One Saturday I did not have food. I went to one of the stores and asked the Negro man there if he would let us have groceries for my children for the week.
He said, “Why Mrs. Bethune, I would like to, but I am not able.”
But when I got back to the little house four men were seated on the porch. They were men who had been attending my night school, coming in to be taught how to read and write. (You see I was doing adult education way back there)
One of them said, “Mrs. Bethune, you have been so kind. We got paid today and we brought you some money.”
Each owed me two dollars—so I had eight dollars and how I thanked God and sent hastily to the store and paid the cash to the man who could not afford to advance me food for my little children, the food necessary for them.
One day we needed food—that morning in our little assembly as I prayed and asked God to supply us. He knew what we needed, and you know, before we got through singing our last hymn, a man drove up in his wagon with a load of vegetables and potatoes and food stuff that a friend had sent over.
And one of the little girls said, “Mrs. Bethune prayed for food and here is a man with a wagon full.” That faith has sustained us.
We needed a roof on the house. It was leaking. We did not have any money to buy a roof, and I felt that it had to be fixed.
I had sent out letters of appeal and no returns had come and finally one morning I said to my helpers, “Build scaffolding around the house. We have enough lumber for scaffolding.”
The men said—“Where are the materials?”
I said, “Build the scaffolds and get ready,” and friends, will you believe me, when the mail come in the late afternoon, just about the time the scaffold was finished—I was sitting on the ground directing the men on the scaffolding and opened the mail bag right where I was sitting and will you believe me—I opened the letter from a darling friend who had sent me one thousand dollars to be used as I needed it.
