When the church first started off, it was not right where it is now. It was out near the light pole north of the church, where the garbage can sits to be picked up. That’s where the old Brush Arbor/Tabernacle was. This was there during the time Brother John Bodie, Reverend Sol Price, and H.C. Mitchell preached there.

Eventually, they built a wooded church not quite where this church sanctuary sits. The wooden church was used until it almost rotted down. Bonnie Collins bought that church and moved it to their property north east of the church (to be used as their home until it burned down many years later).

After Lois and I married in 1952, she asked me if I’d go to church there. You see, I’d been raised in the Baptist church. My mama was strictly a Baptist. I met Lois there at New Bethany. I had gone there just to see who I could see. I was single, you see.

I tried to get her to go with me and she just wouldn’t. So I went there one Sunday morning. Church was just turning out and she was standing in the doorway. I pulled up at the church and she waved at me. Lovie was with her. I carried her to her home where Horace Anderson now lives.

Lois told Aunt Dollie’s girls that she dared me to go home with all of them for dinner. Well, I don’t take a dare. So I rode on down there in my ‘34 Ford pick up. The old folks were in the front room and the girls in the kitchen. I went on in.

When I went home I brought Lois home with me and then back to church that night. When I carried her home that night after church, I had to jump the fence to get out of the way of the old man (which was her grandfather, Legear).

Wes Hall gave the church the cypress posts from one of his ponds to be used to build the original shed (picnic table area).

After Woodrow came there, the post rotted out and the Watson boy rebuilt the shed like it is now.

When the blocks had been laid for the church, I painted the inside lower 4 feet green and the rest white. That was the way Cecil Perkins wanted it. Eventually they sealed the paint. I’ve been up there through 3 hurricanes and all, but there isn’t a bit of strengthening in the corners… at all. There’s no bracing and no rebar like it’s done today. It is just block. I’m scared of it.

There didn’t use to be water at the church. But there was a trail from the church across what is now River Road to the top of the high clay hill (on what is now Curt Porter’s land) where there was a bowling spring. The spring was about 4 feet long and 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep that didn’t run off. It just sat there and boiled. The church had a stob driven down and a can that the church people used to dip water. The pump we have now at the church is 400 feet deep; and yet on top of the hill is a boiling spring. Back in those days Annette Lee Porter’s family had a home where the fish pond is. They had a pipe leading from the spring into her kitchen, giving them the only running water into a home then - all things to that boiling spring.

Johnny Perkins got an old school bus and took the body off. He had just a flat body on it – no cab on it. He’d go around each Sunday morning and pick up people. I wish people could see that today. There were adults sitting all around the edge of the body with their feet hanging down and children sitting in the middle. That was during the time, Brother Mitchell used to preach.

One day I carried Daddy and Mama (Tom and Eva Jenkins) up there. The church wasn’t finished. They had the rostrum and had the papermill paper stretched around. Every time the Lord got to working, Aunt Dollie -she could shout. She was worse than Leon. Anyway, Dollie didn’t want to shout ‘cause she knew Daddy was a Baptist. (Aunt Dollie was his sister, you see.) She got to shouting that night. All at once, she thought about Daddy being there and she jumped through the papermill paper and just left her picture! Daddy asked her just why she jumped through that paper. Her reply was she thought he might get on her. He told her, “No that’s the way you worship. I like it.” Daddy didn’t believe all that we believed. But he lived and taught us through his example: the Christian life.