Ernest and Lowana Phillips

My dad was born in Indiana. When he was seven, his mother died, and he was sent to live with an aunt. That did not work out, so he was on his own at age ten. He worked from farm to farm, and when he was about eighteen, he went to Kansas where he met my mom.

When my mom and dad were first married, they lived out on the prairies of Kansas in a sod house. Times were hard; they had no modern-day conveniences, there were no neighbors close by, the only way to get around was by horse, and my dad would be gone days at a time looking for work on farms.

Out there all alone, Mom started to talk to God. She didn’t know about being born again, but she knew that when she prayed she felt good, and her life was changed. Even though she knew nothing about restitutions, she started making right the lies she had told. Looking back years later, she realized she had gotten saved.

Around 1910, my aunt moved to Portland, Oregon, and was saved at the Apostolic Faith Church on Front and Burnside. She started sending the church literature back to her mother in Kansas. My grandmother loved the church papers and would pass them along to her children. I didn’t know until a few years ago that even though she lived in Kansas, she called herself “Apostolic.”

My mother read those papers and realized that what had happened to her on the prairies of Kansas was salvation. She longed to move to Portland and see for herself that what she read in the papers was true. In the meantime, my parents had three children: Velma, Viola, and Neva.

When my folks moved their family to Portland, they arrived during the annual camp meeting. They had very little money, and even though Florence Crawford, the founder of the work, didn’t know them, she let them stay on the campground. Several years later, Sister Crawford and my mom were walking around the grounds together. With her arm around my mother’s shoulder, Sister Crawford stopped and said, “I think this would be a good place for you and your family to place a tent”—and it was. After camp meeting, my dad heard there was work in Dallas, Oregon, shaking prune trees when the fruit was ripe. He moved the family there, and it was in Dallas that my mother was sanctified and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. These experiences held her steady until the day she died.

In 1927, my folks moved back to Portland where my brother Elvin and I were born. My mom stayed true to the Lord even though my dad wasn’t saved. My dad was a good man; he never hindered my mom in the Gospel. In fact, he did everything he could to help her. On Sundays, he would have dinner ready for us when we got home from church. At the start of camp meeting, he would load a trailer with everything we would need. He would give our tent frame a new coat of paint, and put up one tent for us and one for my aunt. Then he would live by himself until camp meeting was over.

I remember when camp meeting was five weeks long. In those days, we sat on park-like benches and there was sawdust on the floor and straw around the altars. I have a lot of wonderful memories of staying on the grounds. When I was about three, I was sitting with my mom near the front of the tabernacle. Sister Crawford stood up to preach, and seeing that I was very sleepy, asked the Sister next to my mom to move over and let me lay down. From that time on she was very special to this little boy.

Mom prayed for my dad and for her children year after year. One of my sisters, Viola, got saved, but the rest of us went the way of the world. Then in 1948, a group of mothers decided to band together and pray for their unsaved children. In six months, around fifty young people were saved. They ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-eight. My mom had told the Lord, “Even if You take my children’s lives, if they make Heaven, it will be okay.” It almost came to that with me, but my mom saw my brother and I saved, and about three years after, my older sister and her husband were saved. She kept praying for my dad, and in 1952, when I was in the army, I received a phone call from my dad saying, “Guess what, son, I got saved!” My mom’s prayers had been answered.

My dad was dying of throat cancer. A minister had visited him at home and asked if he wanted to pray. He did and got saved. He had smoked from the time he was ten, but the Lord completely took that desire away. I received an emergency furlough to help take care of him. Even though he was dying, what a wonderful time it was praying together and talking about the Lord! The joy of the Lord was in his heart even though he was suffering so. He said he wished he could stand in church just one time and tell what the Lord had done for him or go out in a street meeting and tell how he got saved.

We read the Bible together. He could not swallow or drink anything, and he loved for me to read about Heaven and how there was a river there. On the day he died, I went to see him in the morning. He said the Lord told him during the night that he could have a cup of coffee. I looked at my mom and she said to just go make one and set it on the table by his chair. He took it and drank all of it. The Lord abated his thirst just a few hours before he died. This is the testimony my dad was never able to give.  

My mom was a very quiet person, I only remember her testifying once, but she walked close to her God. I had the privilege of her praying with me at the altar when I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. She lived to see me become a pastor, and in 1972, the Lord took her home to her reward.

This testimony was provided by Earl Phillips, the son of Ernest and Lowana.