Humor

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In the summer of 1974 my dad was appointed to a church in Oak Hill, Georgia. Don't look for it on the map because you won't find a town called Oak Hill. It’s actually a community near Temple, Georgia. I never could figure out why it was called Oak Hill since it was a little church on top of a hill with absolutely no trees whatsoever.

Oak Hill was a small congregation. In fact, it was so small, that they did not have a parsonage for the pastor's family. This created a bit of a hardship for us since this was the first church dad was appointed to without a parsonage. I remember that my parents fervently searched for a place to rent but ran out of time in the search. My dad came up with a last ditch solution -- we would live in the Sunday School rooms temporarily until other living arrangements could be made. It wasn’t much of an inconvenience for the church since there was an average attendance of 15 and most of those were senior citizens. The Sunday School rooms weren’t being used anyway.

The solution my dad came up with had one slight problem – the church did not have rest room facilities except for his and her outhouses located outside, away from the church building. This was certainly an interesting living arrangement for us. We used my small wading pool as our bathtub. We had no neighbors for miles so there wasn’t a problem with having privacy. We moved into the Sunday School rooms and survived these conditions for a few months until we were able to raise enough money to purchase a mobile home.

If you were to ask my parents about the most embarrassing moment during that time, I am sure they would refer to a district meeting that was held at another church in our district shortly after we moved to Oak Hill and settled into our living arrangements. Several of our state officials were at this meeting. The state missionary leader was talking to my parents and turned to ask me how I liked living in Oak Hill. I told her it was fun and that we had outhouses there instead of regular bathrooms like everyone else. Now, I didn’t do this to be a smart aleck, at 10 years old, this was an adventure. I'm fortunate to be alive today after making that comment to our state missionary leader’s question. My parents gave me a personal sermon on the drive home after that meeting.

My parents didn’t have to worry about future outbursts about our little “outhouse on the prairie” after that. Several months later, the adventure was over but it was definitely a memorable moment.

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