Raymond G. Morris

Raymond George Morris and Family

It all began in 1926, I was born to Elsie Lillian (Daniel) and William Morris on 18 October of that year. My earliest memory, around 1930, is of living in a little old house on Broadway, north of some big Outdoor Advertising Signs near the junction of Manukau Road and the Great South Road near Newmarket, Auckland, and New Zealand. My

Dad worked for Amburys Milk plant on Manukau Road as Roundsman delivering milk in bottles. He ‘drove’ a horse-drawn flatbed wagon. We moved a number of times in those early years: Kimberly Road, 17 Bracken Avenue, and Mt. St. John Avenue, and finally to 221 Gillies Ave. Epsom where we remained all through my years in school. Life began with one brother Edward (Ted) Daniel (1925) and later Ronald Frederick (1928), Hazel Lillian (1930), Heather Joyce (1933), John David (1938) and finally Elaine Helen (1941) followed me. Life was never dull!

My father immigrated to New Zealand because he had an Aunt and Uncle already living near Auckland at Te Papa. Mr. & Mrs. Webb were associated with Howe Street hall where he was the Treasurer at that time. My father used to take me with him when he visited them infrequently on a Sunday afternoon. They used to witness to us of the way of salvation and they introduced us to Wellington Street Gospel Hall. The Sands family, who lived across the street from the hall, had several daughters who used to come and walk us to Sunday School. Wellington Street Gospel Hall Assembly commended their older son, Thomas Sands, to missionary work in South America. My earliest memory is of being in Miss Ruth Cairns’s class in 1931 or 1932. Her class met in the classroom at the back next to the garage for the Auckland Bible Carriage. I have vivid memories of playing with figures in the sand table.

In the years that followed my brothers, sisters and I continued at Sunday School and I passed through a number of teachers. My favorite would have to be Mr. Jim Forsythe, the operator of the Bon Accord Bakery in Newmarket. He was able to keep us under control and share the Bible with us. During one extended period, Leo Clarke’s Taxi picked us up and later we came on our bicycles. We owed a lot to our various Superintendents who devoted their time to evangelize and teach the children of the area. Mr. C.F. Warren was a friendly person who was ideal for the task. When I entered Auckland Grammar School (1940), I had a lot more freedom and I used to visit him in his shop on Queen Street where we would pray together. The Sunday School Anniversaries were the highpoint during the year. At one time, I had a shelf of books I had received at these celebrations. Mr. McFadden followed these traditions and with the help of his talented family moved things along. George and Margaret Bremner were there when I entered into my late teens. They cared for us at the Saturday evening youth meetings. I used to walk home with Cameron McLean and listen to his hopes for the future. He was an architectural student at that time. I must mention the Purchase family and their friendship during those years. I used to go with Eric and Bill Purchase by bicycle to the waterfront on Saturday mornings to go fishing in their dinghy. Later they owned a yacht. I recall the Rah Smith family down near Green Lane. Cecil and I worked together in the kitchen at Eastern Beach Camp during the Girls Camp. We kept in touch for many years.

The most important event during these early years occurred in 1940 during my third Form year at Grammar. At the Christian fellowship, known in that era as the Wellington St. Gospel Hall, where I had been attending Sunday School since 1932, there was a Mrs. Wilson who paid my way to attend the 1940 Easter Camp Convention on the banks of the Waikato River at Ngarruawahia. I sat under the preaching of Mr. J. O. Sanders, the Dean of the Bible Training Institute, Auckland. At that time he lived just about four doors down from us on Gillies Avenue. The Word of God challenged me regarding my response to God’s provision for all humankind through the death of Christ. I trusted Christ as my personal savior that weekend. That was a turning point that has effected my life ever since. It opened my eyes to see that life on earth is temporary but there is an eternity ahead.

On my return from Camp, I joined the Crusader Group at Auckland Grammar. Our leader was Mr. Athol Donnell and one of our frequent speakers was Mr. J. S. Burt. I joined the Boys Rally group at Ngaire Avenue under the leadership of Leo Clarke, Ernest Clarke and Les Harris. When the group divided into a Senior and Junior, Ernest led the Junior group and I became his assistant.

I started primary school with Miss Gillespie at the Model Country School, Gillies Avenue, and then moved up the hill to the Epsom Normal School situated on the campus of the Auckland Teachers College. I attended Auckland Boys Grammar for secondary training and returned to Auckland Teacher’s College for tertiary work followed by a probationary year of practice teaching at the Overhung Primary School in order to gain my Teaching Certificate in 1946. My first teaching position (1947-48) was up north as a sole Teacher at the Paponga School, situated between Broadwood and Kohukohu, in the Hokianga District. While at Paponga School, I met and became engaged to Mary Hodgson. After two years, I moved to another sole Charge School at Waiharakeke in the Kawhia District (1949-51). As the years passed Mary and I became interested in Missionary work and to that end, she went to Whangarei Hospital to get her R.N.

In 1951, I gave up my teaching position to prepare to accompany Mr. and Mrs. E.D. Rout, their son Francis, his wife Nan and their two children to serve with them under the Garenganze Evangelical Mission at Kiolo, in the Katanga Province of the Belgian Congo. It was to be my responsibility to take over the existing school system in order to leave Francis available for visiting outlying villages. We traveled by Ocean Liner to Capetown, South Africa, took the Cape to Cairo train up through several countries and after several days arrived at Elizabethville in the Katanga Province of southern Congo. After buying supplies, including a 55 gallon drum of petrol, we headed into the sparsely populated area to the north. The sealed road ended and the rest of the 260 mile journey was on dusty jungle roads. Our vehicle was a Chevrolet pick-up of early ‘40’s vintage. Francis drove while the senior Routs squeezed into the cab and each held a grandchild. Nan and I sat on baggage in the back and collected a thick coating of dust for it was the dry season. We stopped each evening at a Mission Station to get cleaned up and rested for the day ahead. When we arrived the local people gave we.

As I reviewed the school set-up, it became obvious that I needed to spend a year in Brussels, Belgium to take the courses in French language and Government Policies needed to qualify as a Director of a Government subsidized school. Toward the end of 1952, I retraced my steps back to Capetown and went by ship to England. I visited my sister Heather who had married a British Marine, Bob Thomas and was living there. I crossed the English Channel and arrived at Brussels for a year of studies. Missionaries of all denominations attended this Colonial School. In my class there were about sixty from various countries of the world preparing to serve in the Belgian Congo. I shared a room in a boarding house with a brother in Christ from England. We keep in touch even now. Not long after starting the Colonial Course, I got word Mary had contracted polio and died. This was a very ‘low spot’ in my experiences.

During that year, I met two young women from the U.S.A. who were also heading to the Belgian Congo upon the completion of their qualifying, one as a Teacher and the other as a Nurse. Their mission area was in the northeast while mine was in the far south. Mary was the schoolteacher and Dorothy was the nurse. In spite of the fact Dorothy’s Tropical Medicine Course was held in Antwerp, we were able to meet quite often on Sundays at the Belgian Assembly. Later on I contacted Dorothy’s parents by mail and after we received their consent, Dorothy and I became engaged. I returned to the Congo once I had received my Diploma and Dorothy followed some months later. She was able to change her place of service and arrived in the southern area in a village Hospital at Mulongo across the lake from Kiolo where I lived. We were married at the Mulongo on the 9th of September 1954. By this time, the Francis Rout family had moved to Manono, a mining town further north so we moved into their mud house with a thatched roof and hundreds of bats in the ceiling attic area. The ceiling itself was made of sacking stretched over the roof poles and whitewashed. As time went by dark areas appeared through the whitewash. Dorothy worked with an African trainee in the Kiolo Medical Clinic and I supervised the Kiolo School with its four African trained teachers. I started a building program to give both the teachers and the boarding student’s permanent housing. Being so close to a lake and swamps meant in the wet season the mosquitoes were a real menace.

Our daughter, Heather, was born at the Mulongo Hospital on the 17th of June 1956. By 1957, we were ready for furlough. We were able to find a couple, Richard and Edna Lind from Luanza Mission Station, to take over our work for a year and we headed for the U.S.A. and Dorothy’s home in Fanwood, New Jersey. What a welcome we received! Dorothy was pregnant at the time and Howard was born the 23rd of September 1957. We moved on to New Zealand in 1958 and then back to the Congo.

In 1960 brought independence to the Belgian Congo. It became Zaire but the rebel element soon had large areas in turmoil. The unrest, the name changes and the power struggles have continued to this very day. After the murder of several missionaries to our east, I took Dorothy, Heather and Howard south to the nearest airport in Northern Rhodesia and sent them back to the U.S.A. Dorothy’s mother was not well and Dorothy was able to take care of her. (She was diagnosed as having Lupus, an immune system disease, something Dorothy was also diagnosed with some forty years later.)

I returned to Kiolo to continue my work anticipating that law and order would soon be restored. By this time, the Senior Routs had retired to New Zealand so I was alone. The Belgian Authorities began to pull out and the United Nations Forces were introduced into the turmoil. The day came when I was restricted to Kiolo. I packed just what I could carry and waited for a convoy of U.N. troops heading south. The moment came and with, my head teacher Samwele Kishimba accompanying me, I drove my ’57 Ford wagon to Elizabethville and then down into Northern Rhodesia. I sold my wagon, bought a ticket and flew off to my in-law’s place to take care of my family.

After a year in Fanwood, New Jersey helping at Dorothy’s home fellowship Middlesex Chapel, visiting other groups as time permitted and considering our future service, we came to the conclusion that, because of the unrest in Zaire, we should move to Winslow, Arizona in the meantime. Winslow was situated at 5000 feet on a desert plateau. Dorothy’s Aunt Minnie Armerding, who had been a missionary among the American Indians since 1926, asked if we would take over the work at Immanuel Mission. She would then move to California and stay with her younger brother George Armerding and his wife Helen. George was at that time the owner of the Western Book and Tract business established many years before by Dr. H.I. Ironside. We arrived in Winslow about July 1961 and Aunt Minnie was relieved.

The Mission property was put into a Non-profit Corporation, and work began on renovating both the house and the Chapel. This was a task that was to continue for many years. We added a guest room onto the Chapel for there were many fellow-missionaries traveling through on Highway 66 heading both east and west. Winslow was a busy little town of about seven thousand people. Many of them were American Indians from the various tribes surrounding this railroad town. The old Santa Fe Railroad was the reason for the town’s existence for it became a maintenance depot between New Mexico and California. The Indians found employment maintaining the tracks and repairing the breakdowns. They lived in old railroad boxcars that had been lined up on a flat spot beside the tracks. It was quite crude by today’s standards. Both water sources and toilets were outside. Before we left in 1994, it had been declared unfit and had been demolished. In its heyday, there were several hundred residents living there and it was to these people that we ministered the Word of God. There were believers from the Laguna, Apache, Zuni, Hopi and Navajo Tribes. We began youth activities for the children. It started with Every Boys and Every Girls Rallies then expanded into Tent Camping by a small lake in the National Forest on the Mogollon Rim at 7000 feet and finally into a state-wide camping program known as Arizona Bible Camp, Inc. and held in a rented campground in Prescott, AZ. These were the busy years. I would be traveling during the week and Dorothy would be home looking after Heather and Howard and teaching Ladies Group on Wednesdays. Heather and Howard finished High School in Winslow, continued through advanced training in Phoenix and were then on their own. In 1988, Heather married Reynaldo Arias. They have one daughter, Leah . In 1999 Howard married Vernita (Jessie) Williams after divorcing Dana Pleasants whom he had married back in 1978. Dana was the mother of Heath and Brandon. Heath has a daughter Arianna.

In 1989 after returning from a trip to New Zealand, Dorothy was diagnosed with Lupus (the same as her Mother) and the decline had already set in. Her Lupus specialist was in Phoenix, which was two hundred miles to the south. The time came to relinquish our service at Immanuel Bible Chapel in Winslow. Our first convert, after our arrival in Winslow, was Irving Poolheco. The Hopi brother in Christ had been steadfast through the years and having retired from the railroad, was now available to take over. This allowed us to make the move to Phoenix. October 1994 we checked into the Glencroft Christian Retirement Community in Glendale, AZ., which is a city on the west side of Phoenix. January 17, 1997 I received a mechanical heart valve implant. Dorothy grew weaker and weaker and died August 8, 1999. In 2000, I had a mini-stroke. It was a warning and I accepted the challenge. I changed my diet, began an exercise program and kept in touch with my doctors. It has been a long hard grind to reach the place where I am able to function to a limited degree.

I am now eighty-one years of age and lead one of the Court Prayer Groups on this campus of around 950 residents. I volunteered to supervise on Friday afternoons in the Residents Computer Room from 1:00-4:00pm but recently retired from this for I had too many items on my plate and my home office work was not being processed and answered in a timely manner.

It has taken me some time to complete this project but here it is from memory. It has been a blessing to put it all together for it has allowed me to see just how many believers were involved in my spiritual growth. My hope is not in my past but in what is ahead because of what Christ has done for me by his death and resurrection. ‘Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures…’ 1 Corinthians 15:3