Our Bennett, Colorado, charge proved to be a surpassing experience. We lived in a tiny parsonage, worshiped in a tiny church, and served a tiny, rural congregation. It was here we met the sickly but saintly Mrs. Rolf, a symbol of all the really good and sacrificial saints we have known through the years,
She was one of four devout parishioners who met with us for prayer each Thursday afternoon at the church, next door to the parsonage. She rarely missed. She came when she was well enough to stand, and soon we learned her story. She lived with her twelve-year-old son who was spending most of his summer herding sheep to buy school clothes for the coming fall. Mrs. Rolfs husband had left her several years earlier for reasons that never seemed clear. She was destitute and received meager relief from the community. If she had been the only member of the congregation, her strong Christian spirit was enough to make those few weeks in our first parish worthwhile.
Before we knew it the summer was gone; our last weekend had come and one more sermon was to be preached. Saturday night the Bennett people planned a going-away party. They brought many practical gifts for the young couple returning to seminary in Philadelphia—kitchen utensils and enough canned goods from the rural membership that would last for many weeks. But Mrs. Rolf was not there.
The next morning the little church was packed for my farewell sermon, but our special friend was missing again. So, shortly after the service, we finished our packing and decided we should package some groceries and drive the old Model A to “String Town,” the poor section where Mrs. Rolf lived.
She answered my knock by a feeble call from her bed. She explained that she was too weak to get up, and regretted not being able to attend our party or the last worship service. She then hinted she was partly relieved because she had no gift to give the minister and his wife. She asked me to pray for her son and I did. Then before I left she said she remembered she did have something to give. Would I promise to take it? Not being able to refuse her I said yes. She told me where to find it, and I nervously moved to the other room.
It wouldn’t be difficult to find as the next room was the only other room in the house. I can see it as clearly today as in that summer of 1940. There was a small table with two chairs, a little potbelly stove and a new lid-lifter she said the relief board had given her the previous week. Her cupboard amounted to three shelves on the far wall; like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, it was empty. Her gift was on the top ledge, she said. She must be wrong. But, to be sure, I reached to the far right and slowly brought my hand back across the empty board until I quickly knew that she was right. There it was: a twenty-five cent piece.
I took it to her and said I could not accept it. She reminded me of my promise and said, “You must take it. It is all I have to give.” I protested, but I took it. Her last words to me were enough for a lifetime. “Use it as you go back to seminary and prepare to be a good minister of God.” 1 do not know what happened to that twenty-five cents. I only know what happened to me. In many ways that quarter bought a minister. I have never been able to shake off her sacrifice. During the ensuing years we have many times been given large gifts, but nothing has affected me quite like the twenty-five cent piece 1 found on that ledge in a barren cottage in “String Town,” Bennett, Colorado.
—L. Doward McBain
Berkeley, California
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