Hartland VI

It's been a long hiatus and in the meantime, I've sold the place in Streamwood, IL and temporarily moved in with Tom & JaeHi in Goshen, IN.

Where was I? Oh yes. I got involved with the Congregational church in Hartland. Over the several years we had a number of ministers. One was rather bad, and after him it seemed to me that we needed an "antidote". I wound up as one member on a committee to find another minister. We got the Connecticut Congregational central office in Hartford to send us resumes of potential ministers. I have to say that some of them looked like THEY needed help. But we noticed one who, to another member and myself, looked somewhat promising. The other member pointed out one line on the recommendation: "Not very much happened during this mans term at this church except perhaps in the hearts of 5 or 6 members". She said: "Look, see what this says! This means that he brought them to the Lord!" I myself, though a dormant Christian, thought that sounded pretty good. So we took steps to hire the man.

The Congregational church system is very liberal. Their philosophy is that each church is run by the congregation, whatever the congregation wants, that's it. So one congregation can be Modernists, and another can be gospel preaching.

As we interviewed Stanley Albanesius, he shared with us that he had some reservations about infant baptism. But we wanted badly enough to have him as our pastor that we neglected to inform others about this reservation, and ultimately it came back to "bite" us, or rather bite him. (Sorry, Stan).

It was due to Stanley Albanesius that I was revived from my dormant Christian condition, and indirectly also due to him that our whole family ultimately accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior. For several, including Marjorie and some kids, it came about this way. Evelyn Hohloch was a strong believer in the church there, but never one to be "pushy", nor one who would ever do any "organizing", etc., but very quiet and reticent. Yet she had a strong burden from the Lord to rent a bus (which she did), for a round trip to Boston to a Billy Graham Crusade. Stan was thunderstruck, and thought the bus would never be filled, but it WAS! (Thank you Evy).

The gospel was preached faithfully by Stan every Sunday. But this was against the wishes of many of the congregation. Ultimately, it came to a head, and a vote would be taken. I confess that I am an optimist. Stan was a pessimist by nature, but he called himself a "realist". I thought he would win the vote, but Stan thought otherwise, and so together we made plans for that eventuality, if it should happen: On the occasion of Stan coming out on the short end of the vote, I, by pre-arrangement would get up in that very meeting and announce that next Sunday there would be a meeting in my garage with Stan preaching, plus all the Sunday School classes would continue to meet (I believe with the same teachers) in our house and office rooms over top of the garage. He lost the vote and I made the announcement.

The next Sunday there were more meeting at our house than at the Congregational church in the center of town. We continued to meet regularly in our garage and house from 1963 to 1970. My Dad and Uncle Dave came to one of those first meetings, but didn't return. On rare occasions the whole church would have a "love feast" at our house. Twice there were weddings, and at one of those weddings there were 99 people in attendance.

I heated the garage with electricity, having made a special deal with the power company so it would not be excessively expensive. I had had heating elements embedded in the concrete slab of the garage, and also a temperature sensor in there as well. This, combined with a timer to apply power at off-peak times did the trick. The thermal time constant of the slab was rather large, so we could get away with this arrangement.

During this time I continued to use the garage during the week for electronics production, having at peak, 6 employees plus our kids. Every Sunday we would move things over to make room for the church meeting. Also, on Wednesdays, Ethel Albanesius had an after-school children's bible study, and she led many of those kids to the Lord during those years in our garage.

Having a small business, there were "fat" years, and lean years. Both were rather memorable. I had started out consulting for Regent Controls of Stamford, CT, Wendell Caroll, Pres. Once I had obtained my Masters Degree in EE, in 1961, he wanted to have all 5 of my days, but I wanted to cut him down to no more than 3 days. So finally we parted ways, and I went out and in about 1 week had obtained about 4 or 5 new clients.

After a year or two of this I gradually drifted also into some electronics production, with the goal of making more money. My Dad tried a bit of the production work, but didn't like it. My Uncle Arnold was visiting, and tried it a bit also. Marjorie wanted no part of that kind of work. I have a photo of her and me on this subject wherein our facial expressions tell all. You will get a kick out of it if ever I get around to posting it.

Time to quit.