Excerpt from Collection 5, Tape T5. Interview with Vernon Patterson
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Note: Comments in brackets [] are added by the transcriber.
ERICKSEN: You mentioned...you were mentioning yesterday when we were off tape about how Gospel Fellowship was started in this room. Could you talk about that?
PATTERSON: Yes. I was interested in not only the laymen's evangelistic work but for ten years I was also chairman of the Child Evangelism [Fellowship] work, state chairman. And we had a conference up at...up at the Baptist church in...in Winston-Salem of the annual meeting of Child Evangelism work up there. And in that program there, in that meeting a missionary from China gave her experience. She had spent twelve years with the Baptist Board over there. She had felt that she was called to go to China when she was seven years old and when she was converted in a meeting up there at her home in Virginia. And she was baptized there in the James River. And the deacons...she heard the deacons speaking after the (this is some of her testimony)...after the meeting that it was a failure, that there was only one convert and that was little Sally James. But she didn't...but they didn't know that little Sally James had felt already the call to go as a missionary to China. [begins to cry] Well, she got a good education, she worked hard and got to college graduate, and then graduation in a...in a nursing school, had several degrees, and then she went to China and had spent twelve years with the Southern Baptist Convention. And on her way...when the Japs [Japanese] came into China they were run...the missionaries were run out. So had gotten as far as Manila and she was waiting for a ship to take her home when the Japs came in and captured Manila and they put her in the Saint Thomas prison there and she nearly died. She was on the...just the cold concrete slab and very poorly fed. She took almost...well, when she got h...she finally got home on the Gripsholm [ship] and the doctor told her she could never go back. She was...her...she was...had...had bu...bu...bub...what's that ter...terrible, disease. She nearly died. Bu...but she did go back and she stayed twelve years more. And it was after those twelve years that she had come home and we met her up at that convention. And Vida [Patterson's wife] was so impressed with her that she invited her...he [sic] invited her to come down and visit us. She stayed with us about three weeks. She had been...the second period over there of twelve years had been with the Child Evangelism in the just...and just before she left Dr. [pauses]...Dr., well the head, the founder of Child Evangelism had died and a new management had come in and she was debating whether she wanted to go back. They'd...they had changed the rules and she wasn't too well pleased with it. So she stayed with us about three weeks and I...and we...she asked me a lot of questions about what I thought about how foreign missions should be run. And we both...she saw that I was in agreement with her that they ought seek to win...win the...the natives, the...the nationals, and then teach them to evangelize their own people. Well, when we got to the...about three weeks after she stayed here with us, she told me she had decided to go on back again. But this time she was not going under Child Evangelism or any denomination. She'd go on her own. So we...I drew up a charter for her and a doctrinal statement and we founded Gospel Fellowship and got it incorporated in Richmond. I was president for nineteen years. And she went back and stayed about another thirty years. Well, more...well, nineteen, I was president for nineteen so she stayed about nineteen years or fifteen years or so and [unclear].
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