Biography

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my son Bobby, my grandson Mike, and my cousins, Ethell Clark and Breta Clark Smith, who encouraged and urged me to write about our experiences in our work for the Lord.  I would also like to thank my daughter, Roberta, who was responsible for typing up what I had written.   May the Lord bless you all.

Pearlean D. Crocker
July, 2007

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 2017

William Robert Crocker was born February 24, 1907, at Philadelphia, Mississippi in Neshoba County to Lorenzo and Sally Evelyn Crocker.  He was blessed to have two brothers and five sisters.  They lived on a farm, and did not have much in the way of worldly goods.

When he was thirteen years old, he finished the seventh grade in school and had to quit so that he could help his father on the farm.  A year later, they moved from the farm to Benton, Arkansas where his older brother lived.  At the age of sixteen he went to work with his brother, John Frank, in the oil fields.  They worked in oil fields in Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and other places.  Due to his father’s failing health, the family moved back to Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1927.  In the spring of 1928, his father passed away.  Later on that year, Brother D. L. Welch came to Neshoba County, near where they were living, built a brush arbor and began preaching a revival.

Brother Crocker heard about the revival services, and decided he would go and see what it was all about.  Brother Welch was preaching the oneness of God, Baptism in Jesus Name, and the infilling of the Holy Ghost.  Brother Crocker got under conviction and went to the altar and began to seek the Lord for the Holy Ghost.  He was baptized in Jesus name, but did not receive the Holy Ghost in that revival.  He kept praying and believing God.  Soon after Brother Welch’s revival ended, Bro. Paul Lavelle Williamson started preaching a revival which Brother Crocker attended and soon he was filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues as the Spirit gave utterance.  He said he could have received the Holy Ghost sooner if he had not been filled with so much pride.  It was in the summer of 1929 that he got desperate before the Lord and cried out, “Lord I guess I just haven’t got sense enough to get the Holy Ghost.”  God heard his cry and filled him with the Spirit.  He said it was about two o’clock in the morning.   As he was on his way home he heard the roosters crowing, and it sounded like they were saying “Hallelujah!”  Everything was new.

Soon after he got saved, he convinced his mother that she needed what he had and persuaded her to go to church with him.  She was also converted, baptized in Jesus’ Name and received the Holy Ghost.  Not long after that, his brother John Frank also was saved, and later all his sisters were saved.  His older brother, Boseman, did not receive the Holy Ghost until many years later.

Chapter 2

In 1930, Brother Crocker began to feel that the Lord wanted to use him in the ministry.  A good friend, Brother J. P. Crenshaw, had received the Holy Ghost too and was eager to work for God, so they got together and started going from house to house having prayer meetings with anyone who wanted them.  They prayed for people who were seeking the Lord, those who were sick, and told them how good the Holy Ghost was and that God wanted everyone to have it.

Brother Crocker picked the guitar and sang while Brother Crenshaw played the violin.  Soon they were going to town on Saturday afternoons and having street services.  They would play music and sing, and then one of them would read some scripture from the Bible.  They invited people to come to the church services to hear the plan of salvation.

Times were hard back then, and people were having a rough time getting work and making a living.  They lived in a farming community and most people depended on the farm for their living.  Many people were hungry for God in those desperate days.  There were few cars, so most people had to travel by mule and wagon or walk wherever they went.  Brother Crocker said they walked many miles, trying to reach people who were hungry for God with this gospel.

They usually had large crowds when they went into town for their street services.  People loved to hear the music and singing.  One day they were in town and a large group gathered around to hear them play music and sing.  When they got through with the music and singing, Brother Crenshaw decided to read some scripture and comment on it.  He climbed into a wagon and began to speak.  He had a habit of closing his eyes while he was speaking, and when he opened his eyes, everybody was gone except Brother Crocker and one other man.  Brother Crenshaw looked at him and said, “Man, everyone else is gone.  Why are you still here?”  The man replied, “If you’ll get out of my wagon so I can, I’ll go too!”  Since both Brother Crocker and Brother Crenshaw possessed a great sense of humor, they laughed about this incident many times in the years to come, and often retold it for the amusement of family and friends.

They had some difficult times but God blessed them in many ways.  One day they made an appointment with a preacher to meet them at a certain place to have service that night.  Brother Crocker said they walked about seven miles to get there and carried their musical instruments, but the preacher who invited them didn’t make it.  They decided to have a service anyway, so they had prayer, played and sang some songs, and Brother Crocker felt led to read Acts 2:38 and began to talk about the promises of God and how He would fill people with the Holy Ghost if they would seek Him.  As he was talking, the Spirit fell on him.  He said it felt like Heaven came down and kissed the earth and he was caught right in the smack!  He then knew for sure that God wanted to use him in His service.

Chapter 3

In the latter part of 1930, Brother Crocker felt his call to evangelize.  He had no way to travel, but his brother John Frank had an old truck.  In the meantime, Brother John Frank’s wife had received the Holy Ghost too.  They had two little girls.  So Brother Crocker, his brother, and his brother’s family left Philadelphia and started out to work for God.  They first went to Louisiana, where Brother John Frank’s wife, Trudy, had two young sisters who had received the Holy Ghost as well.  They could sing really well together, and the older sister could play the guitar, so the sisters, Tressie and Reba, decided to join the group.

While they were in Louisiana, the old truck broke down.  This happened right in front of a large farm house.  Not knowing anyone to call on except God, they all got down on their knees and began to pray for God to come to their rescue.  The lady who lived in the big house heard them praying and decided she had better see what it was all about, so she went to investigate.  They told her what the problem was, and explained their business of working for the Lord and witnessed to her about what they believed.  She told them right quick that she did not believe what they preached, but that she had a big barn that they could push their truck under while they worked on it, and she would take care of them in her home until the truck was fixed.

One of the lady’s neighbors came by and saw all the people so he also stopped to see what was going on.  After finding out they were trying to work for God, he told them he had a used motor they could have.  They thanked him and offered to pay him, but he refused to take the money.  He helped them pull their old motor and put in the one he gave them and after several days they were ready to travel again.  They thanked the lady very much for her kindness and told her they would be praying for her, that God would bless her for being so good to them, and once again they were on their way.  Like Abraham of old they knew not where they were going.  Brother Crocker said he only knew that God wanted His gospel preached to others for the scripture said it was for “whosoever will.”

They encountered a lot of opposition, but the Lord blessed them and took care of their every need.  Brother Crocker preached wherever he got an opportunity.  They went to one church in Louisiana and asked the pastor if his church needed a revival.  He told them, “No, not at this time.”  They thanked him and went on their way.  The Lord touched that pastor’s heart and he got in his car and overtook them a few miles down the road.  He stopped them and apologized and asked them to turn around and go back to his church for a revival.  They turned around and went back with him and started a revival that lasted several weeks with God blessing in a mighty way, with many souls being baptized in Jesus’ Name and receiving the Holy Ghost.

One day they were traveling down the road and the old truck suddenly went dead.  They did everything they knew to do but it would not start.  They had plenty of gas in the tank, so they knew that was not the problem.  They did not know anyone in the area that they could go to for help, so they all laid their hands on the truck and asked God to take care of the problem.  When they had finished praying, they got in the truck and it cranked right up, and they went on their way thanking and praising God for His blessings!

Not long after that, they traded the old truck for a Model T Ford car which they named the “Old 98.”  The car was a great help and a real blessing to them.  The Lord kept them busy and saved many souls.  Years later, we would meet up with someone who would say that they had been saved in one of Brother Crocker’s revivals.

While preaching a revival in Louisiana, Bro Crocker met a man and his wife who were from Lucedale, Mississippi.  They believed in the trinity doctrine.  Brother Crocker began to preach to them about Jesus, the oneness of the godhead, and baptism in Jesus’ Name.  Their eyes and minds were opened to the truth, and they were both baptized in Jesus’ Name.  The man had been in Louisiana working, and soon his job played out so they were planning to return to their home in Lucedale.  The man began begging Brother Crocker to come to Lucedale with them and to preach this great truth to his family, neighbors, and friends.

Brother Crocker told him he would have to pray about it and if it was God’s will he would go to Mississippi with them.  After much prayer, he felt that it was the will of God for him to go, so they left Louisiana bound for Lucedale, Mississippi.

They all came to George County to the “Buzzard Roost” community near Lucedale, to the Uncle Dave Davis place. Uncle Dave, as he was known, offered his home and his long front porch to preach from.  They began to fast and pray and God blessed with large crowds and many souls repenting of their sins, being baptized in Jesus’ Name, and receiving the Holy Ghost.  Uncle Dave took care of them in his home.  He had sheep, goats, and cattle, so when they needed meat, he would butcher one or the other of the animals and they would have a feast.
The revival at Uncle Dave’s place lasted for several weeks.  There are some still living today who received the Holy Ghost in that revival.  Every Saturday they would go into Lucedale and have a street service.  One Saturday they were in town for a service and when it was over, two men came up to Brother Crocker and introduced themselves as John and Lynn Cooley.  They told him they were from the Mt. Pisgah Community in Greene County near Leakesville.  They asked him if he would consider coming to that community to preach.  They told him that a man named John Crocker lived there and operated a small grocery store.  Brother Crocker learned later that the man was his first cousin.  Their fathers were brothers.  Brother Crocker told the men he would pray about it and if he felt led of the Spirit he would go there for a revival.  So in the fall of 1931, Brother Crocker and his helpers came to the Mt. Pisgah Community.

Chapter 4

Enter Pearlean Dueitt Crocker

On a Friday afternoon, my best friend and I got off the school bus and were walking down the road on our way home.  As we came near Mr. John Crocker’s house, we saw two young men standing out in his yard.  As young girls will, we began to wonder who they were, and if they were “available.”  One was tall, dark and handsome with black wavy hair.  The other was not so tall and had blonde hair.  I was always joking and carrying on, so I looked at my friend and told her.  “Honey, you can have the blonde, but the black-haired one is mine!”  He was really handsome.  Of course we didn’t think we would ever see them again.  We continued on our way home.

The next day, we heard that some Pentecostal people were going to have service at the Presbyterian Church on Sunday afternoon.  That was the church that I belonged to and played the piano for.  When we had service there, which was once or twice a month, the pastor from Leakesville would come preach for us.  Mr. John Crocker was also a member there and he had gotten permission from the elders of the church to let the Pentecostal group use the church for services.

I decided I would go to hear these people.  I had never heard of any Pentecostals so I went to see what it was all about.  There, to my surprise, was the handsome young man I had seen in Mr. Crocker’s yard.  I was in awe when they began to play their guitars and sing under the anointing power of God.  When Brother Crocker began to preach, they praised and worshiped and you could really feel the presence of the Spirit.  I had never seen or felt any thing like that before.  After the service was over, Brother Crocker came around to where some friends and I were talking and introduced himself to us.  When I was a small child I always had a desire to live for God.  I joined that church because I wanted to be saved.  When I joined, I cried and prayed and asked God to save me, but I still felt like something was missing.  Thank God for a mother who took me to church and taught me all she knew about being saved.  After hearing that Pentecostal message, I knew that was what I wanted and needed.

Needless to say, after that one service, some of the members of the church protested and they decided not to let the Pentecostal group use the church for any more services.  There was so much interest and so many people hungry for God that Brother Crocker decided to stay and preach where ever he found a place.  I remember a few days later, they were going to have a service the next night, which was Friday night.  It happened to be foggy and misting rain.  They built a big fire of logs and many people stood around that fire and listened while Brother Crocker preached the Word of God and sang the songs of Zion.

One of my cousins was there and he had been drinking.  After the service was over, he came up to Brother Crocker and gave him a quarter and said, “I’m gonna give you this quarter if it harelips every cat in Greene County, because what you are preaching is the truth and what every one of us needs.”

Times were really tough and a quarter was probably worth as much as a dollar is today.  Brother Crocker always said that when he came to the Mt. Pisgah area that there were so many bootleggers that they had to wear badges to keep from selling to each other.  My cousin later went to the altar, repented and received the Holy Ghost.  He was faithful to God and has gone on now to be with the Lord.

After this bonfire service some of the men in the community helped Brother Crocker build a brush arbor where he preached for several weeks.  As the weather began to get cooler, they got permission to use the school house to have services.  People came from every direction.  Some walked five miles every night to attend these services.  I saw seventy-five and eighty people kneeling on the platform and around it, crying and praying for God to save their souls.  It was awesome.  God was blessing in a mighty way.  I watched as Brother Crocker would walk through the crowd of seekers and lay his hand on their heads and pray for them and they would begin speaking in tongues and magnifying God.

One evening after about a week of services at the school house, I went by my sister’s house on my way to church.  My brother-in-law asked me where I was going.  He always liked to pick at me, and I carried on at him too, so I told him I was on my way to that Pentecostal service.  I said, “I’m going over there and get that good looking preacher.”  Of course I was only kidding.  Never in a million years could I see myself doing such a thing.  My brother-in-law said, “Don’t kid yourself Pearl, that preacher won’t look at you.”  I said, “Oh, I don’t know.  We’ll just wait and see.” Still, I was just kidding.  I still had not been to the altar, or had hardly even spoken to any of the people who were helping the preacher.

I kept going to the services and after seeing people filled with the Holy Ghost and hearing the Word of God preached and the anointed singing, I got under conviction.  I didn’t know what my parents would say, so I waited about going to the altar.  After hearing people speak in a heavenly language, I knew it was real.  I went home and told my mother and daddy that I wanted the Holy Ghost and I was going to the altar to seek for it.  My daddy told me I’d better be careful, that he had heard that these kind of people would put something on the people to make them act the way they did.  I said, “Well if they’ve got something they can put on me to make me feel and act that way, I want them to put it on me.”

Several nights later, I went to the altar with tears streaming down my face, asking God to forgive me of my sins and fill me with His Spirit.  After I had gone to the altar, Brother Crocker came and spoke to me and encouraged me to keep praying and seeking God and assured me that God would never fail to keep His promise to fill me with His Spirit.  After I had been praying several nights, one of Brother Crocker’s helpers, the blond haired man, whom they called Bud, came to me after service and asked me for a date.  I turned him down and told him that I had a boyfriend that I was seeing at that time.  Several nights later, he came to me and said, “We are going to put up a partition on the rostrum.”  I asked him why would they do that?  The men were on one side and the ladies on the other anyway.  He said, “Oh, this is for the one’s who are seeking the Holy Ghost on one side and those who are seeking the preacher on the other.”  I said, “Well, brother, just go ahead and put up your partition.  I’ll be on the side seeking God.”  There were several young ladies going to the altar at that time.  I guess he thought we were all after the preacher.  I thought to myself, be careful how you kid around, it just might come back to haunt you!  I had hardly spoken to the preacher a dozen times, or he to me at that time.  Several nights later, the man came back to me and asked me to forgive him and said he was sorry that he had said those things to me.  I forgave him for I had made up my mind to seek God until He filled me with the Holy Ghost.

Chapter 5

I went to the altar for about two and a half weeks, really pouring my heart out to God.  Then on October 16, 1931, I was flat on my back on the floor when I came to myself, speaking in a language I had never learned or spoken before.  I didn’t know how I got on the floor, but it didn’t matter.  I knew I had something from God that was real, something that I had longed for since I was old enough to realize I was a sinner.  I was baptized in Jesus’ Name several days later.  They baptized in a creek in a place that was deep enough and big enough for baptisms. The place was referred to by most people in the area as “the baptizin’ hole,” and was used by the local Baptist church for the same purpose.  It was really chilly weather and my mother was afraid it would make me sick to be baptized, but I went ahead and was baptized anyway, and God took care of me.  The revival continued on with many people being baptized and receiving the Holy Ghost.  The devil sure got stirred up because he was losing so many people.  One night some mean boys came to the school before service time and sprinkled snuff all over the rostrum, thinking it would stifle the ones who went to the altar to pray, but it was discovered and cleaned up and the rostrum floor mopped before time for service to begin.  Once again, the devil was out-smarted.

Several nights later these same boys were causing a disturbance in the congregation while service was going on.  My brother went to them and asked them to be quiet or go outside the building so they would not disturb the service.  They told him they would go outside if he would go with them.  He went with them and when they were outside they jumped on him and stabbed him in the stomach with a knife several times, but thank God, he was not seriously injured.  The devil continued to work in many ways, but the work of God prevailed.

Chapter 6

The pastor of one of the churches in the community was so upset because he was losing so many of his members to the Pentecostals that he challenged Brother Crocker to a debate on baptism in Jesus’ Name, speaking in tongues, and the oneness of the Godhead.  Brother Crocker accepted the challenge and got Brother D. L. Welch, who was at that time pastor of a church in Pensacola, Florida, to agree to debate whoever the other church chose.  They chose a Brother Matthews to debate Brother Welch.  They chose another preacher whom they called the “walking Bible” as his moderator.  Brother Earl Gamblin served as moderator for Brother Welch.  They really thought that there would be nothing to this debate, that they would beat the Pentecostals so bad that they would be ready to leave the community when the debate was over.  They failed to recognize the power of God.

Brother Welch tied the man up so bad with the Word of God and he got so confused, that he started to walk out of the church.  As he passed by Brother Crocker, who was wearing a big smile, he said, “You need not sit there and grin.  We’re going to win this debate.”  He got so angry that one day he brought a little bottle of poison and offered it to Brother Welch and said, “Here, drink this, and if you’re what you claim to be, it won’t hurt you.”  Brother Welch looked him in the eye and said, “Well, I knew all the time that you were wrong in your doctrine, but I didn’t think you would take the place of the devil.”  “But I’m going to tell you the same thing that my Father told your “pappy” almost two thousand years ago, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’.”  The man became even angrier, and told Brother Welch, “We’ll just go out behind the church and fight it out.”  Brother Welch just looked at him and said.  “I don’t fight, sir.  When God filled me with the Holy Ghost, He took all the cat and dog spirit out of me.”  One of the deacons in that church stood to his feet and said to that preacher as he pointed to Brother Welch, “This little man does not fight, mister, but if a fight is what you want, I’ll take you on.”  The preacher backed down, and called an end to the debate.  The deacon was convinced of the truth during that debate and later on was baptized in Jesus’ Name and received the Holy Ghost as did many others.

The revival lasted about six months with about one hundred and eighty people being baptized in Jesus’ Name and receiving the Holy Ghost.  Thank God, I was one in that number.  That winter was a really bad one, and we walked to church.  Sometimes we would feel like our noses would freeze.  We would try to walk backward to keep our face from being so cold.
When the revival started in the fall, some of the people got together and furnished a house for Brother Crocker and his helpers to live in and gave them food such as they had.  Sometimes it was only beans and corn meal, maybe a few eggs once in a while.  But they never complained.  Lots of people invited Brother Crocker into their homes to spend the night or just for a meal.  My parents went to the revival some.  My mother went to the altar and repented and was baptized.  She prayed hard, shouted and got to the point of stammering lips.  My daddy never did seek the Lord, although he would argue with anybody that what Brother Crocker preached was the right way to go.  During that time, you could hear someone praying any time of the day you stepped outside your house and listened, in most any direction.  Even the school children had prayer meeting at recess and dinner time.

Chapter 7

My daddy invited Brother Crocker to our house for dinner several times.  He was also invited to spend the night at our house several times.  One day he brought his guitar with him.  We had an organ, so I would play the organ and he would pick his guitar and we would sing together.  One night after church he came to me and asked if I would like to take his guitar home with me.  “Of course,” I said, “I would love to.”  I wanted to learn to play the guitar.  One of my cousins who lived near us came to our house and showed me some chords and pretty soon I got to where I could play pretty good.  This kind of became a habit.  I would carry his guitar home with me after service each night, and the next evening he would come by our house to get it and walk to church with me.  Some began to tease him and say that the only reason he let me take his guitar home with me was so that he would have an excuse to come by and walk with me to church.  It was about two miles from our house to the school building, and as we walked to church, we talked about the goodness of God and about the work of the Lord.  He would tell me about the revivals he had been in and how the Lord had blessed and supplied his needs.  He said it was not a bed of roses, there were many things you might have to endure, and things you might have to do without as you traveled from place to place.  He said that the blessings always outweighed anything the devil might try to use against you and that he was happy in the work of the Lord.

One day Brother Crocker went to Mobile, Alabama to look for a new guitar.  He came home with a steel guitar.  That night, he asked if I would like to take his new guitar home with me.  Boy, I was thrilled, and said yes.  Of course I did not know how heavy the thing was.  I was only five foot two inches tall and weighed only ninety-eight pounds.  So I wrestled with that guitar two miles home.  (I wondered later if he was testing me to see how much I could endure.)  The next day when he came by to get the guitar and walk to church with me, I told him I’d had enough of the steel guitar, that I was satisfied with the old one.               .

One evening on our way to church we were talking about revivals and church services and Brother Crocker asked me if I thought I would like to work in the Lord’s vineyard.  I told him that I had not thought about working for the Lord but I had always had a desire to live for Him and I guess that someday He might see fit to use me in His service.

After the revival closed, we had regular services on weekends and Wednesday nights.  We had all day prayer meetings from house to house.  We would fast and pray for anyone seeking the Holy Ghost and if anyone was sick, we prayed until they got a touch from the Lord.  There was always a house full of people at the prayer meetings, both men and women.  Very few men had public jobs; they had to depend on the farm and gardens, a few hogs and chickens, and a cow or two for a living.  So we prayed.

Brother Crocker and some of the men who had received the Holy Ghost decided to try and build a church building.  There was a man who owned land across the road from the school building so we all began to pray for God to move on this man to let us have enough land on which to build a church building.  When they went to talk to him, he not only donated the land, he also donated enough timber to build the building  (Mr. M. L. Davis was the man). There were two men among the brethren, Brother Claude Brown and Brother Oscar Brown, whose father owned a small sawmill.  The men sawed the logs, Mr. Brown cut the logs into rough lumber for free and soon we had a rough and humble building in which to worship God.  Thus, the First Pentecostal Church at Mt. Pisgah began.  We were thrilled and thankful that God had given us such a wonderful blessing.

Chapter 8

The winter of 1932

It was another bad winter, lots of freezing weather.  Many people had the flu, but we still walked to church, no matter how cold.  We did not let anything except sickness keep us from the house of God.  Brother Crocker would go pray for people who were sick with the flu all over the community, day or night when he was needed.  But he took the flu himself, and having weak lungs from childhood, the flu was really bad on him.  He had high fevers and chills, and felt that he might have developed pneumonia, however he trusted God completely for his healing.  He did not even take an aspirin.   He did not preach against doctors or medicine; however, he just felt that God was the great healer.  He was delirious at times when his fever went so high.

One day one of my cousins came by our house after he had been to visit Brother Crocker and pray for him.  He told me, “Pearl, if you want to see that man alive, you’d better go see him.  If God don’t undertake quickly, he can’t last long in the shape he is in.”  I told him, “He is not going to die.  God will not take him, He has too much work for him to do.  I’m sure God will hear and answer our prayers.”  A few days later Brother Crocker was feeling better and decided to try and get up to get himself a drink of water, but he was so weak that he passed out and fell to the floor.  He came to himself speaking in tongues and from that hour on, he began to gain strength.  As soon as he was strong enough, he was back in church preaching the gospel and praising God for His healing power.

People would meet before church time to pray for the services.  Some would meet outside the church, greet each other, and come into the church shouting and praising God.  One lady who had real long hair quit trying to put her hair up because she shouted it down every night.

Chapter 9

It was one night, in the spring of 1933, as Brother Crocker was walking home with me after church, that he told me that he loved me and asked me to marry him and be his help mate in the work of the Lord.  I told him that I loved him too, but that he would have to ask my mama and daddy, and if it was alright with them, then I would marry him.  So the next day he came to our house and asked my parents if they would object to us getting married.  He told them he loved me and that he would do everything within his power to be a good husband to me.  They told him if that was what I wanted too, that it would be alright with them.

We did not tell anybody else about our plans to get married, so it was a big surprise to the whole church when on April 27, 1933, in the home of Mr. John Crocker, we were married by my former pastor, Rev. R. M. Dixon.  After the ceremony, Brother Dixon invited us to a missionary service at his church (the church I used to attend).  We went, and I played the piano for the service.  After the service was over, we walked home with my mother and daddy.  We had no reception and no honeymoon!   Times were really hard and we had no money.  Very few people did back then.

There were days when we did not know what we would eat the next day.  Very few people in the community had jobs as there were no jobs to get.  We ate so many navy beans until I can hardly stand them to this day.  We had corn bread for breakfast, dinner and supper.  My dad raised corn and took some to the mill to be ground into meal every so often, or we would not have had even that.  We were blessed more than a lot of people because my dad owned some hogs and chickens and we had a milk cow or two.  So part of the time we had a little milk and butter and a few eggs.  We would shut up a hog in a pen and feed it corn in the summer and when the weather turned cold, we would kill and dress it, and hang it in the smoke house to smoke and cure, so we had a little meat, too.  When we would kill a hog, we always tried to share with our neighbors.

We prayed a lot and trusted God and somehow, He always provided for us.  One day when we had cooked all we had in the kitchen to cook, we did not know what we would have to eat the next day.  My daddy decided that he would hitch up the mule to the wagon and go to Leakesville to see if he could get some groceries on credit.  He came home with a few groceries, the bare essentials.   He said that while he was in the store a man came in with a shotgun and told the owner of the store that he had to have some groceries, for his family was hungry.  The owner had told him before that he could not let him have any more groceries on credit, because he already owed him so much.  My daddy said that when the owner saw that gun, he let the man have some more groceries anyway.

We fasted and prayed a lot in those days.  Many nights during the revival, we stayed till after midnight praising and worshiping God, and trusting in Him to take care of all our needs.  Because we knew that He was the mighty God who had all power in heaven and in earth and was able to do anything.

Soon, we moved into our first little home, which was a two room building.  We had a bed that my mother had given us, a table, two chairs, and a wood stove.  We used apple crates for storage.  We were just as happy as if it had been a mansion.  We were thankful for what the Lord had blessed us with.

In our community, back then when a young married couple set up housekeeping, it was a custom for the young people to get together and “shivaree” them.  They would wait until after dark and the couple had gone to bed. Then they (the young people) would march around the house, ringing cow bells, beating on tin pans and anything that would make a racket.  So, one night after we had gone to bed and had gone to sleep, we were awakened by all this noise.  Brother Crocker was not familiar with this custom, and did not know what was happening.  I explained to him what they were doing, so we got up, got dressed and went out to meet the crowd.  Usually, you were supposed to give them refreshments, but we had nothing to offer them.  Brother Crocker began to talk to them, and soon he had every one of them on their knees and we had a good prayer meeting.

Brother Crocker fasted as many as seven days at a time without a drop of water or food, and God used him and was powerful in his life to pray for the sick.  One day there was a lady who had been sick several days.  She was having high fevers and she sent for us to come pray for her.  When we walked into the room where she was, she raised her hands and began to cry and pray.  Brother Crocker rebuked the fever and she was instantly healed.  In those days, most of the children of God trusted Him for their healing as the nearest doctor was five miles away and they had no way to get to him except ride a horse or hitch one to a wagon.   It was quicker and easier to get in touch with the “Great Healer.”

Eventually, some of the men went to work on WPA jobs, working on roads, building bridges and other projects.  This was a blessing to many people.  Although the pay was not much, it was better than nothing.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20170

After the church building was completed and everything was going well, Brother Crocker felt like the Lord wanted him to go back to Lucedale and try to start a work there.  Brother Crocker and Brother Dee Jacobs from Louisiana (who was visiting us at the time) hitchhiked from Mt. Pisgah to Lucedale one day to see if they could get a place to have services. They met a man who owned property on Mill Street in the city limits and also owned a sawmill. The property had lots of pine trees on it.  The owner said we could use the property free and that he would furnish some blocks and lumber to make seats.  He delivered the blocks and lumber to the place, so Brother Crocker got some nails and nailed the lumber to the wooden blocks for seats and made a stand for a pulpit.  Then we were ready to begin services out in the open under those pine trees.  We rented a small house in town from a Mr. Walters for one dollar and twenty-five cents a week.  We did not know if we would have the money to pay him or not.  We just trusted God that He would take care of it and He never failed.  We carried our cotton mattress from home and laid it on the floor without a bed frame or springs.  We got a two burner kerosene stove and had our table and two chairs.  We were all set, ready to start a revival.  We got down on our knees to pray and thank God for his goodness and asked Him to supply our needs.

There were some children playing near the house that heard us praying.  They ran across the street and told the lady who lived there that some new people had moved into the little house across the street and they must be hungry because they were praying for God to supply their needs.  It was just a short time later that we heard a knock on our door.  When we opened the door it was this lady from across the street with a large basket on her arm full of food, bread, butter, eggs and vegetables.  She introduced herself and told us what the children had told her.  We told her who we were and that we were there to start a revival down the street in the pine grove.  She gave us the basket and told us she had a big garden and we were welcome to anything in it.  We thanked her and thanked God for getting us off to a good start.  We invited this lady to the services.  She went with us and received the Holy Ghost and was baptized in Jesus’ Name.

Brother Crocker had only one suit and an extra pair of dress pants and a pair of old pants he wore for every day and only three or four shirts.  I had only three dresses and one everyday dress.  We had several changes of under clothes, but I had to wash by hand nearly every day.  One of the ladies who came to our service had a daughter who had outgrown a nice dress and she asked me if I would be offended if she gave it to me.  I told her I would love to have it.  It fit me perfectly and I thanked her and praised God.  This same lady brought us milk and butter nearly every night to the revival.  A black lady who came to the revival came up to me one night and said she had something she wanted to give me.  She handed me a package.  I thanked her and when I opened it there was a real pretty piece of material for a dress.  I got my sister-in-law to make me a pretty little two-piece outfit.  I still have a piece of the skirt.
A Mr. Weldy who lived in town came to the services.  He brought Brother Crocker some pants and shirts.  He came regularly to the services and helped us in many ways but he never seemed to realize that he needed the Holy Ghost.  The lady who brought us the milk and butter received the Holy Ghost.  Her daughter and daughter-in-law were also saved.

Brother Crocker preached, we sang and prayed and praised God and nearly every body in Lucedale came out to see what was going on.  Every evening there would be a line of people from town out to the place we were having service on Mill Street.  People would stand and sit on the ground because we did not have enough seats to accommodate all the people who came to the services.  Even the doctors and lawyers came to hear the Word of the Lord.

The manager of the local theater had to close the theater because we were getting his crowds.  One day he came to Brother Crocker and asked him if he would consider going to the theater to preach.  He said that he had a film of Moses that he would show, then Brother Crocker could preach and that he would give Brother Crocker a commission.  But Brother Crocker told him no, that he preached against theaters and movies and would in no way compromise his convictions.

The revival went on for several weeks with many people seeking God and receiving the Holy Ghost.  One night after service a young man came up and picked up our guitar and was strumming it while we were talking to some people.  In a little while we noticed the young man was gone with our guitar.  Mr. Weldy who stayed most every night after the service was over to talk to Brother Crocker told him he should report the guitar stolen to the sheriff.  Brother Crocker said “No, he’ll bring it back.”  So we prayed before we went to bed that God would move on the young man’s heart to bring it back.  Sure enough, the next evening before time for service to start, the young man brought the guitar back and apologized for taking it off without asking first for permission to borrow it.

Brother Earl Gamblin had contacted us and asked if we would go with him and his wife to preach some revivals in Florida.  We prayed about it and felt it would be good for us to go, so we closed the revival at Lucedale.  We first went to Pensacola to Brother Welch’s church.  There Brother Crocker and I stayed with a Brother and Sister Farrow.  He was a retired navy man and she was a good seamstress.  She made me several nice dresses and they bought Brother Crocker a suit and some shirts.  They were so good to us.  We finished the revival there and preached in several cities in Florida.

While we were with the Gamblins, Brother Welch had a debate with a Church of Christ preacher.  Every night the man would make fun of Brother Welch.  One night he said if Welch’s God can heal, why didn’t he heal his wife before her hair all came out and why doesn’t he heal his poor little hare lipped baby.  Sister Welch had come down with typhoid fever and lost her hair a long time before that and her hair had all come back and she had a beautiful head of hair, and their baby girl had a small nick in her lip that they had fixed as soon as she was old enough.  The man went on to say, “There must not be much to Welch’s organization or they would buy him some clothes.  I’ve noticed that he’s worn the same suit every night.”   When Brother Welch’s time came to speak, he said, “I don’t know who told my opponent I had only one suit, but my daddy told me when I was a small boy not to wear my best clothes when I went to skin a skunk.

Many members of that preacher’s congregation came to Brother Welch and apologized for their pastor’s behavior and said they were convinced that Brother Welch had the right spirit and came and were baptized in Jesus’ Name and received the Holy Ghost.  After we finished helping Brother Gamblin, some people at Red Level, Alabama wanted us to go there for a revival.  They did not have a church, just a few believers who needed revival.  We went and helped them build a brush arbor.  We had to stay in the home of a middle aged couple who had a teenage son and daughter.  They were very poor farmers.  The first night we were there, they had a warmed-over supper: a bowl of peas, some cornbread, and two pieces of meat on a plate.  After we gave thanks, the son took one piece of meat and passed the plate around.  Needless to say, the other piece of meat stayed on the plate.  We enjoyed the peas and cornbread.

We started having services the next night and God blessed with large crowds and people began seeking the Lord.  We would sing and pray for people seeking the Holy Ghost until after midnight.  Then the folks we were staying with would get up at four o’clock in the morning and knock on our bedroom door and say, “If you want any breakfast you’d better get up.”  Anyway, we had a good revival with several souls being baptized and being filled with the spirit.  I don’t know if they ever got them a church building.

After that revival, we went to a church in Alabama for a revival.  Right away, we sensed that there was a hindrance there.  We fasted and prayed, but it seemed we could not break through that spirit.  We noticed that the pastor was too familiar with one of the young ladies in the church, so we closed the services.  We later heard that the young lady got under conviction and confessed that she had had an affair with the pastor, who then confessed and was removed as pastor.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20171

We decided that we would go home from there, since I was pregnant with our first child.  We came back to my parents’ home at Mt. Pisgah.  Brother Crocker got a job with the WPA as timekeeper and worked until our child was born.  On November 24, 1934, our first child, a son, was born.  We named him Robert Junior.  The Lord had blessed us with a used Model A Ford, and as soon as I was able to travel, we began to evangelize again.  We evangelized in Louisiana, North Mississippi, and Alabama.  We always had to stay in people’s homes, sometimes a different home every night.  We never knew where we would be, so we just had to be prepared.  Some homes were nice, and some were not so nice.  It was a hardship but we endured because we felt we were doing what God intended us to do, preach the true gospel to lost and dying souls.  We were in a revival in North Mississippi in the Delta area and they had fixed a house where sharecroppers had lived for us to stay in.  When it rained, which it often did, the place smelled so bad we could hardly stand it.  We sprinkled talcum powder all around and on our pillows to kill the odor so we could sleep.  In another place we stayed, all we had to eat was tomato gravy and rice.  Thank God for tomato gravy and rice.  We had rotten tomatoes and corn thrown at us during services.  One night, three teenaged boys rode horses under the brush arbor and threw shelled corn, then ran away.  Thankfully, no one was hurt.

In our early ministry, we would all gather up to the front for song service, whether in a brush arbor, under an oak tree, on somebody’s front porch, or in a store front.  Even after we had a few churches, anybody that wanted to could come up and sing.  We would sing several songs.  As we sang, we worshiped and praised God, and nearly every time someone would start shouting and pretty soon we would all be shouting.  I have seen people get the Holy Ghost while we were having a song service.  We always had a testimony service as part of  every  service. Sometimes a sinner would stand and start to testify and get under conviction and start weeping and praying and we would have the altar service before the preaching!

We preached a revival in Chase, Louisiana and we happened to get to stay in a nice home.  They made us feel welcome and treated us so good.  They were farmers and had a large field of cotton that was ready to pick.  So Brother Crocker would pick cotton all day, and preach every night.  Someone asked him how he could do that.  He said by the help of God, he prayed as he picked cotton and God gave him the message He wanted preached that night.  Brother Crocker did not have a lazy bone in his body.  He worked when he could.  He could pick two or more hundred pounds of cotton a day.  On Saturdays we would go into town for street services.  One Saturday we were in town and went into a store to look around.  They had a jar of beans on the counter and people were trying to guess how many beans were in the jar and signing their names on a sheet of paper.  Brother Crocker decided to give it a try.  At a certain time they were to announce the name of the winner, the one who came closest to the number of beans in the jar.  When the time came, they called out the name Robert Crocker.  We were shocked, as we had no idea of winning.  They gave him a pair of work pants.  The man we were staying with was with us and said, “Man, I’m so glad they gave you those pants.  You needed them almost as bad as a dead man needs a coffin.”

We preached a revival at Chicora, MS under a big old oak tree and used bottles with rag wicks for light and blocks with planks fastened to them for seats.  One night during service God was blessing in a mighty way.  People were praying and seeking God when the mules that belonged to one of the men who was seeking God broke loose from where they were tied and ran off down the road.  Another man was able to catch them and bring them back.  The man said after he had received the Holy Ghost, that the devil must have gotten into those mules because he was mad because he was seeking God.

Through all our rough and bad times, God never let us down.  He always took care of us.  We preached revivals in many places in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.  In the spring of 1936 we came back home again.  I was pregnant with our second child.  I wanted a little girl so bad.  I bought some soft white material and made little dresses with lace and tucks and embroidered them with pink and blue and green thread.  On August 24, 1936, our second child was born, another son.  We named him Paul Lavelle.  I had to let him wear the little dresses, as that was all I had.  We stayed around Mt. Pisgah and preached out from there.  We preached revivals at Chicora, Mississippi, in Stateline, and wherever anyone wanted a revival.  Most were under brush arbors.  We did not let the rain hinder us.  If it slacked enough for us to have service we would take news papers and spread on the seats to sit on.  Someone would get a blessing and grab on to a pole that was holding the brush arbor up and shake it and the water was like a shower of rain that fell from the brush.

Brother Stafford Brooks was a young preacher back then and he wanted to help us in some revivals.  He was not married at that time.  We had a brush arbor in one place in north Mississippi, and one night they passed a hat around for an offering.  It came back empty.  Brother Brooks laughed and said, “Well we got nothing tonight.”  Brother Crocker said, “And when that’s divided, that’s less than nothing.”  Brother Brooks helped us in several revivals.

Our old car played out and we were not able to get another one at that time, so we stayed around home and went to church at Mt. Pisgah.  We walked the two miles and carried our two children.  Soon the Lord blessed us with another Model A Ford and we traveled all around preaching brush arbor meetings.  There were not many church buildings then.  We preached a revival in Alabama where there was a small group of people.  They had a little church building.  They would run around the church building beating the air.  They said they were running the devil out.  One night two teenaged girls who liked the same young man were fighting each other, pulling each other’s hair and scratching each other, and all the time they were jabbering as though they were speaking in tongues.  Brother Crocker rebuked them and told them the way they were acting was of the devil and unless they repented they would be lost.
I guess we’ll never know how many souls were baptized in Jesus’ Name and received the Holy Ghost in our revivals.  Maybe when we get to heaven, we will meet all of them.
While traveling around from place to place preaching the gospel, many people had no money and they would give us chickens, eggs, vegetables and sometimes a pig.  One night we had been in a service and a lady had brought us a dozen eggs.  On our way home I had the eggs in my lap, I was so tired, I dozed off to sleep and one of our little boys crawled into my lap and broke some of the eggs.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20172

We went to Georgetown, MS for a revival for Brother D. J. Lack.  It was a very small church but we had a good revival with several souls being saved.  After the revival ended, Brother Lack asked Brother Crocker if he would take the little church to pastor.  Brother Crocker told him if all the people were willing and wanted us and if God was willing he would try it for a year.  My mother kept our oldest little boy most of the time while we were evangelizing, so we went back home to get him, and then returned to Georgetown.  The church was very small, and was out in the country, with just a few people.

Most of the people around there raised cabbage and tomatoes for the market every year.  The house where we were to live was owned by a widow who had a large farm and she asked us if we would help her raise some tomatoes that spring.  (We sure didn’t know what we were getting into.)

In the first of the year, we built hot beds and planted tomato seed.  Then we built cold frames and when the plants were about three inches tall, we transplanted them into the cold frames.  When they were six or eight inches tall, we transplanted two or three acres of them into the field.  Then they had to be staked and tied as they grew, sometimes four or five times, depending on how tall they grew.  They also had to be pruned.  We pruned tomato plants until our fingers were as green as gourds, and it would not wash off, it had to wear off.  When the plants were about four feet tall, we had to ‘top’ them, that is, pinch off the tops so they would not grow taller.  Some mornings we would have to get up before the sun rose and haul water to the field and pour water on each plant to wash the frost off before the sun came up.  It was a real experience for us.  When the tomatoes began to develop, we had to watch them and when they began to “stem crack,” we had to pick them.  They had to be culled: the best ones picked out and then wrapped in tissue and packed in crates.  Then we hauled them to the market.  We had to be sure that they were perfect in size and shape.  We threw the culls away.  We never saw so many tomatoes in our lives, before or since.  I think everyone tried raising tomatoes that year, and the market was flooded with them, so the prices needless to say were not good.  All we got for our labor was a lot of experience, and of course all the tomatoes we could eat.

During the time we lived there, the lady that lived near us asked me to take her to Hazelhurst one day, as she did not own a car.  So she and I and another lady friend were in our car and about seven miles from home when the brakes on our car went bad.  I told them that we would have to turn around and return home.  On each side of the road there were ditches that were four or five feet deep.  It happened that the car stopped where there was a narrow bridge across the ditch, but I was afraid to back the car onto it to turn around.  While we were trying to decide what to do, a man with a load of logs came by and stopped to see if he could help us.  I told him what had happened and that I wanted to turn the car around.  He said that he would turn it around for me.  I was already out of the car and the lady friend got out too, but my neighbor decided to remain in the car.  The man almost backed off the narrow bridge and the lady in the car started crying and praying and began speaking in tongues.  When the man got the car turned around and back on the road, he told me he was sorry that he had caused the lady to “have a spell”.  Thank God, we only stayed at Georgetown about a year, then moved back home to Mount Pisgah.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20173

Still based in Mt. Pisgah, we began to evangelize again, preaching revivals in Tickfaw, Louisiana, Chase, Louisiana, and many other places as the Lord led.  On May 16, 1939 our third child, another boy, was born.  We named him Stephen.  When Stephen was about two years old, I went back to Florida with Brother and Sister Brooks to a camp meeting.  By that time, I had gained quite a few pounds in weight.  Brother Brooks introduced me as Sister Crocker to a lady and she said, “Oh, I remember a Brother Robert Crocker, who preached revivals here several years ago, and he had the cutest little wife and she could really sing.  Did you know them?”  I said, “Oh yes, I know them.  I happen to be that once cute little wife.”  Brother Brooks really got a kick out of that.  After that, every time he saw me, he would say something about the “cute little wife.”

Brother Crocker preached brush arbor meetings all around the country.  One of these meetings was at a large community about ten miles south of Lucedale, known as Holder Farm.  One of my cousins and his wife, who had both received the Holy Ghost at Mt. Pisgah, had moved there from Mt. Pisgah.  We had to walk through a pine grove on a narrow little pig trail to get to the brush arbor.  One night it was pitch dark, and we had no lantern or flash light.  My cousin’s wife walked right into a big pine tree and broke her glasses.  Thankfully, she was not hurt.  One Sunday after we had service, we were cooking dinner and my cousin’s wife said.  “You know, Sister Mary did not speak to me this morning.”  My cousin always called his wife “Love.”  He said, “Well Love, did you speak to her?” She replied, “No I didn’t.”  He laughed and said, “Well she’s probably telling someone right now that you did not speak to her.”
In a brush arbor meeting in the Barton community near Lucedale, we were having good services, good crowds, and the Lord was blessing with souls seeking God.  One night, Brother Crocker was about to give an altar call and asked everybody to pray that souls would be touched.  I was sitting on the front bench and I closed my eyes and prayed.  When I opened my eyes and looked down, there was a little green frog, right at my feet, looking right up at me (I’ve always had a horror of frogs and lizards).  I almost lost my breath.  If that thing had hopped on me, I would have had a “spell.”  Thank God it hopped off the other way, but it sure did mess up my concentration on prayer.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20174

All the people who had received the Holy Ghost in the earlier revival in Lucedale had remained faithful and held prayer meetings and occasionally a preacher would come and preach for them.

In the year of 1940, we started going to Lucedale on weekends and having services with the saints there in their homes.  We got a chance to buy seven and a half acres of land on Mill Street Extension Road about two miles out of town at a very cheap price.  We donated an acre of this for a church.  At that time, Brother Crocker was affiliated with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ.  He had been ordained at Mansfield, Louisiana in 1931 and received General License and had been elected Presbyter.  So the saints and Brother Crocker built a small church building on the property we had donated.  The Lord blessed and gave us a great revival with many souls being saved.  In 1941, we decided to try to build a home for ourselves on our property near the church.  It took a while, but we finally got a small house built with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and dining room.  We were not able to move into the house until after our fourth child, a daughter, was born and was eight months old.  She was born February 22, 1942, and we named her Roberta.  We had no electricity.  We used kerosene lamps for light, a wood stove and a hand pump for water.  We had an outside WPA toilet which was used by the church as well as by us. We had some gas lanterns for the church, and one of the ladies who had received the Holy Ghost in our first revival at Lucedale had a piano that she gave to the church.  We were really happy and thankful for the blessings we received.

We had visiting ministers come and preach revivals for us.  We always kept them in our home.  I sometimes wonder now, how in the world we managed that with four small children.  But, somehow, we did it.  It was several years later before we were able to build two more bedrooms on to our house and add a bathroom and back porch.  We finally got electricity and put down a water well with an electric pump.  World War II was going on, and we had lots of preachers coming by wanting to preach.  Some were Spirit filled and some claimed the Spirit but did not have the fruits of the Spirit.  One Sunday afternoon a man came to the church just before service time and said he was a Pentecostal preacher.  Brother Crocker always honored the ministry and offered to let the man preach.  At the beginning of the service, Brother Crocker told the church that he had a bad cold and sore throat, and asked them to pray for him.  After the song and testimony service, he turned the service over to this man.  The first thing he said was, “I’m so glad to be here to preach the truth to you people.  I used to get sick like this man,” he said, pointing to Brother Crocker.  “But not anymore, I’ve out-grown all that stuff,” He said, “If you really live for God, you won’t be sick.”  He went on and on about what God did for him.  He said, “I don’t even have to put gas in my car.”  He said that God supplied everything that he needed, and that if we lived for God we would be able to do every thing God did.  He said, “Oh, what did He do? He raised the dead and walked on the water.  Oh Hallelujah!”  We were all shocked, and some said they were about to get up and leave when Brother Crocker stood and told the man to sit down.  Brother Crocker went to the pulpit and said, “This man claims he doesn’t have to put gas in his car, but this lady owns a store and gas pumps and she says she pumped gas into his car this afternoon.  We don’t have any dead people for him to raise, but we do have a pond about fifteen feet deep right down the hill, we’ll all go down and watch this man walk on the water.  All the church clapped their hands and said, “Amen.”  The man said, “Oh, I’m not old enough in the Lord yet.  I will have to grow some more.”  Brother Crocker dismissed the service, the man got into his car and left and we never heard from him again.

We had lots of men come by who needed something to eat or a place to sleep.  We never knew if they were true Christians or not, but we always tried to help them if we could.  One Wednesday evening, a few hours before church time, a man came to our house, said he was a minister passing through town and decided to be in service with us.  He was walking and had only a small bag.  We invited him in.  We were getting ready to go to church.  He told us he was an artist and had some pictures of flowers and birds drawn on little ten-inch squares of fabric that he was selling.  I already had the children dressed for church, so while we were finishing getting ready, he was drawing pictures of Maggie and Jigs, the comic strip characters, for the children.  Our youngest boy wasn’t paying any attention to him, so he took the toy he was playing with and put it up on the mantle shelf where the child couldn’t reach it.  When my little boy came to me crying, I went and got his toy and gave it back to him.

At church, after the preliminaries, Brother Crocker asked him to say something.  He got up and rambled on about fifteen minutes and told the people he had some pictures he wanted to sell to help him in his ministry.  He said they were only a dollar apiece.  One lady told him that seemed a little high, and he said he had to charge that much because the pictures were drawn on expensive linen fabric.  The material the pictures were drawn on was about the cheapest you could buy back then.  We called it yellow domestic or unbleached muslin.  I told him, “You should have been here last week.  You could have bought all you wanted for twenty-five cents a yard.”  He acted like he didn’t like what I said, but he didn’t say anything.  We let him stay in our home that night.  The next morning, I had to get the children up, fix their breakfast and get them ready for school so they could catch the school bus.  My intentions were to get the kids off to school, then fix breakfast for my husband and the visitor.  When I had breakfast ready for the children and called them to the table, the visitor came too.  I had cooked grits, eggs, and biscuits.  I told Brother Crocker to come on too.  He asked God to bless the food and began to help the children’s plates.  Our youngest asked for his “done” egg.  The man spoke up sharply and said, “Boy, don’t you know the Bible says to eat what’s set before you and keep your mouth shut?”  I held my tongue.  When the plate of biscuits was passed to the visitor, he said, “I don’t eat biscuits.”  My husband asked me if we had a loaf of white bread.  I got up and got it for the man.  He helped his plate, then stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small pocket knife and said, “This is the worst part of the country I’ve ever been.  No where I’ve been have they given me a knife to eat with.  I’ve had to eat with my fingers.”  (I had only put a fork by the plate.)  That did it for me.  I said, “Well brother, eat with your fingers.  They were made before knives and forks were, and the same ‘scripture’ you quoted to my child will apply to you.  Eat what’s set before you and keep your mouth shut.”  Needless to say, the children missed the school bus and their father had to take them to school.  The man finished eating, got up, got his little bag and left.  We sure had some strange characters come around during those days.  In years to come, we could look back on this episode and have a good laugh, but it wasn’t very funny at the time.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20175

About three years after we moved to Lucedale, we got a chance to buy some lots in town on Mill Street, so we sold the little church to a man who gave us six hundred dollars ($600.00) for it.  We bought the lots and put up a small army tent that we had used in our last evangelistic days, and began having services.  A man who lived near the lots was angry that we had bought the lots, so he got up a petition and got a few people to sign it and carried it to the D. A.’s office in Pascagoula, saying we were disturbing their peace.  The D. A. asked him if we owned the lots and the man told him we did.  They went to a judge and the man was told, “If these people own the property, all I can say is get some ear-plugs or join them.”  We learned of what the judge had told him from a friend of ours who talked to the man and that is what he told him.  God blessed in so many ways.  The church people were faithful, but money was very scarce at times.  We got a Mr. Whitfield to lay the blocks when we started the church building.  One day a man came by and stopped to talk to Mr. Whitfield.  The man told him this building will never be finished and if it is it won’t ever amount to anything.  Mr. Whitfield said, “Oh, yes, by the help of the Lord and Brother’s Crocker’s prayers, this church is going to be finished if the Lord gives me the strength.”  The devil worked hard, but by the grace of God the church building was finished and we had some great revivals in it.  We didn’t have much money, but a man who owned a farm near where we lived let us have enough land for a good garden, so we had vegetables to eat and I canned peas, butterbeans, and tomatoes for winter.
One day, we needed some gas in our car, but didn’t have any money.  We knew a man just out of town who owned a service station, so Brother Crocker decided to go see if he could get a few gallons of gas on credit.  While he was there, a man in a big nice car pulled up in front of the station, got out and went in and bought a coke, came back out, got into his car and drove off.  In a few minutes, he drove back to the station, got out of his car and walked up to Brother Crocker and asked him if he was a minister.  Brother Crocker told him he was.  The man took out his wallet and handed him a folded bill and said, “The Lord stopped me down the road and told me to come back and give this to you.”  Brother Crocker thanked him very much, and the man left again.  When Brother Crocker looked at the bill in his hand, it was a hundred dollar bill. In those days a hundred dollars would go about as far as five hundred today. God always provides for our needs. We were blessed during the rationing days in which we were issued ration books to buy shoes, sugar, gas, and other necessities. It was hard to get ladies’ hose. Many ladies had to go church bare-legged because they could not buy hose. One merchant in town was a friend to us, and he always saved me several pairs when he got in an order in his store.  Our fourth son was born Nov. 24, 1944, and we named him Donald.

One time we were fasting and praying for the Lord to send us a good evangelist and give us a really good revival. Late one afternoon we were sitting on our front porch, and a camper trailer pulled into our driveway. Two men we had never seen before got out of their truck and introduced themselves.  They were Brother Frank Maggio and Brother Mike Gerantano.  They said they were evangelists and had been fasting and praying for God to guide them, as they wanted His will in their lives. They said, “The Spirit spoke and said ‘Go to Lucedale, Mississippi’, and so here we are.” Bro. Crocker told them we had also been fasting and praying for God’s will. So we started a revival, and God begin to bless. We had an around-the-clock prayer meeting ring. The evangelist parked his trailer right beside the church and said, “If any one’s prayer time comes while we are in service, just slip out to my trailer and pray.”  We had twenty eight souls to receive the Holy Ghost in that revival. At that time I did not have a washing machine. I had to pump the water and wash our clothes by hand. I washed, starched, and ironed as many as 20 white shirts a week besides the other clothes during that revival. That was before we got electricity. My neighbor said it looked like a Chinese laundry at my house when I got all those clothes hanging on the clothes line.

Later on we had an evangelist from Nebraska, it was in the fall of the year, and we had torn out our fireplace intending to get gas installed before cold weather. We did not have it in when we started the revival and it turned really cool so we bought a small tin wood heater to make do until we got gas installed. This preacher liked to tease our two oldest boys about the North beating the South in the civil war. They would get so mad.   He began to carry on about our lack of heat in the house. He said the cow barns up north were heated better than the homes were in the south. I said, “If it is so much better up North than it is here in the South, what are you doing here?  We did not send for you.”  He said when he told them I put his white shirts in a big black pot and boiled them, they would never believe it. Of course, he was just teasing. He said the further south you got, the more ignorant the people were. My reply to that was, “Do you know the reason for that? Key West, Fla. is about as far south as you can go on land and it is wrapped up with northerners.” I had a wood stove and baked biscuits every morning. About the time I got the biscuits in the oven, he would come in carrying on his nonsense, and I’d let the biscuits get too brown. When he started to leave he said, “Thank God I won’t have to eat any more grits and burned biscuits.”  I told him I hoped he had grits and burnt biscuits everywhere he went. Then I told him he had better not carry on like he had at our house everywhere he went. He said, “I won’t, I’m not crazy.”  We finally got butane gas installed and I was blessed to get a gas stove. It was not too long until the power lines were extended down our road and we had electric power. We put down an electric pump and I could get a washing machine. I still had to hang the clothes on a line to dry.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20176

During these years, we were almost continually in revivals.  I remember in particular a revival with Brother Robert McKeithen and Brother Howard Hutto.  We had a really good revival and souls were saved.  I will never forget a particular incident during this revival!  Brother Hutto had a set of false teeth that fit over his own that he would put in his mouth.  They stuck way out in front and made him look really ugly.  He put them in and put an old cap on his head one day, came and slipped in my front door.  No one was in the house but me.  When I turned around and saw him standing there, looking like someone who had escaped from the insane asylum, I almost had a heart attack.  I was just getting ready to run for my life when he got tickled and began to laugh. I yelled at him and told him he better not ever scare me like that again.  Brother Crocker and the children were in on this trick, and were out in the yard laughing their heads off at my reaction.  We really enjoyed the revival and having them in our home.  They could both really preach.  Brother Hutto played the accordion and the piano, Brother McKeithen played the guitar and they sang together.   They were very talented.

Brother and Sister Vol Sumrall came and preached for us several different times.  We always enjoyed having them in our home too.  He played an accordion and sang and also taught singing schools.   Sister Sumrall was a very sweet lady and was very helpful with things I was sewing for the children.  She was very good with hand sewing and helped with buttonholes and hems.  She also crocheted well and made little booties for Sharon, our youngest, who was a baby at the time.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20177

We had a lady in the church who had received the Holy Ghost in our first revival. She had been faithful and held on to the Lord despite the fact that her husband was mean to her. He often would not let her have the car to go to church, so she would start out walking. It was several miles from her house to the church. They lived on a hill and sometimes he would let her walk awhile then he would drive up beside her and stop as if he wanted to talk to her. When she came up to the car, he would take her by the hand, put the car in gear and make her run along beside the car. Many times when she went to bed, he would hit her and pinch her until she would have to get up and get in bed with her daughter. Through all that she held on to the Lord. One day she was sick and called us to come pray for her. When we got there her husband was sitting in the living room with his gun across his lap. We spoke to him and prayed for his wife as though he was not there and she was instantly healed.

One Sunday night, Dorothy Delmas, a young lady we had known since she was a teenager, came to our church.  She was married and had a small baby who was sick.  She and her husband had been to Memphis, Tennessee, to a doctor there.  Her aunt, Sister Martha Colville, belonged to our church and this young girl had visited the church when she came to visit her aunt.  She asked her husband, who was Catholic, to stop in Lucedale to see her aunt and go to church to get us to pray for their baby.  They came to the church and we had a real good service. When the altar call was given, this lady went to the altar.  She prayed real hard, but her husband had never been in a Pentecostal service before and he was afraid something was happening to her, so he came up to the altar and stopped her from praying.  After the service they went back to her aunt’s home, and she begged him to let her and the baby stay a few days with her aunt.  When we got home from church, I called the aunt to see if the husband was upset.  She told me that he had agreed to let his wife and the baby stay with her a few days, but he had gone home to Pascagoula so he could work.  I asked if it would be alright if we came over and talked to the girl.  She agreed and we went and explained the plan of salvation to her.  Then we prayed and in a few minutes she was speaking in other tongues.  She was baptized in Jesus’ Name the next day.  Her baby lived to be a grown man, although he had an affliction and was in a wheel chair.  He was in his forties when God called him home.  Later her husband received the Holy Ghost along with all her children.  They are still living for God today.

There was a good saint of God in the church who became crippled in her right knee and foot.  She went to doctors but they couldn’t seem to do her any good.  She heard that Brother William Branham was at Pensacola, Florida and many people were getting healed.  She asked Brother Crocker if we would take her over there to be prayed for.  We took her, but the crowds were so large we couldn’t even get near the man.  When we started back home, she was moaning and groaning because she didn’t get prayed for.  Brother Crocker asked her, “Sister, do you believe God will heal you?”  She said, “I sure do.”  He asked, “Do you believe He is just as real in Lucedale as He is in Florida?”  She said, “Yes, I do.”  He said, “Alright, lets pray right now and ask God to heal you and you believe it’s done and it will happen!”  So we had a prayer meeting right there in our car, and God came down in a mighty way and from that night her knee and foot were healed.  From that time she never doubted that God would hear our sincere prayers if we would believe Him.

We had one man who came to church faithfully, but sometimes he would get all sulky and would not speak to anyone and nobody would know what was wrong. One time when he was on one of his pouting spells, he was walking past our house and Bro. Crocker stopped him and gave him some peas, okra, and tomatoes from our garden. The next service the man was there speaking to everybody with a big smile on his face. This man finally received the Holy Ghost and made a real true Christian as long as he lived.

My sister-in-law was fussing one day about something my brother had done and Bro. Crocker asked her if she had tried heaping coals of fire (Rom.12:20) on his head, she said “No, but I’ve tried a little hot coffee.” Bro Crocker said a kind act would always turn the tide.

A business man in Lucedale came to our church quite often.  He always sat on the back pew and sometimes his wife would come with him.  He said that some of his friends asked him why he came to the Pentecostal Church and he said that he told them that he liked to go to the Pentecostal Church because he felt something there that he did not feel in any other church.

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20178

Our car was old and we were having problems with it, so we decided to try to get a newer model but wondered how we would pay for it.  Then we heard that Schermer Pecan Company in Fairhope Alabama was hiring people to work in their packing shed.  It was potato harvesting time so we decided to give it a try.  We went to Fairhope to see if we could find a place we could afford to rent.  We found a lady who had a small apartment in her back yard and she let us have it real cheap.  We went over on Monday morning.  I went to work grading potatoes.  Brother Crocker was hired to oversee the sacking of the potatoes in the field and the two oldest boys helped to sack the potatoes.  Our third son Stephen was old enough to stay at the apartment and take care of the three youngest.  The lady who owned it said she would check on them often for us.  The potatoes were brought from the field and poured into a vat of water where they were rinsed and came out on a conveyer belt.  As they came by, we (several other women, some men, and I) picked out the cut and bad ones, then they went into another vat and into sacks for the market.  We went home on Wednesday evenings for mid-week service and back to work Thursday mornings.  Then we went home again on Friday nights.  A few times we worked late at night.  One Friday night we were on our way home and as we entered Bankhead Tunnel, we were behind a big trailer truck.  It was sputtering and jerking and acted like it was not going to make it through the tunnel.  As we started up the incline out of the tunnel, Brother Crocker said he was going around it.  You were not supposed to pass in the tunnel.  I told him to go ahead because I was afraid too, but I was sure we would be stopped as we left the tunnel.  Sure enough as we came out of the tunnel into Mobile, a cop stepped out in front of us.  We stopped, and he asked why we passed the truck.  Brother Crocker explained to him how the truck was doing.  He said, “I have my wife and children in this car and if the brakes on that truck had failed and it rolled back into us it would probably have killed us all.”  The cop said.  “I don’t blame you, I would have probably done the same thing, but I will have to give you a ticket.”  He told Brother Crocker to come to the courthouse the next day to pay the fine.  He went and the fine was three ($3.00) dollars.
While we were living at Lucedale, we started going to Cross Roads on Sunday afternoons and Thursday nights. There were several people living there who had received the Holy Ghost in Bro Crocker’s revival at Buzzard Roost. We did this for a long time.  Quite a few more people received the Holy Ghost and the people decided they wanted to build a church building.  Bro. Crocker got Bro. Woodrow Page to go there and help them build the church building.  Bro. Page pastored the church for several years.  After that, we started going to Mt. Calvary (we called it Midway then). Times were hard and very few people had a way to travel.  It was a long way for them to come to Lucedale to church. There were several people in that area who had received the Holy Ghost at a revival at our church in Lucedale, so we started going there Sunday afternoons and Thursday nights. We would have Sunday school at Lucedale Sunday morning at ten o’clock, run home afterward to fix lunch, and be at Mt. Calvary by two o’clock for Sunday school then back to Lucedale for service Sunday night.

Every Saturday Bro. Crocker would go into town for a street service. He took our two oldest boys who could sing really well together and let them sing. He would read some scripture, preach a short message, and then invite people to church services. From there, he would go to Leakesville, Stateline and Waynesboro. He made the day of it going from place to place preaching the Word and singing the songs of Zion.

One day after a street service, one of the local pastors came up to Bro. Crocker and spoke and said, “I want to ask you a question. Why is it that you can preach against the sinful things of the world and your people won’t do the things you preach against? I preach against the same things and my people go on and do them anyway.” Bro. Crocker said, “Well, brother, the difference is I preach to my people that if they repent of their sins and receive the Holy Ghost, they will not want to do these things.” The man thanked him and walked away. He did not want to hear anymore. Many people heard the truth preached but did not accept it.

One spring in March, we had a hard freeze for three days and our butane gas, water pipes, and sewer pipes were frozen. One of our neighbors had gotten gas and given our boys a big wood heater. They had begged us to let them put it up in their bedroom. If it had not been for that heater, I don’t know what we would have done. We cooked our meals on it and stayed warm by it. We still had our old water pump and outdoor toilet. Thank God, He sometimes works in mysterious ways.           One day Bro. Crocker was called to the Mobile Infirmary to pray for Mr. Lynn Cooley, who had been burned real bad on his job and was in ICU. They were not sure he would survive. His wife said the first thing he said to her was “Get Bro. Crocker.” Bro. Crocker prayed for him and God touched him in a mighty way. Sometime later, on the street in Lucedale, we met up with him. He grabbed Bro. Crocker, and hugged him and began to thank him for saving his life. Bro. Crocker stopped him and said, “Give God the praise. He is the one who saved you. I only prayed and tried to have faith in a never failing God.”

Chapter 1Roblox Robux Hack 20179

One morning our boys were out in our yard playing with a ball and bat.  Our oldest little girl was about five years old and she went out to watch them.  The oldest boy, Bobby, would throw the ball and the next to the oldest boy, Lavelle, was trying to hit it with bat.  The little girl (Roberta) got too close behind Lavelle and when he swung the bat around to hit the ball, he hit her across the chest and knocked her out.  She fell to the ground. Bobby picked her up and ran into the house with her, calling for me.  I ran and took her and she was as limp as a rag.  I ran into the kitchen to the sink, put water on her face, and tried to revive her.  I was crying and praying, all the boys were crying, and Brother Crocker heard all the fuss and came running in.  He took Roberta and laid her on the bed and began giving her CPR and asking God to undertake. She opened her eyes and started breathing.  We thanked God and praised Him for His goodness.  He was so good to us.

During our revival days we were in a revival at Chicora, MS. There was a young man who came to the service one Sunday morning. He had tuberculosis and was home on visit from the sanatorium. He asked us to pray for him, we earnestly prayed that God would touch him. Several years later we were walking down the sidewalk in Hattiesburg, and a man came running toward us with tears streaming down his face. He shook my hand and hugged Bro. Crocker and said “You may not remember me, but I’ll never forget you. I’m the man you prayed for who had tuberculosis at Chicora and God healed me.” He was healthy looking and said he was working every. We were always happy to see people we had preached to and prayed for doing well and giving God the praise. Many young preachers preached their first sermon in our church and many came to Bro. Crocker for prayer and advice. He always tried to encourage them and help them any way he could.

Chapter 20

Bro. William Robert Crocker was ordained April 19, 1931 at Mansfield, LA into the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ.  Bro. Crocker, as presbyter in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ, helped Bro. O. E. Lamb establish the first Pentecostal church on Ingalls Avenue in Pascagoula, MS. He also helped Bro. J. D. Whitten establish the first Pentecostal church on Wilson Avenue in Prichard, Alabama.  When the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ merged with the Pentecostal Church International, they became the United Pentecostal Church International.  Record page three, Certificate of Ordination, was issued October 31, 1945 at the merger.  It was signed by General Superintendent W. T. Witherspoon, General Secretary S.D. Chambers, District Superintendent A. D. Gurley, and Bro. M.H. Hansford, District Secretary. At that time, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee were combined. Bro. Crocker, Bro. Gurley, Bro. Hansford, and Bro. Greer from Bemis, Tennessee traveled quite a bit, trying to help young preachers establish churches.  When Mississippi became a district in 1946, it was divided into four sections; Bro. Crocker was elected presbyter of section four and served for many years. When the ladies auxiliary was organized in section four, Sister Roberta Goff was elected President and I was elected as Secretary/Treasurer. I served in this office until 1978. At this time I asked to be relieved of the job. After Bro. Crocker gave up the presbyter job, he was elected Sectional Secretary and treasurer and served in that capacity for many years.

In the year 1947, Bro. L. L. Pierce came to Lucedale to our home and asked Bro. Crocker to go to Leakesville and set their church in order. They had several families who had received the Holy Ghost and they were having prayer meetings and several ministers preached for them and they had decided they wanted to build a church.  Bro. Crocker got Bro. Damon Crawford and his wife who were good evangelists to go there to preach a revival for them and help them build a church building. After the church was built, Bro. Crawford was pastor for some time.

Before we left the church in Lucedale, there was a man who moved there and started coming to our church. He wanted to preach so badly, but it seemed God did not see fit to call him into his service. He finally became disgruntled and began to sow discord among the saints. Bro. Crocker tried talking to him and tried to reason with him and prayed for him, but he seemed bent on destruction.

We got Bro. Edward Johnson for a revival and this man did every thing he could to hinder the revival. He had a van and one night he got all who would to go with him to another church that was also in revival. Bro. Crocker decided he could not work successfully for God under these circumstances. So we began to pray for God to work His will in our lives. He told the church he would not stay on as pastor without the full cooperation of all the people. They majority wanted us to stay, but this man and two or three others were still trying to cause trouble, so Bro. Crocker resigned as pastor.

We began to pray for God to show us what he wanted us to do for him. The church was free of debt, and we owned our home, we had it fixed up really nice and did not owe any debts. Our oldest son had just finished high school and our youngest daughter, Sharon, was four years old. She was born Feb. 20, 1948.

Bro. L. L. Pierce heard that Bro. Crocker had resigned the church at Lucedale and he came to our house and asked Bro. Crocker if he would consider going to Leakesville.  Their pastor had resigned and was gone. Bro. Crocker told him we would pray about it and come for a service and if all the people wanted us, we would consider it. We came to Leakesville on Wednesday night for a service and several days later, we got a call from Bro. Pierce and he said, “Bro. Crocker, you have been elected pastor at Leakesville, by all the people.” So we finished all our business at Lucedale.

On May 23, 1952, we moved to Leakesville.  The church was a small block building.  They had recently begun building a small parsonage but it was still just a shell.  No ceiling, no partitions, and no plumbing, except in one corner, which served as a kitchen.  There was an outdoor toilet.  A friend of ours asked us why in the world would we leave our nice home and move into a place like that.  Brother Crocker said, “We’re not trying to please ourselves, we’re trying to please God.”

We were happy and completely satisfied, because we felt we were in the perfect will of God.  Our first Sunday morning service we had about nineteen people.  We got Brother Edward Johnson for a revival and several ladies received the Holy Ghost.  God began to bless and soon we were running seventy-five and eighty in Sunday school.  There were only two men besides Brother Crocker.  The church had no Sunday school rooms, so when the weather was good we had classes outside under some big pecan trees.  That first winter, we had some really cold weather.  I thought we would freeze in the parsonage, as we only had one small gas heater.  We decided to borrow enough money from the bank to fix the parsonage.  We put in the ceiling, and partitioned it into three bedrooms, a kitchen and dining area together, a small living room and a small bathroom.  We used sheetrock for a ceiling and finished and painted it, which made it much more comfortable.  The bank made our notes to where we were able to pay them monthly.  By this time, Brother Crocker was working three days a week as a salesman and collector for the L. B. Price Mercantile Company, so he gave everything he got from the church back into it.  The tithe ran around twenty or twenty-five dollars a week.  We made quilts and sold them to help pay off the debt.

I went to work in the spring of 1953 at Basila Manufacturing Company as a machine operator and worked for nine years to help make a living and send our children to school.  As the church grew, we knew we would have to enlarge some way.  At first we thought we could build some Sunday school rooms and bathrooms on the back of the church, but discovered that there was not enough room so the people all decided to see if they could borrow some more money and buy some more land and build a new church building.

A Mr. Ball owned some lots across the road from the church at the intersection of Highways 63 and 57.  He offered to sell it to the church for a reasonable price, so they all agreed to borrow the money for the lots and building.  Brother Crocker and I took care of our family from the money we got from our jobs and put as much as we could afford into the building fund.  We had suppers and various other fundraisers to make money to help pay the monthly notes.

We still owned our home at Lucedale, so we rented it and the rent money was a real blessing to us.  We decided to build our own home in Leakesville, so we sold our home in Lucedale to help pay for our new house.  The church people agreed to sell the parsonage to help pay for the new church.  We bought some lots from Mr. L. E. Smith on Lackey Street and hired Brother James Barkley (who had lived with us most of the time since 1944) to help build our home.  We paid him by the hour and gave him room and board.  The church building was finished in 1956.

A lady friend of ours in town told us that some people asked her how in the world was that small group of people were going to pay for a building like that.  She said she told them, “Nobody knows but the Lord, Robert Crocker, Duck Pierce and Bertie Gray.”  Sister Gray was secretary and treasurer then.  After we moved into our new home, I continued to work to help pay for it.  We remodeled the old church into a dwelling and rented it for several years.  The Lord blessed in many ways.  We never missed a note and were never late with one.  Somehow, some way the Lord always provided.

Our oldest son, who had graduated from Lucedale High School before we moved, went to Perkinston Junior College.  All the other children finished high school at Leakesville.  The second son went to Perkinston, the third to Mississippi State and the fourth to Hinds Junior College in Jackson, Mississippi.  The man who caused the trouble at Lucedale found out that he had severe heart trouble and he made three trips to Leakesville begging for forgiveness.  We told him he was forgiven every time he came.  I don’t know if he ever forgave himself or not, I pray that he did before he passed away.

We got another evangelist and had a revival in the new church; we had some new people get the Holy Ghost. Our revivals usually lasted at least two or three weeks, seven days a week, and if God was blessing, sometimes longer with lots of fasting and praying going on.  Bro. Crocker would sometimes fast for several days at a time and has fasted up to seven days without food or water.  He loved to help young preachers get started and encouraged them any way he could.  Many young preachers came out of those works in Mt. Pisgah, Lucedale, Crossroads, Mt. Calvary and Leakesville. We had many young preachers preach their first revival for us when they were just starting out who went on to become great preachers and are still doing a great work for God.  Some of the many who preached revivals for us were Bro. and Sis. George Hicks, Bro. and Sis. Damon Crawford, Bro. A. A. Castleberry,  Bro. O. E. Lamb, Bro. Stafford Brooks, Bro. Dee Jacobs, Bro. Willie McNeal, Bro. Wayne Rooks, Bro Robert McKeithen, Bro. Howard Hutto, Bro. Titus White, Bro. and Sis. Ellard, Bro. Frank Maggio, Bro. Mike Gerantano, Bro. D. L. Welch, Bro. Paul Welch, Bro. Harold Kennedy, Bro. L. Y. McVay, Bro. Lacy McVay, Bro. George Christoff, Bro. Edward Johnson, Bro. J. W. Barkley, Bro. Claude Brown, Bro. W. L. Kirkland, Sis. Linda Kyser, Sis. Brenda Montgomery, Bro Darrell Crawford, Bro. Vernon Griffin, Ma Bell, Sis. Floy Marie Bell, Bro. and Sis. Towles, Bro Thomas Peavey, Bro. Buford Miller, Bro. Royce Odom, Bro. Jerry Jones, Bro. Ernest Jones (The Jones Family Singers), Bro. Jerry Sullivan, Bro. Tim Sullivan, Bro. Jerome Bourne, Bro. George Smith, Bro. Jerry Lambert, Bro. Archie Holley, Bro. Carl Varnell, Bro John Clifford, Bro. Stephen Triplett, Bro. G. C. Killingsworth, Bro. Charles Killingsworth, Bro. Joe Slade, Bro. J. E. Anderson, Bro G. R. Travis, Bro. Darrell Harris, Bro. John Bernardino, Bro. Delmas, and Bro. Russell Callenberger.  Through the years, many came to him for advice and asked for his prayers.

Chapter 21

The church at Leakesville went on for several years with only three men besides Brother Crocker.  In the spring of 1966, we got Brother George Smith from Louisiana for a revival.  He was a young evangelist and a good preacher; God began to bless and we had five men and several ladies to get the Holy Ghost.  The revival lasted for several weeks.  We had prayer meetings every night before church service.  God was still blessing but the evangelist had another revival scheduled and felt like he should go.  We tried to talk him out of it, but he went anyway.

We kept praying and a week later Brother Smith was back, said he was sorry he left, that the Lord wanted him to continue the revival here, so we started up again.  One night as we were praying, I was kneeling by a young lady who had received the Holy Ghost and she was weeping and begging God to save her husband.  I heard her say, “God, I will do anything for you if you will fill my husband with the Holy Ghost.”  God will not turn away a broken and contrite spirit.  Oh if we only had more of that kind of praying today.  God heard and answered her prayer and saved her husband.  They are both still living for God.  We need more prayers of travail in these last days.

Brother Crocker always had a certain place to pray.  At Mt. Pisgah, he had a place in the woods back of our house under a big pine tree, where he went three or four times a day when he was not working.  At Lucedale he had a place at the back of our house under an oak tree, where he went to pray and study his Bible.  After we moved to Leakesville, he went to the church several times a day to pray.  The young men who had received the Holy Ghost worked at Hattiesburg, and they would get up an hour early and stop at the church for prayer meeting before driving to Hattiesburg.

I quit my job at Basila’s in 1961, and Brother Crocker retired from his job in 1972, when he could draw his social security.  After we got some men in the church and times got better, the finances from the church were better.  Brother Crocker still put a lot back into the church.  After we added the fellowship hall and Sunday school rooms he paid for a stove and refrigerator for the kitchen and chairs and tables for the Sunday school rooms and fellowship hall.  We had borrowed money from the bank to do the addition and remodeling and every time the note for two hundred dollars a month was paid, he added a hundred dollars to it.  He mostly paid for the piano and organ and bought the first sound system.

We had people to come by our home who needed help and we always tried to help them.  The scripture says “be careful to entertain strangers, for some have entertained angels unawares.”  One winter evening, it was freezing cold, and a man came to our house wearing only a light summer suit and no coat.  He said he had been working in Georgia and his job played out and he was trying to get back to his family.  He was in town and someone sent him to our house.  We gave him some supper and I prepared some sandwiches for him to take with him.  Brother Crocker talked to him and told him the plan of salvation and told him he needed the Lord.  We had an old overcoat in the closet, and after he had eaten, I got the coat out and gave it to him.  He acted like he was so thankful for what we were doing for him.  Brother Crocker and our son, Lavelle took him to Lucedale and paid for a motel room for the night and gave him some money.  We never heard from him again.

Another time, an older man came into town.  He was on his way to his home in Alabama.  He had been to visit his brother in Louisiana.  The brother was sick and passed away while he was there.  His only income was a Social Security check and he had spent all of it while visiting in his brother’s home.  So, having no money for a bus ticket, he was trying to walk and catch rides to try to get back home.  He went to the pastor of a certain church in town and asked if he could sleep in their church.  The pastor told him they had no room for tramps.  He went to the mayor, who sent him to our house.  He had been on his feet so much that the varicose veins in his legs had bled on his socks.  When he showed them to us, my daughter Sharon and I both cried, it was so pitiful.  I gave him some supper.  It was Wednesday night and we carried him to church with us.  After church, Brother Crocker and Lavelle took him to Mobile to the bus station and bought him a ticket to his home.

Brother Crocker believed in helping those who were in need.  He carried many people who were sick to doctors and hospitals in Mobile and Hattiesburg and Laurel, free of charge.  Many people came to him for prayer and advice.  He was a person who could reprove or rebuke with gentleness and kindness that would get the job done without hurt feelings.  He loved the work of God, and loved to preach to people who were hungry to hear the word of God.  He really believed we should put God first in everything we did.

When he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1982, he did not complain or blame God.  He said he was not ready to retire but to “refire.”  He prayed every day and asked God for his healing if it was His will.  But God did not see fit to heal him.  Brother Crocker asked the church to elect our son-in-law as co-pastor to help him with the church.  He went to church as long as he was able to walk.  Even after he got so weak he could hardly go, he wanted to go to the church to pray.  He said he was ready to go to be with Jesus when He got ready for him.

Chapter 22

On December 25, 1983, all of our children and some of our grandchildren were home for Christmas.  After feasting on the good food that God had so bountifully blessed us with, we all gathered around the piano to sing.  It was requested that Brother Crocker, Bobby and I sing “When I’ve Gone the Last Mile of the Way.”  Although Brother Crocker was frail and weak, he sang with all his might.  I could not sing very much for my heart was sad because I knew that would be the last Christmas we would have him with us, unless God undertook and healed him.  The doctors had told us they had done all they could for him.  We had fasted and prayed that God would spare him but it seemed that God was ready to take him home to be with Him.

On June 12, 1984, he went home to be with the Lord.  It was so hard to give him up, but God gave me strength.  We had been together fifty-one years.  He taught me so much God helped me yield to His will.  I know one day I will see him again.  We will sing and rejoice around the throne and praise Jesus, the One he loved the most in all the world.  When Brother Crocker passed away, the church was debt free.  He had pastored it for thirty two years.  Now our son-in-law is doing a fine job as pastor.

Over the years, I have accumulated these poems and they seem to be a perfect example of the life he lived.  I think that they are a fitting tribute to Brother Robert Crocker.

He was a great man, though not by worldly gain,
He was just an ordinary man, whose ways were simple and plain,
But beyond the imagination of any heart to know,
He taught us the faith of the Bible, and the right way to go.
And for those times when the toils grew weary and long,
He could always sing a song.
He was a gentle man, but his eyes were always firm and his hands were strong.
And he would always tell us, “Now do the very best you can.
And remember, its best to be hurt doing right
Then it is to win out doing wrong.
I’ve known a few times when he handled trouble by just walking away,
And rather than arguing, he’d say, “Let’s Pray.”
And when times got hard, like they did sometimes back then,
He would often tell us, with the good Lord’s help,
we’re going to fight this thing and win.
And at the close of day and evening came along,
He could always sing us a song.
As the years went by, he had pains in his back and his hair began to turn white.
Time took the strength of his hands and slowly dimmed his sight.
Though he was often tired and weary, he still stood straight and tall,
He was faithful to God in all his days, he had answered the master’s call.
His life was just a journey here, on his way to a better place,
There was always one thing he asked for, the master’s loving grace.
Not to be rich or great or tarry in this life for long,
But that he would be able to give some pilgrim on their way,
A hope, a trust, a song.

Author UnknownA Special Place in Life

There was a special place in life that needed his humble skill
A certain job he was meant to do, that no one else could fill.
The hours were demanding, and the pay was not so good,
Yet he would not have changed it, even if he could.
He had a goal in life, he needed to attain,
A dream he had to follow, for he would not be back again.
There was a mark he had to leave,
A legacy of love for those who followed,
A light that we might not fall,
There was a special place in life, that only he could share,
A little path that bore his name, awaiting him out there.
There was a hand for him to hold, a word for him to say,
A smile he had to give, for there were tears to wipe away.
There was a special place in life, a place that is empty now,
All we have left is memories and the knowledge that somehow,
As each of us fills our place in life, no matter what we do,
We’ll never be alone, for his memories will be there too.

Author Unknown

His life that touched the lives of others goes on.  We were blessed to have been touched by his gentle hands, taught by his loving examples, and strengthened by his unfailing guidance.

“Loving and kind in all of his ways,
Upright and just to the end of his days,
Sincere and true in his heart and mind,
A beautiful memory he has left behind.”

Author Unknown

He has been gone for 20 years now, and I still miss him so much.  I spend many lonely days without him.  Thank God for giving us six loving children.  I don’t know what I would do without them.