Tag: Summer Missionaries

July 4th, 1975

July 29, 2025

I have a few more stories about fifty years ago that I thought you might enjoy. A few days before Marianne and Phil, and the rest of the family left on their annual vacation to see their other son in Tennessee, he showed me how to light the heater in the house I was staying in.

I thought this was unusual and said as much. This Ozarks boy knew that you did not need a heater in July. Apparently, that is not true in the Allegheny Mountains. The weather forecast predicted a cold front coming to the area during the next week. On the morning of the fourth, the temperature was 32 degrees in Gifford. I lit the gas.

I mentioned in a previous column that I had made two trips to Niagara Falls that summer. The first was on the church bus with the youth from Bolivar Road and Hilltop. A month later, my brother Sam and I went back when he stopped to see me on his way from Chicago to Florida.

We visited some museums and spent a lot of time on the Canadian side. On more than one occasion, a young boy kept crawling under the ropes that were designed to keep tourists from getting too close to the cliff edge. Each time this happened, we remarked that the parents should keep a closer eye on him.

After we drove back to Gifford, we went to bed, and after seeing him off the next morning, I had my regular Sunday schedule. That evening, I went into the main house with the family to relax and watch television. The broadcast was from a station in Buffalo.

A story was headlined about an accidental death on the previous day in Nagara Falls, Canada. As we watched this story, they showed a photograph of a boy who had fallen off a cliff because he had gone beyond the safety barricades. It was the same boy we had seen the day before.

After returning home, Michelle and I spoke to a few churches about our experiences during the summer. Remember, Michelle was another student from SWBC who was in Bradford. Summer missionaries are out there right now working in churches and ministries all around the world. If you know one, thank them for me.

©Copyright 2025 by Charles Kensinger

Fifty Years Ago

July 22, 2025

Yes, I was alive in 1975. If you were not, let me brief you on some things. There were no cell phones, home computers, or personal video games. There was college, and I had just finished my junior year at Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar, MO. In the fall of the previous year, I transferred there.

As I walked around my new campus, I saw signs requesting interested students to apply to be summer missionaries. I did just that and received my assignment in the spring. I would be going to Bradford, PA, for ten weeks starting in June.

When I applied, I had not met Cindy. By early June, we had been dating about eight months, and I was dreading being away from her for the summer. She went with Dad, Mom, and my sister to take me to the Continental Trailways Bus Station. You may have been there also. It is now the Discovery Center on St. Louis St.

I chose the bus to view some of America for the next twenty-four hours. We took I-44 to St. Louis, MO and then I-70 through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and into Pennsylvania. We stopped a few times en route, and the last one was for breakfast in Pittsburgh. I decided to find a café and went exploring outside the station. Smoke and the smell of the city drove me back inside and I grabbed something at the snack bar.

When we arrived at Harrisburg, I waited for my ride. I was on time and, after an hour, called the Baptist building to check. They told me that they wondered why I had not been at the airport like others. I waited another thirty minutes for a ride. We checked into a hotel, and I shared a room with another guy.

We spent two days training. There were over fifty students that would scatter across PA and North Jersey. I met Charlie Brown that summer. He was a seminary student who drove in. He had a VW with a CB radio that resembled a car phone. Remember this was the seventies and the CB craze was on.

When we left the state capital for Bradford, there were four of us with our driver from Bolivar Road Baptist Church. Michelle was from SWBC and lived in Bolivar, MO. Rhonda was from Texas, and I remember the other as Kentuck. Guess where she was from? Michelle and I had not met back home before that summer.

When we arrived at the church in Bradford, we split into four different homes. We had a brief meeting with the pastor, and I got in a car with Phil. We drove up the mountain to Gifford where I would be the summer pastor for Hilltop Baptist Chapel. I met the rest of the family and stowed my gear in the house that Phil grew up in.

Marianne was Phil’s wife, and Mary Anne, his daughter. That night I shared about Springfield. How big was it? I told them it was a small town. Only a population of 135 thousand. They looked at me strangely because the signs said Bradford had 23,000 and Gifford 65.

I met the rest of the family in the next few days. This is just the start of the story. The next column will be “Gifford”. Looking forward to it. See you then.

©Copyright 2025 by Charles Kensinger