Alta Bolte

My mother, Alta, was born October 9, 1903 in Santa Monica, California. Her father loved to travel and they lived in California, Iowa, and Montana, during her growing-up-years.

During her younger years, my mother’s family homesteaded in Montana with her parents and other members of her family. During WWI, her three brothers enlisted in the Army. Because the family farmed in northern Montana in the Havre area tending the homestead there, it left the work of farming to the five girls in the family.

While living in Montana, my mother was influenced by a neighbor lady who gave her and her sisters some Christian cards with Scripture on them and talked about the Lord Jesus. My mother began reading those Scriptures and the Bible and believing in Jesus.

One night she had an awful earache, so she knelt on her knees by her bed and prayed, and Jesus took the pain away and she felt something good had happened in her heart.

She met her future husband in Montana while he was visiting his sister there. My mother and dad were married in Missoula, Montana, in July of 1922. A lady that the family met encouraged them to go to Washington to make their home out West. My dad left the farm in Richardton, North Dakota, and they traveled to Spokane, Washington. Soon after that, they found a place in the town of Puyallup and made it their home. My mother’s parents and three of her sisters also came to Puyallup to live.

My mother began reading those Scriptures and the Bible and believing in Jesus.

The first child, Leona, was born March 3, 1924, and later, their family was blessed with six other children. However, before the first child came, my mother sought a place to worship the Lord. She went to several places of worship and compared the doctrines to the Word of God and decided each was not the true Gospel.

Someone invited them to a cottage meeting in the home of Brother and Sister Modrall and their two unmarried daughters Dorothy and Thelma.

My mother, her mother, and her three sisters, Fern, Delphia, and Margaret began going to the meetings there in the home. The third time my mother attended she prayed and was saved on September 9, 1923. She has told me that the feeling she had as a girl (with an earache) was the same feeling that day she was saved at the Modrall’s home.

Down through the years, Dad would take her to church with the children, but he did not yield from his smoking or attend church himself. In due time all seven of the children prayed and were saved. Prayer for my dad was not in vain, for he came forward at the Apostolic Faith Church at 13th and J Street in Tacoma in the 1950’s, and the Lord saved him also.

The Lord healed my mother of a heart condition at the time she was saved, and she was a firm believer in divine healing, raising all seven of her children without medicine.

In 1973 her only son, Frederick V. Bolte, passed away, and my mother was grief-stricken and never got over the sorrow of losing him. In May of 1976, she passed away and was still a staunch believer and follower of the Christ she loved.

This testimony was written by Alta Bolte's daughter, Elma Nelson.