The church was an experience, as I said, and for at least five years we enjoyed it. I loved singing in a large wonderful choir. We so enjoyed San Hutchison, the organist and those on staff. We made so many good friends: the Guyers, Carters, Bruces. Being a large church offered so much. I went with a group to Estes Park, Colorado one year and taught a decoupage class. The choir sang downtown one Fourth of July with other choirs and Deanne Warwick was one of the guests.

The staff and their wives went to Dallas for several days for a seminar. Warren went into primitive Mexico to be with some Wycliffe Bible Translators that our church supported. One summer Warren and I used Milligan’s trailer that was available in the Outer Banks, North Carolina.

Several plays were put on. I was in one for “Our Town”. One year I drove a wonderful Women’s Association Group to an Indian area where they held their church all day long on Sunday with a building just for cooking and a large area for games. We had saved Campbell Soup labels and were able to present them with a van. They in turn invited us for lunch. They were so gracious to us and I will always remember when it was time to leave they wanted to do it Indian style. They formed a circle and we went into the circle shaking hands with each one. As I was shaking this one Indian’s hand with his steel blue eyes looking into mine he said, “yesterday I did not know you, tomorrow I will miss you.” It brought tears to my eyes. I thought it was so beautiful.

Milligan was an egomaniac and made it very difficult work with. It all blew up when he had a member on trial. It was the beginning of hell for us and people took sides. Warren at this point thought Milligan was way off base and because Warren didn’t agree with Milligan he was fired, which of course he personally couldn’t do. Presbytery stepped in dismissing the entire staff. Our friends were so good to us at this point, very supportive and caring. I wish I could somehow show that Warren was the only one on staff that stood up for the congregation and Milligan was, and as one doctor put it, he was, “mentally ill.”

Warren was the only staff member Presbytery allowed to come back and conduct marriage and funerals. That tells you something but we went through such emotion for over a year. It was hard to take people snubbing you that had been friendly before, but our friends were our pillars of strength and I felt God used them to give us the encouragement we needed at that time.