better I went to the doctor in Glenallen, and he adjusted my back. “Don’t lift anything heavier than a pencil,” the doctor advised.

I, however, went down to Anchorage to buy supplies for the camp. The Army was revamping nearby Fort Richardson Army Post and was auctioning off surplus equipment. I made a bid on three tents: one 14 x l6ft, one 16 x 24 ft. and one 10 x 12 ft. My bid of $50 was accepted. Once again, God not only met our expectations, He exceeded them! What I did not know was that all the equipment under the tents went with the bid. There were steel beds and mattresses, metal tables, a steel sink, serving trays and many things that seemed custom-ordered for our new children’s camp.

Harold Richards loaned me his big truck. We transported the whole load back to the Lower Tonsina campground. Harold helped me set up tents. There were enough logs available to erect a dining room addition to the old cabin.

The territorial government authorities asked me whether they could use our facility in the event of an emergency. This was the middle of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. This kind of request was not unusual, given Alaska’s strategic global location. At a certain point, Alaska is only two miles from Siberia. We agreed to the government’s request. This enabled us to get food surpluses and a motor boat, too.

Children came to our camp from as far as 200 miles away. During my visits to villages, the children were given memory verses to learn. During subsequent visits, children who knew their memory verses were rewarded with free admission to the camp. I never knew of one child who could not repeat their memory verses with this incentive!

More than 80 children enrolled the first season. We transported many of them from their villages and returned them home again. At the camp, the children could earn tokens for doing various things, especially for giving correct answers after the Bible lessons. All these things won their cooperation and respect.

After lunch was a “compulsory rest period” (everything was a quiet as a mouse), and the children could spend their tokens at a little “store” we opened. The rest periods benefited everyone; the workers were glad of a wee rest, too. There was a “good sleeper” award, and some children even had to be wakened up!

We inspected the children’s hands and faces for cleanliness as they filed into the dining cabin. This exercise provided us with some hard-to-suppress chuckles. I pointed to one little boy’s dirty neck and instructed him to go clean it. He left. Soon he came through the line again. When I inspected his neck, that one little spot where my finger had touched gleamed like an island of cleanliness in a sea of dirt. I made my instructions much more specific the second time around.

We also provided the children with clean underwear donated by the Valley Christian Children’s Home. We handed out the underwear after administering baths. For this we used two big Army-issue bread-mixing bowls, each about 36 inches in diameter. We used one bowl for washing them, and the other to rinse them. I channeled a nearby creek to the camp, so there was plenty of water. Workers and children alike had many good laughs when our soapy charges slid out of the bowls.

Native children in those days mostly wore handmade moccasins: slipper-type footwear made from animal skins, lined inside with rabbit fur. Since each child’s moccasins were custommade just for them, each pair was unique and easily identified. One of the children’s favorite games was when we mixed up their moccasins in a pile. After we said “go” the children would race to the pile and scramble to find their own moccasins. The first ones back to the starting line with both of their own moccasins on would win tokens.

We taught Scripture lessons regularly. We also had gospel meetings for parents who came in from their fish camps. Quite a number of adults attended each evening. One boy wanted to be saved and actually Billy my son led him to the Lord. The next day the boy spoke to me and said, “Now I want to be a Christian!” He soon was instructed in the way of God more perfectly.

A crew of student surveyors was working nearby and we invited them to the meetings, too. They all came, probably motivated by curiosity. I visited the survey crew as they worked toward Chitina. Sadie and I invited them over to our home after Sunday evening gospel meetings. They gobbled up Sadie’s delicious homemade treats. They hadn’t had home cooking for months. We were able to speak to them about the things of God and they were receptive to our message.

Devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ is the secret of serving. As the hymn writer put it,

I would not work my soul to save,
For that my Lord has done;
But I would work like any slave
For love of God’s dear Son.

The Lord always met the need of the children’s camp work for all the years we did it. Even after we moved to Anchorage, we still carried on this work each summer.

After the survey crew had finished their projects and gone back to their homes in the Lower 48, we received a letter from one of them, Wayne Sparks. I still have a treasured copy of that letter in my study. He described how our ministry had led to his restoration to the Lord. He vowed to serve the Lord from then on. He had enclosed a gift of $20. Wayne wrote to us a few more times after that. Another young man named McMahon wrote and told us he got saved on the plane taking him home to Seattle.

Helpers in the children’s camp were a good team: Etta Bell, Mollie Billum, Paul and Edna Hammon, Ethel Zinn, Sadie and me. Over the following years, we had some others who came and helped. It was a big undertaking, but it was motivated by devoted love. We felt it was the same kind of love Mary Magdalene showed after Jesus Christ’s death when she went to the authorities and said, “Tell me where you have laid Him and I will take Him away”. Although a weak vessel, she was ready to carry the body of the Lord. 
Over the years I have met people from these places where we spent our early years. I had a Sunday Bible Class for children at the Alaska Native Hospital in Anchorage. One evening, I met a young man named Tom Titus. He was from Tetlin. He was dying with cancer, and he had already had one leg amputated. I talked to Tom about my ministry in his home village and about the camp we had.

“Tom,” I said to him, “When I leave you tonight I could die and would go to Heaven. But then we would never see each other again. If you died first where would you go?” “I would go to heaven, too,” he replied. “How can you be sure?” I pressed.

He then related that after one Bible Class he asked the Lord to “forgive me my sins and save me”. Tom will be united in heaven with his forbears from Tetlin who were saved by the grace of God.

Another time, years after leaving Chitina, I went into the restaurant at Summit Lodge, off the highway in Alaska. I recognized one man’s face and I went over to him.

“Did you ever go to a Sunday School in Anchorage?” I asked. The man turned to me and smiled with recognition. “Yes, Uncle Tommy,” he said. “I’m saved, and also my wife. We go to a church near our home.”

CHAPTER 10

Wasilla

One by one, family by family, the believers from Chitina were moving to Anchorage. The village school closed. We began sensing the Lord preparing us for a different work.

About that time, we were invited to move to Wasilla where the Valley Christian Children’s home was operated by Harold and Mabel Richards. Wasilla was little more than a dot on a map about 45 miles north of Anchorage, a far cry from the busy town of thousands of people today. The Richards cleaned out and remodeled an unused chicken coop, and we moved into it to await the Lord’s leading and for Brian to go to school.

We enjoyed helping out at the children’s home, and I became a member of its board of directors. It was a good work which the Richards originally started in their home in the southeast Alaskan community of Cordova; they had also planted a new assembly of believers in Cordova. The Richards were the first assembly missionaries to Alaska who had stayed for any significant length of time.

Their work in Cordova was transferred to Wasilla in the Matanuska Valley The Matanuska Valley has rich soil and good conditions for farming The U S government had offered subsidies to entice farmers to move there and establish dairy farms and raise crops This is where the world-famous giant cabbages are grown A number of these colonists from the Midwestern United States had moved there about 1935. Land was easy to buy, and soon, with lots of hard work, the Valley Christian Children’s Home was established. 

Harold’s widowed sister, Ethel Zinn, whom everyone lovingly referred to as Aunt Ethel, had retired from school teaching. At an age when other people think of resting, she moved to Alaska to help in this work. I will ever appreciate these dear saints, all of whom have now entered the presence of the Lord whom they served very faithfully.

I was asked to speak at a gathering of the six other Christian homes in the area. My text was 1 Corinthians 4:15. “Though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.”

My message was entitled “Pedagogue”, and its purpose was to encourage the children’s workers to see that one day their work would bear fruit. In a passing reference, I mentioned their own personal need to keep in communion with the Lord for spiritual growth. I said they should not think that a little church sermon on Sunday was sufficient because otherwise they would never mature and preachers would become like spiritual baby sitters. Little did I know that some “reverends” were in the audience and they were not pleased. Apparently, they went back and warned their “flock” about me.

However, John Martin, a businessman, enjoyed the message and came and told me so. “When you move to Anchorage,” he said to me, “I have a piece of property you will need and you can have it very reasonably.” We had not told anyone of our exercise about moving to Anchorage. “Who told you I would move to Anchorage?” I asked. He just smiled and said, “Oh, I just figured you would go there.”

CHAPTER 11 Anchorage

Anchorage sprang up in 1915 first as a tent city around a landing at the mouth of Ship Creek. The federal government had selected the site for the headquarters for the construction of the Alaska Railroad. It was no sooner founded when suddenly there was a population of 2,000 people. Anchorage has been an expanding boomtown ever since.

By the beginning of the 1960s, defense spending to develop Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson Army Post had caused the population to grow exponentially: more than 40,000 people had moved to Anchorage over the previous two decades. The greater metropolitan population today approaches 300,000 people, nearly half the population of the entire state. Anchorage has been the largest city in Alaska since the late l940s,

Anchorage’s population is cosmopolitan. It has always acted like it was a city three or four times its actual size. However, since its economy is based on the military, and industries like fishing, oil, and tourism, it is a very transient place and this made for instability even in the Lord’s work.

When we moved to Anchorage, at first we rented a small cabin and started reaching out to the community with the gospel message. True to his word, John Martin helped us get the piece of land on which we later made our home.

“I know that you live by faith,” he said. I had never told him anything about my support. “Whatever the Lord gives you as a deposit on the land, I’ll accept.”

I saved up $100 dollars and he gladly took this. The Lord enabled us to pay him the remainder within a year. Being familiar with the Army surplus operations I purchased a quarter of a surplus wooden building from a man who bought a whole H-shaped building with heating and plumbing in the center. I bought the 20 x 14 ft bare piece that he cut off the end, no windows, doors, or insulation just an empty shell. I got it moved onto our property for $150. It was with gusto we worked on this project and soon the building was livable, but without water or sewage. We made do in ways we had learned while living in Chitina.

Of course, money was tight. We committed our needs to the Lord. I still drove up to the Alaska interior to visit the villages with the gospel. On one trip on my way back, the fuel gauge in my car displayed “empty.” I prayed to the Lord to get me home, which he did. Sadie met me with a big smile. “Guess what’s in this letter?” she asked, waving an envelope back and forth in her hand. “1 don’t know,” I said, taking the letter to read it.

A certain Mr. Champ from Canada had sent a gift of $400, an enormous sum especially in those days. In the accompanying letter, he wrote about having heard about us, but none of the resources for communicating funds knew us or listed our address. Mr. Champ had persevered for several weeks until he learned where we were and he sent the gift “hoping it would meet your needs”.

Meet our needs it did. We installed windows and siding for the outside of the house, (both essential in Alaska winter climate). We were able to put in a floor oil-heater. This we felt made the house more respectable looking to invite people to Gospel meetings.

I started to dig a well for water in our front yard. It proved tough going because of ‘hardpan’ so I had dug only waist deep in half a day! It was nearly as hard as cutting logs for our cabin in Chitina!

John Henry Graham, our neighbour who owned some apartments next door to our house, came and asked me what I was doing digging in my yard. When I told him, he laughed and said, “Just dig under my apartments and hook into the water system.” His well was 75 feet deep with really good water. I was so happy to do so. I made a watertight wooden box of planks wrapped in plastic, and insulation with a thaw wire around the copper pipe. Soon we had water in the house. From then on, whenever we used the water even for a cup to drink, we thanked the Lord who had provided an Elim indeed.

I also dug a sewer system in the back garden, making first a large 9 x 9 ft hole 12 ft deep. I then cut logs 9 ft long and made a cess pool and lowered this into the hole. Then I made a ditch for the sewer pipe and all was ready to have a flush toilet. I went over and brought the old bathtub from the Chitina cabin. I found some used plumbing parts at an old abandoned Air Force base building up in Tok area. When I went to pay John Henry each month, he told me to keep the money. “The water costs me nothing,” he said. “Use as much as you need!”

When natural gas was made available in the city, many people switched to using it instead of oil for heating. A man called Gene owned a trailer park and converted everything there over to natural gas. While I was picking up his daughter for Sunday School one morning, Gene approached my car. “Do you have any use for my old water boiler?” he asked. I accepted the whole unit and hauled it to our house. My experience in past jobs came in handy and I was able to install the boiler. I gathered some old pipes from a disused Army barracks. Soon I had the boiler supplying hot water heating throughout the whole house. It also supplied hot water through the faucets for cooking, bathing, dish washing and such things. How good is the God we adore!

Having shepherded the Indian saints after they left Chitina, I gathered those who lived in Anchorage and began with gospel meetings in our home. The Lord blessed and we saw souls saved. I then felt free to gather the saints who had come from Chitina, and we also began the Breaking of Bread and all the other services in our home. Greatness is not the place or numbers but the presence of the Lord in the midst (Matthew 18:20). The Lord blessed increasingly.

Needing more room for visitors I approached the American Legion about use of their large hall. They granted permission to use it on Sundays from 6 am. to 2 pm. Going from door to door with invitations to Bible Class and Sunday School the attendance increased, with some parents attending. We continued using the American Legion hail and our home for the assembly meetings until we built our own Gospel Hall.

As door-to-door visitation continued, the witness became better known. All the believers in the assembly began reaching out, too. A girl named Rebecca became our first convert - she was brought by Alice Billum, a Chitina believer. Everyone worked together and soon young men from the Army & Air Force bases began attending.

Air Force Sergeant Robert “Bob” Denyer and his wife Esther were a special blessing to the assembly. They put their hearts into the work. Bob was treasurer and cleaned the Gospel Hall; Esther was an excellent young children’s Sunday School teacher.

On Friday nights, we went downtown and conducted open-air gospel meetings after having the children’s meeting. We preached to crowds of people who were there to “cruise the bars and have a good time” as they called it. One night a big man lumbered up to me as I preached and swung his fist at me. “Shut up!” he bellowed. I neatly ducked under his arm and kept on preaching, using him as an example of the type of people God’s grace can save. Well, this enraged the big man. But, suddenly, another man intervened and warned the big man to leave. With barely a murmur, the big man spun on his heel and disappeared. So did the other man. I have wondered since if the other man was an angel. Perhaps!

Happy days of fellowship were blessed by the Lord with a good number of souls being saved. Psalml33:1 says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Unity of saints commands a blessing by the Lord.

We needed a place more convenient for the assembly work that was taking place. I heard about a suitable piece of property located near the intersection of Northern Lights Boulevard and C Street, just a couple blocks from our house.

When passing through Chigago, Mr Bill McCartney, an Ulster man who founded the Stewards’ Foundation, told me they would help with a building if needed. Application for their help was made to Bill, and it was graciously granted. The Lord enabled us to repay the loan in a short time.

I made a bid for a surplus Army building, but lost the bid by a slender margin. In a way, we were relieved because we really did not have the money in hand to cover the bid. We were a bit mystified about God’s timing when, just a day after we lost the bid, we received a significant monetary gift that would have more than covered it. Then two days after the bids closed, we got a call from the Army. “Mr. Thompson,” the officer said, “We apologize for the mistake. You actually won the bid. Your bid was $6 above the other bid.” Faith was honored by the Lord. That two-day “lapse” was a mystery no longer. Now we had the money to not only cover our bid, but enough to pay for moving the old surplus motor workshop to our lot on Blueberry and Northern Lights Boulevard.

Bob Denyer was allowed by the Airforce to have leave for non— profit work. He and I worked day and night with help from some of the other saints when they had time. The assembly soon moved into an attractive Gospel Hall. Our young Billy and Brian did what they could. Bob Denyer and I made a good team on a number of projects. In his spare time Paul Hammon contributed his skills as a carpenter. Without a doubt, the Lord was working in and through His assembly.

We continued to have a good response to our door-to-door outreach efforts, most of the time. Knocking at a door just three houses from the Hall, a man opened the door and aimed a gun at my face. His face was ugly with hate: “Getaway from my door or I’ll shoot you.” I was frozen with shock at first, but God delivered me, one shaken preacher!

The Lord saved a good number of people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds. One was Dick Washington. Dick, who is black, was born and raised in College Station, Texas. As a young man, he and his cousin drove to Alaska to seek their fortunes. He found his fortune by opening one of the first dry cleaning businesses in Anchorage. He called it Peacock Cleaners. Its motto was “The cleaner with a thousand eyes”. By the early 1960s, Dick was making good money and was a popular person. He drove a big expensive white car. He smoked cigars and was “a real man about town”. The Washington children began attending our children’s meetings. Dick’s wife, Ethel, started coming, too. She would say, “Pray for my Richard.” She was saved as a 16 year old girl. Soon she came into fellowship.

I tried to visit Dick, but had no success in getting an audience with him. Then I learned that on Thursday evenings Dick climbed into bed early with a half-gallon of ice cream and a big cigar, and settled in to watch “Gun-smoke” on the television. I timed my arrival just as his TV program started.

“Is your Daddy at home?” I asked when his daughter Jackie answered the door. “Yes,” she exclaimed, excited to see me. “But he is in bed!” I went into his bedroom and there he was, nestled in for his entertainment. I deliberately positioned myself between him and the TV set. As he leaned from side to side to get a clear view past me, I just kept moving between him and the screen. “Mr. Washington, I know you are a man of your word, and I don’t want to stop you from enjoying ‘Gun- smoke,” I said to him. “So, I’ll be going if you promise to come to the gospel meeting on Sunday night to hear Gordon Reager and me preaching.” Well, needless to say, Dick quickly promised to come to the meeting. I left him to enjoy his show. I don’t think I was in his bedroom more than just a couple minutes.

Dick did attend, just as he promised. And he came back the next night to hear more. As he was leaving the gospel meeting, he shook my hand, looking me square in the eye and saying, “Tommy, I have done what you guys said.” Dick Washington had been saved. This turn of events was hard for Ethel to believe. You see, her husband was quite a man-about-town, and she was going to watch carefully to see if his conversion was true. Usually each morning Dick arranged four cigars in his breast pocket before he went over to his dry cleaning operation. The morning after he got saved, he went to work and left the cigars behind. Ethel brought them over to him at work. “Ethel, I don’t need them anymore,” he told her. “I’m saved.”

Since then, Dick Washington has become one of the most respected, faithful and well-loved brothers in the assembly. He never misses a meeting. Well into his 80s, he still runs Peacock Dry Cleaners and works from 6 am. to 8 pm. daily, except on Wednesdays when at 7:30 pm. he arrives for the Bible Reading and Prayer Meeting.

Another outstanding conversion was Joe Eskilada, one of the men I first met in the bottle-strewn abandoned rail car in Chitina. He got hurt in a car accident and was brought into the Alaska Native Hospital in Anchorage. With no chance to drink alcohol, Joe sobered up to the point where I could visit and speak to him about the provision God made for him in Christ, His Son, who died that we may live.

After Joe was discharged from the hospital, he came to the Anchorage meetings faithfully with his sister Hattie Mack who was also from Chitina and a dear sweet child of God. A young airman named Wally had recently got assurance of salvation while attending Gospel meetings I shared with Leonard Mullan, missionary to Japan. After one meeting Wally turned to Joe and asked, “Are you saved?” The weight of conviction became too much for Joe, and he broke down and cried out for God to save him. Joe became a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. I got him a job with a Christian builder named Carl Rylander. “I wish I had ten Joes,” Carl told me one day. “He is such a good worker.”

Many others were saved whose stories thrill my soul. Through circumstances, Master Sergeant Milton Rowcroft was appointed by a military chaplain to teach a Sunday School class. Milton was ignorant of any truth. His wife, who had been saved through our preaching, told him she could get a man to help him and called on me. “Don’t try to teach me that Jesus is the Son of God,” Milton warned me at our first meeting. “Could I then just tell you why I believe He is?” I said. “OK,” he said, reluctantly. Pointing out this precious truth from the Bible, I commenced teaching Milton the gospel of grace, and gave him lessons which he could teach his class. One night, I went to his house and found Milton weeping, his head bowed down on the dining room table. “I’m an unworthy sinner and don’t deserve to be saved!” he cried. God graciously saved him that night.

Another blessing was the conversion of Air Force Sergeant Dale reen and his wife, June. Years before, as June’s mother was dying  she made June put her hand under her hip (like Abraham ad done with his servant in Genesis 24) and asked her to vow ever to leave the Baptist church. Dale and June were heavy inkers. One day some Mormons visited her at home and confused her. A neighbour told June to send for me. I met the rtee1s and they both agreed to come to the Sunday evening ospel meeting. “Please come visit us,” Dale said after the eting. “I’ll be up tomorrow night.” I replied.

Monday night I went to their house and opened the Scriptures D John 1:10-13. Verse 13 says, “But as many as received Him, them gave He the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” The Lord used these words as I tried to explain to Dale and June how to be saved by believing rd receiving.

All of a sudden Dale said, “June, I just got saved!”

As he turned to his wife, his eyes flooded with tears. June began crying, too, and said, “And I was saved last night, and was afraid to tell you!”

They hugged each other and cried. The liquor was poured down the kitchen drain.

However remembering her vow, June called for the military thaplain, himself a Baptist. He advised her, “If you got saved here you should stay there.” So Dale and June entered the fellowship at the Northern Lights Boulevard Gospel Hall. After ie big earthquake of 1964 Dale’s unit was deployed back to Tennessee. The Lord increased the number in fellowship to 85. The judgment seat of Christ will reveal what was of God.

Our family increased too. On March 30, 1963, our fourth child, Brent, was born in Palmer, Alaska, on the day of our 17th wedding anniversary, and we rejoiced at the coming of another boy.

The old 1948 station wagon which we purchased in 1954 had us well. However it was nearing the end of its effectiveness. God again exercised John and Edith MacLelland to purchase another car through her brother Jim, and send it up to us. It was a lovely Packard. They had it driven to Seattle and I arranged for it to be driven up to Alaska.

CHAPTER 12

The Earthquake

The Great Earthquake of 1964 of course brought many changes. The news of it made headlines around the world, reaching Northern Ireland and South Africa where our families lived. Graphic pictures of the damage and casualties caused them much concern. Our home was badly shaken, so much that the foundation blocks were crushed and the house was damaged. All the utilities were shut off and rendered useless. The Gospel Hall was still usable, so we opened it to those who had lost their homes. Since the telephone lines had been knocked down, we could not reach loved ones overseas. We were surprised, then, when suddenly our telephone rang. It was Jim Graham, my brother-in-law, calling from Belfast. “Are you all right?” he asked through the crackle of static and delay of the line. “Yes, all are safe,” I replied. No sooner had those eight words been exchanged than the telephone line went dead. It remained so for several more weeks. Jim ever received a bill from his phone company for that call. More miracles? Jim brought much relief to our friends and relatives in Ulster, and to those at the Belfast Easter Conference when he told them the good news of our safety.  Much praise ascended to the Lord.

One man from Canada, brother Reilly, attending that conference, wrote a letter and addressed it to “Tommy Thompson, Missionary, Alaska.” He requested if I got his letter, please send him my address. I got the letter and replied to brother Reilly. He often wrote afterward and often enclosed a gift.

My parents in South Africa were very concerned when they heard about the earthquake. My father came to 2 Kings 4:26 in his daily reading. That verse describes Elisha instructing his servant Gehazi to inquire of the Shunammite woman, “Is it well with thee?” The Shunammite woman answered, “It is well.”

“It is well!” my father shouted to my mother. “Aggie, they are all well!” “How do you know?” my mother asked. “From God’s Word,” he said. They both bowed their heads and thanked the Lord having heard nothing from us, yet receiving assurance through God’s Word. This type of faith was passed on to me (2 Timothy 1:5). I am thankful to the Lord for such godly parents.

Many villages along the Alaskan coast were devastated either by the earthquake or the tsunami which it caused. In the days and weeks that followed, homeless villagers were brought to Anchorage and housed in schools that were not damaged too much. I was asked to supervise their welfare, and many of their needs were supplied by Christian friends of mine. However, when the Red Cross, which came from outside Alaska, found out I was also witnessing the gospel, my services were abruptly no longer needed.

I could now give time to rebuilding our home. We dumped Sadie’s broken dishes into a wheel-barrow with other debris and took it all to the dump. After our foundation was repaired and our home set back in place, we discovered that the earthquake had displaced much ground underneath the house. This encouraged the boys to make a basement. They began digging out under the house with a metal can and called me to see it. They had removed so much that we were all encouraged to dig and soon had a basement under half of the house. Brian made his bedroom down there, as well as a small study. It is just like God to leave more room after an earthquake than before, at no extra cost!

The God of miracles preserved us physically through the earthquake in spite of the dangerous experiences we all had. As the quake shook the city, a young native mother named Shirley threw herself on top of her children to save them from a collapsing ceiling. Light from God suddenly showed her that Christ had done the same thing for her, sheltering her from death. Shirley was saved still sheltering her children from danger. She attended gospel meetings and Sunday School both in Chitina and then in Anchorage. But it is God alone that gives the increase and grants salvation. Her husband was an atheist. Her faith inflamed his anger and he began abusing her. Horribly, in a fit of rage, he stabbed her through her heart. It was a sad funeral which I took. I preached the gospel to many people through her testimony.

In 1965, we got word that my dad back in South Africa, Thomas James “Jimmy” Thompson, had passed home to glory shortly after praying during a week night. I received the news in Ketchikan where I was sharing gospel meetings with my childhood friend and fellow laborer in Alaska, John Abernathy. Reading from John 11:6 I noticed “two days”, so I continued for two more nights before flying back to Anchorage. There for me was a cheque for $5,000 in a letter, more than enough for us all to fly to South Africa return. I immediately booked round-trip flights on Air France to Cape Town for all the family.

Two days afterwards the telegram office telephoned me and asked me if I wished them to read another message. “Yes,” I said. “Wrong cheque sent. Yours coming for $59. Sorry for mistake.”

I felt the blood drain from my face and my jaw slackened. FortunateIy I had not yet used the cheque to pay for the Air  tickets, so returning the money was no problem. But e tickets were booked and payment would be due shortly.

When I broke the news to Sadie, she began to laugh. “Oh, Tommy,” she said, catching her breath. “I wish you could see the look on your face!” She always saw the humour in things and knew how to lighten up when I saw the sad side.

Sadie went shopping and took the boys. I went to the Lord in prayer. “Lord, I know I need humbled,” I prayed. “But this is humiliation. What will I do?” The verse that came to my mind was Exodus 4:2 where God said to Moses, “What is that in thy hand?” I told the Lord about my car, worth $600, Brian’s piano, worth $200, the fish bowl, $50, etc. I arose fully assured the Lord would open up the way. We needed $3,000 for the tickets, but we did not have that kind of money on hand. Sure enough, no sooner had I said “Amen” when the telephone rang. “Tommy, could you get us a car for our daughter?” It was Harold Richards. Just like that, the car was sold.

A few days later, an old friend, Julius Wuerth, heard from someone that I was going to South Africa. Years earlier, I had helped Julius avoid bankruptcy. He now owned a successful automobile dealership in Anchorage. He handed me $800. “You helped me, now I am helping you!” he said. The saints in the assembly gave us a gift of $400. Soon I had all except $600.

Air France called and said it was time to pay for the tickets. The day before the tickets were to be picked up, Harold Richards called to tell me they had sold a piece of property and had decided to give me the tithe. “It’s only $600,” he said. God again provided.

The tickets in our hands now, the mailman told me if we went to the post office early on the day of our departure, before he made his rounds, he would give us the mail due that day. Brian went down to the post office and brought back the mail. One letter caught our attention and we opened it. “Here is the $59 cheque,” the letter read. “Sorry about the mistake.” The Lord also gave us our pocket money for the trip. Hallelujah!

When we arrived in Cape Town and went to my mother’s home, a sad sight met my eyes when I entered her bedroom. My dad’s empty bed, Mother ill from shock with clots in her leg. I took it upon myself to wind up her affairs when she said, “Tommy take me back to Belfast.” Again the Lord provided her fare through a legacy left me by a Miss Walker which just . covered the cost.

We all arrived safely in Belfast and kindly were allowed the use of one of the missionary homes there while I tried to find accommodation somewhere for mother. I located a wee house in Cregagh Road area, and Jim my brother in law loaned me the difference to settle the deal.

When the Lord indicated for us to return to Alaska, we had one more family member than when we had left. On June 2, 1966, Sadie gave birth to our fifth child, an only daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. We called her Bettie in honor of Sadie’s sister. Our children were now Brian, Billy, Barr)f Brent and Bettie: the five Bs.

Before leaving Belfast we settled my mother into the wee house in Cregagh Road. Albert Aiken helped me put electricity throughout the house. I also turned a little kitchen storage area into a bathroom, so we left her comfortable.